After a question by O’Reilly about the Muslim Brotherhood’s role in transitioning a government for Egypt, Luntz began to ask the Iowa Republicans why the meters showed them all having such a negative reaction to Obama’s answers.

One woman said she believed the president’s religious convictions guide his policies. When Luntz asked her to clarify, she said, “I believe that he is a Muslim.”

Luntz then asked the rest of the group how many believed Obama is Muslim. About a dozen, or nearly half, raised their hands.

“Now do you understand the implications of what you’re saying here,” Luntz began to ask. “What the media’s going to say about this group and about the Iowa Caucus voters in the future. Do you realize what you’re opening up here?”

After that comment, several other members of the focus group said they believed Obama’s religious belief is “liberalism,” which they said was “the most intolerant of all.”

The president is of course Christian, but some of the Republicans said they did not believe him.

This isn’t the first time Iowa has garnered headlines for questions about the president’s faith. Kim Lehman, one of Iowa’s three representatives on the Republican National Committee, was criticized last summer when she publicly questioned the president’s religion. In response, several prominent Iowa Republicans sounded off, with state Sen. Sandy Greiner saying she respects the point of view of anyone who says the president is a Muslim.

Gov. Terry Branstad said at the time that he would take the president at his word that he’s a Christian.

Luntz’ panels have been criticized as seeming too far right to be an accurate representation of any segment of the US population. The Pulitzer-prize winning website PolitiFact said Luntz coined the “Lie of the Year” in 2010, with the phrase “government takeover of health care.”

Luntz previously complained his airtime had been cut on Fox because his findings didn’t comport with the outlet’s orthodoxy, resulting from focus groups he conducted that ended up favoring Obama.

Also, on cable Monday night, on MSNBC, Lawrence O’Donnell concluded O’Reilly had interupted the president 43 times during the interview.

Chuck Grassley worries about scientists looking at porn.

An Elvis Presley impersonator — named Elvis Presley — is running for Arkansas governor.

McConnell also hopes the president will become a “born-again moderate.”

…while Bill O’Reilly wonders why Obama hasn’t come out in support of same-sex marriage.

Nobody wants to come to Charlie Rangel’s birthday party.

Wolves are back on the endangered species list.

In Virginia, Rep. Tom Perriello’s opponent wants to get rid of the IRS.

Rush Limbaugh thinks health care and beach houses are the same.

Milwaukee teachers want their insurance to cover Viagra.

To some media professionals whom I admire because you don’t let anyone tell you to sit down and shut up, please keep making the idiots’ heads spin. Thank you for not taking our Freedom of the Press for granted, you bold and patriotic, fair and balanced media folks. Keep calling it like you see it: Amanda, Andrew, Ann, Bill(s), Bob, Cal, Dennis, Dick, Eddie, Fred, Glenn, Greta, Hugh, Joey, John, Jonah, Larry, Laura, Lou, Mark, Mary, Michael, Michelle, R.A.M., Rich, Rush, S.E., Sean, Tammy, Walter… and there are more. I join you in standing up for what is right. Remember that as your voice is heard and your spine is stiffened, the spines of others are stiffened, too.

Who’s who? Here are my best guesses for most of them: Amanda Carpenter of The Washington Times, Ann Coulter, Bill Kristol, Bill O’Reilly, Cal Thomas, Dennis Miller, Fred Barnes, Glenn Beck, Greta Van Susteren, Hugh Hewitt, Jonah Goldberg, Larry Kudlow, Laura Ingraham, Lou Dobbs, Mark Levin, Michael Reagan, Michelle Malkin, Rich Lowry, Rush Limbaugh, S.E. Cupp, Sean Hannity, Tammy Bruce, and Walter Williams. Why not use their whole names? Good question.

One day before the Senate Finance Committee is set to present the nearly 600 proposed amendments to Chairman Max Baucus’s (D-Mont.) health care plan, the amendments presented by fellow “Gang of Six” member, Sen. Olympia Snowe’s (R-Maine), made headlines today. The most significant change to the Baucus bill proposed by Snow is a “trigger” mechanism for the public option –  in which a government-run insurance plan to compete with private insurers would be “triggered” if private insurance companies fail to meet targets for coverage and cost-containment. She has also proposed an amendment to reduce the individual mandate penalty — the tax penalty assessed to qualifying individuals who fail to purchase health insurance as required by the legislation — which the Baucus bill currently sets between $750 and $3,800. Snowe also offered an amendment that would eliminate the individual mandate penalty, in favor of a vague “defined minimum contribution” instead of a mandate. As Ezra Klein writes: “The devil, however, will be in the details, and right now there aren’t any.”

The Wonk Room runs through some of the Republican offerings and finds they include “two separate amendments prohibiting funding for ACORN, reduced affordability credits, and eliminated ‘all industry fees.’”

Politico reports that Baucus will  present a modified version of his bill tomorrow that uses the $28 billion surplus that the Congressional Budget Office projected the initial bill  first proposal would create. Sen. Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) hopes to begin debating the Finance billon the Senate floor next week will be heard — a tough proposition with 534 amendments to sort through in the committee, and many more sure to come when the bill goes to the full Senate.

Finally, following Fox News host Bill O’Reilly’s surprising endorsement of the public option last week, the liberal group Americans United for Change has produced a Web video featuring Papa Bear himself. Chris Good writes we shouldn’t “be surprised to see the left use more of O’Reilly and the clip from last week in its push for a public option and health reform in general.”

I was one of about a dozen reporters who huddled outside the room for a few minutes immediately after the speech was supposed to start. Security guards, pictured after the jump, ushered us further and further away from the door–we could hear brief bits of O’Reilly’s speech when the doors would swing open. At around 7:10, we heard a loud clatter and the doors blasted open, as Mike Stark, a Huffington Post liberal blogger [UPDATE: An earlier version of this post incorrectly stated that Stark, formerly employed by FireDogLake, still worked for that site], was hauled out by multiple security guards.

“I have a right to be here!” shouted Stark, as he was forced into the stairwell leading outside the hotel. Speaking the next morning, emcee Gil Mertz mocked Stark (not by name) as a “representative from don’tjudgemeasIjudgeyou.org.”

The blocked ballroom door.

The belated warning to the press, which was posted in the press room during the speech.

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You can follow TWI on Twitter and Facebook.

Watters and his camera man accosted me at approximately 3:45 p.m. on Saturday, March 21, in Winchester, VA, which is a two-hour drive from Washington, DC. My friend and I were in this small town for a short weekend vacation and had told no one about where we were going. I can only infer that the two men staked out my apartment and then followed me for two hours. Looking back, my friend and I remember seeing their tan SUV following us for much of the trip.

What had Terkel done to deserve this? She’d seen that O’Reilly was going to speak at a fundraiser for a rape survivors’ group, and pointed out that O’Reilly had once accused a woman who was raped and murdered of dressing too sexy and being in the wrong place.

This isn’t a career highlight for Watters, but at least he’s never had to settle with an employee who accused him of sexual harrassment.

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TWI’s Twitter feed: far less creepy than Bill O’Reilly. Follow it here.

(WARNING: NSFW!)

Rush Limbaugh – 26 percent
Glenn Beck – 17 percent
Sean Hannity – 11 percent
Bill O’Reilly – 10 percent
Ann Coulter – 7 percent
Laura Ingraham – 4 percent
Michael Savage – 3 percent
Mark Levin – 2 percent
Michael Medved – 2 percent
Neal Boortz – 2 percent
Bill Bennett – 2 percent

A couple of things here. First, Ann Coulter’s 7 percent is strikingly low, given how CPAC is her natural habitat. She can, as she did on Saturday, give a contentless Henny Youngman routine of rehashed jokes and get an overflow crowd screaming. Second, Michael Savage’s 3 percent is sort of reassuring, given that Savage is a conspiracy theorist whose hatred of Islam goes well beyond simple bigotry.

The most interesting thing is the ranking of Glenn Beck over Sean Hannity. Hannity is far more famous, his show gets better ratings, and he’s better-respected within a Republican Party that hands him top-tier guests. I remember driving through Fulton County, Ga. on Election Day 2008, listening to Sen. John McCain appear on Hannity’s radio show and beg voters to turn out. But Beck is a strange populist conservative who, in February, dedicated an episode of his TV show to the coming American meltdown and civil war.

How to explain Beck’s popularity? First, the Ron Paul supporters. Paul scored 13 percent of the CPAC straw poll vote, higher than his 2008 showing of 10 percent, even though there were more voters this year. Paul supporters adore Beck, because he (like Lou Dobbs) will talk about more fringy worries of the right, like a possible union between America, Canada, and Mexico.

Second, the Bush/McCain amnesia effect. Hannity is seen, correctly, as a partisan talker who promotes whatever Republican is in power or leading the party’s ticket. He was one of the few radio hosts, along with Hugh Hewitt, who backed the Supreme Court nomination of Harriet Miers. As memory of Bush fades, perhaps Hannity will make a comeback with this crowd. Or perhaps they will become still more conservative and more aligned with the likes of Beck.

Fox’s tight and symbiotic ties with the G.O.P. are well documented, but that does not rule out a Democratic detente, since it is still owned by Rupert Murdoch, a pragmatic mogul who has famously made peace with liberal politicians here and abroad.

Fox’s Republican role is out in force on Friday, however, as the RNC began an offensive against Obama based entirely on Bill O’Reilly’s framing from The Factor. A new RNC attack file contends Obama offered “conflicting threat assessments on Iran” based on “his interview with Bill O’Reilly.”

Some Democrats were also concerned about the Obama-O’Reilly exchange on Iraq. “Instead of presenting a clear definition of how he will realize the promise of change after eight failed years of George Bush, [Obama] blurred the distinction between himself and John McCain on Iraq,” lamented a former aide to Chris Dodd, who thrilled liberal Fox critics in a more combative exchange with O’Reilly during the Democratic primary last year.

“He gave up his greatest strength – opposition to the Iraq War – on O’Reilly’s show,” the operative continued. “If Obama’s lucky, he gained enough new Fox-watching supporters to make up for the Democrats he just alienated.”

The Obama campaign had no comment on the appearance or reaction from Democrats.

Robert Greenwald, the director of the documentary, “OutFoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism,” emailed a new video to supporters today. In it, he criticized Fox’s unbalanced treatment of Democratic politicians:

O’Reilly needled and interrupted Obama, trying to get him to simplify many of his answers — a far cry from the softballs O’Reilly lobbed at many prominent Republicans like Rudy Giuliani in the past.

In a separate interview with TWI, Greenwald said his new video shows how Fox News is using the same playbook this year that it effectively deployed against Sen. John Kerry’s presidential campaign in 2004.

“Those who don’t learn from history are forced to relive it,” Greenwald wrote in an email. “Here is proof positive of the Fox propaganda machine using the same language, the same tools the same attacks word for word against BO as they did against Kerry.” Raw Story, an alternative news site favored by the netroots, also criticized O’Reilly for a slanted, hectoring performance.

While most news channels focused on Sen. John McCain’s big night on Thursday, it was a battle of the B.O.s on Fox News.

Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee, made a much-hyped appearance on “The O’Reilly Factor” to tangle with Bill O’Reilly. The talk-show host had been pushing so hard for an Obama visit, of course, his unrequited desire was a big topic at the secret meeting between Obama, NewsCorp head Rupert Murdoch and Fox News chief Roger Ailes.

Ever the showman, O’Reilly turned his new tape into a mini-series — only “Part 1″ aired Thursday (below) — and turned us commentators into previews for the remaining segments. But it was still good television.

Part 1 is about national security, with O’Reilly gingerly mugging as a salt-of-the-earth armchair general. He may pull down $9 million a year, but O’Reilly talks with the cadence and umbrage of any regular guy holding court at the bar — scrunching his face, interrupting, waving his hands and wondering whether Obama is tough enough to take on Iran.

He looked permanently perturbed with Obama’s answers. But he also offered his guest a few compliments. So Obama was correct to oppose the Iraq war as the “wrong battlefield,” O’Reilly observed, but wrong to oppose the surge. (Don’t even bother trying to square that.) Obama gave a good speech in Denver, O’Reilly conceded, but he still “bloviated” about Pakistan.

Obama was cool and cogent throughout, but O’Reilly’s audience presents demographic kryptonite to his political superpowers. Fox News viewers went for Bush by 9:1 last cycle, and prime-time shows — like The Factor — offer an even more conservative spin than daytime programming. Meanwhile, the average age of an O’Reilly viewer is 71. Obama has trouble with older Americans in general, but older Americans who voted for President George W. Bush and tune into O’Reilly? Even they may not be moved by this solid performance: