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CNN media critic Howard Kurtz on Sunday pushed back against a Fox News pundit who slammed the "deafening silence of too much of the media" over coverage of a Philadelphia doctor accused of killing seven babies and one woman while performing late-term abortions.

In a USA Today column last week, Fox News political analyst Kirsten Powers pointed to former Pennsylvania abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell as evidence that Planned Parenthood has been wrong to claim that it's "highly unusual" that infants survive late-term abortions.

Powers said that there was a double standard because conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh had received front page coverage after he called Sandra Fluke a "slut" over her advocacy of contraception coverage for students, but Gosnell had not gotten the same attention.

"You don't have to oppose abortion rights to find late-term abortion abhorrent or to find the Gosnell trial eminently newsworthy," the Fox News pundit wrote. "The deafening silence of too much of the media, once a force for justice in America, is a disgrace."

In his "Media Monitor" segment on Sunday, Kurtz agreed that the Gosnell case had not gotten enough national coverage, but suggested that conservatives had oversimplified the argument to attack the "liberal media."

"Some conservatives are saying this amounts to blackout by the so-called liberal media, but it's more complicated that that," he explained. "First, the Gosnell case has drawn some coverage since the FBI first raided that clinic back in 2010, in such outlets as Time, NPR, the AP, The New York Times, Slate and The Daily Beast. Now since Gosnell's trial began, CNN has done a half dozen segments, including one by Jake Tapper back on March 21 and Fox News did a story that same day."

"MSNBC, like Fox, has done a few stories," Kurtz continued. "CBS and ABC carried evening news segments back in January, but there hasn't been nearly enough on the trial. Almost nothing in The Washington Post, not enough in The New York Times. Perhaps the mainstream press is less attuned to a story that cast a shadow on abortion, but the conservative media didn't do much either."

"And it's not like even the staunchest pro-choice advocate would defend what Gosnell is alleged to have done. This is a gruesome case that journalists on both sides of the abortion question have told me is hard to stomach."

The Philly Post's Simon van Zuylen-Wood wrote last week that the media should cover the Gosnell case, but it was wrong to use it as a tool to fight against abortion rights.

"Powers is a liberal and an evangelical Christian; she criticizes the right on women’s rights, the left on abortion," he observed. "Powers’s aim is to draw attention to the fact that the Gosnell murder charges should make us consider whether there’s really a difference between killing a baby inside the womb, or outside, as he so horrifically did. But this is misleading."

"The moral to be drawn from the Gosnell trial is not that current abortion laws are screwed up. Indeed, Gosnell broke them, which is why he’s on trial. Rather, it’s that as individual states increasingly restrict abortion rights, more and more illegal clinics, like Gosnell’s may crop up."

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The invitation of Ann Coulter to CPAC this year along with the rest of their guest list, continues to prove that they learned absolutely nothing from the last election. After making a weight joke about Gov. Chris Christie, who was shunned from the event, Coultergeist went on to explain that the reason Republicans lost the Senate is that some of their candidates, like Todd Akin, just failed to keep their mouths shut, and Democrats are supposedly the ones waging a war on women.

Ann Coulter CPAC: Pundit Tells Chris Christie Weight Joke, Calls Bill Clinton 'Forcible Rapist' :

Ann Coulter spoke at the 2013 Conservative Political Action Conference on Saturday, firing off an insult about New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's snub from the annual conference.

"Even CPAC had to cut back on its speakers this year about 300 pounds," Coulter said.

Christie wasn't he only target of Coulter's insults. She also criticized President Barack Obama and made eyebrow-raising remarks about Sandra Fluke's haircut while addressing birth control and the war on women.

"That haircut is birth control enough," Coulter said of Fluke.

Perhaps her most extreme criticism was directed at President Bill Clinton.

"The keynote speaker at the Democrat National Convention this year was forcible rapist, Bill Clinton," Coulter said.

Keep keeing it klassy Annie. Here's more of some of her "greatest hits" from her speech this Saturday.

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Fox's Andrea Tantaros, who recently made jokes about living off of the food stamp program as a dieting technique, actually had the gall to attack Sandra Fluke as a "terrible person to elevate" after Fluke's nomination by Time for Person of the Year.

Of course, attacking Fluke is nothing new for Tantaros, who went after her this August as well, saying that "no woman should aspire to be" Sandra Fluke.

And now that Fluke has received her nomination, Tantaros isn't the only one over at Fox or in the right wing media going after her -- Right-Wing Media Launch Attacks After Sandra Fluke Nominated For Time "Person Of The Year" .

Tantaros continued the tradition of lying completely about Fluke and what she was advocating for and after watching this I can say one thing. Fox and their Republican allies don't look like they learned a damned thing from the losses they just took among women during the last election. Keep it up wingnuts.

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Scarce edit: If you'd like to vote for Sandra Fluke you can do so at this link:

Sandra Fluke as Time's Person of the Year

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After a week where a good deal of the featured speakers at the 2012 Democratic National Convention had Bill O'Reilly's head ready to explode on a regular basis, Bill-O decided to sound off in his Talking Points Memo this Monday evening on Fox, and go after them one by one and charge them with being "left wing loons" and extremists. I guess "extremism" is on the eye of the beholder.

O'Reilly really is a disgusting piece of work. He's never taken an ounce of responsibility for the murder he helped provoke of Dr. George Tiller. And he continues to this day to go on the air week after week and demonize and dehumanize those he disagrees with, lying all the way and distorting their words and what they stand for.

If O'Reilly wanted to have an honest discussion on policy and disagreements there, that would be one thing, but you can't do that when one side has created an alternative reality with no basis in facts. It's much easier to fling garbage at those you don't like and and name call than to try to defend the indefensible, so that's what we got from O'Reilly. Sandra Fluke isn't asking for the government to pay for birth control. Peggy Noonan should be the last person to call someone a "ninny, a narcissist, and a fool." Caroline Kennedy hasn't embarrassed anyone. And President Obama has not "embraced the radical" anything. But that's not going to stop O'Reilly from telling his audience just that.

Transcript below the fold.

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Someone needs to tell Joe Walsh to "get a job" where it doesn't include lying to his constituents on a daily basis. Hate monger and deadbeat dad Rep. Joe Walsh decided to lay into activist Sandra Fluke for her appearance at the Democratic National Convention this week, and apparently he's not aware that she was not asking for the government to pay for anyone's birth control, or her own.

She was advocating that insurance companies pick up that tab, since it actually saves them money in the long run to do so. And he apparently thinks that she's never going to try to find a job once she graduates from college. I'm not sure what corner of the electorate this mean S.O.B. is trying to appeal to, but somehow I don't think screeching that someone who is continuing their education needs to get a job right now if they dare to want insurance companies to pay for birth control pills is going to resonate with a good deal of the sane public out there. Here's to hoping this idiot goes down in flames in the upcoming election, and that Fox doesn't hire him once the voters fire him.

Joe Walsh To Sandra Fluke: ‘Get A Job’:

At a campaign stop Saturday in Addison, IL, Walsh, who faces a tough reelection battle, went on a self-described rant about Fluke, attacking her support for contraception coverage and telling the law student to “get a job.”

“So at the Democratic Convention Wednesday night their first prime time speaker was Sandra Fluke, whatever her name is,” Walsh said. “Think about this, a 31-32 year old law student who has been a student for life, who gets up there in front of a national audience and tells the American people, ‘I want America to pay for my contraceptives.’ You’re kidding me. Go get a job. Go get a job Sandra Fluke.”

“This a woman who feels entitled that we all should pay for her contraceptives,” he said. “This is what we are teaching Americans? That was embarrassing. That was embarrassing.”

If Walsh wants to know what embarrassing looks like, just take a look in the mirror buddy.

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From this Wednesday evening's Democratic National Convention, activist Sandra Fluke laid out the stark choices we face when it comes to women's reproductive rights in the upcoming election.

Some of you may remember that earlier this year, Republicans shut me out of a hearing on contraception. In fact, on that panel, they didn't hear from a single woman, even though they were debating an issue that affects nearly every woman. Because it happened in Congress, people noticed. But it happens all the time. Many women are shut out and silenced. So while I'm honored to be standing at this podium, it easily could have been any one of you. I'm here because I spoke out, and this November, each of us must do the same.

During this campaign, we've heard about the two profoundly different futures that could await women—and how one of those futures looks like an offensive, obsolete relic of our past. Warnings of that future are not distractions. They're not imagined. That future could be real.

In that America, your new president could be a man who stands by when a public figure tries to silence a private citizen with hateful slurs. Who won't stand up to the slurs, or to any of the extreme, bigoted voices in his own party. It would be an America in which you have a new vice president who co-sponsored a bill that would allow pregnant women to die preventable deaths in our emergency rooms. An America in which states humiliate women by forcing us to endure invasive ultrasounds we don't want and our doctors say we don't need. An America in which access to birth control is controlled by people who will never use it; in which politicians redefine rape so survivors are victimized all over again; in which someone decides which domestic violence victims deserve help, and which don't. We know what this America would look like. In a few short months, it's the America we could be. But it's not the America we should be. It's not who we are.

We've also seen another future we could choose. First of all, we'd have the right to choose. It's an America in which no one can charge us more than men for the exact same health insurance; in which no one can deny us affordable access to the cancer screenings that could save our lives; in which we decide when to start our families. An America in which our president, when he hears a young woman has been verbally attacked, thinks of his daughters—not his delegates or donors—and stands with all women. And strangers come together, reach out and lift her up. And then, instead of trying to silence her, you invite me here—and give me a microphone—to amplify our voice. That's the difference.

Over the last six months, I've seen what these two futures look like. And six months from now, we'll all be living in one, or the other. But only one. A country where our president either has our back or turns his back; a country that honors our foremothers by moving us forward, or one that forces our generation to re-fight the battles they already won; a country where we mean it when we talk about personal freedom, or one where that freedom doesn't apply to our bodies and our voices.

We talk often about choice. Well, ladies and gentlemen, it's time to choose.

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Regardless of the right's continued attacks and insults against activist Sandra Fluke, I for one and happy to see such an articulate and smart young woman speaking out for women and their issues at this year's Democratic National Convention.

As MSNBC's Ed Schultz, who caught up with Fluke on the Monday evening before the convention pointed out, the Republican National Convention wasn't exactly a big hit and didn't move the needle for Republicans with women, or with anyone else for that matter, and he asked Fluke what she thought of their event.

Fluke is exactly right that women don't care about who gets put on the podium at these events. They care about the policies. We didn't hear anything mentioned at the Republican convention about women's health care, equal pay, reproductive rights, or violence against women. We got a vice presidential candidate with an absolutely horrid voting record in that regard and who wants to do things like change the definition of rape. And from the speakers, lots of empty platitudes about how much they love women, but not much else or much evidence to support that assertion when you take a good look at their policies and their platform.

I think we can say that Fluke's presence, among others who will speak as well, proves Bill Kristol's theory wrong that Democrats aren't going to focus on social issues during the rest of this presidential campaign. Schultz gave Fluke a chance to respond to Bill O'Reilly disgusting remarks that the convention was going to drop condoms from the ceiling when Fluke spoke and as usual, she kept it polite and classy with her response. I can't say the same for O'Reilly. He seems to have the maturity of about a 12 year old boy.

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Bill O'Reilly used his Talking Points Memo segment Monday night to attack various speakers at the upcoming Democratic National Convention, and in particular Sandra Fluke and treat his viewers to a big heaping helping of projection and false equivalencies.

That sleazy Sandra Fluke just wants tax payers to pay for her birth control, even though she doesn't. Democrats have a bunch of "far left loons" and abortion loving extremists speaking at their convention that just want to fearmonger over Republican policies on women, Medicare, that they want to make the rich richer and don't care about the working class -- or in other words tell the truth. And oh my God they've got that radical leftist Elizabeth Warren speaking and that lesbian woman Tammy Baldwin... the horror!

And Republicans, in Bill-O's world anyway, have a bunch of moderates speaking at their convention and no one from the far right -- they even told Sarah Palin to stay home. Although Rick Santorum is speaking. And no "local" tea partiers, but Rand Paul is speaking. And other than that all moderates. And Mike Huckabee.

Upside down land thy name is Fox.

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From this Thursday's The Five on Fox News, regular and Caribou Barbie fan-girl Andrea Tantaros, after an entire segment bashing President Obama and Democrats as being the ones really waging the "war on women" decided to take a cheap shot at Obama supporter, Sandra Fluke, saying that "no woman should aspire to be her."

There's nothing like Fox to bring us a huge, heaping, helping of false equivalencies and projection with the attacks leading up to this one, and the talking heads on Fox pretending that Republicans would not be ones happy to take us back to the fifties with women's reproductive rights.

And to add insult to injury that was followed by one of the many women who are making a living as eye candy for the Fox misogynist channel, simultaneously doing a leg shot for Fox, while attacking Sandra Fluke as someone "no woman should aspire to be."

Sorry Andrea, but I think the law student who hasn't reduced herself to being a sad joke and an attempt to make sure horny old men who watch Fox want to stay tuned in and hasn't reduced herself to the leg shot in four or five inch pumps on the left side of the screen wins this one.

If there's a woman the rest of us should be aspiring to be, it's the one who decided to work hard and hope it leads somewhere by getting an education. It's not the one that has to count on her looks until she's tossed aside for the latest model with better legs and little regard to whether there's a thought in her head by Rupert Murdoch.

h/t Media Matters

And for more on how Fox treats the women who appear on their network, check this article out: Foxy Ladies: Why one network applies so much makeup.

h/t Fran

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In yet another shining example of why The Five is probably one of the most IQ lowering hours of propaganda on television today, Fox news model Kimberly Guilfoyle compared Sandra Fluke to a political opportunist, and Greg Gutfeld compared her to a Chick-fil-A employee on this Wednesday's show.

Because we all know that Guilfoyle knows absolutely nothing about political opportunism. And a random idiot no one had ever heard of before this week attacking a restaurant employee and putting it on You Tube is exactly the same as Rush Limbaugh launching an national attack on Fluke.

If anyone is wondering what got Fox back on the attack of Sandra Fluke, it's because she dared to introduce President Obama at a campaign event this week in Colorado. If Republicans think that Democrats are done hitting them over the "war on women" and going after women's access to health care and reproductive services, or the fact that no one in the Republican party is willing to stand up to their misogynist in chief, Rush Limbaugh, I think they're sadly mistaken.

Watching The Five try to mount a response to that and the Obama campaign's willingness to put Sandra Fluke back out there is pretty pathetic to say the least. If using a Chick-fil-A employee is the best they can come up with to counter Fluke out on the campaign trail for President Obama, I think they're in trouble.