Sure, the cable network covered the DOMA decision as it broke mid-morning, giving the essential details to viewers. But then it swiftly moved onto what it apparently deemed more urgent stories, like an IRS credit card spending spree on porn and wine, a Keystone Pipeline corruption scandal featuring a billionaire supporter of the president, and President Obama's allegedly lavish trip to Africa.

As someone who worked at Fox News for two and half years, I can tell you this coverage decision wasn’t surprising -- it fits right into the network's strategy.

I was employed by Fox for two and half years, beginning in 2008 and ending in 2011. Unlike other former Fox producers who’ve caused a stir, I’m not here to dish juicy tidbits about secret meetings or specific anchors. I have no gripes to share about the No. 1 rated cable news channel. But my time there -- beginning on the cusp of the Obama age in 2008 as a guest booker for Foxnews.com’s “Strategy Room,” and ending in 2011 working on “Freedom Watch” with Judge Andrew Napolitano -- did give me valuable insight into the network.

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Few outside Zimmerman's defense team have done more to help him than Sean Hannity, who on Friday declared that Zimmerman had already won the trial. "As far as I'm concerned, this case is over," the Fox host said after playing testimony from a witness who said he saw Trayvon Martin beating Zimmerman "MMA style." The day before that, Hannity said on his radio show that the judge should dismiss manslaughter, let alone the second-degree murder charges.

"So the question is why are we here? And the answer to that question is purely political. Politics influenced the decision, the media influenced the decision," Hannity said, succinctly revealing why the conservative media has found itself vocally defending someone who admitted to killing teenager Trayvon Martin. It goes like this: Liberals and the media made hay out of the fact that Zimmerman was initially not charged in the killing of Martin. Liberals and the media are bad. Therefore, Zimmerman must be good.

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On Monday, Erickson posted a photo from the reproductive rights rally happening outside the Texas Capitol in advance of the legislature's special session, and asked if what he was seeing was "Salon's editorial board."

While we're flattered by the comparison, many of Erickson's Twitter followers were quick to point out his mistake.

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I had the immense honor of being invited to participate in the Nike LGBT Sports Summit earlier this June. Seeing how this conference has grown from about thirty people last year to over one hundred people this year gave me a feeling that you only get after winning a race-I thought "Wow, we are doing it, we are actually changing the institution of athletics across the country."

This feeling was quickly knocked out of me after I had heard Fallon Fox's moving speech which kicked off the conference on Friday morning. She reminded us that although the sports world has become safe for many lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) athletes, the trans community has been left behind.

I know all too well that sickening feeling of isolation and alienation, and how that pain can be unbearable to the point that makes people want to leave the sport they love. The fact that I am reaping the benefits today of dedicated LGBT individuals over the years, I felt that it is my duty to continue that advocacy for every L-G-B-and especially T.

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First, on "This Week": "TRAITOR OR HERO?" This is, what, a month into the Snowden saga, and these are still the first words to appear on a news show? "TRAITOR OR HERO?" You're on a troll, Stephanopoulos.

And here is Julian Assange, from his safe room in London, tie knot loosened. An ABC News correspondent gives us some background: "Who is Julian Assange?" Is he destroying the world? Or is he just a dude in the Ecuadorian Embassy.

What can you tell us about Edward Snowden, Assange? For example: where is the little shit hiding? "I wish I could answer your question in more detail." Red eyes and a cough, he sounds like he has a nasty cold, the poor guy. Now he is making Edward Snowden's story all about himself. The two face very similar investigations, he says, both from the same court in Alexandria, Virginia, where you've got a low chance of receiving "justice."

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I went to the rally, camera in hand, expecting to see the joyous faces of those who had been so worried while the SCOTUS decisions were being awaited. What I saw and heard was not a photo op: men and women, cautiously joyful, wandering through occasional bursts of enthusiasm. There was introspection, wonder, maybe even shell-shock. I went to the rally with a need for solidarity, feeling relief more than anything but the mood at the New York “victory” rally was like the tenuous ripples of a child stepping into a still lake. The water feels good, but what lies beneath? Was it trepidation or the cynicism often attributed to New Yorkers? Realism or pessimism?

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I keep a portrait of Machiavelli over my desk at work — an interior design choice that, I have learned, dismays some of my coworkers. Amid a recent mid-afternoon zone out, I received an email from one of them with the title “Who Wants to Serve a Billionaire?” The message contained a link to an article in the Guardian about a growing group of international multi-billionaires, their so-called “superyachts,” and the desperate lower-class Britons and Eastern Europeans who serve them as deckhands.

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Huffington Post’s Michael Calderone extensively detailed this week's NSA media counteroffensive against Snowden, as officials have tried to explain — anonymously and without real proof — that Snowden's leaks have hurt national security. On Wednesday, intelligence officials described to ABC News, Washington Post, Reuters and AP how terrorists are allegedly “changing their tactics” now that they've been tipped off that the U.S. is monitoring the Internet.

Essentially, the government leaked a bunch of classified information in an attempt to prove leaking classified information is dangerous.

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Shaye is the Yemeni journalist who in 2009 exposed his government's coverup of a U.S. missile strike that, according to McClatchy's newswire, ended up killing "dozens of civilians, including 14 women and 21 children." McClatchy notes that for the supposed crime of committing journalism, Shaye was sentenced to five years in prison following a trial that "was widely condemned as a sham" by watchdog groups and experts who noted that the prosecution did not "offer any substantive evidence to support (its) charges."

What, you might ask, does this have to do with the American government's attitude toward press freedom? That's where Scahill's movie comes in. As the film shows, when international pressure moved the Yemeni government to finally consider pardoning Shaye, President Obama personally intervened, using a phone call with Yemen's leader to halt the journalist's release.

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"I'm in favor of ending the possibility of offering both free delivery and a five percent discount," she told BFM news television on Friday. "We need a law, so we're going to find a legislative window to introduce one."

Amazon in France declined to comment.

Filippetti's remark underscored tensions between the French government and U.S. online firms such as Amazon and Google, which have been criticized for paying too little to the creators of cultural or news content.

France, like other European countries, bans retailers from discounting books more than 5 percent from a sale price set by the publisher. This is to prevent small sellers from being crushed by giant retailers that can absorb bigger discounts.

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The filibuster was a gripping spectacle that kept me rapt for hours. On Twitter, people were able to offer support, however symbolic, for Sen. Davis’ efforts. There was a sense of community. For some levity, I couldn’t help remarking on Sen. Davis’ flawless hair, several hours into her ferocious stand.

Near midnight, after some intense and partisan efforts to derail Sen. Davis’ efforts, the impassioned crowd in the gallery began shouting and cheering, letting the senator know she did not stand alone. It was a sound of women fighting for their reproductive freedom in the only way they could: with their voices. I will never forget that sound. It awoke something in me I hadn’t realized had gone dormant.

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On Sunday, Gregory asked Greenwald, the Guardian reporter who published Edward Snowden's NSA leak, "Why shouldn't you, Mr. Greenwald, be charged with a crime?" New York magazine points out that Gregory's question "all but accused the Guardian's Glenn Greenwald of aiding and abetting Edward Snowden's fugitive travels."

But Rich rebuts: "Is David Gregory a journalist?"

"As a thought experiment, name one piece of news he has broken, one beat he’s covered with distinction, and any memorable interviews he’s conducted that were not with John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Dick Durbin or Chuck Schumer."

"Presumably if Gregory had been around 40 years ago," Rich adds snidely, "he also would have accused the Times of aiding and abetting the enemy when it published Daniel Ellsberg’s massive leak of the Pentagon Papers."

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CINCINNATI — The Village at the Lift publicity tent has massive, thick walls of white canvas rising high enough to support a second floor balcony. Normally used for large parties, the tent was eerily empty despite it being the opening Friday of the 2009 Sundance Film Festival.

Back in a corner, sinking so low into a couch that he seemed to be touching the floor, was James Gandolfini, who passed away last Wednesday from a heart attack. But when I saw him he was in in Park City, Utah to speak about the political comedy In the Loop, his first major role since wrapping eight years as mob boss Tony Soprano on HBO’s The Sopranos.

For whatever reason, maybe Sundance gridlock, perhaps some competing publicity events, none of the other journalists showed for the interview. So I spent solo time with the normally press-shy Gandolfini inside a tent that could hold a thousand Tony Sopranos.

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It also garnered her a pretty fancy group of new fans on Twitter.

A roundup:

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A.V. Club reports:

Having apparently determined that no Japanese actors would dare be a part of the Jonathan Liebesman-directed Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, presumably given the original text’s importance to the Shinto religion, producer Michael Bay has been forced to make a decision regarding the reboot of a nostalgia property that will potentially upset people, just this one time.

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As has been well documented on Salon and elsewhere, Hoinsky's "seduction guide" offers dubious and sexually predatory advice that many feminist writers (hi) have denounced for encouraging sexual assault and violence against women. But as one Redditor pointed out on Tuesday, the advice threads that didn't make it into Hoinsky's book proposal are far more troubling than those that did, as this archived "field report" from Hoinsky shows:

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It wasn't until Nakia Grimes recently tried to renew her driver's license that she noticed her birth certificate mistakenly stated she was male. When she tried to update the document, a state official told her she would need a pap test to prove that she was a woman.

"She [the state worker] said I needed to go have a pap exam, have a doctor write a note verifying you’re a woman, and bring it back -- notarized," Grimes told Fox 5 Atlanta.

Fox 5 Atlanta reported the invasive request to Vital Records Services, where the director told her there was no need for the exam and that the employee's request was not standard protocol.

Instead, state record officials simply used the birth certificate of Grimes' son, which lists her as his biological mother, to verify her sex, Grimes says.

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Goldberg tells this story about when he and his daughter met Booker while she was studying for her bat mitzvah:

Booker turned his attention to her. “What’s your parasha?” he asked, using the Hebrew word for portion, a reference to the section of the Torah she would soon be reading. I could see, across my daughter’s then almost-13-year-old-face, a bit of confusion and a trace of panic, but she answered: “Vayera,” which is the action-packed chapter in the Book of Genesis that includes, among other things, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.

“Amazing parasha!” Booker said. He then quoted -- in Hebrew -- one of its more famous lines. And he shared his expert exegesis on the portion’s broader meaning -- notably, the lessons that any troublemaker worth her salt could derive from Abraham’s audacious decision to negotiate with God about the future of these two sinful towns.

My daughter didn’t know quite what to make of Booker’s erudite and enthusiastic performance. “Is he Jewish?” she asked later. No, I said. He’s a Protestant. “He knows a lot about my parasha,” she said.

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Galant is thinking of something even better, or at least more quantifiable: social media pickup.

It's hard to understate [Ed.: Um, overstate?] how much this is changing the game of online content. Publishers no longer control some of the most important analytic data. Writers know how well their work is performing in realtime. Competitors can analyze which articles are successful or duds in rival publications. As I wrote in a prior column, public relations executives can gauge the impact of a story about their clients. Even governments can monitor (without a FISA request) the resonance a muckraking story has.

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