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Embattled Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO) on Wednesday reacted to the death of a U.S. ambassador in Libya by accusing President Barack Obama of not liking the very country he is leading.

On Tuesday, U.S. ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens and at least three members of his staff had been killed during protests over a film that mocked that the Prophet Muhammad and was promoted by Terry Jones, a U.S. pastor who had previously sparked deadly riots threatening to burn Qurans.

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney on Wednesday had used the death of Stevens to score political points by accusing Obama of “sympathizing” with the enemy after the U.S. embassy in Libya released a statement condemning the anti-Muslim film.

"First of all, apologizing to all people, [to] a lot of countries who are enemies, and apologizing to them and everything," Akin said during a campaign stop in Kansas City, according to KMBC. "You know, if we did something wrong that's one thing, but he's just apologizing because he didn't like America? I think that's the wrong thing to do."

As The Huffington Post's Amanda Terkel noted, the president never apologized for the United States in the statements he made about attack in Libya.

Akin, who is a member of the House Armed Services Committee, is facing calls from Republicans to drop his bid to unseat Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) after he suggested last month that women could not get pregnant from "legitimate rape."

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MSNBC hosts Chuck Todd and Lawrence O'Donnell say that Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney miscalculated badly when he decided to attack President Barack Obama for "sympathizing" with the enemy after the deaths of U.S. ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens and at least three members of his staff.

In the hours before the protest in Benghazi that left Stevens dead, the U.S. State Department had released a statement over a film that mocked the Prophet Muhammad. That film, "Innocence of Muslims," had been recently given Arabic subtitles and promoted by Terry Jones, a U.S. pastor who had previously sparked deadly riots threatening to burn Qurans.

"The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims – as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions," the U.S. Embassy in Cairo said prior to the protests. "Respect for religious beliefs is a cornerstone of American democracy. We firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others."

After the attacks, the State Department tweeted that it stood by its earlier statement and condemned the "unjustified breach of the Embassy." The White House later disavowed the statement by the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, saying it had not been cleared in advanced.

But the Romney campaign wasted no time in using the deaths to attack Obama.

"It's disgraceful that the Obama administration's first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks," the candidate said.

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus echoed Romney's remarks in a tweet: "Obama sympathizes with attackers in Egypt. Sad and pathetic."

"Apparently President Obama can’t see Egypt and Libya from his house," former Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin wrote on Facebook. "It’s about time our president stood up for America and condemned these Islamic extremists. ... We already know that President Obama likes to 'speak softly' to our enemies. If he doesn’t have a 'big stick' to carry, maybe it’s time for him to grow one."

On Tuesday morning, MSNBC host Lawrence O'Donnell observed that the Romney campaign would have been better off "to say nothing because the fact is if you say something responsible and careful, it's just going to be ignored. The only thing that will get attention is if you say something stupid, which is what they've managed to do."

"The only way to get attention is to say something a little outrageous," MSNBC host Chuck Todd agreed. "And I have to say, I am stunned they put out this release when they did, before we knew all the facts, before daybreak, before we know for sure whether there are going to be protests that spread around the world."

"It seemed to be an irresponsible thing to do," he added. "And it's one that I'm fascinated to see this morning that the Romney campaign, no mention. Suddenly they put out a debt statement. I have a feeling they wish they had that moment back, they wish they had that statement back. I understand where they feel like they are, they are chasing news cycles right now and they feel as if they have to be involved in every news cycle and every event if the president is involved in order to look on equal footing. But that was a bad mistake they made last night."

Moments later, Redstate's Erick Erickson was blasting Todd on Twitter.

"While I think Romney must be delicate, I think NBC's analysis from Chuck Todd that R's response was a mistake is partisan crazy talk," he wrote.

"I would have liked to see a statement [from Romney] that looked more like leading, presenting a vision, less like 'again, Obama sucks,'" former Republican National Committee online communication director Liz Mair said in response Erickson.

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A controversial Koran-burning pastor accidentally discharged his firearm Thursday night in the parking lot of a TV station after appearing on a talk show with a Muslim cleric.

Terry Jones had appeared on Fox 2's Let it Rip program along with Hassan Al-Qazwini, the leader of Deaborn's Islamic Center of America, prior to the incident.

"After the show wrapped, the imam was chatting in the rear of the building while Terry Jones and [assistant pastor] Wayne Sapp walked with police officers out the front door to their car," MyFoxDetroit.com reported. "As the pastor gets into the car to leave for the night, suddenly there's a loud 'boom.'"

"Officers heard a gunshot, approached the vehicle, asked Mr. Jones if he was OK," Southfield Police Lt. Nick Loussia told The Detroit Free Press. "He was, and they also observed he had a gun in his hand."

That .40 caliber handgun and another firearm found in the car were briefly confiscated by officers.

"Based on the facts of the investigation it did not appear a crime had been committed," Loussia said. Jones and Sapp were allowed to leave after the weapons were returned to them.

"It was definitely accidental," Jones later said. "I actually have no explanation, no excuse."

Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy has filed petition in Florida district court to prevent Jones from holding a rally outside a Michigan mosque.

Worthy said the risk of violence was too great to allow Jones to hold the rally.

"We have made it very clear that we are coming there with very, very peaceful intentions," the pastor explained to WXYZ-TV. "We will be armed. We do have concealed weapons permits."

h/t: Talking Points Memo

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CNN contributor and former Giuliani speechwriter and Deputy Communications Director John Avlon is back at his usual game of making false equivalencies and pretending all sides are equally extreme when it comes to this race-baiting and extreme anti-Muslim rhetoric that's been hyped by the media for the last month or so and that everyone just needs to tone it down and play nice with each other that are out there protesting. John, why don't you start by asking your former boss to lead the way and knock it off?

He also throws this nugget in there when asked about the wingnut pastor who wanted to burn the Quran on 9-11.

AVLON: It's a good example and a cautionary tale of the way that extremists are able to gain the system and hijack the media with deeply disproportionate, you know, unrepresentative statements. And that kind of ugliness too often occupies our attention. We need to push back on that.

Try starting with your own network John. All of the cable news networks have been nearly as bad as Fox when it comes to over-hyping these stories. Then they bring this guy on for some naval-gazing and to play the all-sides-have-crazies game.

LEMON: Yesterday, the nation remembered those lost on September 11, 2001. But some people say the anniversary this year was unlike the last eight. They feel the controversy surrounding a proposed Islamic center two blocks from Ground Zero turned a patriotic day of mourning into political football.

John Avlon, a regular contributor to CNN, says the anti-Islamic center rally he attended yesterday was a desecration to the meaning of September 11. He told me there's been a 9/11 amnesia in today's politics.

AVLON: You know, one of the things that came out of that awful day wasn't just the beginning of a wider war that we are still engaged in, but an awareness that what unites us is fundamentally more important than those things that divide us as Americans.

And what we're seeing with the rise of partisan politics and an ugliness at some of these rallies marks the fact that I think we're forgetting that again. The divisions that are deeply divisive to Americans, whether Democrat or Republican, completely unimportant under the wider lens of the war we're in. That was an awareness that really sunk into people after the attacks...

(CROSSTALK)

LEMON: What did you specifically see, John, at the rally -- at these rallies that made you use such harsh words?

AVLON: Just on both sides, a lot of politicization, harshly political rhetoric, and a lot of -- not just anger, but hate. Keep in mind, one of the organizers of the big rally in the afternoon is somebody who has referred to President Obama as the Muslim in the White House over 250 times on her blog.

There's an inherently partisan political nature of this. It's not about Democrat or Republican, but really a divisiveness. And that's what we need to push against. That's what we need to remember. In fact, on the day when McCain and Obama went to the Ground Zero ceremony in 2008 together, that is the spirit of this day. That's the spirit we need to keep in our minds and hearts. We're losing it.

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Salon's Joan Walsh came on Ed Schultz's show this Friday and attempted to explain to him why Gen. David Petraeus and President Obama's concern over this wingnut pastor Terry Jones was not unfounded. I get a chance to listen to some of Ed's radio show on XM radio at times and caught part of it prior to this interview with Joan on MSNBC. If I would have had the time to try to call in, which I did not and knew I would have gotten through so I wasn't wasting my time trying, I would have pointed him to the exact same article that Joan did when she got on the air with him.

He was bashing President Obama all day for getting bad advice for weighing in what this wingnut was threatening to do and saying that Gen. Petraeus shouldn't have said anything either, but from Justin Elliot's reporting over at Salon, this thing was already blowing up for a long time well before the general decided to speak to the press about it. So the damage was already done and they didn't fuel it by asking for Terry Jones to reconsider his book burning.

I can't say the same for most of our media which has not bothered to look at how this was already playing in the international press for quite some time and who put that mad man on the air day after day for the better part of a week after Petraeus spoke out about it. If Ed needs to be taking anyone to task, it's not David Petraeus or President Obama, but his fellow members of the American media instead. I'm thankful that Joan Walsh led him to her colleague's column at Salon. Maybe if Ed goes and reads it he'll tone down his criticism of the president and the general on this issue. Here's the article from Salon. Go read the whole thing but here's how it starts out.

How (and why) the media made Terry Jones a star:

When Gen. David Petraeus first spoke out against Pastor Terry Jones' planned Quran burning in a Wall Street Journal article published Monday, the story exploded in the U.S. media, going from a sideshow to the dominant national media controversy of the week. As Yahoo News reported, it was on the front page of more than 50 newspapers Thursday -- more than the total number of members of Jones' fringe Florida church.

Critics of the American media's coverage of the Quran-burning saga are loud and plentiful, and they have a strong case. In short, the U.S. media has given a global platform to a fringe pastor with a tiny flock, elevating him to a level of significance that would make most members of Congress jealous (whether or not he actually executes his plan). But those media critics are also missing the point.

To grasp the real story here, one has to understand the context in which Petraeus decided to weigh in: At that time, the Quran burning had already been treated as a major story in the media in the Muslim world for several weeks. In other words, since at least late July, when it started to get attention in some Muslim-majority countries, the story has been doing untold damage to America's reputation.

"It was a big issue over in the Arab media before U.S. media picked it up," Marc Lynch, director of Institute for Middle East Studies at George Washington University, told Salon in an e-mail.

And as I've already pointed out and as Rachel Maddow has been reporting, this man would not have been elevated either if there wasn't the amount of Muslim bashing going on from the likes of those who are leading the drum beat with playing the hate card already like Gingrich and Beck and Palin.

It's really disgusting that on the anniversary of 9-11 a great deal of our country has apparently learned nothing from the fact that spreading hatred rather than peace just leads to death and destruction and that demonizing people you're afraid of rather than trying to understand each other solves nothing. That and that it's apparently alright now to openly use race baiting as a political tactic by the GOP. They've given up on even trying to hide it. The former dog whistles are sirens now that I guess they think no one is going to notice. Subtlety is apparently something they don't think is needed these days.

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Rachel Maddow did a great job of taking on the likes of Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin and especially Newt Gingrich and the new fearmongering movie he's coming out with, for exploiting 9-11 and mainstreaming the idea that America is at war with Islam. Gingrich has got a long history of doing this sort of thing, but I think he's hit a new low for even him with this garbage. The whole lot of them are nothing but a bunch of hucksters happy to line their own pockets while drumming up racial and religious resentment. If the story of the Quran-burning nutjob is going to be covered, it needs to be put into the larger context of the hatred being stoked by the right, as Rachel demonstrated here.

I'm frankly sick to death of the media covering this wingnut Terry Jones and I'm glad they are at least pulling back today and not putting him on the air for interviews any more but if I see much more of their navel gazing about whether they gave him too much attention or not I think I'm going to throw something through my television set. These ambulance chasers who think tabloid television passes for news are suddenly sitting around wondering if they gave this guy too much attention, like this is any different than the rest of the crap they commonly put on the air to distract from talking about the things that matter.

And what John Cole said..."The only thing the media enjoys talking about more than lunatics is themselves"... go read the whole thing but warning, it's not safe for work.

And one last note on Gingrich's movie. I'm not sure what's creepier, that promo or his Stepford-like third wife.

Here's Rachel's transcript:

MADDOW: But we begin with the extremist Christian pastor in Florida who was planning to commemorate the anniversary of 9/11 by burning copies of the Koran. He has now changed his plans twice.

The pastor claimed in a press conference this afternoon that he was canceling his Koran-burning because the imam behind the planned Islamic cultural center in downtown Manhattan agreed to move the building away from the hallowed grounds of the old Burlington coat factory building -- blocks away from the World Trade Center site. That`s what the pastor said. He said he is ditching the Koran-burning because the so-called Ground Zero mosque is moving.

But the imam and developer behind the planned cultural center in Lower Manhattan quickly came out with a statement saying they did not agree to move the center at all.

So, now, the pastor says he is merely suspending his Koran-burning plans, not canceling them. That`s what happened on that insane front today.

If you are looking for other ways to celebrate -- and I do mean to celebrate -- the 9/11 anniversary this year, don`t worry. One event that has not canceled or suspended is the planned Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin 9/11 beer bust up in Alaska. Tickets range in price from a low of $73.75 to a high of $225 for a spot in the arena and participation in a "meet and greet."

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Speaking to George Stephanopoulos on ABC's Good Morning America Thursday, President Barack Obama implored pastor Terry Jones not to go through with his plan to burn copies of the Quran on Sept. 11.

"If he's listening, I just hope he understands that what he's proposing to do is completely contrary to our values as Americans," said Obama.

"I just want him to understand that this stunt that he is talking about pulling could greatly endanger our young men and women in uniform who are in Iraq, who are in Afghanistan. We're already seeing protests against Americans, just by the mere threat that he's making," the president continued.

"This is a recruitment bonanza for al Qaeda. You know? You could have serious violence in places like Pakistan or Afghanistan. This could increase the recruitment of individuals who would be willing to blow themselves up in American cities or European cities," he said.

The pastor has said that he plans to go through with the burning but he's praying for God's guidance.

"I hope he listens to those better angels and understands that this is a destructive act that he's engaging in," Obama told Stephanopoulos.

Bruce Plante, Tulsa World

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When even Gen. David Petraeus and Gen. Ray Odierno have come out and spoken against this wingnut pastor Terry Jones, Keith asks, where is the Republican leadership in speaking out against it? This guy is obviously some nutcase who is enjoying all of this attention the media is giving him and it is a shame that they are but it appears that the Republicans who have been happy to stoke the Islamophobia for political gain are either silent on the issue, or if they are making statements like Sarah Barracuda did from her Facebook page, they're not helping matters much or making them worse.

As Keith noted, the book burning has been condemned by the Sec. General of NATO, the U.S. General heading training in Afghanistan, the head of the U.N. mission in Afghanistan, Sec. Gates, Sec. Clinton, Atty. Gen. Holder, David Axelrod, NY Mayor Bloomberg, Sen. Joe Lieberman and the group of family members of 9-11 victims.

Mitt Romney, Gov. Haley Barbour and Sen. Lindsey Graham all came out against the book burning although their statements were rather tepid.

And then we have House Minority Leader John Boehner who said what Pastor Jones was doing "was not wise" but conflated it with the Park 51 Islamic center that the wingnuts are going crazy over. Followed by Sarah Palin or her ghostwriter putting up a similar sentiment on Facebook, comparing the decision to burn the Quran to the not-a-mosque "mosque at ground zero" as well.

Silent on the issue... George Bush, Newt Gingrich, Michael Steele, Eric Cantor, Mitch McConnell, Jeff Sessions, Susan Collins and Liz Cheney and last but not least John McCain. So much for "listening to the generals" huh?

Sadly as the generals pointed out, even if this man was being ignored by the media, in the age of You Tube his actions would still be causing a backlash, but the amount of coverage really has been over the top. That said, even his own church in Germany has come out against him.

Terry Jones Accused of 'Spiritual Abuse' at Cologne Church:

US fundamentalist pastor Terry Jones, who wants to burn copies of the Koran on Sept. 11, ran a church in the western German city of Cologne until last year when members of the congregation expelled him. Former members have spoken of his hate-filled sermons and insistence on "blind obedience."

Our new team member Matt Osborne made a really great point that he shared with our group today. Islamophobia is the new colored drinking fountain and Pam Geller has allowed the likes of Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich and their cohorts protesting there to set up ground zero as a "a whites-only drinking fountain". I'd say that sums up the hatred they're spreading pretty well.

I'm sick and tired of the constant drumbeat of hatred coming from these people, dressed up as patriotism. It's disgusting and tiresome and it feeds into people like this wingnut pastor with all of fifty or so followers getting this much attention from the media. If this guy goes through with this, I hope it falls under Florida's hate crime laws and he's arrested and that's the last we hear of him. You should not be allowed to burn the Quran any more than you should be allowed to go burn a cross on someone's lawn. It's meant to intimidate and to drive hatred and violence towards a particular religious group and it's just dead wrong.

If there's some truth to this diary at Daily KOS, the guy has bigger problems than just possibly being arrested for a hate crime. They've accused him of drumming up anti-Muslim hatred to run a money laundering operation.

WARNING: Money-launderers using muslims as red herrings.

If there's some truth to this it would also be nice to see the media following up on it since they've given this guy so much coverage already. I'm not an investigative reporter where I've got the time or resources to look into their accusations but I hope the ones actually being paid to do that sort of thing do, and do their jobs rather than just giving him air time to stir the pot and help the GOP stir up racial and religious resentment, thus motivating their angry, scared white base and giving them a reason to come out and vote in the mid-terms.