I love Shep. O'Reilly irritates me (and of course he is a commentator not a journalist!). Hannity makes me nuts - I just can't stand him. Megan Kelly is pretty - I think she is a rare talent but sometimes... That pretty dark haired girl is just mean. Colmes is nice.

All that being said, I am an Independent conservative. I view Fox News as entertainment because, overall, they have a terrific sense of humor (but they are getting way too tabloid). The liberals who go ballistic over Fox and insist it is all things evil and that only sheep watch it need to get over themselves. It is not the Fox watchers who are freaking out everytime someone says something with which they disagree. Oh sure, we'll argue the point, but few of us start making personal attacks about the level of intelligence or free will of the person who disagrees with us.

What many liberals don't seem to understand is that there are several major paths to conservatism. Some people are morally or culturally conservative as a result of their religion, values or their upbringing. They adopt the conservative platform because it more closely mirrors their values and world view.

Other conservatives hold their beliefs based on a hard eyed assessment of how the world works and life has taught them a lot about unintended consequences. Many of those people, and I count myself as one of them, began as liberal when we were younger and reassessed those views when we discovered that they didn't stand up to what actually happens in the real world.

I've noticed that a lot of liberals automatically want to lump conservatives into the first group and, further, inject a bit of an arrogant, judgmental attitude by assuming that people are conservative only because they are mentally lazy or otherwise simply following along with what they are taught. Toss in a bit of anti-Christian sentiment and whenever they run across someone who is conservative, they automatically think they know what the conservative thinks and what their values are. They frequently categorize conservatives (and dismiss them) as mindless drones. The fact that the second conservative group tends to have reached their beliefs through a great deal of soul searching and willingness to discard notions that they used to hold dear (which is painful and takes puts a premium on intellectual clarity) results in quite a disconnect between how liberals view them and the reality. Obviously, it makes it hard to have an intelligent discussion when liberals "assume" you just haven't thought this stuff through.