Newt really likes the attack-the-media tactic, using it whenever and wherever an uncomfortable question is posed. But I imagine he never thought he'd have to use those tactics against his former employers, Fox News. Unfortunately for him, Roger Ailes' morning memo to his on-air talent was to take on fully the accusation that Newt Gingrich really isn't a conservative (like St. Ronnie himself could stand up to the GOP purity nowadays) and that he's saddled with corruption and ethics violation baggage that will hurt his general election viability. This gang up by the second string Fox & Friends group is more than little Newtie can handle:

He then took a sharp turn to attack the hosts, offended that he had been asked to “take seriously” Romney’s demand. “Even in the news media, you ought to have some sense of balance. As a reporter, don’t you have some sense of balance? Isn’t ‘fair and balanced’ part of Fox News?” Briggs jumped in to defend Morris’s question, explaining that he was giving Gingrich a chance to respond, not legitimizing any claims. He also expanded the question to propose that it was up in the air whether “any of this mattered. Gingrich responded that “if there is something wrong, we deserve to know” with Romney’s taxes only because of the “billion dollar Obama campaign” that would crush him if there was something wrong there– as opposed to Gingrich’s ethics investigation, which had “been covered for 20 years; it’s all out in the open.”

So why did Gingrich blow up at Morris’s question? It felt, at least on Gingrich’s part, somewhat forced, as if he was waiting for any opportunity to bash them. And that wouldn’t be surprising in light of some peripheral evidence that not all the Fox & Friends hosts were 100% on his side during that testy exchange with CNN’s John King– particularly Briggs, who tweeted his support of King (and Fox’s Neil Cavuto in defending him) that his question about Gingrich’s affair with his now-wife Callista was “fair game” (the twist to this is that Morris, who actually got clawed here, seemed fine with Gingrich’s reaction to King’s question while it happened on Thursday). Either that, or Gingrich had a bullet in his barrel for the media today that was ready to land no matter where, since the strategy is clearly working, and the Romney tax issue felt like the right moment to strike.

I have to believe that this tactic is going to wear thin fairly soon. The news media is not exactly an industry of shrinking wallflowers. There are a number of egos in the media that rival Gingrich's and at some point, they may get sick of being attacked for giving Newt the free publicity he craves.

By the way...that assertion that Newt made that all he was exonerated of all ethics charges? Not so much.

It's hard to make the Fox & Friends team seem more inane and stupid than they actually are, but SNL decided to give it a try. Here, Steve Doocy, Gretchen Carlson and "not Steve Doocy" contrast and compare the Occupy Wall Street protests with the tea party rallies:

No, "anarchy" is no government while people play bongos.

And the Hank Williams controversy:

CARLSON: Mr. Williams compared President Obama to Hitler and we just don't say that on this show.
NotDOOCY: We imply it.

Ouch.

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Hank Williams Jr. joined the morning crew of Fox & Friends and meandered off the rails. It even had the Ailes puppet crew freaking out, causing them to disavow his comments at the end of the segment.

Newshounds tipped me off on this this morning:

Hank Williams, Jr. appeared on Fox & Friends this morning and, undoubtedly knowing that Williams is a Republican, the Curvy Couch Crew decided to probe his thoughts about the 2012 presidential election. The ensuing trainwreck as Williams compared President Obama to Hitler and called Obama “The Enemy!” proved too much even for these three hosts. It probably guarantees this will be the last time anyone on Fox asks for Williams’ political opinion again. How bad was it? Bad enough that Gretchen Carlson made a point of disavowing his comments after the segment was over.

Williams was obviously in a hostile mood from the get go. He appeared in dark sunglasses and with his arms crossed as the interview opened. His bizarre answers that followed strongly suggested he was inebriated. That would be the best of the possibilities. Otherwise, what he said was just hostile, ungracious and offensive - even by Fox News standards. (H/T Aunty Em).

If Gretchen said that they disavowed his disgusting comments then you know it was way, way, way out there. And his remarks caused ESPN to pull him off of Monday Night Football tonight. I'm sure he'll say that his first amendment rights were just violated by ESPN because that's the standard tea party line of defense.

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By now, there's no question in anyone's mind that the tragic Norway shootings are the work of a right-wing extremist who appears to at least have been influenced by web sites like StormFront.org, among others. But watch these Fox talkers avoid it completely, even in the beginning, where they open up by asking if this can "really be compared to the Oklahoma City bombings." Not only do they deny it, they manage to turn everything on its head to portray the guy as someone with a deep fear of Islamic extremists.

By far, the most intellectually dishonest and insidious part of this report is the characterization of Anders Behring Breivik as a "domestic extremist." I defy anyone here to explain exactly what the hell a domestic extremist is. Seriously.

Taking apart this silly video step by step, let's begin with who they decided to put on as an "analyst". Fox News "correspondent" Catherine Herridge, author of the book "The Next Wave: On the Hunt for Al Qaeda's American Recruits". Just to give you a flavor of her thought processes, here's a small snippet from her book from a section recording her thoughts during the KSM tribunal:

So Janet fixes the sketch to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s satisfaction. Within minutes, the sketch is carried to our live shot position on the tarmac about 50 yards from the courthouse. It is filmed by the pool TV crew and then broadcast to millions.

Later in the evening, I sit on the equipment box near the live shot position. The sun is dropping like a red, hot ball into the Cuban hills.

"Who's in control," I say under my breath. "Us or the terrorists?"

There you go. Typical Fox News them-or-us thinking, resplendent with lots of fear of the brown guys. Now, on to the transcript:

ANCHOR: Many comparisons made to the Oklahoma City bombing. Are they valid?

HERRIDGE: Well, I think they are valid. I spoke with a US official last night in Oslo and I said "Hey, is this Oklahoma City comparison appropriate" and they said absolutely because on the face of it, based on what we know from the investigation, it's a case of domestic extremism and there do not appear to be any known links to an outside terrorist group. We've had a series of arrests this morning but it really does appear to be an act that was driven by a single suspect or lone wolf operative, Dave.

DAVE: And it's this guy, Anders Brevik who was not hiding his extremism, he had this video online, he was very active in social media. How was this missed and is that the takeaway?...

Can someone please tell me what a "domestic extremist" is other than a euphemism for Fox News avoiding their responsibility to report the truth to their viewers? As Dave pointed out yesterday, this is part of the reason these people get away with what they do. As you can see, the host is getting away with blaming social media, Norway's law enforcement authorities for not monitoring social media more closely for people like this, and just about everything but coming out with the truth: Brevik was not a "domestic extremist." He is a radical right-wing cultural warrior who has been influenced by many different people, including Tim Phillips, director of Freedomworks, apparently.

Herridge, instead of discussing the fundamental problem here, spends an inordinate amount of time blaming the Internet for his views. There is some truth to what she says. It's easy to turn social media, blogs, and other content into an echo chamber which then magnifies anger and hate. Just have a look at Andrew Breitbart's timeline sometime for an example. He specializes in that kind of tactic. Still, it's beside the point. The point here is that Brevik espoused extreme right-wing political positions and acted on them to inflict political mayhem on his countrymen.

Let's not forget that he didn't just target a random group of people. He chose to target the youth movement of the current political party in power, which is further evidence of just how far he was willing to go to eradicate opposition.

Unfortunately, deluded Fox News viewers will just go on thinking he was some sort of amorphous 'extremist' deluded by social media. Business as usual.

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Fox & Friends had wall-to-wall coverage of the celebrations inspired by news of Osama bin Laden's death this morning, and had on lots of analysts to discuss the Obama administration's big victory in the so-called "war on terror".

To do that, strangely enough, they had on all sorts of commentators, including various politicians, such as Karl Rove, and featured statements from the likes of Dick Cheney. Oddly enough, not a single segment managed to include a Democratic politician or even one person from the Obama administration.

Instead, what we heard all morning was how George W. Bush deserves credit too! They even ran a segment featuring Bush vowing in 2001 he would eventually get Bin Laden, with the longest time frame being a year from then.

As Steve Benen puts it:

There's a fair amount of this rhetoric bouncing around this morning, and it's not especially surprising -- Republicans aren't going to credit President Obama, regardless of merit, so it stands to reason they'll try to bring George W. Bush into the picture.

If this is going to be a new GOP talking point, we might as well set the record straight.

In March 2002, just six months after 9/11, Bush said of bin Laden, "I truly am not that concerned about him.... You know, I just don't spend that much time on him, to be honest with you."

In July 2006, we learned that the Bush administration closed its unit that had been hunting bin Laden.

In September 2006, Bush told Fred Barnes, one of his most sycophantic media allies, that an "emphasis on bin Laden doesn't fit with the administration's strategy for combating terrorism."

And don't even get me started on Bush's failed strategy that allowed bin Laden to escape from Tora Bora.

I'm happy to extend plenty of credit to all kinds of officials throughout the government, but crediting Bush's "vigilance" on bin Laden is deeply silly.

But it's what we expect from Republicans. And especially the crew at F&F.

(h/t TPM)

You want proof we're living in Idiocracy? Look no further than Fox & Friends, which I swear kills braincells each and every time I'm masochistic enough to tune in.

Libertarian John Stossel does his best to contribute to the dumbing down of the populace with this little gem. Quick, name the group that has gotten more government handouts than anyone else: Millionaires? Financial institutions? Big Pharma? Big Oil? The Military Industrial Complex? Surely, you jest. No, no, no....according to John Stossel, the group that has gotten more government handouts than anyone are Native Americans with their deficit-busting Bureau of Indian Affairs:

Stossel was on Fox & Friends this morning to discuss some high-paying government jobs recently reported in The Daily Caller. The report found that the "Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs needs someone to run the Facebook page for the Dept. of the Interior and they'll pay up to $115,000 a year." Stossel took that as an opportunity to wonder about the entire concept of a Bureau of Indian Affairs.

"Why is there a Bureau of Indian Affairs?" he said. "There is no Bureau of Puerto Rican Affairs or Black Affairs or Irish Affairs. And no group in America has been more helped by the government than the American Indians, because we have the treaties, we stole their land. But 200 years later, no group does worse."

Established in 1824, Indian Affairs is the oldest bureau of the United States Department of the Interior. Among other responsibilities, the Bureau is charged with "maintaining the federal government-to-government relationship with the federally recognized Indian tribes," according to its website.

What a stunning ignorance of history, economics, the Constitution, Native Americans, tribal sovereignty and let's face it, reality. Maybe that hit Stossel took from that wrestler knocked sense out of him.

Brian Kilmeade, defending Lord Bill O'Reilly from the nefarious Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar, gives voice to the basic Fox News view of the world:

Kilmeade: They can't handle the give and take of the debate. They were outraged that somebody was saying, uh, there's a reason, there was a certain group of people that attacked us on 9/11. It wasn't just one person, it was one religion.

Not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims.

Oh really, Brian.

Well, just as we had to do for Sarah Palin back in 2008, let's do a little reminder session for Kilmeade et. al.:

Eric Rudolph:

Eric Robert Rudolph (born September 19, 1966), also known as the Olympic Park Bomber, is an American radical described by the FBI as a terrorist who committed a series of bombings across the southern United States which killed two people and injured at least 150 others.

Rudolph declared that his bombings were part of a guerrilla campaign against abortion and what he describes as "the homosexual agenda." He spent years as the FBI's most wanted criminal fugitive, but was eventually caught. In 2005 Rudolph pleaded guilty to numerous federal and state homicide charges and accepted five consecutive life sentences in exchange for avoiding a trial and the death penalty. Rudolph was connected with the white supremacist Christian Identity movement. Although he has denied that his crimes were religiously or racially motivated, Rudolph has also called himself a Roman Catholic in "the war to end this holocaust" (of abortion).

James Kopp:

James Charles Kopp (born August 2, 1954) is an American citizen who was convicted in 2003 for the 1998 sniper-style murder of Dr. Barnett Slepian, an Amherst, New York physician who performed abortions. Prior to his capture, Kopp was on the FBI's list of Ten Most Wanted Fugitives. On June 7, 1999 he had become the 455th fugitive placed on the list by the FBI. He was affiliated with anti-abortion group "The Lambs of Christ." He has been referred to as a terrorist by the National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism.

The Phineas Priesthood:

Letters left at the scene of an April 1996 bank robbery/clinic bombing in Spokane, Washington, contained Identity propaganda, diatribes against the banking system and were signed with the symbol of the "Phineas Priesthood." [At the time of the robbery, a bomb was set off at a nearby Planned Parenthood clinic as a diversion, with death threats toward abortion providers contained in the note left with that bomb.] The three men arrested, Charles Barbee, Robert Berry and Jay Merrell, were linked to white supremacist and "Identity" groups and were also charged with setting off bombs at a newspaper office and a Planned Parenthood clinic. All three were convicted.

[More here.]

Tim McVeigh:

Timothy James McVeigh (April 23, 1968 – June 11, 2001) was a United States Army veteran and security guard who bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City on the second anniversary of the Waco Siege, as revenge against what he considered to be a tyrannical federal government. The bombing killed 168 people, and was the deadliest act of terrorism within the United States prior to the September 11, 2001 attacks.

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Well, as we observed this morning, the Republicans are out in force whining about Democrats' plans to reform the Senate's filibuster rules. This morning on Fox & Friends, the usual Doocy-Carlson-Kilmeade trio gave a cursory report -- complete with a chryon describing it as a "power grab" by Democrats -- emphasizing Mitch McConnell's suggestion that this it would hurt Democrats down the road if they "eliminate the filibuster."

Except, of course, no one is talking about eliminating the filibuster -- they just want to make it so you actually have to filibuster if you want to stop the Senate from doing its business. That won't hurt Democrats -- especially because they are so smitten with "bipartisanship" that it's hard to imagine them ever conducting the kind of scorched-earth/filibuster-everything tactics the Republicans have used on an ongoing basis for the past fourt years.

So here, officially, is the package of reforms:

Udall-Harkin-Merkley Rules Reform Package

Blocking a vote with a filibuster used to be rare and reserved for extreme situations. Today, major bills, non-controversial bills, sometimes multiple steps on the same piece of legislation, and even non-controversial nominees face filibusters. There have been more filibusters since 2006 than the total between 1920 and 1980.

Senate rules are supposed to allow for substantive debate and to protect the views of the minority – as our founders intended. Instead, they are abused to prevent the Senate from ever voting on, and sometimes even debating, critical legislation.

Our reform resolution helps increase transparency, restores accountability, and fosters debate.

• Clear Path to Debate: Eliminate the Filibuster on Motions to Proceed

Makes motions to proceed not subject to a filibuster, but provides for two hours of debate. This proposal has had bipartisan support for decades and is often mentioned as a way to end the abuse of holds.

• Eliminates Secret Holds

Prohibits one Senator from objecting on behalf of another, unless he or she discloses the name of the senator with the objection. This is a simple solution to address a longstanding problem.

• Right to Amend: Guarantees Consideration of Amendments for both Majority and Minority

Protects the rights of the minority to offer amendments following cloture filing, provided the amendments are germane and have been filed in a timely manner.

This provision addresses comments of Republicans at last year’s Rules Committee hearings. Each time Democrats raised concerns about filibusters on motions to proceed, Republicans responded that it was their only recourse because the Majority Leader fills the amendment tree and prevents them from offering amendments. Our resolution provides a simple solution – it guarantees the minority the right to offer germane amendments.

• Talking Filibuster: Ensures Real Debate

Following a failed cloture vote, Senators opposed to proceeding to final passage will be required to continue debate as long as the subject of the cloture vote or an amendment, motion, point of order, or other related matter is the pending business.

• Expedite Nominations: Reduce Post-Cloture Time

Provides for two hours of post-cloture debate time for nominees.

Post cloture time is meant for debating and voting on amendments – something that is not possible on nominations. Instead, the minority now requires the Senate use this time simply to prevent it from moving on to other business.

Of course, all of this is eminently sensible. Which virtually guarantees total Republican opposition.

Harry Reid is pushing to make it happen:

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Now that the 9/11 first responders' health bill has passed the Senate, Jon Stewart and the Daily Show obviously deserve a round of applause for stepping up and playing a critical role in getting it done.

That really seemed to stick in the craws of the crew at Fox & Friends this morning. Check out this exchange between Gretchen Carlson (who I think is just still mad at Stewart for calling her out on the dumb-blonde schtick), Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade, culminating with this:

Carlson: I think it's interesting when you have Jon Stewart, who apparently decided to get really serious on this topic, have a serious show about it. That's like mixing apples and oranges, c'mon! I mean, people already think that his show is real news, which is a problem.

So then when you have comedy and then one day you decide to just get totally serious --

Doocy: He's an activist.

Carlson: But I don't know if that works in the mind of the -- mind of the American people.

You know what's an even bigger problem, Gretchen? That people already think every show on Fox News other than Shep Smith's is real news. When in fact, it's demonstrably little more than lying, smearing, fearmongering propaganda. Now THAT'S a problem.

Considering the amount of air time that Fox News Channel gives to such A-list talent like Ted Nugent to wax political, you'd think they wouldn't necessarily be surprised to find out that performers, like many Americans, have opinions and occasionally like to express them.

Buffett, a well-known Gulf resident, held a benefit concert in Gulf Shores, Alabama, and in an interview with the AP, didn't hold back his anger:

Buffett told The Associated Press in an interview Tuesday that it's perfectly normal for people to be mad when they see oil washing up on beaches and marshes.

"If you're born and raised on the Gulf Coast and it's kind of in you, and you don't feel anger and rage initially over what's going on down there, I think you're a hypocrite," he said in a telephone interview from New York.

Buffett's anger and rage has focused on the crony capitalism and de-regulation so rampant and institutionalized during the Bush administration:

Buffett, a supporter of President Barack Obama, said the roots of the spill lie with the administration of former President George Bush, which was often criticized for being too cozy with the petroleum industry.

"To me it was more about eight years of bad policy before (Obama) got there that let this happen. It was Dracula running the blood bank in terms of oil and leases," he said. "I think that has more to do with it than how the president reacted to it."

That, of course, is a simply OUTRAGEOUS statement to the brain-trust that is Fox & Friends. I mean, c'mon already, people are just looking for a little entertainment. Can't Buffett just keep his opinions to himself? And as Steve Doocy notes, Buffett is a supporter of Obama (something that AP felt obligated to note as well), so obviously "Margaritaville" has turned into Kool-Aid Land.

Um yeah. Let's remember who is sipping the Kool-Aid then next time Chuck Norris has some valuable political punditry to provide.