Conservative media are pushing for Israel or the United States to launch a military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities, claiming that inaction will cause great harm to Israel. In doing so, however, they are ignoring questions about whether Iran is planning to build nuclear weapons at all and minimizing the dangers of war with Iran. 

In a February 6 Townhall.com piece, Ken Blackwell and Bob Morrison, senior fellows with the Family Research Council (FRC), argued that Israel should "strike [Iran] now" as its "very survival is on the line," adding, "As worrisome as an Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear facilities might be, Iran with a nuclear weapon is infinitely more." They concluded: 

Today, surrounded by mortal enemies, with their backs to the wall, Israelis are told to take more "risks for peace" by a US. administration that is outraged by the sight of too many Jews in Jerusalem. 

If we wait until the Iranians have sunk their nuclear weapons deep into hardened bunkers it will be too late. The Obama administration will not act in time. Later, will be too late. 

Israel: Don't wait; hit the Iranian nuclear facilities now. The world will thank you for it. 

During the February 7 edition of his Fox News show, Sean Hannity said that "[t]here is a rise of Islamic extremism that is happening under [Obama's] watch, and he's not doing a thing," adding, "[h]e ought to be dropping bunker buster bombs on Iran's nuclear sites." 

On February 8, The Wall Street Journal's Bret Stephens appeared on Fox News' Happening Now to discuss his recent piece on whether Israel should bomb Iran. During the segment, Stephens said that "Israel should bomb Iran if it's going to strike decisively," adding: "If it's going to have a surgical attack that will set the Iranians back by six months or one year then the question becomes, What's the point of that? But if it's going to use a strike as a first stage in a broader program of regime change joined by the United States, then that's worthwhile." Stephens concluded the segment by saying: 

As the Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak put it, Iran is now entering what he calls a zone of immunity. They will have too much material too deeply buried to be susceptible to an Israeli strike. And that window is closing for them. Unless they take advantage of this opportunity they will have to live with a nuclear Iran, which will be devastating for Israel's interest. 

And on the February 12 edition of Fox News' America's News Headquarters, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani said that "if we don't become very serious and convince the Iranians that we will use significant military force to stop them they're going to just keep moving straight ahead," adding, "I think we're going to have to be prepared to use military force." He concluded: 

I want this administration to get realistic and get tough about Iran. Stop this nonsense about talking to them, which goes back to when he was debating Hillary Clinton and Hillary Clinton told him to his face that he's naïve. Stop it. Cut it out, Mr. President. They don't want to talk to you. You know what they want to hear from you? That you're tough. That you are capable of attacking them if that is necessary and that you're not going to sit there and labor over it. That you are willing to do it if that is necessary to stop them from becoming a nuclear power. And he should say to them, in the toughest language he can come up with, there's no way on earth I'm going to let you become a nuclear power. It's just too darn dangerous. 

There are several things wrong here. 

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During a segment about new rules regarding women in the military, Fox News contributor Liz Trotta attacked the Department of Defense for increasing spending on support programs for victims of sexual assault. Trotta also reacted to a Pentagon report showing a 64% increase in violent sexual assaults since 2006 by stating: "Well, what did they expect? These people are in close contact."

Trotta began by claiming "we have women once more, the feminist, going, wanting to be warriors and victims at the same time" and later added that feminists "have also directed them, really, to spend a lot of money. They have sexual counselors all over the place, victims' advocates, sexual response coordinators. ... you have this whole bureaucracy upon bureaucracy being built up with all kinds of levels of people to support women in the military who are now being raped too much."

When Fox News anchor Eric Shawn said that "many would say that they need to be protected," Trotta replied: "That's funny, I thought the mission of the" armed forces "was to defend and protect us, not the people who were fighting the war."

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In his February 10 Washington Times column, titled "End of the Constitution: Obamacare birth-control mandate would defeat the First Amendment," Jeffrey Kuhner called President Obama "an anti-Christian, anti-religious bigot" whose "goal is to purge Christianity from civil society, to marginalize religion from the public square." Kuhner's attack is in response to the president's announcement that he would require most employers to cover contraceptives for women. President Obama later announced an accommodation in which insurance companies would directly offer contraception coverage to employers who have religious objection to such coverage.

From the Times:

Is America sliding toward autocratic rule? This is the essential question of Barack Obama's presidency. Mr. Obama vowed to "fundamentally transform" the United States. Despite his incompetence and economic failure, the president is making good on his central promise: the destruction of our constitutional republic. He is trying - piece by painful piece - to reverse the legacy of the Founding Fathers.

[...]

His greatest assault, however, is on religious freedom. Fortunately, his latest effort sparked a rebellion. Mr. Obama had declared war not just on the Catholic Church, but on the First Amendment. The administration ordered almost all religious organizations to provide health insurance coverage that includes free birth control and sterilization procedures - even the morning-after pill, which can induce abortions. Otherwise, under Obamacare, Catholic hospitals, charities and universities would face major fines totaling millions of dollars. The choice was clear: Catholic institutions must either abandon their fundamental tenets or go bankrupt. The contraceptive mandate denied the conscience rights of the church. It was state-sanctioned coercion of private entities to act against their explicit religious beliefs. This is why it triggered such furor among Catholics and non-Catholics alike. If such basic liberties could be trampled on, then nothing - and no one - is safe from big government's crushing grip. Fortunately, a three-week outcry forced him to back off.

Like many on the radical left, Mr. Obama is an anti-Christian, anti-religious bigot. His goal is to purge Christianity from civil society, to marginalize religion from the public square. He essentially told the church that Washington, not the Vatican, will dictate how it must run its affairs and administer its social services. He demanded that Catholics sacrifice their beliefs on the altar of secular liberalism. The state - with him at its helm - is the new pagan church. Women's "reproductive health care" trumps Catholic positions on birth control and abortion. The fact that most health insurers already cover contraception and that it is widely available and accessible to women - just go to your local Walgreens - means nothing to feminists or the powerful abortion lobby. The real aim is to smash the Catholic Church as a bulwark against the sexual revolution, reducing it to a quisling of the liberal regime.

Catholic leaders rightly stood up. The Church understood it was under siege. That may not be over. Mr. Obama could win a second term. Hence, Obamacare - along with its contraceptive mandate - might not be repealed and may even expand. If so, he will have succeeded in giving birth to his Frankenstein monster: a post-constitutional, post-American soft tyranny.

Yesterday, we exposed how the conservative media has been hyping a study from the Heritage Foundation purporting to show America's growing "dependence" on the federal government. The report, however, was little more than a thinly-veiled attack on government programs like Social Security and Medicare.

Today, the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) released important research shedding light on just how important the government programs that conservatives attack actually are. The CBPP analyzed budget and Census data and found that more than 90 percent of the funding for programs such as Social Security and Medicare benefit people who are elderly, seriously disabled, or members of working households.

From the analysis:

Some conservative critics of federal social programs, including leading presidential candidates, are sounding an alarm that the United States is rapidly becoming an "entitlement society" in which social programs are undermining the work ethic and creating a large class of Americans who prefer to depend on government benefits rather than work.  A new CBPP analysis of budget and Census data, however, shows that more than 90 percent of the benefit dollars that entitlement and other mandatory programs spend go to assist people who are elderly, seriously disabled, or members of working households -- not to able-bodied, working-age Americans who choose not to work.  (See Figure 1.)  This figure has changed little in the past few years.

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National Rifle Association (NRA) executive vice president Wayne LaPierre told an audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference that "if you don't remember anything else I say today, write this down: this is the most dangerous election of our lifetimes." He warned that "all of our freedom, all of our rights" are at stake, asking, "Will we save America and our freedom? Will we save the Second Amendment from a second Obama White House?"

LaPierre promised that Obama's purported strategy will not succeed, saying that the NRA is "all-in" for the 2012 elections and promising that "gun owners will be responsible" for Obama's defeat. New research from the American Prospect's Paul Waldman brings such claims from the NRA into question, demonstrating that "the NRA has virtually no impact on congressional elections."

When LaPierre first asserted the existence of a "massive Obama conspiracy" at Florida's version of CPAC, he was widely mocked by media figures including Rachel Maddow and Chris Matthews for what Maddow called "the insane paranoid message from the NRA this year." Today, LaPierre offered a rejoinder to such criticisms, saying that "the media won't win this election, gun owners will."

The NRA leader also suggested that President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder had acted "like some South American dictator" with regards to the ATF's failed Operation Fast and Furious,again offering up the baseless conspiracy that the operation had been deliberately designed by the White House to go wrong in order to justify stricter U.S. gun laws.

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Things are not going so well for the Fox Business Network. The network, which mostly seemed to function during primetime as the Fox News Channel's cover band, announced the cancelation of its entire primetime lineup yesterday: Power and Money with David Asman, Freedom Watch with Andrew Napolitano, and Follow The Money with Eric Bolling. For anyone that has been paying attention to the network's recent struggles, the news is not surprising.  

Last October, Reuters reported on a memo sent by Fox Business Network executive vice president Kevin Magee to Fox Business staff imploring everyone at the network to stop trying to emulate Fox News Channel. In the memo, which Magee sent after meeting with Fox News CEO Roger Ailes, Magee told his staff that he had "been asked to remind you all again that they are separate channels and the more we make FBN look like FNC the more of a disservice we do to ourselves."

Indeed, at that point it was difficult to differentiate between FBN and FNC. The channels featured the same rotating cast of contributors and hosts, and FBN, though it did report on business news, seemed far more interested in the Fox News routine of tearing down Obama and Democrats. It was not uncommon to turn on the channel and see David Asman or Eric Bolling covering stories not even tangentially connected to business, like conspiracies about President Obama's birth certificate.

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During his appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Thursday, Cal Thomas cracked that MSNBC host Rachel Maddow "is the best argument in favor of her parents using contraception. I would be all for that. And all of the rest of the crowd at MSNBC, too, for that matter" (h/t Think Progress).

Maddow responded to Thomas' comment on her show Thursday night: "Mr. Fox News person speaking there, I am sorry that you feel that way about me, that you wish I had never been born. Personally, I'm glad that you were born. Otherwise, how would Republicans get the special Fox News bat signal that it's time to be outraged now, about what used to be Republicans' own policy idea?"

In addition to being a syndicated columnist, Thomas is a regular panelist on Fox News' "media criticism" show, Fox News Watch. In 2012, he has appeared on the January 14, January 28, and February 4 editions of the weekly show.

Thomas' comment was so offensive that at least one of his Fox News co-workers has called for him to apologize. On her Gretawire blog, Fox News host Greta Van Susteren wrote: "Cal Thomas needs to pick up the phone and make a personal call to Rachel Maddow. Then he needs to publicly apologize."

Does Van Susteren's criticism portend Fox News itself sanctioning Thomas for his ugly remarks about Maddow? We shall see.

For weeks, the right-wing media have been attacking the Obama administration for drafting regulations that required most employers to provide contraceptive coverage to women. While the regulation exempted churches and other religious institutions, conservatives screamed that it would violate the religious conscience of Catholic hospitals and other employers. Today, President Obama announced an accommodation in which insurance companies would directly offer contraception coverage to employers who have religious objections to such coverage.

The Catholic hospitals -- who conservative media say they are trying to protect -- support the accommodation. According to the Associated Press: "The president of the Catholic Health Association, a trade group representing Catholic hospitals that had fought against the birth control requirement, said the organization was pleased with the revised rule. 'The framework developed has responded to the issues we identified that needed to be fixed,' Sister Carol Keehan said in a statement."

Despite the support from Catholic hospitals, Fox's supposedly "straight news" division is already laying the groundwork to attack the accommodation.

Discussing the accommodation, Fox News' Happening Now host Jon Scott said "There's no guarantee, I have to think, that this accommodation is going to be acceptable." Scott also said: "Saying that the church doesn't necessarily have to pay for the birth control option, that the insurance companies have to, that doesn't seem like it's going to necessarily fly."

It will be hard to make the case that Obama has done anything less than bend over backwards to achieve consensus. Catholic hospitals support the accommodation; the Catholic group Catholics United supports the accommodation; and recent polls have shown that the majority of Catholics support insurance plans that cover contraception.

But Fox seems ready to keep trying to drum up outrage.

Faced with a corporate decision last May on how to handle the still-troubling, but not yet disastrous, phone-hacking allegations that had been dogging his British newspapers, Rupert Murdoch assembled key lieutenants in London and weighed his options.

According to a new, detailed account of the meeting published by Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Murdoch was presented with two options: let his London office continue to deal with the police and Parliamentary inquires, neither of which up to that point had done grave damage to News Corp., or Murdoch could shift responsibility to New York, to News Corp.'s corporate headquarters and allow key executives there to give the pressing problem a fresh, independent look.  

According to BusinessWeek, Murdoch chose to keep the phone hacking focus in London (i.e. the "containment strategy"), in part to inoculate his son James Murdoch, a key News Corp. executive who had been positioned to become his father's successor.

Two months later though, the hacking scandal exploded when it was revealed Murdoch's News of the World had hacked into the phone messages of Milly Dowler, a 13-year-old girl who disappeared in April 2002 and was later found murdered. Since July, more than a dozen hacking arrests have been made, News of the World was shuttered, and executives were summoned before Parliament for a series of hearings, including James whose reputation has been badly damaged.

By August, it was evident that Murdoch had made exactly the wrong decision in opting for the London containment strategy.

Writes Greg Farrell in BusinessWeek: 

If Rupert Murdoch had chosen a different path at that dinner in London, the company might have dodged theworst consequences of the Milly Dowler revelations.

...

James would still have suffered in the short term for heading News International at a time when it was obscuring the extent of phone hacking, but he could have avoided the embarrassment of making firm claims before a parliamentary committee that were eventually contradicted by e-mail evidence.

In making his fateful choice, Murdoch overruled his longtime general counsel, Lon Jacobs, who urged his boss last spring to move aggressively on the pressing problem and transfer the focus from London to New York.  

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Todd Starnes sees a divided America. The culture war-happy Fox News reporter writes in the introduction to his new book, Dispatches From Bitter America, that he is one of the many "bitter" Americans, and self-describes as a "gun-toting, chicken-eating son of a Baptist." The "antithesis" of his kind, he writes, are people "who've been educated in Ivy League schools, who listen to high-brow music, and who dine on arugula and fermented soy." A bit perplexingly, Starnes also describes these Ivy League arugula-eaters as believing that "mankind created the heavens and the earth."

Starnes borrowed the "bitter" descriptor from President Obama, who in April 2008 told a group of donors in San Francisco that people in small-town Pennsylvania and the Midwest see the steady degradation of their communities and sometimes "get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." The comment caused a political controversy at the time but has persisted in the conservative talk radio environment like so much strontium-90. For Starnes it was so monumental a happening that, four years later, he's written an entire book around it.

The book, as an indictment of the Obama administration or as a piece of journalism, is utterly useless. It shifts uneasily between earnestness and parody (both intentional and unintentional). Frequently it's just ugly and offensive. Starnes describes "Islamophobia" as "the word [liberals] use to describe bitter Americans who have a fear of getting blown up," unwittingly proving those liberals to be justified in its use. He devotes a short chapter to empathizing with Tyler Clementi, the college student who committed suicide after his roommate secretly videotaped his sexual encounter with another man. The first line of the very next chapter refers to a transgender homecoming queen as a "mary." None of this is particularly surprising, given Starnes' history of bigoted commentary.

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Right-wing talk radio host and frequent Fox News guest Neal Boortz, who has said that President Obama "is a bigger disaster to this country than 9-11," is now comparing Obama to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. In a post on his Twitter feed, Boortz wrote: "Trying to convince myself that under the right circumstances Obama wouldn't be another Bashir [sic] Assad. Trying .... but I can't":

The Syrian government is currently engaged in cracking down on an 11-month-old uprising protesting the Assad family's 42-year rule of the country. The brutal suppression has resulted in many deaths. According to human rights organizations, the current military assault on the city of Homs has "killed at least 300 civilians and wounded 1,000." Numerous countries, including the United States, have pulled their diplomatic envoys from the country amid the mounting violence.

In October 2011, Boortz stated that "Barack Obama is a bigger disaster to this country than 9-11." Asked to explain his statement, he added that "killing 3,000 people is a tragedy," but that "killing the individualism, the self-reliance, and the self-respect of the American people, like Barack Obama has done, is much more of a tragedy." Boortz's comments drew fire from 9-11 victims' families, who said the comparison was an insult.

In December 2009, Boortz similarly wrote on his Twitter feed that 9-11 was "[h]orrible," but "the damage Obama and the Dems are doing will surpass this tragic event."

CBS Correspondent Sharyl Attkisson did not appear at the Conservative Political Action Conference today to receive her journalism award from fringe group Accuracy In Media (AIM), despite previous reports that she would speak at the event. Instead, CBS Vice President and Washington Bureau Chief Christopher Isham accepted the award on her behalf.

AIM said earlier this week that Attkisson had "confirmed and reconfirmed" her attendance at the award presentation and that she would address the audience for 8-10 minutes. Isham did not speak at length, telling the audience: "Sharyl was very sorry not to be here today. She is traveling out of town on assignment, so I'm going to accept this award on her behalf, on behalf of CBS News."

After saying Attkisson would be donating the award to the family of slain Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, Isham added: "CBS News is very proud of Sharyl's groundbreaking reporting, as you've described it. It represents the best at CBS News -- original reporting that we are extremely proud of."

Attkisson's reported decision to accept AIM's award -- which before this year had only been given to conservative commentators -- drew attention, due to AIM's history of promoting virulently anti-gay views and conspiracy theories. In less than 24 hours over 11,000 people signed a Media Matters petition urging CBS not to legitimize AIM by accepting the award.

Among other veteran journalists who questioned the move, former CBS Washington bureau chief Ed Fouhy said Attkisson risked becoming "another pawn in the ideological chess games being played with such intensity in Washington." Charles Davis of the University of Missouri School of Journalism added: "I'm not going to ever applaud a journalist for accepting an award that essentially recognizes the fact that the advocacy group likes what they reported."

In announcing this year's winners, AIM praised Attkisson for her January 13 "investigation" purporting to reveal 11 "New Solyndras." But Attkisson's report suffered from factual problems that CBS has yet to correct. Attkisson has also been criticized for a series of articles fueling unsupported claims about a link between vaccines and autism.

The recent announcement that the Obama administration would require most employers to provide birth control caused immediate outrage throughout Fox News and the right-wing media. (Churches and other religious institutions are exempt.) Today on Fox News' Happening Now, Jon Scott explained to fellow Fox News host Chris Wallace that critics are calling "the birth control mandate an attack on religious freedom" while "supporters say it's about woman's access to family planning and health care." Chris Wallace -- supposedly part of the network's straight news division and anchor of Fox News Sunday -- decided that the supporters of the mandate were totally wrong.

Wallace said: "I don't think it's just about birth control. I really think this controversy is about government intrusion. There are a lot of people who aren't Catholics who are very upset about this because they think the government shouldn't be in the business of telling anybody in any religion what they have to do. And so it becomes a question of government limits or government intrusion in the lives of institutions or of people." Wallace also said: "This idea of mandates is something I think you don't have to be Catholic to be upset about."

Wallace's comments directly contradicted comments that Democratic senators had made about the contraception issue. For instance, Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) said: "We have news for Republican: This is about contraception. The attacks on women's rights never come without being disguised as something else."

And it's ridiculous to suggest that this isn't about access to contraception. According to a study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, "[e]mployer-based coverage is the primary form of health insurance for 64% of women of reproductive age, but a sizable minority of women lack coverage for contraceptives." Notably, poorer and college-aged women are the ones who struggle the most with the cost of prescription birth control.

But that's Fox's straight news division for you: always ready to rebut the progressive position regardless of the facts. 

Yesterday Heritage released an "Index of Dependence on Government" report. Fox and others in the conservative media trumpeted the report. But even a quick look at Heritage's report reveals its true intent: a thinly-veiled attempt to discredit important government programs such as Social Security and Medicare.

The report suggests that times were better when, rather than relying on a government-provided social safety net, Americans of limited means had to hope for "support provided by families, churches, and other civil society groups." Here is what the Heritage report has to say about Social Security and similar government programs:

Financial help for those in need has also changed profoundly. Local, community-based charitable organizations once provided the majority of aid, resulting in a personal relationship between those who received assistance and those who provided it. Today, Social Security and other government programs provide much or all of the income to low-income and indigent households. Nearly all the financial support that was once provided to temporarily unemployed workers by unions, mutual-aid societies, and local charities is now provided by federal income, food, and health programs.

This shift from local, community-based, mutual-aid assistance to anonymous government payments has clearly altered the relationship between the receiver and the provider of the assistance. In the past, a person in need depended on help from people and organizations in his or her local community. The community representatives were generally aware of the person's needs and tailored the assistance to meet those needs within the community's budgetary constraints. Today, housing and other needs are addressed by government employees to whom the person in need is a complete stranger, and who have few or no ties to the community in which the needy person lives.

Both cases of aid involve a dependent relationship. However, support provided by families, churches, and other civil society groups aims to restore a person to full flourishing and personal responsibility, and, ultimately, to be able to aid another person in turn. This kind of reciprocal expectation does not characterize the dependent relationship with the political system.

And it's nostalgia for the good old days is just as strong when it comes to Medicare. The report says: "Regardless of whether the medical and financial results are better today, the relationship between the people who receive health care assistance and those who pay for it has changed fundamentally. Few would dispute that this change has affected the total cost of health care, and the relationships among patients, doctors, and hospitals, negatively."

But how good were the good old days? Poverty was far more prevalent among the elderly back in those days. With the implementation of Social Security and subsequent increases in Social Security expenditures, elderly poverty experienced precipitous declines, falling from 35 percent in 1960 to 10 percent in 1995. In other words, back in the good old days, more than a third of the elderly were poor. Now it's down to less than one in 10.

From the National Bureau of Economic Research: 

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Conservatives have a simple, and false, narrative when it comes to the Constitution.  In their telling, they cherish, protect, and defend our founding document, while progressives at best ignore and at worst actively seek to undermine it.  And, ever since the heady days of Brown v. Board of Education and "Impeach Earl Warren," they are always on the lookout for opportunities to tell this tale.

With that in mind, right-wing bloggers' and pundits' explosion of indignation at Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's inoffensive recent comments in Egypt is wholly predictable.  Reacting for the most part to a heavily redacted transcript (which reduces the 16-minute interview to 356 words) released by The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), the right-wing outrage machine has seized on a single sentence:

You should certainly be aided by all the constitution-writing that has gone one since the end of World War II. I would not look to the US constitution, if I were drafting a constitution in the year 2012. I might look at the constitution of South Africa. That was a deliberate attempt to have a fundamental instrument of government that embraced basic human rights, had an independent judiciary... It really is, I think, a great piece of work that was done. Much more recent than the US constitution - Canada has a Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It dates from 1982. You would almost certainly look at the European Convention on Human Rights. Yes, why not take advantage of what there is elsewhere in the world? (emphasis added)

Cue the vitriol.  Among the first to weigh in was Liberty Counsel, which claimed Ginsburg "insulted" the Constitution. The Daily Caller accused her of "dissing the Constitution while abroad." Breitbart.tv charged the Justice with showing "disdain" for the Constitution. Daniel Horowitz of RedState.com thought he detected evidence of a "perverted judicial philosophy." The headline of William Tucker's essay on the The American Spectator website blared:  "Justice Ginsburg should resign." Former Supreme Court law clerk and Harvard Law School graduate Ed Whelan decided to elevate the discourse by encouraging his readers to take a RedState.com "pop quiz" asking "Which of these artifacts is too old and irrelevant to be useful to America?" The choices?  Justice Ginsburg and the Constitution.

Syndicated radio host Lars Larson struck the shrillest note on Fox News, calling Justice Ginsburg "anti-American."

Lost in the rush to yet again tell the false fable of progressive perfidy regarding the Constitution was just about everything else Justice Ginsburg said in the lengthy interview. Although you wouldn't know it from MEMRI transcript, which contained the outrage-triggering quote and not much else, watching the unedited video posted to YouTube by the U.S. embassy in Cairo reveals that Justice Ginsburg was eloquent and effusive in talking about how well the Constitution has served America, rather than Egypt. She touched on the power of the simple phrase "we the people;" the vital role played by the First Amendment; the brilliant insight by the Founders that establishing three branches of government, each with a foothold in the others, would preserve a republican form of government; the importance of guaranteeing all people the equal protection of the laws.  In short, she offered much regarding the U.S. Constitution as a source of guidance for the Egyptians' thinking about the form their new government should take.

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On January 20, the Obama administration reaffirmed that under the Affordable Care Act, most employers must provide health care plans that cover contraceptives for women free of charge. Religious employers such as churches, synagogues, and mosques are exempt, but hospitals and schools run by religious organizations that employ people of many faiths are not. Catholic clergy have been protesting the decision, asserting that contraception is counter to the teachings of the Catholic faith.

Right-wing media, with Fox News leading the charge, have seized on the ruling as evidence of a supposed "war on religion" that they have long claimed Obama is waging. Desperate to keep this narrative alive, Fox News this morning hyped a Rasmussen Reports poll that purported to show that the "majority" of Americans oppose the contraception rule. But Fox failed to note (though one Fox contributor tried) that two other polls in recent days have found that a majority of Americans do support the rule -- as do a majority of Catholics.

Rasmussen has a history of asking loaded questions to produce Republican-friendly findings; not only did this poll fit that pattern, but it actually asked a question that misleads about the contraception rule.

Fox & Friends began hyping the Rasmussen poll at the top of their show, during a segment in which they attacked the president and his administration for the decision. Co-host Steve Doocy reported the results of the poll, saying:

DOOCY: Rasmussen did a poll, called up 1,000 people, and here's the -- here's some of the results: 50 percent oppose, 39 percent favor it, 10 percent undecided. Interestingly enough, when you get into the small print about it, a plurality of Republican and independent voters as well are against it, and for the White House, that is a problem.

The co-hosts hyped the poll results again in a later segment with Fox News contributor Michelle Malkin. Co-host Brian Kilmeade again cited Rasmussen's findings and said, "In this political season, how does it make political sense for the president to do this?" Malkin replied, "It really doesn't."

Neither of these segments acknowledged, however, that two other recent national polls determined the opposite.

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Fox News' Andrea Tantaros has been very vocal in blasting the Obama administration for its decision to require all health insurers, including church-affiliated organizations, to provide plans that cover contraception. In her haste to criticize the administration tonight, she distorted comments by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to make the point that the administration's mandate "has nothing to do with women's health," but is more about "population control."

In fact, the requirement has everything to do with women's health.

When political commentator Jehmu Greene pointed out that contraception is also used to treat other health issues, including ovarian cancer, Tantaros dismissed the argument:

According to a study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, "[e]mployer-based coverage is the primary form of health insurance for 64% of women of reproductive age, but a sizable minority of women lack coverage for contraceptives." Notably, poorer and college-aged women are the ones who struggle the most with the cost of prescription birth control.

And those struggles have real consequences for women's health. Contraceptives are indeed used to treat a wide array of medical conditions, including reducing the risk of ovarian cancer. USA Today recently reported that "[o]varian cancer is the deadliest of cancers that affect the female reproductive system, with about 22,000 women diagnosed each year and, in 2011, approximately 15,460 deaths." According Dr. Hyun J. Bang, a radiologist quoted by USA Today, "this cancer produces few, if any, symptoms in early stages. ... This is why 75 percent of all women present with advanced disease which has already begun to spread to other areas of the body."

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Raising questions about whether he will continue to donate money to the Susan G. Komen Foundation, Bill O'Reilly once again downplayed the role that Planned Parenthood for America plays in providing cancer screenings for millions of American women..

Contrary to O'Reilly's claim that Planned Parenthood "doesn't really do much" in the area of cancer prevention, Planned Parenthood doctors and nurses provide nearly 750,000 breast cancer screenings annually. According to their 2009-2010 Annual Report, "cancer screening and prevention" combined with "other women's health services" account for almost 25% of their total services:

O'Reilly also pushed the discredited claim that grants given to Planned Parenthood by Komen are used to fund abortions. In an open letter to Komen CEO Nancy Brinker, The Washington Post's Sally Quinn noted that "not one penny" of the money the Komen Foundation has granted to Planned Parenthood "went toward abortion":

It is clear, despite what you told Mitchell, that you were under enormous political pressure -- and had been for some years -- from conservative donors to cut your ties to Planned Parenthood. This was because some of its money (about 3%) goes to fund abortions. Nevermind that of the $680,000 or so given to Planned Parenthood last year by your organization, not one penny went toward abortion. It was targeted to breast cancer screening for low-income and uninsured women. In the past five years Planned Parenthood has, with your funds, been able to provide 170,000 breast exams and thousands of referrals.

Fox News' Eric Bolling has said some pretty awful things about the Occupy Wall Street movement. He's called the protesters "petulant little children," compared them to Communists and Nazis, and even slammed them as "pot-smoking, sex-addicted morons." When Bolling has been forced to specifically address the substance of the protesters' claims -- namely that of rising inequality and an economic system tilted to overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy -- he has employed a different tack: denial or diversion.

Tonight, confronted with the fact that Americans share the protesters' concerns about rising income inequality in the United States, he chose to negate the claim, arguing that income inequality doesn't exist in this country.

Bolling's efforts to dismiss inequality comes as an overwhelming majority of Americans voice support for policies meant to address inequality. Results from a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll indicate that 68 percent of Americans believe the current tax system favors the wealthy, and 72 percent of Americans support raising taxes on millionaires. 

Here are the facts:

• Taxes on top earners are at historic lows

• CBPP: "Typical middle-class households face higher tax rates than some high-income households."

• The Center for Economic and Policy Research has shown that income for the top 1 percent increased 256 percent from 1979-2006, while the lowest quintile saw incomes rise 11 percent

• Federal Reserve Bank of Boston: Mobility has "not been sufficient to offset the considerable rise in short-term inequality."

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