O'Reilly got particularly angry when talking with Fox News analyst Juan Williams, calling Chief Justice John Roberts' opinion that the backers of Proposition 8 had no standing to appeal the case "just absurd."

Williams argued that in cases like Prop 8 and Obamacare, Roberts "made a decision based on what he thought was in the political best interest of the Court."

"That's not his job!" O'Reilly exploded. "That's not his job, Juan!"

Here's the video. The interview with Williams begins at around 4:25:

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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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Not surprisingly, Fox has often come in for a drubbing from media watchdogs for its often conservative, narrative-driven news coverage. But Kurtz, while occasionally willing to call foul on Fox, is generally pretty credulous of the cable news channel, defending it during controversies, favorably profiling its personalities, and seemingly overlooking its lapses.

John Cook at Gawker pointed this out, suggesting that Kurtz may have scooped him in 2004 at the behest of a News Corp. PR agent, and pointing to some other examples:

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“This fiction that somehow [the IRS is] totally an independent agency is absurd,” Woodward, who broke the Watergate scandal, said. "You say they aren't answering this question about the 157 visits by the IRS commissioner. They should."

"President Obama could easily come out through his spokesperson and say this is where Mr. Schulman was. And here are the dates. Here is who he met with," O'Reilly said. "The fact that the President doesn't do it, should raise the curiosity of every reporter, Mr. Woodward, every reporter. Yet, as I said, the major network news on television ignored the story last week in its totality. It's amazing."

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On a list of days that will live in infamy, October 13, 2004, is, for most people in the outside world, probably pretty close to the bottom. If we consider dates like December 7, 1941, November 22, 1963, and September 11, 2001, to be at the top of the Infamy List, then 10/13/04 would have to fall somewhere between March 6, 1969 (Major League Baseball introduces the Designated Hitter rule), and May 19, 1999 (George Lucas releases the first Star Wars prequel).

But that was just for the outside world.

In the insular, gossipy microcosm that was Fox News, the day that saw the release of a salacious sexual harassment lawsuit against Bill O’Reilly—our biggest star and most fearsome newsroom presence— had the same effect as Lee Harvey Oswald flying a Japanese Zero into the World Trade Center.

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And I would always tell them the message isn’t so much pushed as it is pulled, gravitationally, with Roger Ailes as the sun at the center of the solar system; his vice presidents were the forces of gravity that kept the planet-size anchors and executive producers in a tight orbit; then all the lesser producers and PAs were moons and satellites and debris of varying sizes.

An organizational flow chart at Fox would be tough to draw up, as title alone was not the ultimate signifier of status. Sometimes the anchors outranked their executive producers, as was the case with "The O’Reilly Factor." (In fact, Bill had procured an EP title for himself, but he outranked the two other EPs on the show, both Stan, who oversaw TV, radio, and the website, and Gayle, who focused on television and also served as a fact-checker.) Sometimes the anchors were relatively weak — as was the case with a lot of weekend shows, and maybe some of the newswheel hours — and a strong senior producer or producer outranked, or at least pretended to outrank, the host. (For example, Lizzie from "The Lineup," who was only a producer but was tough enough that she probably could have bossed around Ailes himself had she been left alone in a room with him for more than five minutes.)

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"So for five years, you're always on DEFCON 1, red alert" said Stewart of "The O'Reilly Factor's" historically sensationalist coverage of President Obama. "You finally have a few things that really look worth investigating," said Stewart. "Is it joy, is it sexual arousal? What is the feeling over there?"

O'Reilly then offered up some "educated speculation" on why the IRS profiled Tea Partiers as Stewart continued to gently mock Fox News, the "organization of Sauron."

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“Remember when she said, ‘well who cares how this happened,’ in a rather emotional way?” McCain asked guest host Martha Raddatz. “A lot of people care.” It’s too bad Raddatz didn’t tell the senator that no, she didn’t remember that – because Clinton never said it.

Remarkably, I’ve seen no one follow up on McCain’s misstatement today either. (I’m sure someone will correct me if I’m wrong.) Instead, reporters are breathlessly parsing each new GOP charge on Benghazi (while also decrying the very real abuse of the IRS overscrutinizing the tax-exempt status of conservative groups.) The National Journal’s Ron Fournier tweeted “Welcome to the 90s,” with no apparent irony or self-awareness about the role of the media in ginning up that decade of phony scandals that paralyzed our last popular second-term Democratic president, Bill Clinton.

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O'Reilly blasted David Sirota again at the 5:12 mark in the segment below, saying Sirota hopes it's a "right wing militia, neo-nazi nut" who perpetrated the bombings to push Sirota's own personal political agenda:

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In honor of the Los Angeles Lakers retiring Shaquille O'Neal's No. 34 tonight, HuffPost Live hosted a conversation today with Shaquille O'Neal, Kurt Rambis and The Big Aristotle himself. About halfway through the conversation, a viewer posed a question about homosexuality in sports:

"I'm wondering if you think that organizations and players and athletes could be or need to be more inclusive of gay athletes and more welcoming to the gay community in general."

Host Marc Lamont Hill, best known for playing Bill O'Reilly's foil on Fox News, tried to distance himself from the question with a dismissive, "Who wants to take that one?"

Jackson responded:

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“The compelling argument is on the side of homosexuals,” O’Reilly said. “That is where the compelling argument is. We’re Americans, we just want to be treated like everybody else.” He continued: “That’s a compelling argument, and to deny that you’ve got to have a very strong argument on the other side. And the other side hasn’t been able to do anything but thump the Bible.”

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"Now, this would be much ado about nothing, if not for the fact that trivial attacks on President Obama are obscuring serious problems in this country," O'Reilly said, also noting that "every other president in history has lived in comfort, and it looks like President Bush the younger had a bigger White House budget than Barack Obama does."

"This is a trivial pursuit, and Michelle Bachmann made a mistake pursuing it," he added.

Bachmann had slammed Obama last week in her CPAC speech for his presidential "perks" that waste taxpayer money, specifically citing the Secret Service, the White House dog-walker, and movie nights.

Watch:

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The hip, bespectacled journalist is preparing to take over the covetable 8 p.m. time slot vacated by Ed Schultz's "The Ed Show" — network executives have moved Schultz to Saturday and Sunday evenings. Hayes has hosted "Up With Chris Hayes" since September 2011, and established quite a following in less than two years of carrying a show.

"Chris has done an amazing job creating a franchise on weekend morning," network president Phil Griffin said in a statement. "He’s an extraordinary talent and has made a strong connection with our audience. This is an exciting time for MSNBC."

Griffin is banking on Hayes -- and possible Hayes's morning slot replacement Ezra Klein -- to make MSNBC a household name. Well, a liberal household name, at least. “Our awareness level, people who can define who we are, is much lower than Fox and CNN,” Mr. Griffin told the New York Times. The network president has been building out a brand identity through the steady recruitment of ever-younger, ever-more progressive on-air talent. Of the network's gravitation to the left, former President Bill Clinton remarked, “Boy, it really has become our version of Fox.”

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But both came under serious fire. As former Salon politics editor Jefferson Morley pointed out, O'Reilly fabricated a story in "Killing Kennedy," saying he heard an associate of Lee Harvey Oswald commit suicide when, in fact, O'Reilly did not. And Justin Elliott has noted that O'Reilly's Lincoln assassination account was so grossly inaccurate that the historic site, the Ford Theater, refused to sell the book on its premises “because of the lack of documentation and the factual errors within the publication.”

It remains to be seen how O'Reilly will spin what publisher Henry Holt and Co. describes as the retelling of "the story of Jesus of Nazareth as a beloved and controversial young revolutionary brutally killed by Roman soldiers," adding that "O’Reilly will recount the seismic political and historical events that made his death inevitable, and the changes his life brought upon the world for the centuries to follow.”

The book is due to hit shelves on Sept. 24.

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Persistent rumors have surfaced recently that Judd, a woman whose career highlights include humanitarian work in the Congo, campaigning for Barack Obama and making a movie with Dwayne Johnson, is mulling a run against Kentucky Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in 2014. She reportedly met recently with Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and has begun privately researching campaign strategy. Last month, she told reporters the people of Kentucky "need a fighter."

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In an incident detailed in the book (and flagged by media outlets including USA Today) O'Reilly claims he was tracking down an interview with George de Mohrenschildt, a Russian expat with possible CIA connections who was friends with Lee Harvey Oswald. Investigators looking into the JFK assassination were seeking information for de Mohnrenschildt when he reportedly committed suicide in 1977. According to "Killing Kennedy," O'Reilly was on the Russian's doorstep when he heard "the shotgun blast that marked the suicide."

But as Morley pointed out this week, this was pretty much dramatic baloney:

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The channel, better-known for nature documentaries, will debut "Killing Lincoln" next month, and has released a trailer; it's a close-up of what happens after the bulk of Steven Spielberg's recent biopic "Lincoln," and is based on O'Reilly's account of the 1865 assassination. Tom Hanks, who is both a longtime producer of acclaimed historical films for highbrow HBO and a cousin of Abraham Lincoln through his mother, serves as narrator.

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The Daily News:

So what happened to Hannity?

The going wisdom is that viewers who basked in his preelection anti-Obama rhetoric tuned him out when they were stunned to wake up on Nov. 7 and discover that the President had won a second term — a scenario that Hannity had all but promised could never happen.

Before the election, Hannity was riding high in the ratings and topped thought leaders on the right, like Dick Morris, Ann Coulter, Peggy Noonan and talk radio bulldog Mark Levin, who predicted Obama would lose in a landslide.

Hannity performed even worse in the "money-demo" of viewers aged 25-54. More than half of them deserted his show.

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The New York Times notes that his recently published presidential biographies, "Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination That Changed America Forever" and "Killing Kennedy: The End of Camelot," have been the top two books on the list for the past full week, with the latter having sold about one million copies.

In fact, the Times suggests that O'Reilly might be "the most popular history author in America" in part due to his television fame, and partially due to the sheer volume of work he has pumped out over the years:

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