On yesterday’s America’s Newsroom, Martha MacCallum, Juan Williams, and Mary Katharine Ham debated Mitt Romney’s refusal to release more tax returns. MacCallum predictably stuck up for Romney and repeatedly announced that his tax returns were not anybody’s business.

Remember how Hannity was complaining a few days ago about the sleazy Obama campaign playing the race card on Mitt Romney? You may recall I said in my post that was a “tell” that Hannity was about to do the same thing. Sure enough, a little later on the same show, Hannity was suggesting that Michelle Obama was some kind of black radical whose views (and by extension, her husband’s) had heretofore been hidden from the public.

While Fox News is always willing to defend the Christian cross, they have no problem attacking atheists who seem to have replaced Muslims and "illegals" as the personae most non gratae. So when Fox is able to combine their patented memes of persecuted cross with evil atheists, they've hit the meme jackpot. Last September, Fox had full guns blazing in defense of the placement of the "Ground Zero Cross" (a piece of a surviving steel cross beam, from the WTC, that became an object of Christian worship) at the Ground Zero museum. Martha MacCallum freaked out about this "iconic source of hope." Brian Kilmeade fulminated against the atheists who want the cross removed from the museum. Eric Bolling ranted about atheists who wanted to take away a "symbol of hope." Megyn Kelly did two segments in which she admonished atheists who are "making people upset" about something that "isn't religious" but "part of history." Yesterday, Kelly continued her cross defense in what could only be called a tale of two guests in that Kelly mocked her atheist guest while allowing her Christian guest to defame atheists. But this is straight "news" and not "opinion." Right?

Sean Hannity appears to be very glum lately. Probably because his man Mitt is looking just as much the loser even after he chose Ronald Reagan Reincarnated Paul Ryan as a running mate. So Hannity has been handling his disappointment the way most bullies do: by taking it out on others. Unfortunately for him, Democrat Joe Trippi wasn’t intimidated by the bluster and histrionics.

On the August 15 Your World, Senator John McCain and former CBO director Doug Holtz-Eakin discussed entitlements. Host Neil Cavuto did the Republican spinning for them. “There’s a lot of controversy and mudslinging back and forth because you dare talk about the third rail of politics, reigning in the growth of entitlements, and that’s all Congressman Ryan’s been talking about with his plan, just reigning in the growth, not ending it.”

Allegations of employment and sexual discrimination against men have arisen at the Department of Homeland Security. It’s a serious case: a lawsuit has been filed by the head of New York City’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement office alleging that women appointed by DHS head Janet Napolitano were unqualified for their positions and “created a frat house-type atmosphere that is targeted to humiliate and intimidate male employees.” Fox News covered this with their usual kind of tastefulness and sensitivity when a Democrat is under harsh scrutiny: by asking if a “lesbian cabal” is “ruling the roost” at DHS.

The right wing has seized the shooting at the Family Research Council as an opportunity to denounce the designation, by the Southern Poverty Law Center, of the FRC as a "hate group" - a designation that has been used by some media in reporting the shooting. Naturally, as the right's media arm, Fox News has provided a platform for those who defend the FRC. Michelle Malkin did her usual verbal histrionics about the unfairness of labeling, as a hate group, a group that supports traditional values. Both Megyn Kelly and Bill O'Reilly provided a platform for FRC President, Tony Perkins, to say that the SPLC provided "license" for the gunman to attack. On none of these shows was there any attempt to articulate the basis for the SPLC's categorization. The viewer is left with the impression that the FRC was unfairly maligned because of its position on gay marriage when the reason for the SPLC classification is that it "has knowingly spread false and denigrating propaganda about LGBT people." That wasn't mentioned on any of the segments. Fox News, "fair & balanced?"

Mike Huckabee once said that he wished that every American could be forced to listen to the message of radical Christian nationalist "historian," David Barton, whose bizarre and inaccurate revisionist history of the US includes the myth that the Founders were fundamentalist Christians (Enlightenment? What Englightenmen!) who sought to create a country based on biblical principals. (And did ya know that they opposed the teaching of evolution and that the Revolution was all about ending slavery?). He has been denounced by reality based historians for years but his reputation is now even further sullied - but ya probably won't hear anything about it from Mike Huckabee!

Bill O’Reilly apparently saw the recent shooting at the ultra-conservative Family Research Council as some kind of proof that he bore no responsibility for the death of abortion doctor George Tiller. O’Reilly’s thinking seemed to go something like this: a politically-motivated maniac tried to shoot up the FRC (but only succeeded in wounding a security guard) and the liberal media thought it no big deal. Therefore, that proved that when a politically-motivated maniac shot and killed Dr. Tiller, the harsh (liberal media) spotlight on O’Reilly’s inflammatory rhetoric was simply more liberal-bias baloney. Unfortunately for O’Reilly, FRC head Tony Perkins was more interested in blaming the Southern Poverty Law Center, a staunch critic of the FRC, for “creating an environment that led” to the shooting than he was in attacking the media.

As I posted yesterday, the Fox News Nation has been “inspired” by the news that there’s a new video out, called Dishonorable Disclosures, from a group of supposedly non-partisan military and intelligence operatives accusing President Obama of taking too much credit for the killing of Osama Bin Laden and also of endangering national security with intelligence leaks. Of course, it’s just a coincidence that the video is being released now, during the height of the 2012 presidential campaign and that the group behind it shares an office space with a Republican consulting firm. But another funny coincidence is that there are some Fox News talking heads involved.  So these guys are not only in bed with the right-wing but are or have been paid to speak for them, too.