In case you’ve not been paying attention, the White House is feuding with Fox News.

In the latest salvo, President Obama’s senior political adviser David Axelrod told ABC’s “This Week” that Fox’s programming “is not really news” but “pushing a point of view.”

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel echoed those remarks on CNN’s “State of the Union” program Sunday, saying Fox “is not a news organization so much as it has a perspective.”

The White House began pushing back against Fox’s coverage of the Obama administration a week ago after the president won the Nobel Peace Prize.

White House communications director Anita Dunn noted that conservatives who were “rejoicing” over Obama’s failure to bring home the Olympics seemed “quite bitter” about the Nobel prize.

“Fox News often operates almost as either as the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party,” she said.

“What I think is … fair to say about Fox, and certainly it’s the way we view it, is that it really is more a wing of the Republican Party,” Dunn said.

Karl Rove, former President George W. Bush’s political adviser, told “Fox News Sunday” the White House was dominated by “Chicago-style politics.”

“If you don’t like the questions that are being asked by Major Garrett or Wendell Goler or Chris Wallace, then you try and demonize Fox News,” Rove said.

News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch saw a bright side to the White House attacks.

“There were some strong remarks coming out of the White House about one or two of the commentators on Fox News,” Murdoch told an annual meeting of News Corp. shareholders. “And all I can tell you is that it’s tremendously increased their ratings.”

Despite all the back and forth between the two sides, the White House says Obama will accept interviews with the network.

“We’re going to appear on their shows,” Axelrod told ABC. “We’re going to participate, but understanding that they represent a point of view.”

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Photo credit: Reuters/Jim Young (Obama with Emanuel and Axelrod at a meeting in Turkey in April)

In every U.S. president’s administration, there is always some kind of in-fighting that spills out into the public domain and now a battle royale is shaping up between President Barack Obama’s senior adviser David Axelrod and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.

The two are set to duke it out over who has done the most to contribute to the Mustached American way of life — and no, it’s not the contest of who has the best mustache (Ax might just win that between the two of them if that were the case).

“Axelrod and I both went to Stuyvesant high school in New York and I got an alumni magazine or print out or something that showed us mustache-less in high school,” Holder said.

The organization behind the award, the American Mustache Institute, says that Holder is the first mustached attorney general in more than 100 years.

“I was actually going to shave mine during the course of the summer. My kids told me not to and now I think I should have followed my gut,” Holder told reporters. “I’d be honored to have that award but it’s nothing I’m pining for.”

They aren’t alone in the contest, other nominees include the pilot who safely landed a damaged US Airways plane on the Hudson River earlier this year, Chesley Burnett (Sully) Sullenberger, CBS correspondent Bill Geist, and Dan Snarr, the mayor of Murray City, Utah, among others.

Voting ends Oct. 20 on the American Mustache Institute’s Web site with the winner announced Oct. 30 at the ‘Stache Bash 2009 in St. Louis.

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Reuters/Tim Shaffer (Axelrod at a pre-inaugural ball in January)

Reuters/Rick Wilking (Holder speaks to law enforcement authorities in Denver.)

WASHINGTON - With the clock ticking on his hunt for a running mate, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama spent nearly three hours on Monday meeting with his vice presidential search team and campaign advisers.

Obama visited the downtown office of Eric Holder, a former deputy attorney general who is leading the process of researching and analyzing potential vice presidential picks, and emerged with little to say.

Asked by reporters who he met with, Obama replied: “Some guys.” As he got into his car, he asked reporters how they were doing then told them: “Get back on the bus.”

A few minutes after Obama pulled away, the Politico newspaper reported that the other leader of the search process, Caroline Kennedy, daughter of President John Kennedy, and campaign manager David Plouffe and strategist David Axelrod left the building through a separate entrance.

The Washington Post reported Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine has had “very serious” talks about joining the ticket, according to sources close to Kaine. Delaware Sen. Joseph Biden and Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh are also being seriously vetted for the job, the Post said.

Neither Obama nor Republican rival John McCain is expected to make a choice during the opening week of the Olympic Games in China, which start on Aug. 8, giving them less than two weeks to make their decisions known or wait until near the nominating conventions.

The Democratic convention opens on Aug. 25.

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- Photo credit: Reuters/Jason Reed (Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama speaks alongside his top economic advisors during a roundtable meeting at a hotel in Washington, D.C., on July 28)

DALLAS - Has Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton improbably emerged as the favorite of the “Guns and God” crowd?

The U.S. media and blogosphere has been ablaze with speculation that conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh may have contributed to Clinton’s narrow victory in Tuesday’s Indiana primary over Barack Obama by urging Republicans to vote for the former first lady.

The speculation is that the “Rush for Hillary” is seen as a way to extend the Democratic nomination battle and further damage the eventual winner.

Limbaugh has also said in the past that he thought Obama needed to be “bloodied up politically, and it’s obvious that the Republicans are not going to do it and don’t have the stomach for it.”

Obama chief strategist David Axelrod, speaking to reporters on Obama’s plane on the way to Chicago from his rally on Tuesday night in North Carolina, said he saw a Rush factor at play in Clinton’s win.

He said Clinton ought to “call a press conference and thank Rush Limbaugh for the victory.” He said the margin of victory for Clinton was so narrow, there is a good chance Limbaugh might have tipped the scales for her. 

“Eleven percent of the total electorate were Republicans. She got 52 percent of those. A large percentage of them said they would favor McCain in a race against Clinton.” 

Indiana has one of the more open primaries which allows independents and Republicans to also request a Democratic ballot on the day they vote.

Do political bedfellows get any stranger than this?

(With additional reporting by Caren Bohan) 

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