Despite the religious diversity of America, Fox News does seem to pander to the conservative Catholic Church. Whether it's a way to put the imprimatur on conservative issues and thus bring the Catholic sheaves into the Republican party or just Murdoch's ongoing gratitude for papal knighthood, it's apparent that Fox provides a pulpit for American Catholic bishops who seem more concerned about women's reproductive systems and gay marriage than poverty. That Fox has less than six degrees of separation from the US Council of Catholic bishops, second only to AIPAC as a powerful and well funded lobby group, was seen in Catholic Maltese Knight Peter Johnson Jr.'s unrebutted articulation of the bishops talking points regarding the new HHS mandate that employer health plans cover contraception with no co-payment. The Catholic Church has been given a year to sort things out and Fox's only official clergy contributor, Fr. Jonathan Morris, is outraged. Today's Fox & Friends Sunday homily was full of the same agitprop pimped by Johnson - along with a shout out to the Catholic Newt Gingrich. Women won a victory with the Obama policy - but that's not how Fox sees it.  

If this column by Fox News psychologist Dr. Keith Ablow isn’t the ultimate in Republican Rehab, I don’t know what is. In a jaw-dropping column on FoxNews.com, Ablow analyzes Newt Gingrich’s marital (mis)behavior and decides it may be all good for the country. Seriously.

In a surprising commentary on Friday (1/20/12), Neil Cavuto took a strong stand on behalf of CNN’s John King who got savaged by Newt Gingrich in a Republican candidates’ debate the night before. Ordinarily, Cavuto’s commentaries are about half as long and go at the end of his show, Your World. But Cavuto felt so strongly, he decided to get it “off his chest” at the top of the show. Not so incidentally, Cavuto took a few swipes at Gingrich along the way.

What are your thoughts? What news coverage are you watching, reading or listening to? This is an open thread. 

Rick Santorum visited the Hannity show last night where he eagerly joined in the only unfairness of significance in this country according to Sean Hannity and much of Fox News – liberal media bias. But Santorum suddenly took the discussion beyond bashing the usual culprits when he began lashing out at the liberal bias of Google. According to Santorum, Google is “trying to destroy fundamental values in this country and conservatives who fight for (them).” While Santorum was on his anti-Google tear, Hannity could be heard agreeing off camera. 

Mike Huckabee has blown the birther dogwhistle again. Oh, he cleverly avoided saying anything about a birth certificate but he suggested that Mitt Romney respond to demands for his tax returns with a demand for President Obama to release his college transcript “and the copy of his admission records to show whether or not he got any loans as a foreign student.”

Fox Newsies are falling all over themselves defending Mitt Romney’s 1%-ness. Either they argue that it’s great that he’s so wealthy or they attack those with differing opinions are both. But in no case do they ever seem to really understand that what’s wrong with Romney is that everything about him says privileged and wealthy and nothing about him says he feels or understands or will work on behalf of those who are not.

Neil Cavuto opened a segment on Wednesday's Your World (1/18/12) about Mitt Romney paying a 15% tax rate instead of the top tax rate of 35% by celebrating it. "Maybe this sounds sacrilegious, but what am I missing here? Why be defensive about it? What's wrong with paying 15%?"

If Debbie Wasserman Schultz’ appearance on Fox & Friends this morning is any indication of how an Obama vs. Romney campaign would go, it’s looking good for Obama! As DWS bonus points, she gets in quite a few good digs at Fox, too!

News Corp. has settled 37 cases of phone hacking at a cost of possibly £10m, The Guardian has reported. As part of the process, the media conglomerate made what a high court called an “admission of sorts” that it covered up evidence of phone hacking by its British tabloid newspapers.