It takes a lot to ruffle the usually unflappable Anderson Cooper on his own show, but Renee Ellmers, a Republican House candidate in North Carolina managed to do just that when she was interviewed by the CNN host last Friday night. In discussing her latest campaign ad, a 30-second spot that strongly denounces the Islamic community center near Ground Zero, Cooper takes the candidate to task for interchangeably using the words "Muslim" and "terrorist" in the video and asked her to clarify. This discussion quickly devolved into the validity of the political shock ad's assertion that Muslims traditionally built "victory mosques" on the cities they conquered and that "they" now want to do so on the site of the 9/11 attacks.

The CNN host, visibly frustrated with the candidate's inability to answer his questions, pressed her on what she meant by this assertion. Ellmer's response? She pressed right back against Cooper, asking, "are you anti-religion? Are you anti-Christian in your thinking?" That's when the host momentarily dropped his journalistic guise, retorting, "that's like the lowest response I have ever heard from a candidate, I have got to tell you."

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Erik Hayden