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Deputy White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer told ABC's George Stephanopoulos that Republicans owed Susan Rice an apology after they misled the country about the Benghazi emails -- a story that was hyped by his network's correspondent Jonathan Karl. After Stephanopoulos feigned ignorance on the matter, Pfeiffer should have told him ABC owes her an apology as well.

Karl gave a sorry excuse for apology this weekend, saying that he regrets that "the email was quoted incorrectly." More like he regrets getting caught. So to sum things up after reading his statement and listening to this interview -- not only is ABC refusing to come clean about the names of the Republicans who lied to them and conned them into hyping and giving new life to this so-called scandal that was being ignored by most of the networks other than Fox until Karl and ABC decided to lend it some credibility -- Stephanopoulos decides to sit there and pretend he doesn't have any idea why someone might want Republicans to apologize to Susan Rice after what they did to her.

Instead he decided to ask Pfeiffer about the emails without a word on Karl's "apology" or any acknowledgement of his network helping to spread lies for Republicans by hyping doctored versions of them. Stephanopoulos should have been opening This Week with a statement from the network on their shoddy "journalism" and with Karl's statement instead of trying to pretend it didn't happen.

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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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Conservative columnist George Will on Sunday told Republicans that they should get behind immigration reform because "conservatism begins with facing facts."

During a panel segment on ABC's This Week, Will said that he understood immigration reform opponents -- like Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions (R) -- who think allowing a path to citizenship would be "rewarding lawbreaking."

"However, conservatism begins with facing facts," he explained. "The facts are that of the 11 million people who are here illegally, two-thirds have been here a decade of more; 30 percent, 15 years or more. They're woven into our society, they're not leaving and the American people would not tolerate the police measures necessary to extract them from our communities."

"Therefore, the great consensus has to be on the details of a path to citizenship," Will insisted, adding that "even if the system weren't broken, even if we had no illegal immigrants, we'd still need to do something about this because we need the workers as the baby boomers retire and as the birth rate declines, we need something to replenish the workforce to sustain the welfare state."

A study published last year in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science found that conservatives were more likely to contort facts to justify their beliefs.

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Abyssinian Baptist Church Pastor Calvin Butts on Sunday called on the U.S. Supreme Court to legalize same sex marriage because it was part of "the freedom God has given you."

"It's something that we don't believe in, in terms of what we have learned from the Bible," Butts told ABC's George Stephanopolous. "But in terms of men and women having their rights as citizens and human beings, we certainly affirm that."

"You should have every right as a citizen of this nation and every right as a human being to enjoy the freedom that God has given you. The choice is yours. And I should not stand in the way of you making that choice."

Butts added that even though his religion did not teach that "marriage between a man and a man or a woman and a woman is God's divine imperative," it would be wrong for him to oppose marriage equality for all Americans.

"And I think that the Supreme Court should not stand in the way of that," the pastor explained. "I have to support that in a civil society because, otherwise, I would not be a good citizen of our great nation and a participant of this great experiment in democracy."

"However, I choose to believe the book upon which I build my life."

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This was a nice change of pace, watching a Republican get shot down for their fearmongering on the air: ABC Journalist Calls Out Karl Rove: ‘Stop Scaring People’ About Background Checks:

During a heated debate about gun regulations on Sunday morning, ABC News’ Terry Moran accused Karl Rove of using “Orwellian” language to scare people about background checks, noting that the federal government is not seeking to confiscate guns but rather keep them out of the hands of criminals and people who are mentally ill. [...]

The proposals currently being drafted would require a background check on all gun purchases including those by private sellers while exempting family and temporary transfers. In some of the drafts being circulated, private dealers would have to maintain records for all private sales, while other exempt non-commercial private sales from record keeping. None of the bills would maintain a national gun registry, which is already illegal under current law. But the record keeping provision is important, advocates claim, to ensure that the checks are being properly conducted.

A recent Quinnipiac University poll found that 88 percent of Americans, including 85 percent of gun owners, believe “those purchasing firearms at private sales and gun shows should undergo a background check.”

Full transcript below the fold.

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Thom Hartmann takes our corporate media and the cheerleaders for war with Iraq to task and ten years after our invasion, asks 'Where are the apologies?'

Via Truthout: How the Media Fueled the War in Iraq:

Yesterday, the U.S. marked the 10th anniversary of the start of the Iraq War. And, over the course of the past ten years, we've learned more and more about how the war with Iraq actually started.

It's incredibly easy to blame the Bush administration for its lies that led us into Iraq. But Cheney, Rumsfeld and company weren't the only ones who played an integral role in convincing this nation that Saddam Hussein was a threat, and that WMD's were a forgone conclusion.

In the days and weeks leading up to the invasion of Iraq, corporate media – and even NPR and PBS - were abuzz with the talking points of the Bush Administration, echoing claims that Iraq had its hands on "yellow cake uranium" and that it had a massive arsenal of "weapons of mass destruction."

Thanks to the media's repeated claims that Iraq and Saddam Hussein were immediate threats to our nation, in the weeks leading up to the invasion, nearly three-quarters of Americans believed the lie promoted by Donald Rumsfeld that Saddam Hussein was somehow involved in the attacks of 9/11.

One of the biggest proponents of the Iraq War was Bill O'Reilly.

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Former Bush adviser turned ABC contributor, Matthew Dowd was asked to weigh in during the panel segment on This Week on some the speeches at this years Conservative Political Action Conference, and didn't hold back with continuing his criticism of the decision to invite Sarah Palin to speak at the event.

Two weeks prior, Dowd complained that Palin "wasn't competent enough for Fox News" and "diminishes" CPAC. While I'd agree with him on the former, given the list of the other wingnuts who were invited to speak there as well, there wasn't much left to "diminish." Republicans have been pandering to the Christian right and the TeaBirchers in their party for decades and now that they've taken over the joint, they're complaining.

RADDATZ: Congressman, anybody make you nervous there at 2016?

BECERRA: No, no. I think...

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Ohio Republican Sen. Rob Portman recently reversed on his opposition to same sex marriage after his son came out as gay, but House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) says that he would never support equal marriage rights for an LGBT child.

During an interview with ABC that aired on Sunday, host Martha Raddatz asked Boehner if he had talked to Portman about his change of heart.

"He has, in fact, called," the House Speaker admitted. "I appreciate that he's decided to change his views on this, but I believe that marriage is a union of a man and a woman."

"Can you imagine yourself in a situation where you reversed your decision as Portman has on gay marriage if a child of yours or someone you loved told you they were gay?" Raddatz pressed.

"I believe that marriage is the union of one man, one woman," Boehner repeated. "It's what I grew up with, it's what I believe, it's what my church teaches me."

"And I can't imagine that position would ever change."

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I don't know if Jeb Bush is going to run for president in 2016 or if he's just out there hawking his book, but if he is running, as Digby noted, it appears he's a little out of practice, or overrated to begin with, in part due to the contrast with his brother. If he is running, he's doing his best to give Mittens some competition in the flip-flopping department right out of the gate.

TPM's Benjy Sarlin has been keeping track for us here: TIMELINE: How Jeb Bush Pulled A 360 On Immigration Reform:

Jeb Bush completed a whirlwind one-week journey on immigration on Sunday, praising a Senate proposal to grant eventual citizenship for undocumented immigrants after attacking the idea in a newly released book he co-authored that was itself a reversal of his past position.

Bush’s experimental turn as a border hawk was so quick you could blink and miss it. Here’s a quick timeline of how the flip-flop-flip went down.

June 12, 2012
In an interview with Charlie Rose, Jeb Bush explains his support for eventual citizenship for the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the country.

“You have to deal with this issue. You can’t ignore it,” Bush said. “And so, either a path to citizenship, which I would support and that does put me probably out of the mainstream of most conservatives; Or a path to legalization, a path to residency of some kind, which now hopefully will become — I would accept that in a heartbeat as well if that’s the path to get us to where we need to be which is on a positive basis using immigration to create sustained growth.”

Go read the rest but here's more just from this Sunday where Bush was out there doing a full Ginsburg.

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Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) on Sunday called out Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK) for complaining about drastic cuts in the so-called "sequester" after Republicans forced it by refusing to raise the debt ceiling and risking default for the first time in the nation's history.

"This was a presidential suggestion back in 2011 -- an idea -- and, yet, the president himself hasn't put out any alternative," Cole said during a panel segment on ABC. "Republicans twice in the House have passed legislation to deal with it, once as early as last May, again after the election in December. The Senate has never picked up either of those bills, never offered their own thing."

"Now, we're three weeks out [from the sequester deadline] and folks are worried," he continued. "They ought to be worried. On the other hand, these cuts are going to occur. The real choice here is do you want cuts to be redistributed in other ways, which is the sensible thing to do, or do you want to let this happen?"

Ellison, however, pointed out that Republicans couldn't place all the blame on President Barack Obama after they voted for the sequester created by the Budget Control Act of 2011.

"Well, Tom, the problem with saying that this is the president's idea is you voted for the Budget Control Act, I voted against it," Ellison noted. "We wouldn't ever have been talking about the Budget Control Act but for your party refused to negotiate on the debt ceiling, something that has been routinely increased as the country needed it."

"You used that occasion in 2011 -- August -- to basically say, we're going to default the country's obligations or you're going to give us dramatic spending cuts. That's how we got to the Budget Control Act."

The Minnesota Democrat added that the sequester was projected to increase both unemployment and the deficit.

"It's going to do everything opposite to what your party says they want," he told Cole. "It's going to create uncertainty, it's going to increase the deficit, it's going to increase unemployment, it's going to be a problem."

"We don't have a presidential proposal," Cole opined. "I don't think you speak for the president."