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Vice President Joe Biden is trying to assure survivalists and those preparing for doomsday that they will still be able to protect themselves in case of disaster even if assault weapons are banned because shotguns are more effective weapons for defense.

During a Google Hangout discussion about gun control, YouTube video blogger Philip DeFranco asked the vice president why an assault weapons ban was necessary if the number of murders had gone down since the Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act temporarily banning some military-style rifles expired in 2004.

"So what would you say to the people who say, yes, you are infringing on our rights, not for sporting or for hunting, but in California, everyone talks about the big earthquake or some terrible natural disaster as a last line of defense," DeFranco wondered. "What would you say to those people?"

"A shotgun will keep you a lot safer -- a double-barreled shotgun -- than the assault weapons in somebody's hands that doesn't know how to use it, even one that does know how to use it," Biden advised. "You know, it's hard to use an assault weapon and hit something than it is a shotgun."

"If you want to keep people away in an earthquake, buy some shotgun shells," he added. "I'm must less concerned quite frankly about what you would call an assault weapon than I am about magazines and the number of rounds that can be held in a magazine."

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BREAKING: Analysts are scrambling to determine what leaked searches like "Blood child, blood on the child" and "must the president look at people" could tell us about Mitt Romney.

This seems to be as good a summation of the this year's election campaign and the media's reaction to it as any I've seen. via The Onion, of course.

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A church in Beaverton, Oregon is suing a woman after she posted a negative Google review calling them a "cult."

Julie Anne Smith revealed on her blog in March that Pastor Chuck O'Neal and Beaverton Grace Bible Church had sued her for $500,000 over negative reviews on Google and DEX that claimed that she had been shunned for no reason.

"I thought, I'm just going to post a review," Smith told KATU. "We do it with restaurants and hotels and whatnot, and I thought, why not do it with this church?"

Smith said that after leaving the church a few years ago, the pastor instructed members to shun her family.

"If I went to Costco or any place in town, if I ran into somebody, they would turn their heads and walk the other way," she explained. "All we did was asked questions. We just raised concerns. There’s no sin in that."

In their 54-page lawsuit, Beaverton Grace Bible Church claimed that Smith had defamed them by using words like "creepy," "cult," "control tactics" and "spiritual abuse."

"What we had was indoctrination... That is how cult leaders work," the suit alleges Smith wrote. "Don't waste your precious lives and relationships being held emotionally/spiritually captive by this so-called church."

Another message claimed that the "beloved pastor knew about a sex offender in the church who had access to the nursery and children on a weekly basis and did not have any safeguards in place."

"This is a very destructive and disturbing 'church.' ... The exra-Biblical legalistic teaching is wrong. The gossip/slander, disclosure of what goes on in private counseling sessions, sex offenders have free reign in childrens' [sic] areas with no disclosure to parents. ... This is not a safe place."

According to comments posted on Google Maps, O'Neal had first threatened to sue Smith on February 25.

"DEFAMATION IS A CRIME: Pastor Chuck O' Neal, his wife, his children, and Beaverton Grace Bible Church as a whole, have suffered JulieAnne's hateful lying slander for well over three years," O'Neal wrote. "After seeking counsel from a pastor on staff with Grace Community Church (under Pastor John MacArthur) and reading him several excerpts from JulieAnne's endless defamation, he recommended that we FILE A LAWSUIT in an appeal to Caesar as the Apostle Paul did when falsely accused of crimes against God and the state."

"Her many lies and vicious criminal accusations will not stand in the light of day in the Washington County courthouse or in the coming courtroom before God."

Smith's profile says that she started her blog after noticing that her negative reviews had been removed from Google.

"Days after the commencement of this blog, I received a legal summons suing me and three others for defamation to the tune of $500,000," she recalled. "The story of spiritual abuse needs to be told. People are being hurt emotionally and spiritually by pastors who use bully tactics and we need a place to learn, to talk freely, and to heal. I will not be silenced."

The lawsuit also target's Smith's daughter and three other commenters.

At the time of publication, Beaverton Grace Bible Church had a rating of one and a half stars on Google.

(h/t: The Blaze)

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Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum hopes that Google will do something to disassociate his name with with a sex act.

The top search results on the worlds most popular Internet search engine conflates the former senator's name with anal sex.

MSNBC's Chuck Todd talked to Santorum about his "Google issue" Thursday.

"Do you think google has any responsibility in how its search engine works," Todd asked.

"It comes with the territory," Santorum explained. "There are foul people out there who do horrible things. It's unfortunate some people thought it would be a big joke to make fun of my name. That comes with the territory."

"You don't think google should step in themselves?" Todd prodded.

"I don't know how they've treated other circumstances and other situations, whether they treated it differently than mine. I would suggest that if they have treated it differently and have done things stop this kind of this vile activity and filth on the Internet, they should apply it equally to me and everybody else," Santorum said.

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So if you're a Tea Party leader and you post a racist online screed mocking NAACP "Coloreds" what does the media do? Why reward you with television appearances so you can try to sugar coat your hatred of course. Think Progress has more on his appearance with MSNBC's Tamron Hall.

Bigoted Tea Party Leader Mark Williams: ‘It’s Impossible For There To Be A Racist Element In The Tea Party’:

When host Tamron Hall asked why not “move forward” by condemning extremism in both camps, Williams instead pointed fingers, blaming all cases of racism on agent provocateurs Crash the Tea Party. Even more absurd, Williams said it is “impossible” for the tea party movement to contain racist elements:

HALL: Do we move forward by either side calling out extremism in their party? [...]

WILLIAMS: It’s impossible — it’s impossible for there to be a racist element in the tea party, you don’t get it! The tea party is about human rights, it’s about the United States constitution. The United States constitution mankind’s foremost human rights document.

HALL: What about the signs of the president as an African with a bone in his nose? What is that? Is that about the constitution?

WILLIAMS: Those signs were brought by Crash the Tea party, the coalition of anti-tea party groups, google crashed the tea party. You will find it all there. … Buy my book!

Of course, as ThinkProgress has documented, Williams needs to look no farther than himself to know that it is not “impossible” for the tea party movement to contain racist elements. Moreover, William’s pathetic attempt to dismiss every single example of tea party racism as the work of Crash the Party is complete nonsense. If he took his own advice and googled Crash the Tea Party, he would see that the group didn’t even exist until April of this year — a year after racist and bigoted signs began appearing at tea party rallies. Beyond this, the counter-protesters never really materialized, and basic common sense should tell Williams that the group couldn’t possibly be responsible for every single racist sign.

This guy really is a piece of work. It's too bad Hall didn't call him out for trying to blame a group that didn't exist for those signs until way after those racist signs started showing up at their rallies. It was obvious she didn't buy his line but didn't challenge him either. John King didn't do much better and allowed Williams to paint a happy face on his extreme comments and his writing and claim that what he said was just "misconstrued". Williams knows he stepped in it or he wouldn't be trying to do this kind of damage control.

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Keith Olbermann shoots down Glenn Beck's hackery for claiming that there's a conspiracy theory because he can't seem to find any footage of the late Sen. Robert Byrd filibustering the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in his Worst Persons segment.

Olbermann: Live television coverage of the Senate floor didn’t begin until June 2, 1986. T.V. cameras were not permitted onto the Senate floor until Dec. 1974 and were then used only to broadcast the swearing in of Vice President Rockefeller. Prior to that T.V. or film cameras were never permitted on the Senate floor, only occasionally in committee hearing rooms. No cameras as the Civil Rights Act debate of 1964.

And maybe it’s not necessary for Glenn Beck to know this obvious fact of the history of his own profession, nor for Tiffany to and it’s nice she got work after the singing career fizzled out by the way. But the answer to his fulmination is available on Google by typing in “Senate televised” and waiting, you know, two seconds!

Founding a university… this guy is not qualified to found a Magic 8-Ball. Lonesome Rhodes “Where’s the film of Congressman Brooks caning Senator Sumner in 1857? Huh? Huh? The communists stole it” Beck, todays Worst Person in the World!

Runners up were Sen. Jim DeMint for embarrassing the state of South Carolina again and Mel Gibson for making more idiotic bigoted comments.

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MSNBC's Chris Jansing talks to the NRA's Wayne LaPierre about the decision by the Supreme Court today that the Second Amendment right "applies equally to the federal government and the states".

Justices extend gun owner rights nationwide:

The Supreme Court held Monday that Americans have the right to own a gun for self-defense anywhere they live, advancing a recent trend by the John Roberts-led bench to embrace gun rights.

By a 5-4 vote, the justices cast doubt on handgun bans in the Chicago area, but signaled that some limitations on the Constitution's "right to keep and bear arms" could survive legal challenges.

Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the court, said that the Second Amendment right "applies equally to the federal government and the states."

The court was split along familiar ideological lines, with five conservative-moderate justices in favor of gun rights and four liberals opposed. Chief Justice Roberts voted with the majority.

...The ruling seemed unlikely to resolve questions and ongoing legal challenges about precisely what sort of gun control laws are permissible.

...Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association, said his politically powerful group "will continue to work at every level to insure that defiant city councils and cynical politicians do not transform this constitutional victory into a practical defeat through Byzantine regulations and restrictions."

Of course LaPierre doesn't want any restrictions on gun ownership at all and compared anyone who does to someone wanting to restrict "the individual right of religion, or speech or the right to vote, or any other great fundamental core freedom we have as American citizens." I hate to break it to LaPierre but there are restrictions on our other Constitutional rights, but heaven forbid that might get in the way of his demagoguery.

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Joe Scarborough hammered House Minority Whip Eric Cantor about why the Republicans were going to allow Smokey Joe Barton stay in his leadership post despite his retraction on Twitter for his apology for his apology to BP. As Think Progress noted, Cantor tried to brush it off by saying that Barton is not the issue. As they and others have noted, he's right.

Cantor Tries To Brush Off Barton’s Defense Of BP: ‘He Is Not The Issue’:

Yesterday, House Republicans decided to let Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) keep his seat as the ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, despite his apology to BP executives last week for the White House’s supposed “shakedown” of the company. Barton apologized to his Republican colleagues during a meeting behind closed doors, and House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) apparently though that was enough to excuse Barton for his “poor choice of words.”

This morning on MSNBC, Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) defended his party’s decision, claiming Barton “is not the issue.” Host Joe Scarborough — a former Republican congressman from Florida — repeatedly pressed Cantor on the decision, noting that Barton’s comments are important because he is the “most powerful Republican” on energy issues. The best Cantor could muster was to brush off Barton’s apology to BP as a mere gaffe, comparing him to Vice President Biden:

SCARBOROUGH: But why is Joe Barton allowed to keep his job when Joe Barton apologized to a corporation that is destroying my hometown and its economy and destroying the environment across the Gulf coast?

CANTOR: Joe, listen. Joe Barton is not the issue.

SCARBOROUGH: He kind of is, though. If he is the most powerful Republican on the Hill right now when it comes to energy, he is the issue, isn’t he?

CANTOR: No, he is not. [...]

SCARBOROUGH: Eric, I press you respectfully here, but it was a written statement. You and I both know that sometimes you get tired. Sometimes you say stupid things. I spoke, of course, of myself. I say it every day. You’re like, oh, God, I shouldn’t have said that. You kick yourself. Joe Barton is sitting here reading a statement ‘I apologized to BP!’

MIKA: He’s calling it a poor choice of words.

SCARBOROUGH: That was a calculated statement that shows a troubling mindset and I know you agree with me. You just can’t say it.

CANTOR:Joe, listen. If the standard for resignation is a YouTube moment or an inappropriate statement, wouldn’t you think the Vice President would be handing in his letters twice a week? I mean, come on!

And as they noted the DNC has responded.

DNC National Press Secretary Hari Sevugan issued the following response: “We don’t say this often but, Eric Cantor’s right – Joe Barton’s not the issue. The issue is a broader Republican culture of not just apologizing to the oil industry, but defending them and their other corporate benefactors at every turn and at the expense of middle class families and small businesses."

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Could a Fox News host who has admitted she had to Google terms like "czar" and "ignoramus" actually be qualified to be President of the United States? Fox News Gretchen Carlson suggested Wednesday that the president's job was "just like" her job as a co-host of Fox & Friends.

In trying to make the point that important moments like whether or not to fire Gen. Stanley McChrystal will define President Barack Obama's legacy, Carlson said the job or president was exactly like that of a Fox News anchor.

"This is what being president of the United States is all about. It's these tough, huge monumental decisions. It's not about how you run a campaign. It's not about whether or not you're popular. It's not about whether or not you're a celebrity, good looking, tall or short. It's in the time of crisis making these executive decisions," Carlson began.

"It's just like our job," she told co-hosts Brian Kilmeade and Steve Doocy.

"From a day-to-day basis, a lot of times where there's big breaking news, we just sort of roll along. But what's the role of an anchor during huge breaking news? You remember growing up? You tune to the television during that one moment during the year, they would have to carry a story all alone. It's the same thing as being the President of the United States," she said.

Carlson actually graduated from Stanford with honors. In December, Comedy Central's Jon Stewart slammed Carlson for dumbing down the news for her audience.

BP denies the existence of giant oil plumes, while Kevin Costner and Chuck Grassley come up with their own solutions.