On Thursday’s Joy Behar Show on HLN, host Behar quipped that former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has returned "like jock itch," after playing a clip of Palin on Fox News Channel making fun of CBS anchor Katie Couric. Behar: "I give Sarah Palin credit. She's out of favor. She's out of the limelight. And then, suddenly, she's back like jock itch, and just as snarky as ever."

After commentary from her panel members for the segment, the HLN host ended up cracking that Palin is reminding people that she’s "illiterate" because the former Alaska governor also alluded to her own answer to Couric’s question about what she reads. Behar: "I think that she learned from being on Saturday Night Live that the way to reconstruct your image is to take the joke on yourself. But all she's doing is reminding us that she's illiterate."

Panel member and actor Josh Gad then oddly suggested that Palin has a history of making anti-Semitic jokes as he chimed in: "I miss her anti-Semitic jokes so much."

 On Tuesday’s Joy Behar Show on HLN, host Behar claimed that "poor white people, poor black people are the ones who are oppressed by the right wing in this country," during a discussion of a poll finding that 42 percent of Americans believe the American Civil War was fought over states rights instead of slavery.

Panel member and comedian Baratunde Thurston had just cited the Mississippi state secession charter as evidence that slavery really was the primary cause of the war, and then suggested that the Republican Party oppresses the poor in modern times. Thurston:

These were rich Southern men who not only oppressed black people, they oppressed poor white people who made up most of the population. And so the idea that we’re empowering the people represented today want to go back to this time where they were more oppressed is a perfect representation of the Republican Party agenda today.

Behar responded:

Joy Behar ripped the House of Representatives on her program on Monday for their recent defunding of Planned Parenthood. Behar, focusing on the organization's birth control services, criticized the move as "illogical...because if you are not going to help people with birth control, you're going to have more abortions. So, besides being evil and immoral and unethical, they're also stupid" (audio clips available here).

The liberal host led her 10 pm program by playing clips from Democratic Congresswoman Gwen Moore's Thursday speech on the floor of the House, where she argued that funding Planned Parenthood was better than having "to give your kids ramen noodles at the end of the month to fill up their little bellies so they won't cry. You have to give them mayonnaise sandwiches." Many in the conservative blogosphere argued that she's hinting that it's better to abort a child than have them live life in such a way. Behar then introduced Rep. Moore and Planned Parenthood Federation of American president Cecile Richards and asked the congresswoman, "What drove you to finally stand up on Thursday and deliver that great speech on the floor?"

[Video embedded below the page break]

 On Wednesday’s Joy Behar Show on HLN, when host Behar asked, referring to House Republicans, "Are they going to ruin health care?" guest Roy Sekoff - founding editor of the Huffington Post - referred to a repeal of Obamacare as "destroy[ing] health care." Moments later, he also claimed that Obamacare "will actually lower the debt," and accused Republicans of being hypocritical for wanting to repeal it:

JOY BEHAR: Let’s talk about what they’re going to try and do. Are they going to try and destroy everything Obama has done so far? The approval rating is up over 50 percent on Obama again. What are they going to try to do? Are they going to ruin health care?

ROY SEKOFF, HUFFINGTON POST: Well, yeah, you know, first thing out of the gate, they’re going to try to, you know, destroy health care and try to repeal it ... And, of course, they’re always talking about how concerned they are about debt. And we know that that bill will actually lower the debt. So, a little bit of talking out of both sides of their mouth.

As the two discussed White House advisor David Axelrod and Press Secretary Robert Gibbs’s upcoming departure from the White House, Sekoff joked about the possibility of Behar following the lead of Tony Snow and moving from cable news to White House press secretary, leading the HLN host to assert that "I would do it any day," before making making her latest admission that "I love President Obama":

Every year, the Media Research Center invites a distinguished panel of expert judges to sift through the dopiest, wackiest quotes of the year, and every year it seems the honor roll of idiocy gets longer and longer.

This year, top honors in the MRC's "Audacity of Dopes Award for the Wackiest Analysis of the Year" went to the Boston Globe Magazine's Charles Pierce, for a January 10 column he addressed to Republican Senate candidate Scott Brown just days before the Massachusetts special election. In Pierce's highly-esteemed opinion, Brown's cause was hopeless: