Ann Coulter actually sounded reasonable on Fox & Friends yesterday as she lit into Newt Gingrich and his right-wing talk-radio style of campaigning that won him the South Carolina primary the night before. “South Carolinians would rather have the emotional satisfaction of a snotty remark toward the president than to beat Obama in the fall,” Coulter said. It’s nice to see Coulter – a Romney supporter – talking up the importance of tamping down the heated rhetoric. But it’s hard to take her seriously given that that’s exactly the kind of rhetoric that is her stock in trade. However, it was a point that seemed to completely escape any of the Fox & Friends hosts.

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Steve Doocy usually has a vacuous grin on this face while he's promoting right wing propaganda. But today, he was uncharacteristically snarling as he got almost histrionic over the Obama HHS decision to give religious organizations an extra year to figure out how they will be able to comply with the HHS decision requiring them to provide free birth control to their employees - a victory for women's reproductive rights. This Fox enabled "outrage" against the Obama administration policy, as a way to foment anti-Obama sentiment in the Catholic electorate, began in November with the super Catholic Maltese Knight, Peter Johnson, Jr's. promotion of the talking points of his liege lords in the US Council of Catholic Bishops to his fellow Catholic, the head bobbing Steve Doocy. Yesterday, in his weekly sermonette, Foxpriest Fr. Jonathan Morris vehemently opined that the HHS policy is "offensive." And this morning, Doocy and Johnson were back to do some more pimping of the bishops positions - the womens' position not so much - in fact not at all as far as I can tell. As the "church lady" would say, "isn't that special."

It’s not hard to guess why FoxNews.com closed the comments on its report about a Jewish newspaper suggesting that Israeli Mossad agents assassinate President Obama. We’ve repeatedly noted how Fox News readers long for the deaths of Democrats and President Obama in particular. This thread appears to be no different. One of our readers got a screen grab of some of the comments before the thread was closed – and sure enough, the malevolence and racism was over the top. Screen grabs after the jump.

Tomorrow is the anniversary of Roe v Wade, the landmark SCOTUS decision which established a woman's right to an abortion.  Every year, on this anniversary, those who want to take us back to the days of back-alley abortions converge onWashingtonfor their annual "March for Life." As Fox is the mouthpiece for the "pro-life" movement, it's not surprising that they would report on the march. But beyond just reporting on the event, alleged Fox "news" anchor, Shannon Bream brought us a little tear jerker that is part of a growing narrative of those who seek to curtail women's reproductive freedom. That narrative is the tale of those who supposedly "survive" abortions. And not only is it a tear jerker, it's quite effective at raising money at the various churches where these supposed survivors speak. Today, LibertyUniversity grad, Shannon Bream interviewed one such "survivor" as part of her coverage of the "pro-life" (not anti-abortion) "big event." Praise Tim Tebow.

Apparently, Chris Wallace let the all-Republican focus on Fox News Sunday today go to his head. He wasn’t content to just listen to Speaker of the House John Boehner say that “all options are on the table” with regard to the Keystone Pipeline and the payroll tax cut. Instead, Wallace repeatedly tried to push Boehner into saying he’ll make the extension of the payroll tax cut conditional on President Obama approving the Keystone Pipeline.

Fox News Sunday didn’t just exclude Democrats from its roster of interviews today, the one segment that purported to deal with a Democratic issue, a “preview” of President Obama’s upcoming State of the Union speech, was from a Republican perspective, only – that of Rep. John Boehner.

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.