That Fox & Friends panders to the extremist base of the GOP was underscored yesterday when Roger Ailes' personal attorney, Cardinal Dolan's pal, Knight of Malta, and Fox "friend" Peter Johnson Jr. interviewed Virginia's current Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli about whether government poses a "threat" to personal freedom. Personal freedom? Really? While Cuccinelli hates Obamacare and federal regulations, he is also a militant anti-abortion activist who doesn't have a problem with government threatening the reproductive freedom of Virginia's women. Yet Johnson (who, according to Steve Colbert, has the dubious distinction of having three names that mean penis) thinks that Cuccinelli is awesome. Guess we know who Fox News will be supporting in the VA governor's race?!

Trust Fox Nation. This morning they're busy trying to create a Todd Akin-style scandal out of a Democratic congressman’s remarks about women’s safety on campus. The lead story is titled “Democrats Have a Full-Blown Akin on their Hands.” The first paragraph reads: "Chill, women, says Colorado Democrat Rep. Joe Salazar. While arguing for the disarmament of college students, Salazar says that even if women feel like they’re going to be raped, they may not, so who needs a firearm for protection?” 

Glenn Beck visited The O’Reilly Factor tonight, ostensibly to discuss the tension between the Republican Party and the Tea Party. But about halfway through, Bill O’Reilly changed the subject to the story he “broke” last week about sensitivity training at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It wasn’t long before Beck was ranting that the Obama administration is deliberately training federal workers to hate white people.

Despite his frequent whining about how Christians are just soooo mistreated, Tucker Carlson has no problems maligning those who follow a Wiccan belief system. One imagines that Carlson would have a problem if - say - somebody at MSNBC maligned his Anglican church (the more conservative version of Episcopalism) but that didn't stop Carlson from saying, during his misrepresentation, on Fox & Friends, of a religious diversity guide at the University of Missouri, that Wiccans "hate orthodox Christianity."  Later, in the same Fox & Friends show, Carlson (and the "Friends" - Clayton Morris and Ann Kooiman) continued to denigrate and mock Wiccans and lie about the University of Missouri. Ah, don't ya love the smell of righteous Christian bigotry in the morning!

The Curvy Couch Crew got the SNL treatment again over the weekend with their discussion of President Obama’s State of the Union address. They “revealed,” until they figured out it was a hoax, that when you played Obama’s address backwards, he said, “I am a Black Panther. When this is over, I am going to smoke weed and do hip-hop songs.” 

The hypocrisy is truly astounding. Fox & Friends is the flagship Fox show that provides a national public venue for every perceived attack on American Christians. Yet, the show that specializes in "outrages" and "controversy" surrounding alleged insults to the church of the perpetually persecuted Christian has no problem mocking the religious beliefs of American non-Christians. Last week, famous "dick" Tucker Carlson, who is described in an Alternet article about the 24 "most loathsome" Americans as an American pundit "who believes that incredulous squinting qualifies as commentary," mocked Wiccans. And not only did he mock them; but he lied about and misrepresented a diversity (treasonous concept) guide at the University of Missouri. Good ole Fox & Friends - Jesus loves them, yes he does?

Memo to Republican presidential hopefuls: Forget Iowa (for now, anyway). Find a way to embarrass President Obama on national television, maybe at the National Prayer Breakfast, throw in some right-wing shibboleths like the “war on Christmas” and  “death panels” and voila! Not only can you get all the face time on Fox News you could hope for, you might even get an hour-long special on Hannity called, “Saving America” complete with focus group and cheering Q&A segments designed to promote your candidacy. Political experience optional. Minority ethnicity probably helpful.

Although last week, Chris Wallace paid tribute to retiring Executive Producer Marty Ryan, his replacement is off to an unfair and unbalanced start, judging from this week's guest list of two Republicans: Senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Rand Paul of Kentucky. The result was that no guest was there to rebut Graham's shocking suggestion that, as Think Progress reported, the government "protect the Defense Department from automatic spending cuts by slashing $1.2 trillion from the Affordable Care Act." UPDATED.

As part of his God given job of "looking out" for us, Bill O'Reilly has discovered that there is "an epidemic of disrespect" which, in Bill's alternate reality, is caused by public schools. So in the interest of consistency, inquiring minds want to know if O'Reilly will be using his show to call out Ted Nugent who was recently quite disrespectful towards RI Congressman Jim Langevin (D).  Nugent has been praised by O'Reilly who said that Nugent's "straight talk" is just what the GOP needs. But Nugent's "straight talk" now includes an attack on the congressman who, based on Nugent's history of violent rhetoric aimed at the president, questioned Nugent's presence at the State of the Union Address. Nugent subsequently accused Langevin of being "brain dead" and having "shit for brains." Langevin, a former RI Secretary of State, is a quadriplegic as a result of a gun accident. What say you Bill O'Reilly?  

Greta Van Susteren doesn’t seem too concerned about the Republican stunt to temporarily block the nomination of Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense. But last night, she spent an entire segment suggesting that President  and First Lady Obama are wasteful spendthrifts for taking separate vacations next week.