Since 2008, the gun lobby and right-wing media have been pushing various theories suggesting Barack Obama was secretly plotting against the Second Amendment. The National Rifle Association set up www.gunbanobama.com as Glenn Beck warned Obama was working to "take away your gun." Three years after Obama's election the purported plans to enact sweeping gun bans and confiscation haven't materialized, but according to gun lobby chief Larry Keane, Rupert Murdoch's media empire is now engaging in "corporate gun control."

Last week online reports indicated that FOX Sports Media Group had told the Ultimate Fighting Championship's parent company that gun-related sponsorships would no longer be permitted for their events. Fox and the Ultimate Fighting Championship recently signed a 7-year broadcast agreement. On Wednesday the gun lobby trade association National Shooting Sports Foundation announced they had confirmed the sponsorship ban.

FOX's decision to ban advertisements for lawful products owned by more than 80 million Americans is nothing more than corporate gun control.  We expect better from FOX.  So should you.

The Gun Store and ammotogo.com are among the UFC sponsors who would be affected by this ban. If no sponsorships in a single sport doesn't sound like a big deal to you, then you probably aren't working to contrive controversies in a gun lobby press shop.

Eric Bolling's gun antics at Fox Sports' corporate cousins apparently won't stop the gun lobby, which apparently wants fighters sporting monikers like "Natural Born Killer" and "American Psycho" to be allowed to be sponsored by gun retailers. What part of the Second Amendment doesn't Fox understand?

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Earlier today the Susan G. Komen Foundation released a statement "apologizing" for their decision earlier this week to cease grants to Planned Parenthood to pay for breast cancer screenings. Komen says it will "continue to fund existing grants, including those of Planned Parenthood," though what will happen in the future seems a bit murky.

Regardless, the same conservatives who cheered Komen's decision earlier in the week are now upset at the breast cancer awareness charity's apparent reversal of course. National Review's Daniel Foster this morning called the backlash to Komen "disgusting" and lashed out at Planned Parenthood and "the Left" for their "gangsterism":

In the NROHQ kitchen just now, Charlie Cooke wondered aloud, and here I paraphrase: "Does anyone on the Left even ask the basic question of whether a private charitable organization has the right to dispose of its money as it sees fit?" But in fact, that anyone thinks there is a question here is a sign we've already lost.

The Komen Foundation is a private organization. Planned Parenthood is ostensibly a private organization as well, but one with the highest of public profiles, a maximally polarizing mission, and a conduit of taxpayer dollars. If either of the two should be wary of politicizing its decision-making process, it should be PP, no? And yet Komen is getting hammered for a practical organizational decision (for the zillionth time: PP does not provide mammography) while pro-choice auxiliaries are gleefully fomenting the rage.

Will Wilkinson, who is pro legal abortion and probably the libertarian with whom I agree least often, gets it exactly right on this score, observing that there is more than a little gangsterism in the response from the PP set.

There are a couple of things to point out here. First, to look at the Komen situation and see Planned Parenthood as the bad-faith actor requires an astonishing amount of willful obtuseness. Komen's executives and PR team have spent the better part of the last three days dissembling their way through various media debacles claiming that they didn't alter their grant-making rules specifically to target Planned Parenthood (The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg obtained quotes from Komen insiders and uncovered internal documents showing this to be false).

As to the "gangsterism" charge and the exasperated kitchen quotes about "the Left's" lack of respect for a private organization's private donating decisions, I'd point out that anti-abortion rights activists have been pressuring Komen for years to end their relationship with Planned Parenthood. When Komen's decision was announced on January 31, National Review's Kathryn Jean Lopez celebrated the longstanding efforts by those activists:

This Komen-Planned Parenthood relationship has long been a target of pro-life activists and, media bias aside, this appears to be a remarkable turning point. Planned Parenthood may have trained the AP well -- and has been as American as apple pie to Republicans and Democrats alike for all too long -- but it has really seen itself exposed in new and deep ways since Lila Rose started her gutsy undercover work.

Scott Lemieux points out the obvious: the right of a private institution to dole out money in the ways they see fit does not exempt that institution from criticism. The anti-choice crusade against Komen's Planned Parenthood funding should be proof enough of that, and reason enough not to pop off about liberal "gangsterism" when things don't go your way.

Last fall, while television news outlets were largely ignoring the Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect IP Act during their evening news and opinion programming, their parent companies were busy paying an army of lobbyists to influence Congress on the then-pending legislation.

For months, the networks deemed subjects like Tim Tebow and the British Royal Family to be more worthy of evening coverage. Following criticism for ignoring the growing outrage over the bills, television media eventually devoted considerably more coverage to the widespread protests, website blackouts, and eventual shelving of both bills.

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Lots of conservative opinion makers expressed dismay at the sight of Republican front-runner Mitt Romney appearing in Las Vegas Thursday to receive the endorsement of reality TV host, and full-time birther, Donald Trump. Livid GOP boosters denounced the move as "unseemly" and a "fiasco" that represents the "biggest blunder" of Romney's candidacy. They openly mocked the Republican for his "moronic" campaign maneuver.

Message: Trump is a joke and Romney looked small and un-presidential glad-handing the developer on stage.

The slings may be directed Team Romney's way, but who's really to blame for Thursday's campaign "fiasco"? Fox News.

Let's not forget it was Fox News that nearly twelve months ago decided that golf course owner Donald Trump ought to be elevated to national status as a Republican kingmaker and Very Serious Person. It was Fox News, desperate for new anti-Obama content, that embraced Trump's farcical birther charade.

Celebrating Trump last year, Fox News covered the birther story with endless "news" segments, only to watch the tale crash in spectacular fashion when the White House released the president's long-form birth certificate. 

The original rise of Trump, not to mention his return this week, was bought and paid for by Roger Ailes and Fox News. They were the ones who couldn't stop pointing a camera at him last year when he went all birther. They were the ones who turned him into a GOP celebrity. (Sadly, other media outlets followed.) And Fox was the one that, yet again, moved to elevate celebrity above policy and common sense within the conservative movement.

Without Fox's incessant marketing last year, who would even care which candidate Trump is endorsing in this year's GOP primary? Likely nobody. But because Fox made the conscious decision to transform Trump into a right-wing celebrity, nominees-to-be like Mitt Romney now feel the need to embrace his "unseemly" and "moronic" endorsement.

Conservatives are shaking their heads. Maybe now they'll begin to understand how Fox News is destroying the Republican Party. 

Sean Hannity sought to bolster Newt Gingrich's assertion that "it will be a disaster" for the country if President Obama is re-elected, by misleading about the Congressional Budget Office's recent budget analysis. Hannity argued that CBO, which released its 10-year economic outlook on January 31, reported that if Obama wins a second term, "[t]axes will go up 30 percent."

But that's not at all what CBO reported. The budget office, working under the assumption that current laws will "remain unchanged," meaning that all sunset provisions currently in law go into effect (including the expiration of the Bush tax cuts at the end of the year) -- then revenues would increase by 30 percent.

As CBO explained:

Much of the projected decline in the deficit occurs because, under current law, revenues will rise considerably as a share of GDP -- from 16.3 percent in 2012 to 20.0 percent in 2014 and 21.0 percent in 2022. In particular, between 2012 and 2014, revenues in CBO's baseline shoot up by more than 30 percent, mostly because of the recent or scheduled expirations of tax provisions, such as those that lower income tax rates and limit the reach of the alternative minimum tax (AMT), and the imposition of new taxes, fees, and penalties that are scheduled to go into effect.

Hannity often uses misleading information to support various assertions about Obama, especially when it comes to the economy. On his Wednesday night show, for example, he claimed that one cannot "make the case" that the economy has improved during Obama's term -- when, in fact, plenty of evidence exists to make that case. But to Hannity, who has vowed that this is the "year to defeat Obama and save America," this is just another way of attacking Obama.

The Daily Caller's headline: "Holder's No. 2 in 2009: Gunwalking, Fast and Furious a 'terrific idea.'"

The Daily Caller's lede:

The head of the Department of Justice's Criminal Division and Attorney General Eric Holder's highest-ranking deputy, Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer, called Operation Fast and Furious and gun walking a "terrific idea" in emails to now-former Acting Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Director Ken Melson back in late 2009, according a report released by Republican staff of the House Oversight Committee.

What Melson and Breuer actually said, as reported by the Daily Caller:

On Dec. 3, 2009, Melson wrote to Breuer, "Lanny: We have decided to take a little different approach with regard to seizures of multiple weapons in Mexico. Assuming the guns are traced, instead of working each trace almost independently of the other traces from the seizure, I want to coordinate and monitor the work on all of them collectively as if the seizure was one case. . . We should meet again just to catch up on where we are in our gun-trafficking issues and we could talk about the above idea as well. Let me know what you think."

Breuer responded on Dec. 4, 2009, writing, "We think this is a terrific idea and a great way to approach the investigations of these seizures. Our Gang Unit will be assigning an attorney to help you coordinate this effort."

According to the Republican Oversight Committee staffers' report, Breuer -- Holder's number two -- assigned a prosecutor to help ATF handle Fast and Furious. That attorney, according to the report, was Joe Cooley.

As the Daily Caller's own reporting shows, the emails in question don't mention the idea of allowing guns to be trafficked to Mexico; they deal with how data from seizures of multiple weapons that were recovered in Mexico would be treated by ATF in their investigations.

This isn't the first time the Caller's reporting hasn't matched up with the slant they apply to their stories on Holder and Fast and Furious.

By the way, "Holder's No. 2" isn't Lanny Breuer, it's Deputy Attorney General James Cole. Other than that, the Caller did a bang-up job.

In the latest sign that News Corp.'s hacking scandal shows no signs of fading, Scotland Yard is reportedly investigating Times of London with regards to allegations that a Times reporter "gained unauthorized access to an e-mail account."

As today's New York Times notes:

The development was significant in two regards: it focused attention on e-mail hacking rather than the illicit voice mail interception at the center of inquiries so far, and it suggested that the most august of the Murdoch publications in Britain was not immune from scrutiny.

But the development is also significant because it means Murdoch's media companies are now being investigated, on two separate continents, for three different kinds of hacking: phone, email, and computer.

As Media Matters has been documenting for months, it's increasingly clear that there's a larger culture of corruption inside Murdoch's media empire, and that too many of his employees feel unrestrained by ethics or the law. 

In attempting to make a point about voter turnout during the Republican primary process, Sarah Palin repeated the right-wing talking point that President Obama called Americans "lazy." Palin claimed that ads targeting Mitt Romney would help Obama's re-election "only if Americans can concede Obama's point that he recently made, and that is that America has gotten lazy." She added: "It is imperative that voters do not become lazy in this primary process."

In fact, Obama did not accuse Americans of being lazy, and those who continue to insist, like Palin, that he did, take Obama's comments out of context.

As FactCheck.org wrote:

Republican presidential candidates Rick Perry and Mitt Romney both claim President Barack Obama said that "Americans are lazy." He didn't. To the contrary, Obama has consistently and repeatedly praised American workers as the "most productive in the world," a bit of boosterism he has repeated dozens of times.

His recent words -- "we've been a little bit lazy, I think, over the last couple of decades" -- actually referred to collective efforts to promote foreign investment in the U.S., and not to American workers or voters as individuals. Perry and Romney simply rip those words out of their context in order to mislead.

According to right-wing talk radio host and frequent Fox News guest Neal Boortz, America's poor are "toenail fungus."

Boortz's comments came in defense of presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who on Wednesday said:

ROMNEY: I'm in this race because I care about Americans. I'm not concerned about the very poor, we have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I'll fix it. I'm not concerned about the very rich, they're doing just fine. I'm just concerned about the very heart of America, the 90, 95 percent of Americans right now who are struggling, and I'll continue to take that message across the nation.

Talking Points Memo reported that several conservative commentators chastised Romney for the statement:

"Facepalm," Michelle Malkin wrote of the incident, which she said "could easily have been a Saturday Night Live parody"

Over at the National Review, Jonah Goldberg said the quote raised concerns that Romney is "simply not a good enough politician" to beat Obama.

"There are plenty of things one could say to defend Romney on the merits of what he says here," he wrote. "But great politicians on the morning after a big win, don't force their supporters to go around defending the candidate from the charge that he doesn't care about the poor. They just don't."

"Romney's 'I'm not concerned with the very poor' line may be the most idiotic thing a politician has ever said," The Weekly Standard's John McCormack tweeted.

RedState, whose bloggers have traditionally not been Romney fans, added their voices to the pile. According to co-founder Erick Erickson, Romney "played straight into the liberal caricature that Republicans don't have hearts." He added that "The issue here is not that Romney is right or wrong, but that he is handing choice sound bites to the Democrats to make him as unlikeable as he made Newt Gingrich."

It's unsurprising that Boortz would up the ante while defending Romney's statement. Boortz once said that "single mothers receiving public assistance" are "welfare broodmares."  Boortz also called the people of New Orleans displaced by Hurricane Katrina "garbage" and "worthless parasites," who could not "get out of the way of the water when that levee broke." He opined: "When these Katrina so-called refugees were scattered about the country, it was just a glorified episode of putting out the garbage." He earlier referred to Katrina refugees as "debris," saying:

I love talking to you about these Katrina refugees. I mean, so many of them have turned out to be complete bums, just debris. Debris that Hurricane Katrina washed across the country.

A post appeared on The Washington Post's health blog The Checkup today titled "Should Komen have been funding Planned Parenthood in the first place?" The post discusses the decision of the breast-cancer charity Susan G. Komen for the Cure to no longer partner with Planned Parenthood affiliates to provide breast exams.

The post, written by health columnist Jennifer LaRue Huget, asks whether Komen should have been funding Planned Parenthood because an organization called The Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer claims that abortion increases the risk of breast cancer. This organization is run by Karen Malec, who apparently has no medical background and presents herself primarily as a journalist, according to her biography. 

It's unclear why Huget is treating the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer seriously. Huget admits that research on the link between abortion and breast cancer risk is "spotty" but nonetheless links to a study from November 2011 that suggests that there may be an increase in breast cancer risk among women who have had an abortion. 

Malec promoted this study shortly after it was published last year, and The Daily Caller wrote an article advancing her claims. At the time, Media Matters spoke about the study with the former chief of the Abortion Surveillance Branch at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who called the study's methodology "one of the worst" he's seen and said it was "grossly inadequate":

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Daily Caller columnist Yates Walker is frustrated at the conservative hand-wringing over Mitt Romney's "electability." As he sees it, the whole idea of "electability" is just a ruse concocted by the media that is intended to damage Republican candidates:

The electability question is a liberal media con. It is posed only when discussing Republicans. And it is posed often. The purpose of the question is to cast doubt on conservative candidates and, ultimately, keep them out of office.

And, tragically, it works.

It shouldn't be surprising that Walker finds questions of electability to be a pernicious conspiracy, given that he worked for Christine O'Donnell's 2010 Senate campaign, which was a master class on the dangers of baggage-laden candidacies. To wit: Walker himself gained a small amount of notoriety for floating the ugly rumor that O'Donnell's primary opponent, Mike Castle, was having a gay affair (he had quit the campaign at that point and was working for a pro-O'Donnell outside group, from which he was subsequently fired).

Walker's theorizing on "electability" earned an approving tweet from Erick Erickson, so it's likely we'll see this theme repeated elsewhere. And that's as good a reason as any to examine the evidence for the "electability" media conspiracy, such as it exists.

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During the January 30 broadcast of The John and Ken Show, hosts John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou discussed California Gov. Jerry Brown's defense of a proposed ballot initiative that would raise tax revenue through additional levies on the wealthy and a temporary one cent increase of the state sales tax, which Brown delivered during an interview on Los Angeles ABC affiliate's Eyewitness Newsmakers.

According to Brown, this new revenue would benefit poor children by partially funding schools and various state welfare programs. In response, Kobylt wondered why he was "responsible for everybody's bad decision," claiming that "you don't get a benefit" from government spending on poor children. Kobylt concluded that poor children receiving government assistance were "little Solyndrites." From The John and Ken Show:

CHIAMPOU: Stop having kids if you are low income. Really? Half the kids born--come on. I don't care who you are, why can't you make a decision better than that.

[...]

KOBYLT: Why am I responsible for everybody's bad decision? Why do I have to invest in people when their parents don't seem to care? When the parents can't carefully plan a family. I mean really, how hard is it to slip on a condom?

CHIAMPOU: Well eventually that burdens just becomes too great, if it already isn't.

KOBYLT: It is--It's already too great. That's why we are bankrupt. We've got to many poor people. It's clear. We've got almost a third of the nation's welfare cases, just in this one state. A third.

[...]

KOBYLT: And you know, you don't seem to get a benefit from it either. These kids are largely dropping out of school. I mean if you look at LA the dropout rates are 60 percent. So we poor in all this medical care, food stamps, all these  welfare benefits, then free education, and it goes on for 15 years , and then somewhere in the middle of high school they drop out  and they go take a crap job, or not, and then--What did we put that money in for? What did we invest in?

[...]

KOBYLT: This is like Solyndra. All these kids are little Solyndrites.

CHIAMPOU: Yeah, they want our half a billion dollars. 

KOBYLT: They take the money, and it's billions every year, and we get nothing out of it--

CHIAMPOU: In this case it's a $7 billion tax increase

KOBYLT: And they keep selling the same damn thing that they have been selling us for 50 years. It doesn't go anywhere. You don't get a benefit from investing in kids when they come from families who don't give a crap. And that's really the core of this. A lot of the families don't care. They just don't care. So what am I investing in their kids for? Or investing in them. I'm not interested. I don't have to be forced to pay money for this. It doesn't work.

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Last week, the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by 16 scientists and engineers which downplayed the threat of climate change and urged public officials not to combat global warming.

As we reported, only 4 of the 16 authors have published peer-reviewed research related to climate change, and 6 have been linked to fossil fuel interests. Given their lack of expertise on the science of global warming, it is hardly surprising that the op-ed was riddled with scientific inaccuracies and distortions.

Today, 38 climate scientists responded to the flawed op-ed in a letter to WSJ titled "Check With Climate Scientists for Views on Climate." The following is an excerpt from their rebuttal:

Climate experts know that the long-term warming trend has not abated in the past decade. In fact, it was the warmest decade on record. Observations show unequivocally that our planet is getting hotter. And computer models have recently shown that during periods when there is a smaller increase of surface temperatures, warming is occurring elsewhere in the climate system, typically in the deep ocean. Such periods are a relatively common climate phenomenon, are consistent with our physical understanding of how the climate system works, and certainly do not invalidate our understanding of human-induced warming or the models used to simulate that warming.

[...]

Research shows that more than 97% of scientists actively publishing in the field agree that climate change is real and human caused. It would be an act of recklessness for any political leader to disregard the weight of evidence and ignore the enormous risks that climate change clearly poses.

Talk about throwing good money after bad.

Last week, cantankerous media watchdog Brent Bozell announced his group, Media Research Center, was launching the largest initiative in its 25 years history -- a $5 million marketing campaign urging the "liberal media" to "tell the truth!" Bozell urged Americans to stand up during this election year and "declare, once and for all, that the leftwing so-called news media are no longer going to pick winners and losers."

Featuring mobile billboards and "Tell The Truth!" placards, the MRC campaign is drawing inspiration from Newt Gingrich's candidacy, and specifically Gingrich's calculated pushback against the press. That crusade reached its peak on the night of the South Carolina debate when he won a standing ovation after castigating moderator John King for opening the debate by asking about allegations Gingrich's former wife had made in the press that week about their marriage.

Bozell soon announced Gingrich's primary win in South Caroline represented a "defeat for the liberal media." He  urged GOP candidates to pick up Gingrich's anti-media mantle and to denounce the elites' "mission to destroy" Republican hopefuls.

All of this, as usual with Bozell, is a charade.

In fact, all that the MRC's new "Tell The Truth!" campaign does is highlight the dubious nature of the long-running "liberal media" bias production. The punch line surrounding this multi-million dollar marketing drive? It's being rolled out at the exact moment the conservative press is attacking Gingrich.

It's true. Last week Gingrich likely received better, or at least fairer, treatment in the pages of The New York Times than he did at The Drudge Report, which dedicated several days to posting a litany of harassing headlines and relentlessly targeting the former Republican Speaker of the House, treating him as if he were the political reincarnation of Bill Clinton.

It seems conservative pundits are the ones on a "mission to destroy" Gingrich's candidacy. But Bozell can't say that out loud because he has a phony, "liberal media" campaign to launch.

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Last week, we released a study showing that major media outlets have largely favored GOP talking points in their coverage of the Keystone XL pipeline. The vast majority gave a greater amount of airtime to proponents of the pipeline and portrayed the project as a "job creator," often repeating discredited jobs estimates in the process. A poll released today by Republican pollster David Winston suggests that the media bias may be skewing public opinion as well.

78 percent of those surveyed in December said that the pipeline would create "a significant amount of jobs," while only 13 percent said that it wouldn't. There are, of course, questions as to what defines a "significant number" of jobs. But if trends in media coverage provide any indication, it is more than likely that a sizable chunk of those surveyed are basing their answers on bad data.

TransCanada, the Canadian company behind the proposed pipeline, has repeatedly claimed that the project would "directly create more than 20,000 high-wage manufacturing jobs and construction jobs" as well as "118,000 spin-off jobs," and up to 553,000 jobs "stemming from a permanent increase in stable oil supplies." Those estimates have been parroted by pipeline proponents in Congress. But they are drawn from an industry-funded study that independent experts have called "dead wrong," "meaningless," "flawed and poorly documented." Worse, they aren't even accurately cited. TransCanada has repeatedly used the term "jobs" to refer to what was actually an estimate of "person-years of employment."

In reality, the only independent study of the Keystone XL pipeline found that it could create as few as 50 permanent jobs, along with a maximum of 4,500 temporary jobs. The State Department estimates that the project would employ 5,000 to 6,000 temporary construction workers, but "would not have a significant impact on long-term employment."

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If you've sat down and watched a few episodes of Fox News' The Five, then you know that the nightly four-against-one conservatives-versus-Bob Beckel shout-fest has some real difficulty discussing race and politics. And that's unfortunate because they love talking about race and politics.

Last night, comedian and The Five regular Greg Gutfeld (who does for political analysis what Stu Rothenberg does for comedy) attributed the stark polarization of the American electorate to the unwelcome presence of the race card:

GUTFELD: All right. I want to say, I want to say -- what is really polarizing, the most polarizing thing we've ever come into contact with in politics is the race card. And that's why you are seeing polarization now. Nobody likes to be called a racist. And that angers a lot of people. So, there's no surprise. But you know what? When you tie the race card with class warfare, you've got a very angry electorate.

There is indeed an argument to be made that the unnecessary injection of racial issues can be toxic to reasoned discourse, and Gutfeld himself demonstrated exactly how toxic just a few minutes later.

The ensuing segment centered on Rep. Allen West's comments from this past weekend that President Obama and other top Democrats should "get the hell out of the United States." Beckel laid into the Florida Republican, saying: "I've never heard anything more disgraceful in my life. I think Allen West owes an apology to a lot of people." Gutfeld's response to Beckel was to read off a list he'd made of "outspoken black liberals," to include Al Sharpton, Louis Farrakhan, the Black Panthers, and Public Enemy. His point? "In our culture, we celebrate outspoken black leftists. So now, you have one provocative American black conservative and you liberals whine. I want to see more Allen West."

Up to that point, no one had mentioned West's race. It was about as far from the discussion as Farrakhan is from your average liberal. But Gutfeld just tossed it in there to paint liberal objections to West's inflammatory comments as being rooted in race. He rather indelicately played the race card.

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The right-wing media's hypocritical campaign to scapegoat lower-income families and those in need while simultaneously accusing President Obama and progressives of waging class warfare was on full display Monday night on Fox.

Here's Trump going On the Record to explain how unemployment insurance can create "incentives" for people who "don't want to go back to work because they can pick up many more months of their unemployment insurance and various other things."

Here's Trump a few minutes later chastising President Obama for waging "class warfare" and creating "a system where people dislike each other."

Defending Rep. Allen West from criticism over recent comments that President Obama and Democratic leaders need to take their message and "get the hell out of the United States of America," Fox News' Eric Bolling cited West's military service and reproached co-host Bob Beckel for not addressing  the Florida Republican as "Representative Allen West" or "Lieutenant Colonel Allen West," because he "risked his life for our freedom." Bolling's sudden embrace of formality, however, stands in stark contrast with the way he talks about President Obama.

During a speech in Florida over the weekend, West stated:

WEST: We need to let President Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and my dear friend the chairman of the Democrat National Committee, we need to let them know that Florida ain't on the table.

Take your message of equality of achievement, take your message of economic dependency, take your message of enslaving the entrepreneurial will and spirit of the American people somewhere else. You can take it to Europe, you can take it to the bottom of the sea, you can take it to the North Pole, but get the hell out of the United States of America.

Discussing West's comments, Beckel referred to West as a "hater" and said that West "owes an apology to a lot of people." He also stated that West's comments were a "kind of hatred" and that they were "disgraceful, despicable," and "disgusting." Beckel went on to say: "I don't believe conservatives believe like Allen West does. They're smarter than he is. He represents a smaller percentage of the tea party, right-wing crowd and I don't -- I wouldn't paste the whole conservative party that way."

Bolling then jumped in, telling Beckel:

BOLLING: Can I just point something out? You're calling him Allen West. Either call him Representative Allen West or call him Lieutenant Colonel Allen West because he was in the Army -- a war hero.

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How many missed meals does it take to be poor?

It's a question at the root of the latest campaign to redefine what it means to be poor in America.

Citing U.S. Department of Agriculture data that he claims shows "just 1 percent of households have someone who is forced to miss a meal" during an average day, Washington Examiner blogger Paul Bedard took up the conservative cause of dismissing poverty by pointing to all the cool things poor people own, like VCRs:

Forget the image of Appalachia or rundown ghettos: A collection of federal household consumption surveys collected by pollster Scott Rasmussen finds that 74 percent of the poor own a car or truck, 70 percent have a VCR, 64 percent have a DVD, 63 percent have cable or satellite, 53 percent have a video game system, 50 percent have a computer, 30 percent have two or more cars and 23 percent use TiVo.

A similar campaign to downplay the scourge of poverty in 2011 was voiced perfectly by Fox's Stuart Varney, who argued:

The image we have of poor people as starving and living in squalor really is not accurate. Many of them have things, what they lack is the richness of spirit.

In fact, what they actually lack is the richness of money to pay for things like food and shelter.

Which brings us back to the question -- how many missed meals does it take before one is poor enough to rate?

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Is there any national tragedy the National Rifle Association won't exploit to make a buck?

Last year the NRA marked the tenth anniversary of the 9-11 attacks by sending its members two separate fundraising emails referencing the terrorist strikes. Over the weekend the NRA continued the trend, marking the anniversary of the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster by encouraging their members to buy NRA-brand products from the NRAstore.com. Quoting President John F. Kennedy's words over a photo spread of the assassinated president and the shuttle, the NRA told their members, "The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it."

Then the email proceeds try to unload some the NRA's "Pursue Freedom" products in the hope that Americans are willing to pay for them as well. Now you too can "Pursue Freedom of Buckle Choices" with a selection of official "NRA Western Tooled Belts."

Much like the NRA store's 9-11 fundraising effort the recent email shows real-life images of fiery explosions seen by millions of Americans above advertisements for NRA branded mugs, clothing and other various trinkets.