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Fox News host Sean Hannity and conservative pundit Michelle Malkin on Wednesday both defended a former Rutgers basketball coach who verbally and physically abused his players, both saying that they had received plenty of spankings and "turned out okay."

On Wednesday, Rutgers announced that the school had fired coach Mike Rice after ESPN revealed video tape of him kicking players, throwing balls at the heads of players and shouting homophobic slurs like "fucking faggot" and "fucking fairy."

Hannity, however, said that the coach "maybe" should have stopped physically abusing the players, but he was just "trying to get the best out of them."

"I'm watching this and I'm thinking, 'I don't like it' -- he kicked one player there -- but on the other hand, I kind of like old-fashioned discipline," the Fox News host explained. "I mean, have we become that politically incorrect? These are adults, they don't want to play for that team, they can leave."

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A Fox News guest who took on Sean Hannity for blasting President Barack Obama even as employment dropped to the lowest level in more than four years reaveled on Tuesday that the conservative host and others at Fox News are "so upset" that the economy is recovering.

During a panel discussion on Monday, Hannity talked over Occidental College Associate Professor of Politics Caroline Heldman as she tried to point to positive economic indicators like that the unemployment rate had dropped to 7.7 percent and the stock market was soaring.

"Nine million fewer Americans in the workforce!" Hannity interrupted. "You hear Nancy Pelosi, others talking about the stock market. Do any of those people on food stamps, are they investing in the stock market, Caroline?"

"I'm impressed that you're now concerned about the poor, thank you for that," Heldman shot back.

In an appearance on MSNBC on Tuesday, the Occidental professor shed some light on her interview with Hannity.

"You know, I have never met a group of people that is so upset that the economy is rebounding than the folks over at Fox," Heldman told MSNBC's Al Sharpton. "I mean, the signs are really clear, not only the unemployment rate dropping, but housing starts, new housing starts, housing prices, the fact that the stock market has doubled since 2009, that private wealth has been fully restored... But it is getting better, and we can't be in denial about this because that actually affects consumer confidence."

"I think that Sean Hannity is a perfectly likable person," she added. "I happen to know that he tips 100 percent in his private life, I just wish that his public stances and the stances of Republicans didn't go after the poor, the elderly, kids with Pell grant cuts, Medicaid cuts, job training cuts. I mean, you really do have to put your money where your mouth is."

"I agree with you, professor," Sharpton concluded. "I don't have a problem with any of them personally. They just seem to have a problem with facts."

(h/t: Media Matters)

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"Let these families take their White House tour next week and I'll cover the added expenses," he explained. "Word is it will cost around $74,000. If I can get the White House doors open, I'll pick up the tab... You know this is an offer you can't refuse. Give me a call."

"I think we just realized that The Five isn't your primary source of income," co-host Greg Gutfeld quipped.

Later in the hour, Fox News host Sean Hannity joined in Bolling's offer, tweeting, "[G]reat idea! Count me in, I will pay for a week also!"

But in all the fuss over whether or not lawmakers can give out White House tours as gifts, MSNBC host Martin Bashir pointed out that everyone was missing a very serious point that "it’s the public who are being injured by the sequester."

For the money that Bolling and Hannity have agreed to spend so that lawmakers can give constituents access to a short walk through the White House, the Fox News hosts could also provide one year of nutritional and preschool programs to 15 of the 75 children that could be cut from the Head Start program because of sequestration.

Or according to the Nation, they could fund over 90,000 meals to hungry families through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) food stamps program, which is also expected to face cuts.

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A reporter from Tucker Carlson's conservative website The Daily Caller says that by fighting for birth control and reproductive rights, Democrats have "reduced the American woman to a sexual being."

During a Wednesday segment praising Karl Rove's American Crossroads super PAC for accusing President Barack Obama of waging a "war on women," Fox News host Sean Hannity told The Daily Caller's Michelle Fields that Democrats' plan to paint Republicans as anti-woman had failed.

"I love this ad!" Fields said of the American Crossroads attack. "Democrats love to run away from numbers and facts which is why they created this ridiculous war on women with contraception."

"And what they did was they basically reduced the American woman to a sexual being whose sole concern is birth control and cheap abortions," she added. "That is not the American woman. The real American woman cares about the economy, getting a job, helping her family, which is why this ad will be far more effective than the war on women have."

Hannity noted that "even the dog in the kennel" on the roof of Mitt Romney's car had backfired on Democrats because "Barack Obama ate dog meat" in Indonesia as a child, something that Obama revealed in his 2007 book, but The Daily Caller resurrected the story earlier this year to "push back" against the Romney story.

Regardless of Hannity's claim that the "war on women" had backfired on Democrats, the most recent Quinnipiac University poll found Obama had a massive lead over Romney among unmarried women, 60 percent to 31 percent.

(h/t: Media Matters)

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Debates are fun, but post-debate spins are even more fun especially with Sean Hannity's tiny pea-brain memory. During last night's debate, Chris Wallace asked Newt about his campaign staff quitting en masse. Newt was not very happy about the question.

Wallace pointed out to Gingrich that, in June, he suffered a huge staff exodus.

"How do you respond to people who say that your campaign has been a mess so far?" he asked.

Gingrich was highly displeased by the question, and he turned on Wallace.

"I took seriously Bret's injunction to put aside the talking points," he said, referring to a request Wallace's co-host Bret Baier had made at the outset of the debate. "And I wish you would put aside the gotcha questions...I'd love to see the rest of tonight's debate asking us about what we would do to lead America...instead of playing Mickey Mouse games." [h/t Huffington Post]

And of course, Sean Hannity was appropriately concerned for poor Newt, but evidently that concern obliterated his short-term memory.

HANNITY: You know, I don't mind hard questions. I think they're important. As I was watching tonight's debate, you know what ran through my mind? In all the time that President Obama ran, he didn't experience one of these moments that I can really think of. So the double standard is clear.

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MSNBC's Cenk Uygur wondered Wednesday why Fox News' Tucker Carlson didn't call for Sarah Palin to be executed after she killed a defenseless caribou.

After all, Carlson had proclaimed Tuesday that NFL quarterback Michael Vick should have been given the death penalty for killing dogs.

"Now, I'm a Christian," Carlson announced, while filling in for Fox News' Republican commentator Sean Hannity. "I've made mistakes myself. I believe fervently in second chances but Michael Vick killed dogs and he did it in a heartless and cruel way and I think, personally, he should have been executed for that."

Carlson had become outraged because President Barack Obama praised Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie for giving Vick a second chance.

"[Obama] said, 'So many people who serve time never get a fair second chance,'" Lurie explained, after a phone call with the president. "He said, 'It's never a level playing field for prisoners when they get out of jail.' And he was happy that we did something on such a national stage that showed our faith in giving someone a second chance after such a major downfall."

White House spokesman Bill Burton clarified that Obama "of course condemns the crimes that Michael Vick was convicted of, but, as he's said previously, he does think that individuals who have paid for their crimes should have an opportunity to contribute to society again."

"I like how [Carlson] prefaced it by saying he was Christian," Uygur said, during the "Psycho Talk" segment of Wednesday's The Ed Show broadcast. "Is that what Jesus would have done? I love the way that conservatives twist the Bible. If you listen to them, Jesus was a gun-toting, rich-loving Texan."

"And if you're executing people because they killed defenseless animals you may want to remember this," he said, playing a video clip of Palin shooting a caribou on her TLC reality show, Sarah Palin's Alaska.

"Look, I know there is a difference," Uygur admitted. "But is it really that large? Sarah Palin is folksy for killing a caribou, who was clearly trapped and defenseless, if you watch that show. And Michael Vick should be executed? I don't think so."

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Newt Gingrich made the mistake of calling Shirley Sherrod "viciously racist" but the White House is at fault, the former House Speaker said Sunday.

The Obama administration called for Sherrod to resign from her position at the USDA after a selectively edited video clip of her allegedly admitting racism appeared on the internet. The administration apologized after the NAACP released the unedited video showing Sherrod actually explaining how she overcame her racist tendencies to help a white farmer.

After Sherrod resigned Monday, Gingrich appeared on Fox News' Hannity and said, "I often disagree with this administration but firing her after that kind of viciously racist attitude was exactly the right thing to do."

"Was that irresponsible, calling her viciously racist based on an internet clip that had been taken out of context?" Fox News' Chris Wallace asked Gingrich Sunday.

"No. I was operating in the context of the Secretary of Agriculture having summarily fired her and therefore there was no reason to disbelieve the clip and what you see is one more example of the Obama administration's continuing incompetence," said Gingrich.

"Apparently, she didn't even get the courtesy of a chance to talk to the Secretary of Agriculture who I suspect fired her under pressure from the White House and she said they were firing her under pressure from the White House," he continued.

"So, my comments were in context of a clip that had been validated by the Secretary of Agriculture who had fired her. Clearly, when you look at the complete clip and when you look at the background information and when you listen to the white farmer say she had actually been very helpful, I think a fair case can be made that this administration acted with destructive irresponsibility and the way that they fired her," he said.

ADDENDUM: (Jon Perr) As it turns out, history is repeating for Newt Gingrich. Sixteen years before he call Shirley Sherrod “viciously racist,” he blamed Democrats for the murders of two children in the racially-fraught Susan Smith case.

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Rachel Maddow with the second half of her report on the political witch hunt of ACORN and the problems that the De-Fund ACORN Act is going to bring for private war contractors if it actually passes.

As Rachel notes the De-Fund ACORN Act has a bill of attainder problem. The Constitution prohibits the legislature from enacting bills of attainder, which means the De-Fund ACORN Act must also include "any company that's ever been indicted for breaking campaign finance laws, or that's ever filed fraudulent paperwork with any federal agency". That means a good deal of our military contractors are going to be swept up under the law as well and it cannot only be enforced against ACORN.

Rachel reads off a list of all of the military contractors that would have their funding cut off and goes into the list of other crimes like murder, prostitution and contract fraud that they have committed as well which pale in comparison to what ACORN has been accused of.

Jeremy Scahill is asked whether the war contractors are worried about this law touching them. His answer. "Hell no." It's all about politics and too many in Congress are bought and sold by our military industries. And as he notes, ACORN got pennies when compared the massive sums of money these private contractors received.

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