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The Obama administration has been criticized for their inaction on gun control during their first term in office. In fact, one of the earliest efforts by Attorney-General Eric Holder back in early 2009 was rebuffed by then White House Chief-of-Staff Rahm Emanuel. In the wake of Newtown he's now calling for "meaningful action".

(CBS News) As the country is still reeling from the elementary school massacre in Newtown, Conn., Chicago Mayor and former chief of staff to President Obama, Rahm Emanuel, defended the president's position on guns, saying he has always been "very, very clear" on the issue.

"President Obama always stood for getting something done," Emanuel said on "CBS This Morning."

Co-host Norah O'Donnell, however, pointed out that the pro-gun control organization, the Brady Campaign, rated the president with an F grade during his first year in office for allowing guns in national parks and on Amtrak. She also pointed to a book by Danny Kleinmann called Kill or Capture that quoted Emanuel as being extremely angry when Attorney General Eric Holder said that the president backed a ban on assault weapons.

Here's her rather direct question to Emanuel and you'll hear his rather evasive reply.

NORAH O'DONNELL: "I want to ask you about what led us to this point. The assault weapons ban expired in 2004. You were President Obama’s Chief of Staff and in 2009, according to the book Killer Catcher, you were furious with Attorney General Holder who held a press conference in February of 2009 saying that the Obama administration was going to reinstitute, push the assault weapons ban, and that you sent word to Justice that Holder needed to “shut the [fuck] up on guns."

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Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) and conservative columnist George Will told a Sunday panel on ABC News that gun violence in the United States was caused by mental illness, video games, violence in the media and even "unparented" boys from single-parent homes -- but they refused to accept that gun control was part of the problem.

"Look, I'm a concealed-carry permit holder," Chaffetz explained. "I own a Glock 23. I've got a shotgun. I'm not the person you need to worry about. And there are millions of Americans who deal with this properly. It's our Second Amendment right to do so. But we have to look at the mental health access that these people have."

"The gun rules are very stringent. There's a lot conjecture out there that I don't think would necessarily solve this particular problem. And I want to look at anything we think will solve all the problems, but we have to, I think, look at the mental health aspect."

"As a parent, we all shed a tear," Chaffetz added as he choked up. "You put violence and death and gore in a movie, you're not going to get an R rating. You do something else, okay. I got to tell you, I think the movie ratings are terribly misleading when it comes to violence, death, gore and glamorizing."

Will, however, pointed to boys in single-parent homes as a source of the problem.

"We ought to bring in Mayor Rahm Emanuel of Chicago," he insisted. "Chicago is an epidemic of violence with young, largely unparented -- that is, no father in the home -- adolescent males. That's a problem quite separate from this."

The conservative columnist also worried that the massacre of 20 children at an elementary school in Chicago would be used to "ratchet up the security of schools and elsewhere in public spaces."

"Our public spaces are already blighted by this," Will ranted. "For generations, people have been using the water on the [National] Mall to run little sailing boats. Now, the government in its wisdom has banned remote-control little boats on the mall water in Washington because it somehow represents a security threat to the country. We have to be a little bit reasonable."

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Conservative columnist George Will on Sunday said a series of attacks and questions about Mitt Romney's association with Bain Capital, his tax returns and offshore investments were adding up to trouble for the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.

"Mitt Romney's losing at this point in a big way," Will told ABC's George Stephanopoulos. "If something's going to come out, get it out in a hurry. I do not know why -- given that Mr. Romney knew the day that [Sen. John] McCain lost in 2008 that he was going to run for president again -- that he didn't get all of this out and tidy up some of his offshore accounts and all the rest."

"He's done nothing illegal, nothing unseemly, nothing improper, but lots that impolitic -- and he's now in the politics business," Will added.

The Boston Globe reported on Thursday that Romney was listed as the "sole stockholder, chairman of the board, chief executive officer, and president" of Bain even after he repeatedly claimed he had retired in 1999.

President Barack Obama's campaign spent the better part of Thursday and Friday using that report to connect Romney to American jobs that Bain allegedly helped send overseas. They also hammered him for not releasing more than two years of tax returns and having offshore investments and tax shelters in the Cayman Islands, Bermuda and Switzerland.

By late Friday afternoon, Romney had scheduled last-minute interviews with five different television networks to defend himself, but the damage had already been done.

On Sunday, Obama surrogates like Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel said the GOP candidate's "whining" about the Obama campaign called into question how he would handle more serious issues like Russia and China if elected president. And Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) told NBC that Romney was running from his record at Bain "like a scalded cat."

Meanwhile, Romney supporters like adviser Ed Gillespie were on the defensive, trying to explain away the discrepancies in the former Massachusetts governor's record by claiming he had "retired retroactively" after taking a part-time leave of absence from Bain in 1999.

“He’s not a felon,” Gillespie insisted to CNN’s Candy Crowley. “And so it’s sad to see -- we now know this president will say or do anything to keep the highest office in the land, even if it means demeaning the highest office in the land.”

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Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel (D) on Sunday advised presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney to "stop whining" about suggestions that he broke the law or lied to voters by saying he had "retired" from Bain Capital, even though Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) documents show that he was in charge of the company.

After The Boston Globe revealed on Thursday that Romney was listed as the "sole stockholder, chairman of the board, chief executive officer, and president" of Bain even after he claimed he had retired in 1999, Obama deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter noted that lying on SEC filings was a felony.

On Friday, Romney scheduled last-minute interviews on five television networks to demand an apology from President Barack Obama.

"He sure as heck ought to say that he’s sorry for the kinds of attacks that are coming from his team," the former Massachusetts governor complained to ABC News. "If I were president of the United States, I would put a stop to it and apologize to my campaign for what has been done by his."

"What kind of a president would have a campaign that says something like that about the nominee of another party?" Romney asked during an interview with CBS News.

During an interview with ABC News' George Stephanopoulos on Sunday, Emanuel pointed out that Romney's protests made him look less than presidential.

"Stephanie cited the law and it's very clear," Emanuel explained. "Either the filing with the SEC is accurate and his personal financial disclosure is not honest or that's honest and the SEC [filing] isn't. Both can't be accurate."

"Give it up about Stephanie," he continued. "Don't worry about that. What are you going to do when the Chinese leader says something or Putin says [something] to you? Are you going to whine as your way? You cannot do that."

"As Mitt Romney said once to his own Republican colleagues, stop whining. I give him his own advice: Stop whining."

Emanuel added: "If you want to claim Bain Capital as your calling card to the White House then defend what happened to Bain Capital and what happened to those jobs that went overseas, those jobs that were actually cut and eliminated and the companies that went into bankruptcy. And the very companies that went into bankruptcy while Bain was still getting paid, same philosophy that led to him advocating that the auto industry go bankrupt."

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Countdown's Keith Olbermann talked to Jan Rodolfo, Midwest Director of the National Nurses United Union, who was one of the nurses arrested during the Oct. 22nd late night crackdown at the Occupy Chicago protest.

Rodolfo explained that she and others were arrested when they refused to take down the medical tent set up there for the protesters after the Chicago police department demanded they leave the park at the 11pm curfew.

When asked about Mayor Rahm Emanuel's statement that “the city has a balancing act and has to enforce the law as well as respect people's First Amendment rights” and whether she thought the arrests were balanced, Rodolfo responded:

Absolutely not. Rahm Emanuel apparently believes that First Amendment rights end at 11pm in the city of Chicago. We think that Constitutional rights extend 24/7 and that people should have the right to protest and to raise their voices and to reflect the anger and suffering that are out there across the country. Other mayors, in Albany, as you mentioned have figured out a way to do it and it's time for Rahm Emanuel to let there be a long-term encampment in Chicago.

You can follow Rodolfo on Twitter at @NurseJanIAm. And as Nicole noted in her post, you can contact Mayor Emanuel’s office at 312-744-5000.

Time for your weekly podcast with the Professional Left, otherwise known as our own Driftglass and BlueGal, both just back from Netroots Nation last weekend.

You can listen to the archives at http://professionalleft.blogspot.com/ and also make a donation there if you'd like to help keep these going. You can also follow them on Facebook at The Professional Left Podcast with Driftglass and Blue Gal.

Have a great weekend and enjoy the podcast everyone.

Time for your weekly podcast with our own Driftglass and Bluegal, otherwise known as the Professional Left. Have a great weekend and get out there and show your support for the protesters if you can make it.

You can listen to the archives here and you can also throw a few bucks in the hat there if you'd like to help keep these going and enjoy them as much as I do. If you're not a regular visitor to Video Cafe, these do go up on Friday before they're crossposted if you don't want to wait for the Open Thread on Saturday and of course they're posted on Driftie and Fran's sites on Fridays as well.

Open thread below...

Time for your weekly podcast with The Professional Left, otherwise known as our own Driftglass and Bluegal. And for a bit of fun, the Photoshopping of Driftglass and Bluegal's wedding has already begun. Have a great weekend everybody and enjoy the podcast.

You can listen to the archives at http://professionalleft.blogspot.com/ and you can throw a few bucks in the hat there as well if you'd like to help keep these going.

Time for your 2010 year end podcast from The Professional Left, our own Driftglass and Bluegal. Happy New Year everybody and enjoy the podcast.

Mentioned in the podcast

Jon Stewart article in The NY Times.

Brian Williams Claims the Media Quit Covering the BP Oil Spill Because the Public Lost Interest in the Story

Batocchio's round up of best posts of the year by the bloggers who wrote them.

You can listen to the archives at The Professional Left or make a donation there if you'd like to help keep these going. Have a great weekend everybody.

Time for your weekly podcast with The Professional Left, our own Driftglass and Bluegal. Have a great weekend everyone and enjoy the podcast.

Driftie has some related links posted over at his place for the podcast and here they are:

Susie Bright Costume Contest.

David Brooks goes to Church.

Rahm Emanuel on Twitter .

Christine O'Donnell and China.

Gene Cradick and the fire next time.

If you would like to listen to podcast archives or if you enjoy these as much as I do you can visit their web site http://professionalleft.blogspot.com/ and drop a few bucks in the hat.