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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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Stephen Colbert is still on vacation this week over at Comedy Central, but he did make an appearance on Jake Tapper's new show on CNN, The Lead. Colbert stepped out of character for the better part of the interview and discussed his support for his sister who is running for the U.S. House seat that was vacated by Tim Scott after he was appointed to the Senate to replace the Heritage Foundation's latest wingnut welfare recipient, Jim DeMint.

Colbert Busch's leading contender on the Republican primary side is none other than Mr. Appalachian Trails himself, Mark Sanford. If she's fortunate enough to find herself elected to the House, Colbert told Tapper she would be fair game when he's doing his show:

But now Colbert is breaking character to dip his toe into real politics – supporting his sister Elizabeth Colbert Busch, who works in business development at Clemson University and is running for Congress as a Democrat in their home state of South Carolina.

This is the first election Colbert has become involved in.

"I've actually worked very hard not to get involved in an election because I think people expect me - and I don't want to speak for Jon [Stewart], but people expected of Jon to exercise political power because we talk about politics a lot, and we did the rally and stuff like that," says Colbert.

But this time is different, says the Comedy Central star.

"She's my sister and I'm willing to break the jewel of my own creation to try to do something for her. Like I'm not worried about what it would do to me or my show to try to help her as myself, not as my character but as myself, and if people don't think that's the right thing for me to do, I don't care, it's my sister and I'm willing to help her," says Colbert.

Besides, Colbert says, "I've met these people and my sister is in the top decile."

And he would know. Colbert's faux conservative pundit shtick is basically the longest-running spoof of Washington, D.C., on television.

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Following last week's slaughter of 20 children in Connecticut, President Barack Obama on Wednesday held his first-ever press conference about gun control, but the press corps insisted on asking at least the first six questions about the so-called fiscal cliff.

The president took to the podium in the the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room -- which was named after a staffer who was shot during an assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan -- to say that he had tasked Vice President Joe Biden with spearheading an effort to recommend policy changes like banning assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition clips.

"It won't be easy, but that can't be an excuse not to try," Obama told reporters. "And I'm not going to be able to do it by myself. Ultimately, if this effort is to succeed, it's going to require the help of the American people. It's going to require all of you."

With that, the president invited the press corps to ask questions, beginning with The Associated Press' Ben Feller, who wanted to know, "Are we likely to go over the cliff?"

In fact, reporters ignored the Connecticut shootings for at least the first six questions, until White House staff insisted that the next question be about the topic at hand and USA Today's David Jackson asked why Biden's effort would be any different than other ineffective Washington, D.C. commissions.

"The idea that we would say, 'This is terrible, this is a tragedy, never again,' and we don't have the sustained attention span to be able to get this done over the next several months doesn't make sense," the president insisted. "I have more confidence in the American people than that."

In the final question of the press conference, ABC's Jake Tapper noted that the president had done little about gun violence during his first term.

"This is not the first issue of horrific gun violence of your four years," Tapper said. "Where have you been?"

"I've been president of the United States, dealing with the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, an auto industry on the verge of collapse, two wars," Obama explained. "I don't think I've been on vacation. And so, I think all of us have to do some reflection."

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Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH), a surrogate for Mitt Romney, claimed on Sunday that the Republican presidential nominee could win the White House without carrying Ohio in November -- even though no GOP candidate had ever won without the "Buckeye State."

During an interview on ABC News, senior White House correspondent Jake Tapper observed that President Barack Obama continued to have a comfortable lead of 6 points in Ohio, even after his poor performance in the first presidential debate.

"He can probably win the presidency without Ohio, but I wouldn't want to take the risk," Portman insisted. "No Republican has. And we're doing great in Ohio. If you look at the average of all the polls, it's about dead even in Ohio right now. And importantly, the momentum is on our side."

"It's turning our way. I think that's why you're going to see the president continue to attack, not focus on the substances of the issues that people care about, but instead continue the attack because things are not going their way right now."

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ABC News global affairs anchor Christine Amanpour on Sunday threw cold water on one of her colleagues, Brian Ross, who had reported that Iran could have a functional nuclear weapon in as little as four weeks.

During a panel discussion on ABC, host Jake Tapper asked Ross how quickly Iran could build a nuclear device.

"Four to six weeks away, if they made the decision to do it," Ross claimed. "That’s some of the intelligence. They haven’t made that decision, that’s the key."

"That is so vastly disparate," Amanpour pointed out. "Other's say it could be a year. So, this is a guessing game that's gone on for years."

"It could be two years," ABC Senior Foreign Affairs correspondent Martha Raddatz agreed.

"That's the latest claim," Ross argued.

While Ross has won awards and broken many major stories during his tenure at ABC News, he is also renowned for making some of the biggest and most embarrassing mistakes in mainstream journalism.

In 2001, ABC's senior investigative reporter falsely claimed that Iraq and Saddam Hussein were behind anthrax attacks in the U.S. He reported in 2009 that Ft. Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan had made an "attempt to reach out to al Qaeda." Gawker found that Ross had edited footage in 2010 to make spontaneous acceleration in Toyota cars appear worse than it actually was.

Most recently, Ross was blasted by conservatives when he wrongly reported that Jim Holmes -- the 24-year-old accused of a shooting rampage at a theater in Aurora, Colorado -- had been associated with the tea party.

"Brian Ross is responsible for several of the establishment media’s most shameful and reckless journalistic falsehoods of the last decade," The Guardian's Glenn Greenwald told Politico. “His reporting philosophy seems to be to go on TV and say whatever he thinks will garner attention and create ‘scoops,’ without the slightest concern for whether it’s actually true.”

(h/t: Think Progress)

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Fox News contributor Liz Cheney on Sunday blasted President Barack Obama with the false claim that he had apologized to enemies of the United States and had abandoned Czechoslovakia, which has not existed since 1992.

During a panel on ABC's This Week, host Jake Tapper asked the daughter of the former vice president if she agreed with Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney's assertion that Obama was "sympathizing" with the people who attacked the U.S. embassy in Libya and killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and other Americans.

"I think he did get it right," Cheney insisted. "We've now had three and a half years of Obama policy and it looks an awful lot like -- whether you're talking about the Mexico City speech in 2009, the Cairo Speech in 2009, the extent to which he's been apologizing for America, he's abandoned some of our key allies like Israel, Poland, Czechoslovakia. He's attempted to appease our enemies, the Iranians, for example, the Russians. ... The president himself has got a terrible record on national security, and it's clearly something that Gov. Romney ought rightly to be pushing."

"I think the governor handled it exactly right when he went out and condemned the embassy statement," she later added. "I think, frankly, it would be a tragedy for the nation if President Obama is allowed to effectively claim that he's been a successful national security president. And it would be a tragedy for the nation if the Romney campaign doesn't push this issue very hard."

Cheney concluded: "But there's no question but that we're weaker than we were when Barack Obama took office. And if he has four more years, we may well be unrecognizable."

An Associated Press fact check last week determined that President Obama never apologized for the United States or expressed sympathy for the people who attacked the U.S. embassy in Libya.

"The claim that Obama repeatedly has apologized for the United States is not borne out by the facts, especially if his full quotes are viewed in context," Washington Post fact checkers wrote in 2011. "Note to GOP speechwriters and campaign ad makers: The apology tour never happened."

As for the claim that Obama "abandoned" Czechoslovakia, that country was dissolved in 1992 -- over 16 years before he took office.

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George Will admitted something on ABC's This Week that is as obvious as the nose on everyone's face and has been for some time -- that the economy doing well is not in the best interest of the Romney campaign and that they've got every reason to be rooting for it to fail.

TAPPER: I want to switch topics right now to a hardening we've seen in conventional wisdom about the state of -- of the -- of the election. We've seen in -- in Friday, these three swing state polls came back indicating, in Ohio, Obama's up 7 points, Virginia, Obama is up 5 points, Florida, Obama is up 5 points.

And, George, one of the amazing things is, Mitt Romney is no longer in polling beating Obama on trust to handle the economy.

WILL: Which is his campaign in one sentence. Those three states have one thing in common: They all have Republican governors. And all three Republican governors are bragging -- perhaps rightfully so -- that they have got their economies up and running. If you add Wisconsin, with Scott Walker, and -- to that list, you have a tension, a kind of disconnect between the interests of the Republican governors in the swing states and the interests of the Romney campaign.

What you'll never hear Will admit is the fact that a lot of the reason those states are doing better is because of federal intervention and President Obama's policies like that auto bailout and stimulus they want to pretend didn't work.

If we could get Will to admit the extent to which Republicans in the Congress have done their best to sabotage the economy purely for political gain, now we'd be getting somewhere.

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As Dave already noted here, the roof has caved in on Mitt Romney with the number of people calling him unfit to lead after his disastrous response to the murders of American diplomats. We had Peggy Noonan and Chuck Todd throwing Mittens under the bus and you can add Mrs. Greenspan to that list as well.

Romney adviser Richard Williamson appeared on Andrea Mitchell's show this Tuesday to defend his candidate's craven political response to the incidents and it was nothing but more flame throwing and being extremely condescending to Mitchell. President Obama's leading from behind. He's apologizing for America. It's the same old tripe we hear over at Fox day in and day out, but they're not having quite so much luck selling their talking points this time around.

Williamson even attacked former ambassador Nicholas Burns, trying to pretend he's a partisan because he worked for Jimmy Carter. As Mitchell pointed out, he also happened to work for Republicans as well, but never mind that. His response was basically to shrug his shoulders and say, "So what?"

The Romney campaign has been lying so much, I was wondering what it would take for him to finally start losing the media. I think we got our answer this week. When you're losing the likes of Todd, and Noonan and Mitchell, Mark Halperin and Jake Tapper, you're in trouble. They've all been carrying a lot of water for the Romney campaign thus far to put it mildly. When even they can't take the cravenness of this campaign any more, stick a fork in him. I guess we'll see if this lasts and how much pressure gets put on any of them after the fact by the Romney campaign to change their tune as the week goes on.

Rough transcript below the fold.

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Here we go again with Darrell Issa out there pushing the right-wing conspiracy theory started by Mike Vanderboegh, that the Fast and Furious debacle is really just a secret ploy to try to get more gun control laws enacted: GOP Oversight Chair Doubles Down On Wild Conspiracy Theory: Obama DOJ May Have Started Fast & Furious To Limit Access To Guns:

House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) doubled down on a right wing conspiracy theory this morning, again suggesting that the failed “Fast and Furious” operation was a secret scheme by Democrats designed to promote stronger gun control regulation. But he also admitted that he had absolutely no evidence to back the theory and likely never would. [...]

Issa is more than happy to continue to promote the theory — started and peddled by Mike Vanderboegh, a man who once called for militias to break the windows of members of Congress because of the passage of the Affordable Care Act — even though even he concedes even he does not believe he will ever be able to produce any evidence of the allegations.

Transcript below the fold.

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This is what happens when you let everyone see the thought process, or lack thereof that goes into your ramblings that are generally reserved for your Wall Street Journal column. I don't know if Peggy Noonan was having a senior moment or if she'd already been hitting the cocktails before the taping of This Week, but she had a bit of trouble when asked what she thought about Anne-Marie Slaughter's recent article in The Atlantic, Why Women Still Can’t Have It All.

We got quite a stark contrast between the concise, intelligent, specific remarks from Hilary Rosen on the United States being behind the rest a good deal of the world when it comes to family-friendly work places and then... well... there was Peggy Noonan's response.

Transcript via:

TAPPER: OK, let us talk -- now turn to this Atlantic cover story, "Why Women Still Can't Have It All" by Anne-Marie Slaughter, former State Department official. Hilary, we've all read this. It's a provocative essay. What did you think of it?

ROSEN: You know, two things kind of for context first. The first is, two-thirds of mothers in America today actually are primary or co-breadwinners for their family, so women don't have the luxury of whether or not to work. We have to work.

The second is, I think men are increasingly feeling this pressure, so I don't -- I don't, you know, want you to feel left out. But that kind of brings us...

TAPPER: Thank you.

ROSEN: ... to a central problem, which is this issue really has to move beyond kind of party talk and angst and philosophy to some place that gets our country moving forward. We're the only -- we're one of two countries in the developing world that do not actually have paid family leave, that does not have flexible mandated work hours, that does not have federally supported child care. Those issues, you know, have historically been women's issues, but they're really economic issues. They support everything, and we really ought to move this issue into some policy debate.

TAPPER: Peggy?

NOONAN: Oh, I think you can't legislate away some of life's limits and joys. It's a very rich and varied thing. Look, I think that -- interesting article in the Atlantic tends -- it seems to me it is focusing on how women are doing in the world, in business, in the professions. What percentage of people we have -- of women we have in the State Department and are we slipping and such?

And I think, therefore, it takes a slightly limited view of what women are, what choices they have, and what they might want to be. And so it's seemed to me a little bit limited and crabbed in its canvas, I suppose.

I forget where I'm going with that, beyond it is good to remember that it is good to work with children, it is good to be in the house, it's good to be in the office. All of these things are good. You've got to be open about them, but you can't try to legislate it too closely.

If there was ever a segment in need of a bobblespeak translation, it's this one.