Rick Santorum

On Friday's All In show, with the words "The Sickness" displayed on screen behind him, MSNBC host Chris Hayes began the show with a commentary in which he tagged the NRA as a "far-right fringe organization" that "might be spelling their own demise" by celebrating the defeat of the universal background check proposal. Hayes:

As former GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum appeared as a guest on CNN's Piers Morgan Tonight, host Morgan brought up "some people" who are "blaming" the former Pennsylvania Senator for costing Mitt Romney the general election by forcing him to take "fairly right-wing, quite extreme positions," getting him into an "unholy mess." Morgan:

Ever notice how liberals never seem to have a problem with genuine evil and instead use the word to describe those who don't share their rarefied opinions?

Libtalker Bill Press provided an example of this on his radio show yesterday, venting about the Koch brothers, Karl Rove, Sheldon Adelson and Foster Friess for their alleged nefarious plans to seize control of the country through its politics (video after page break) --

Andy Cohen plays a ridiculous game on Bravo's Watch What Happens Live called "Marry, Shag, or Kill" in which he gives three names to his guests, and they have to choose who they'd marry, shag, and kill.

On Current TV's Say Anything Monday, host Joy Behar played this game with Cohen with the subjects being conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh, Republican presidential nominee Paul Ryan, and former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary).

Gee, and you thought Barack Obama had an inflated opinion of himself.  After watching Andrea Mitchell in action, he might actually need self-esteem therapy  . . .

On her MSNBC show today, Mitchell rolled a clip in which Rick Santorum told the Value Voters Summit audience that "we will never have the elite, smart people on our side."  After asking a former Santorum aide what he he meant by the "elite smart people," Mitchell declared "I think I should plead guilty."  View the video after the jump.

CBS This Morning anchor Charlie Rose on Tuesday pestered Rick Santorum about Todd Akin and tried to goad the former Republican presidential candidate into bashing Mitt Romney. Highlighting Akin and his gaffe about rape, Rose needled, "What does that say to you? Does that say something about the party and its image?"

Rose followed up by pushing the former senator, who will be speaking at the Republican convention. The host demanded to know the "the differences today between Rick Santorum and the governor, in terms of how you see the world and how you see the particular issues that he will address?" After Santorum side-stepped the question, choosing to attack the President, Rose badgered, "Speak to the differences you have with [Romney] coming into this convention."

Immediately following an antagonistic discussion with the former presidential candidate Rick Santorum, in which he demanded the Pennsylvania Republican to differentiate himself from  Mitt Romney, CBS This Morning’s Charlie Rose previewed the next interview that would be conducted by his co-anchor Gayle King, with a Chris Matthews-like swipe at the GOP as anti-science.

“Republicans here in Tampa believe evolution is just a theory,” Rose teased, adding that “Bill Nye the Science Guy says its science.” Of course this suggests Rose may be a bit scientifically illiterate himself, as the National Academies of Science defines a scientific theory as “a well-substantiated explanation of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses.”

To describe evolution as a scientific theory is accurate.

On Wednesday's NBC Nightly News, as correspondent Andrea Mitchell filed a report recounting that President Obama is running ahead of Mitt Romney with female voters, Mitchell referred to liberal birth control activist Sandra Fluke's political activities as a push for "contraception rights" rather than more accurately relaying her desire to force health insurance to pay for birth control pills for women as if they could not choose to purchase such products on their own.

San Francisco media outlet SFist has adopted the language of the Westboro Baptist Church to bash Chick-fil-A, referencing the death of Chick-fil-A spokesman Donald Perry with the question “God Hates Flacks?”

A July 27 article about the death of Chick-fil-A PR Vice President Donald Perry was titled “God Hates Flacks? Chick-fil-A Spokesman Dies of Heart Attack.” The headline references the disgusting slogan of the Westboro Baptist Church – God Hates Fags.

Last night's episode of Aaron Sorkin's The Newsroom was hilariously titled, "Bullies." Unfortunately for HBO, the humor was due to the program's seemingly endless hypocrisy and not because there was anything remotely funny in the dialogue of the episode itself.

Lauded as a ground-breaking show by much of the liberal media, The Newsroom really jumped the shark this week by trying to paint Republicans as bullies all while portraying liberal character Will MacAvoy (Jeff Daniels) and his network's executives belittled women and demonized African-Americans who dared to support conservative candidates rather than back liberal Democrats as the Left expects them to. [video embedded below]

In an analysis piece which, based on its title ("In divided era, what does July 4th mean?"), was as predictable as heat in July, Ted Anthony, who is tasked with writing "about American culture" at the Associated Press, attempted to explain, 236 years in, where what he claims is "the only nation in the world that was built solely upon an idea" stands. (Communism as an idea is what originally built the historically destructive Soviet Union, so Anthony is obviously wrong on that; readers will see another example later in this post.)

In the process, even beyond his tedious complaints about commerce ("Independence Day ... (is) more about the pursuit of happiness than life and liberty"), Anthony revealed utter ignorance about the nature and interrelationship of this country's key founding documents, as seen in the following excerpts (bolds are mine):

Former Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) on Sunday gave CNN's Candy Crowley a much-needed education on what "moderate" and "willing to work with the other side" mean in Washington today.

Appearing on State of the Union, Santorum correctly informed his host that the kind of Republican she wants in office "means doing what the other side wants only doing it slower instead of doing what is necessary for this country" (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

Appearing as a guest on Monday's The Tonight Show with Jay Leno on NBC, actor and comedian Martin Short lambasted several of the GOP presidential candidates, as he called Rick Santorum a "crazy Catholic," compared Michele Bachmann to the Taliban while questioning her intelligence, and suggested that Mitt Romney has sent jobs to other countries.

Appearing as a guest on Monday's The Tonight Show on NBC, advertising executive and former CNBC host Donny Deutsch praised President Obama for voicing support for same-sex marriage, and predicted that voters will prefer Obama as a person, in contrast with Mitt Romney, as Deutsch raised the story of Romney allegedly "bullying" a fellow classmate in high school.

When host Jay Leno showed Deutsch the latest cover of Newsweek devoted to Obama's stand in favor of gay marriage, Deutsch effused:

Bill Maher on Friday took a disgusting shot at former Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum.

In his final bit on HBO's Real Time, the perilously liberal host said of the former Pennsylvania Senator, "I never worried Rick would have an affair. I worried he’d dress up as his mother and kill women in a motel" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Sean Penn on Monday said former Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) is "anti-American" and "did not read the Constitution."

Rather hysterically, the Oscar-winning actor also told CNN's Piers Morgan, "I am very pro-American in the sense of a Constitutional America" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Six months ago, Pew's Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) came out with a report claiming that the GOP candidates received more positive press coverage than President Obama. This morning, the group came out with another installment from the same ongoing study. Their press release claims: "The President’s media coverage in 2012 has been consistently negative while his Republican challenger has experienced a more mixed narrative."

As I wrote here at NewsBusters back in October, PEJ's methodology is seriously flawed: "First, they didn’t study what most people would consider 'the media.' Second, their definition of 'positive' and 'negative' press doesn’t match what media experts consider 'favorable' or 'unfavorable' coverage. And, third, the researchers didn’t really even look at the stories — they let a computer... churn through the words and determine whether an assertion was pro- or anti-Obama."

As NewsBusters reported last week, now that Mitt Romney appears set to win the Republican presidential nomination, Saturday Night Live is going to do its darnedest to trash him every week through Election Day.

This pattern continued Saturday as for the second week in a row the program began with a segment attacking the former Massachusetts governor while also taking shots at all the other candidates including a disgusting homosexual reference to Michele Bachmann's husband Marcus (transcribed lowlights and commentary follow, video for those that can stand it available at Mediaite):

Bashing conservatives is nothing new for MSNBC or for Martin Bashir. However, on the April 13 edition of Martin Bashir, liberal British journalist Martin Bashir went on a rant about how Rick Santorum is a hypocrite for giving a small portion of his earnings to charity. Except there is one key fact that Bashir is missing. Rick Santorum is spending a lot of money on medical care for his sick daughter Bella.  [Video below the jump]

New York Times editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal showed his usual class in a Tuesday afternoon post responding to Rick Santorum's withdrawal from the Republican presidential race: "Goodbye, Rick Santorum."

Reporting on Rick Santorum leaving the Republican presidential race on Tuesday's NBC Nightly News, correspondent Ron Mott proclaimed: "It was a campaign filled with highly-publicized gaffes....From calling President Obama out on education, to President Kennedy's famed speech on the separation of church and state....Just two of a number of comments he eventually walked back or was pushed to explain."

Mott also depicted Santorum as only appealing to a narrow group of voters: "Santorum's support was mostly rooted in a core of Republican strongholds, where his unapologetic push for social conservative values, something the GOP establishment largely sought to avoid, was enthusiastically embraced by evangelicals."

According to Muslim comedian and CNN regular Dean Obeidallah, Rick Santorum speaks the language of "the Taliban" when he talks about the intersection of church and state in America. On CNN Sunday night, liberal host Don Lemon decided to have a religious discussion for Easter Sunday, and his first question was about the separation of church and state.

Obeidallah has attacked Santorum in the past, and found a way to bring him into the discussion. He referred to Santorum "saying the Bible and our laws must comport," adding later that "He was saying the same things honestly that the Taliban would say, that religious scripture and the laws of that state must agree." [Video below the break. Audio here.]

Good Morning America analyst Matt Dowd on Wednesday lectured Rick Santorum to "get out" and stop wasting "any little bit of political capital he has left." Depending on which count one looks at, Mitt Romney is currently 489 delegates short of the nomination.

That fact didn't stop Dowd from making his point clear. Over four sentences, he used the phrase "get out" four times, pronouncing, "I think he has to get out because he wants to preserve any little bit of political capital he has left and a voice in the Republican Party." The same man who, on March 26 slammed conservative states as hypocrites, instructed Santorum, "I think it would be good to get out right now before he loses Pennsylvania. But he has got to try to keep a voice in the party by getting out."

On Monday's Piers Morgan Tonight, as he interviewed Rick Santorum, CNN host Morgan suggested that America needs more gun control, and pressed the GOP candidate on whether it is "caring" for him, "as a Christian," to undo ObamaCare if elected President. (Video below)

Soledad O'Brien's CNN show is suffering some pretty horrific ratings, and yet she still had the gall to ask Rick Santorum's communications director why the candidate won't drop out of the presidential race.

The quarterly numbers for O'Brien's morning show Starting Point were the lowest in more than a decade at CNN for that time slot, in fact. She averaged less than 100,000 viewers per day from the age 25-54 crowd. [Video below the break. Audio here.]