Former NRA President Marion Hammer, promising a fight from NRA on any attempt to regulate guns, January 2, 2012,

Since the Sandy Hook shooting rocked us to our core, there have been at least an addition 489 gun deaths (at the time of this writing). That's approximately 20 deaths a day. That's a horrifying statistic and one that the NRA feels completely comfortable in writing off as collateral damage. And for too long, those inside the Beltway felt compelled to allow.

But it looks like there may be a little daylight breaking through those clouds. The Obama administration is clearly floating a trial balloon about initiating some sensible gun safety regulations:

The White House is weighing a far broader and more comprehensive approach to curbing the nation’s gun violence than simply reinstating an expired ban on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition, according to multiple people involved in the administration’s discussions.

A working group led by Vice President Biden is seriously considering measures backed by key law enforcement leaders that would require universal background checks for firearm buyers, track the movement and sale of weapons through a national database, strengthen mental health checks, and stiffen penalties for carrying guns near schools or giving them to minors, the sources said.

As should be readily apparent from the clip above, this is no easy fight, so kudos for even going there. Especially when you consider how much fearmongering over "Obama is gonna take yer guns!" there already has been with no evidence to support it.

But frankly, I had to jump through more hoops and prove myself more responsible to adopt a dog from a rescue organization than I would have to go through to buy a gun at Walmart. That's a ridiculous discrepancy. And anyone that wants to argue against that doesn't have a leg to stand on.

The White House needs our support right now to help them feel comfortable in pursuing this line. Please, please, please call the White House and encourage them and call your congresscritters to let them know you support this as well. No other parent should have to spend the holidays like the Sandy Hook parents did.

This is a very big deal. We have so many other things happening at once, but anything that accelerates the degradation of our environment is a priority:

Saturday kicked off two weeks of sit-ins in Washington, D.C. for thousands of activists fighting the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.

On the first day, over 70 people were arrested at the White House fence, including protest organizer Bill McKibben.

Tar Sands Action is fighting against the Keystone XL pipeline, which is a pipeline from the tar sands in Canada to refineries on the Gulf of Mexico. Protestors are asking President Obama to reject a permit for the pipeline. According to the organization, the pipeline "will send 900,000 barrels a day of the world’s dirtiest oil to US refineries, allowing further development of the Alberta tar sands – development which could mean ‘game over’ for the climate, in the word’s of NASA’s James Hansen."

On the other side, Democracy Now! reports, "Supporters of the pipeline say the pipeline will create some 20,000 construction jobs, and the company behind it, TransCanada, has already signed agreements to employ the members of four international unions if the project is approved."

Some celebrities have joined the fight, including Mark Ruffalo, who recently said in a video, “I’ve seen the kind of damage that out-of-control energy development can do to water and to communities near my own home, where fracking for natural gas is causing widespread pollution ... All these problems are connected — we need to get off fossil fuels.”

So the only jobs the administration can come up with involve destroying what's left of the environment? Not what we voted for!

You can sign their petition and donate here.

Cold Cold Heart - Norah Jones

I had the distinct displeasure of listening to the ultra-conservative radio station here in San Francisco (amazingly, we have three conservative stations here to the one remnant of the late Air America) this weekend as my husband and I drove around running errands. I don't do it often, because it makes me question my faith in humanity. But after listening to the weekend host not only rationalize, but agree with Allen West's** offensive "plantation" remarks, I came to some conclusions. In order to be a conservative, you have to either have a cold cold heart or you simply cannot figure out the most basic logical equation. Because as I listened to this host complain mightily about all these welfare queens being created by the existence of "Democratic" programs (as if only Democrats take advantage of these programs) and said that we needed to end them right away to get people to pull themselves up from their bootstraps. No, see, as a liberal, the next logical question for me is, "But what if they can't? What do we do then?" And that's where we see the failure of the conservative dogma. Either they haven't thought it through...or they just don't care. Those people don't stop needing help just because you make it harder for them to receive it. As much as conservatives like to paint the whole by the mythological exception, there are people who simply do need assistance. And here, in the wealthiest country in the world, there is absolutely no excuse for us to let fellow human beings falling through the cracks like that.

I'll leave it to you to decide in which category this Sunday's news show guests fall. Jon Huntsman is the featured guest on This Week. There are times he does appear to be the only adult in the Republican clown car of a primary, so I imagine his time on the campaign trail is not much longer. Not to be overshadowed, Rick Santorum is heading for the far more friendly territory of Fox News Sunday, although between you and me, I think Chris Wallace struggles mightily to find ways to make Santorum not seem crazy. And if it's Sunday, it's time for some more Grampy McSame, this time facing Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation.

ABC's "This Week" - Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, a 2012 GOP presidential candidate; David Axelrod, senior political adviser to President Barack Obama's re-election campaign.

NBC's "Meet the Press" - Robert Gibbs, adviser to the Obama campaign; Gov. Mitch Daniels, R-Ind.

NBC's "The Chris Matthews Show" - Panel: Katty Kay, John Heilemann, Rick Stengel, Helene Cooper. Topics: Is Perry Like Reagan, The Westerner Who Can Defeat The Establishment Romney? In Bad Economic Times, Would Perry's Far Right Rhetoric Get Overlooked?

CBS' "Face the Nation" - Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.; former Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe; former Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie.

CNN's "State of the Union" - Axelrod; Virginia Gov. Robert McDonnell, head of the Republican Governors Association; Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, head of the Democratic Governors Association; Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md.

CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS" - Economist Jeffrey Sachs, TIME’s Rana Foroohar, CFR’s Richard Haass, and British historian Andrew Roberts.

"Fox News Sunday" - Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, a 2012 GOP presidential candidate; former Bush political adviser Karl Rove; former Obama White House aide Bill Burton.

So what's catching your eye this morning?

**Corrected to reflect correct attribution

The problem's gotten too big to ignore, and the White House is wise to finally jump out in front of this growing scandal:

Federal law enforcement officials are investigating possible criminal violations in connection with the national foreclosure crisis, examining whether financial firms broke federal laws when they filed fraudulent court documents to seize people's homes, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Obama administration's Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force is in the early stages of an investigation into whether banks and other companies that submitted flawed paperwork in state foreclosure proceedings may also have misled federal housing agencies, which now own or insure a majority of home loans, according to these sources.

The task force, which includes investigators from the Justice Department, Department of Housing and Urban Development and other agencies, is also looking into whether the submission of flawed paperwork during the foreclosure process violated mail or wire fraud laws. Financial fraud cases often involve these statutes.

The probe is unfolding as the administration seeks to send a public message that banks or other companies that broke the law would be held accountable. After freezing foreclosures in many states amid reports of improper foreclosures, banks are now preparing to submit new paperwork and resume the process of seizing homes. The task force is holding a wide-ranging meeting Wednesday to discuss the issue at HUD, which will be followed by a White House briefing by HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan and the task force executive director, Robb Adkins, an administration official said.

"As institutions are determining their next steps in addressing these issues, we remain committed to holding accountable any bank that has violated the law," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said in a statement Tuesday. "The administration's Federal Housing Administration and Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force have undertaken their own regulatory and enforcement investigation into the foreclosure process."

Looks like it's official:

President Barack Obama will nominate Solicitor General Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court, a person familiar with the president's thinking said Sunday night.

The move positions the court to have three female justices for the first time in history.

The source spoke on condition of anonymity because the decision had not been made public. Obama will announce his choice at 10 a.m. Monday in the East Room of the White House.

Known as sharp and politically savvy, Kagan has led a blazing legal career: first female dean of Harvard Law School, first woman to serve as the top Supreme Court lawyer for any administration, and now first in Obama's mind to succeed legendary Justice John Paul Stevens.

At 50 years old, Kagan would be the youngest justice on the court, one of many factors working in her favor. She has the chance to extend Obama's legacy for a generation.

Kagan has clerked for Thurgood Marshall, worked for Bill Clinton and earned a stellar reputation as a student, teacher and manager of the elite academic world. Her standing has risen in Obama's eyes as his government's lawyer before the high court over the last year.

Yet Kagan would be the first justice without judicial experience in almost 40 years. All of the three other finalists she beat out for the job are federal appeals court judges, and all nine of the current justices served on the federal bench before being elevated.

Kagan's fate will be up to a Senate dominated by Democrats, who with 59 votes have more than enough to confirm her, even though they are one shy of being to halt any Republican stalling effort.

Media Matters says that conservative objections to Kagan are motivated by politics, not substance (a "no duh" statement if I ever heard one.):

Bill Kristol says he "endorsed Elena Kagan," but Republicans "should oppose her" anyway. On the April 11 edition of Fox News Sunday, when host Chris Wallace asked if Republicans' "decision as to how much of fight they want to make" over the nomination would depend in part on who Obama nominated, Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol responded, "Not that much." Kristol added that while he "endorsed Elena Kagan" as a nominee, he believed that "most Republicans would oppose her and, honestly, should oppose her, with respect and with deference to her, you know, impressive academic credentials, because she will be a reliable liberal vote."

Conservative activist Viguerie signals that conservatives will paint any nominee as "radical." The New York Times reported in an April 16 article:

Richard Viguerie, a conservative fund-raiser who is developing direct-mail and Internet campaigns about the coming nominee, said conservatives relished the prospect of a fight with Democrats over the Supreme Court before the November election. "The more material he gives us to work with, the easier the battle will be," Mr. Viguerie said. "The more quickly we can identify that person as an ideological liberal, the easier it is for us to communicate to the American people how radical the president is and the nominee is."

Coulter urges "huge court battle" to benefit GOP election hopes. On April 12, conservative commentator Ann Coulter said: "A huge court battle is fantastic for Republicans. The reason the Democrats need the courts to legislate for them is their ideas are heinous to the American people. They can't win in democracy so they do it through the courts. This is always good to have a fight over the courts."

Hannity agreed that it was a good idea to have a court battle "whether you win or lose." In response to Coulter's statement that "it's always good to have a fight over the courts," Fox News host Sean Hannity said: "I agree with you, whether you win or lose."

Let the hackery begin.

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Last night on Bill O'Reilly's Fox News show, Glenn Beck made his weekly appearance and was shocked to learn from O'Reilly that White House Senior Adviser Valerie Jarrett was upset with him, and wanted to know why Beck was after her.

Beck either feigned amnesia, or he's a complete psycho who manages to obliterate any memory of his vicious verbal assaults on various individuals:

O'Reilly: She goes -- and she was very nice by the way -- 'What is his problem with me?' So here you are -- what is your problem with Valerie Jarrett?

Beck: I don't think I've -- I've mentioned Valerie Jarrett maybe a couple of times in the last year.

O'Reilly: She was very, very upset.

...

Beck: I don't know what I've said about Valerie Jarrett other than she is the Karen Hughes, if you will -- she's a huge player. She considers herself, uh, family. And I believe he considers her family.

O'Reilly: Is that bad?

Beck: No, no. I'm just saying she is very, very tight there. And she is one of the big players.

See, now this is why Whoopi Goldberg called Beck a "lying sack of dog mess." Because Jarrett has been a regular pinata on Beck's show. How many times has he played that tape of Jarrett praising Van Jones? We lost count, actually.

More importantly, it was just Sept. 30 when Beck devoted an entire twenty-minute segment to attacking Jarrett, placing her at the epicenter of the vast conspiracy or black radical Marxists who had infested the White House.

We've excerpted the more interesting parts of this attack:

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The day before this, he'd smeared her for her role in the Chicago Olympics bid, claiming she was a slumlord: "And Valerie Jarrett, some people say she was a slumlord, and she may personally benefit." He later added:

Beck: Is Valerie Jarrett, is it possible that she is going to benefit if the Olympics come to Chicago?

Caddell: Well, that's the word. She certainly had a lot of dealings going on in real estate.

He returned to the subject on his Sept. 3 show, when Beck invited Michelle Malkin on to slag Jarrett: "This woman is the consigliere not just to Barack Obama but to Michelle Obama as well, who shares these black nationalist and radical tendencies throughout their whole career."

I expect a Lexis/Nexis search would show that, besides the more outrageous smears, Jarrett has been mentioned on Beck's show at least twenty other times.

Beck is just flatly lying. But then, that's hardly news anymore, I guess.

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You know where the phrase "jumping the shark" originates, right? It's from the episode of Happy Days where Fonzie, wearing his leather jacket and some swim trunks, jumps over a confined shark with a pair of water skis. As Wikipedia explains, the phrase originally referred to TV shows whose desperation for ratings leads them to indulge stunts that underscore their having "lost it."

Well, Glenn Beck is hardly desperate for ratings -- yet -- but on his Fox News show yesterday, he jumped an entire school of Great Whites with Pinky Tuscadero on his shoulders.

He devoted an entire 14-minute-plus rant to depicting the Obama White House as being like Al Capone and his gang of thugs in The Untouchables, bashing people's heads in with baseball bats. And to illustrate the point, he waved about a big wooden Louisville Slugger and affected a tough-guy gangster voice, all to depict the administration as a bunch of petty thugs who threaten their opponents.

Because it was so long, I've divided it into two parts, just to preserve the whole thing for posterity. I want to be able to tell my grandchildren that yes, your grandpappy was alive when the most popular man on TV could rant for a quarter-hour that the president was a violent thug, while himself wielding a big baseball bat and urging his audience to take action.

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Glenn Beck ended his show with another his patented weepfests yesterday. It was special. And not just because it was about as sincere as the last time we saw Beck cry.

No, this one was special because it was accompanied by a loopy rant about how "life was simple" in the Golden Days of America, and then rambled into a weird metaphor comparing the nation to teenagers who innocently get stuck at a party and have to come home to mom and dad and face the music.

No, really. I'm not exaggerating.

Apparently the straying behavior for which we have to face the consequences now has something to do with having elected Barack Obama as President. Because the entire preceding show was a rant attacking the White House as riddled with "radical Marxists" who want to transform America into a communist state.

What got him especially worked up was this video featuring White House Communication Director, Anita Dunn:

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As we mentioned, the folks at Fox News were all up in arms yesterday about Anita Dunn's scathing commentary in which she pointed out the cold truth: Fox News has become a propaganda arm of the Republican Party. In fact, the outraged howls could be heard on every Fox program yesterday (except Shep Smith's).

Fox's chief defense is that the White House is confusing its opinion shows with its news coverage. It ran one such "news story" outlining the "attacks" by the White House on Fox, which included the following fine whine from Fox News Senior Vice President Michael Clemente:

"It's astounding the White House cannot distinguish between news and opinion programming. It seems self-serving on their part."

Actually, the White House is not alone. Indeed, anyone watching Fox News throughout the day will suffer much of the same confusion.

Fox is trying to pretend that only on its "opinion shows" such as Glenn Beck, The O'Reilly Factor, and Hannity is there free-ranging criticism of President Obama and his administration. But that's a load of hooey.

If you watch Fox's daytime "news" programs -- from Fox & Friends to Happening Now to Special Report with Bret Baier (where this report aired) -- you'll find that, while they lack the viciousness of the "opinion" programs, they nonetheless are heavily slanted with an anti-administration bias. "Reporters" like Carl Cameron and James Rosen constantly bring on Republican spokespeople and reliably transmit GOP talking points as though they represent fact (when in reality they usually have an estranged relationship with the truth). Anchors like Gretchen Carlson and Trace Gallagher regularly comment on the news they're reporting with an unmistakable right-wing slant.

A classic case, in fact, is this very "news" story that ran both on Baier's segment and earlier on Happening Now: It is wholly a defensive piece of propaganda that reliably gives the Fox News line -- comparing Obama's recognition of cold reality with Richard Nixon's paranoid "enemies list" -- with no attempt whatsoever to explain the White House's point of view.

If you wanted to see why the White House might confuse Fox's "news" programming with its "opinion" shows, one need look no further than this "news report" itself. Speaking of "self-serving."

Of course, there is a mountain of such examples already plunked in the middle of our national discourse. The most notorious recent such case was Fox's ardent promotion of the anti-Obama Tea Parties, beginning back in April and continuing through the "Tea Party Express, which produced such "news" segments as the one where Griff Jenkins was openly cheerleading the tea parties, and a Fox producer was caught working up the crowd to cheer. Then, of course, there was the whole 9-12 event, which Fox not only avidly promoted (it was, after all, wholly the creation of Fox's Glenn Beck) but actually attacked other networks for ostensibly failing to cover it as avidly as they did.

But that's just scratching the surface. Everyone knows it -- and Fox just wants to pretend it all away.

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Bill O'Reilly was helping lead the chorus of whining that erupted on Fox News yesterday in response to Anita Dunn speaking the truth about their right-wing propaganda operation.

He opened with a Talking Points Memo segment attacking Dunn and the White House. He wrapped it up with a series of claims that could only have been uttered by someone who's pathologically delusional:

Finally, Ms. Dunn is seeing the world through the prism of the other media, like NBC News and CNN. By all accounts, those networks favored Barack Obama over John McCain, and NBC actually promoted the president's candidacy and continues to give him excellent coverage.

So by that measure, Fox News is indeed troublesome to the White House. But our hard news coverage is fair and balanced. Again, if somebody doesn't believe that, let's see the evidence because bloviating walks.

Oy. Where to begin. Over the years, there's been a mountain of evidence amassed -- both here at C&L as well as such sites as Media Matters and ThinkProgress -- demonstrating Fox News' extraordinary right-wing bias, and its utter lack of anything approaching fairness or balance. Indeed, Fox's adoption of the phrase "fair and balanced" has transformed it into a popular reference to up-is-down Newspeak.

The fact that O'Reilly blithely dismisses this mountain as the product of a "far left bias" by those groups is itself clear evidence of his own bias: It's clear he a priori dismisses any facts produced by such groups, regardless of their actual validity.

O'Reilly wants evidence of an utter lack of "fairness and balance"? OK, let's try a single sample out of that mountain: Griff Jenkins' reportage from the "Tea Party Express" in which he not only blatantly led the teabaggers in their anti-Obama chants, but where a Fox producer was caught exhorting the crowds to cheer.

Of course, O'Reilly will never accept such evidence simply because it disproves his claim. Yeh, that's the Fox brand of "fair and balanced."

But O'Reilly really severed any tie with reality in the following part of the segment, where he talked over the White House meanies with fellow Foxite Brit Hume. Reaching his apotheosis when the subject of Fox's treatment of George W. Bush came up, O'Reilly claimed:

O'Reilly: And I have to say that when President Bush was in trouble in Iraq, this network and this program, and your program as well, routinely, routinely hammered President Bush. On Iraq.

Hume: Well, we certainly -- we, we were very faithful about covering all the bad news that came out of Iraq for a very long period of time. The criticisms that were made of him were reported and discussed at length on Fox News. Um, now, he had his defenders, the war had its defenders, there was commentary on Fox --

O'Reilly: But there was no cheerleading -- There was no cheerleading of President Bush on this network when his administration ran into trouble. There was no cheerleading, you know -- it was skeptical coverage, Iraq's going south, when the economy started to wobble last September, we were right on that.

OK, done with that long belly laugh? Good. Because we all remember how Fox not only fawned over every move made by the Bush administration, but how it viciously attacked anyone who dared criticize Bush or Dick Cheney or their incompetent gang of cronies.

Recall how it attacked war critics as the situation worsened in Iraq? (It also transformed proponents of the war into "critics" when it became convenient to do so.) How it openly cheerled for Gen. Petraeus?

Remember how O'Reilly routinely attacked anyone who criticized the Bush torture regime?

Then there was the way O'Reilly consistently dismissed the Abu Ghraib scandal as unimportant.

Remember how it routinely attacked Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson, and sturdily defended Scooter Libby?

And those are just a few examples of how Fox didn't merely cheerlead for the Bush administration, but also acted as its propaganda arm by viciously attacking its critics. And there's no shortage of evidence of that reality at all.