Marc Lamont Hill, the liberal counterweight against the conservative line-up at Fox News was given his walking papers.

While both Fox and Hill have been quiet about the situation, but Huffington Post reports FOX was under pressure to remove Hill due to his “sympathies” for Mumia Abu-Jamal and Assata Shakur.

Hill is a professor at Columbia University.

Fair and balanced, eh.

The feud between Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele and talk-show radio host Rush Limbaugh isn’t really a fight at all. After all, they’re as cozy as two bugs in a rose bud when it comes to conservative issues. But all the snuggling stops when the issue shifts to whom the party should crown as the official message deliverer. Read on.

 Ex-convict-Ku Klux Klansman David Duke, the former Republican member of the Louisiana House of Representatives, says the new African-American chief of the GOP is a “racist” and an “Obama Jr.,” who will run “rank-and-file” Republicans out of the party. Michael Steele, who formerly served as the lieutenant governor of Maryland, is the first Black person chosen to head the Republican Party, of which Duke was a longtime member. Read about what Duke said about Steele here.

Obama Tells Republicans to Get on Board President Obama has issued a warning to   members of the Republican Party: Get on board or stand powerless on the sidelines. Speaking to Republican leaders, whom he had invited to the White House to discuss his $825 billion stimulus package, Obama took a shot at acid-tongued conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh and his followers, saying, “You can’t just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done.” Last Wednesday, Limbaugh said in a televised interview that “I want [Obama] to fail,” and he added that American had been duped into voting for Obama for fear that they’d be called “racists” if they rejected him. Read more here.

 Peter Yarrow, whose “Puff the Magic Dragon” children’s song was commandeered by a Republican honcho and retooled to mock President-elect Barack Obama, called the insults “vulgar,” “mean-spirited,” racist and full of “outright disrespect.” Tennessee Republican Chip Saltsman, who’s hoping to be the next head of the Republican National Committee, included “Barack the Magic Negro” tune on a CD he sent to fellow Republicans for Christmas. The song was introduced to the public by the acid-tongued conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh last year.  Saltsman dismissed his actions as lighthearted humor and “political satire.” Yarrow sees it differently. “The sending of a Christmas greeting by Chip Saltsman to the members of the Republican National Committee that includes a recording of the so-called parody, ‘Barack the Magic Negro’ is not only offensive; it is shocking and saddening in the extreme. It flies in the face of America’s deeply held hope for a new era in which common ground and mutual respect characterize the exchanges between our national leaders,” Yarrow wrote in a statement. Read what else he had to say here.

McCain tells his party to get off Obama’s back. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said it’s high time the Republican Party get behind President-elect Barack Obama and get off his back. When asked by ABC “This Week” host George Stephanopoulos whether he thought Obama was being less than forthright about his staff’s contact with embattled Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, McCain shot back: “I think that the Obama campaign should and will give all information necessary. You know, in all due respect to the Republican National Committee and anybody – right now, I think we should try to be working constructively together, not only on an issue such as this, but on the economic stimulus package, reforms that are necessary…” Read what else McCain said here.