MSNBC

Way to go out on a limb, Harold!. . . Of all the Morning Joe regulars, Harold Ford, Jr. is on my short list of those who bring the least to the table. Ford seems more interested in cultivating friends and avoiding offense than in saying anything interesting or—heaven forfend—controversial.

Ford took his penchant for finding something good to say about everyone to absurd new heights on today's show.  On the one hand, Harold showed respect for Rand Paul's filibuster. On the other, he actually broke out the hoary "my dear friend" in saying he wasn't as worred about the drone policy as is Ron Wyden. And Harold is confident that President Obama will uphold the Constitution.  Ford even claimed that AG Eric Holder did "a phenomenal job" in answering questions on the drone policy. We're running out of hands, here, Harold! Matters reached an absurd crescendo when, after observing that those who hang out with terrorists put themselves in peril, Ford proclaimed "I don't dine, socialize or spend time with people who are on a terrorist list around the globe." Good to know! View the video after the jump.

MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Thursday worried that a future "right-wing" politician "like Dick Cheney" might one day use drone strikes against his political enemies. The Hardball host was discussing Senator Rand Paul's filibuster on Wednesday and the subject that prompted it: Whether the U.S. has the right to use drones on Americans in a non-war situation.

Matthews wondered if "there is a possibility somewhere out there on the edge that a tough-- not going to say he did it-- but somebody pretty far on the far right like Dick Cheney...will push this thing too far?" The host fumed, "Do you think it's possible that a Jane Fonda could be targeted even by the most right-wing American politician we can imagine?" [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

On her Thursday 1 p.m. ET hour show on MSNBC, host Andrea Mitchell denounced a newly passed law in Arkansas preventing abortions after 12 weeks: "We're talking about the most restrictive abortion legislation in decades. Most people do not think it will pass court test muster..." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

She lamented to Time magazine's Nancy Gibbs: "We're still debating whether or not in the first trimester there should be the right to abortion, all these years after Roe v. Wade." Gibbs joined in the hand-wringing: "There are a growing number of states where there are simply no abortion providers available or there's only one in the entire state, or the restrictions have become so great that effectively there is no availability of abortion....This is just the latest of what has been a pretty steady stream of state level efforts to roll back that access."

Not surprisingly, most of the folks on MSNBC have being having a field day Thursday ridiculing Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) for his historic filibuster the day before.

Doing his part on the Martin Bashir show was MSNBC political analyst David Corn who said that Attorney General Eric Holder’s letter to Paul “had a very silent FU in it” (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

A daily feature on MSNBC’s Jansing & Co. is the ‘tweet of the day’ in which host Chris Jansing showcases a tweet from a politician or a member of the media that is topical to a major news event. Most of Jansing’s featured tweets are from liberal journalists, and on March 7, things weren’t much different. 

Following coverage of Senator Rand Paul’s (R-Ky.) 13-hour filibuster over the nomination of John Brennan for CIA Director, Jansing featured a tweet from Glenn Thrush, White House Reporter for Politico, who snarked that: "I have it on good authority that millions of Americans, not just Rand Paul, stand on their feet for hours & hours, some for minimum wage."

As Joe Scarborough said, "this is liberal on liberal on liberal violence. I love watching it."  He was referring to the intra-squad liberal dogfight, spurred by Rand Paul's filibuster, that broke out on Morning Joe today over the use of drones by the U.S. government. H/t NB reader Ray R.

Though former car czar Steve Rattner played a supporting role, the two main combatants were Sam Stein of the Huffington Post and Richard Wolffe of MSNBC itself.  Stein criticized the lack of guidelines that the Obama administration has established for the use of drones on U.S. citizens, supporting Paul's argument that it should be an easy question for the Obama admin to answer.  In the other corner, Wolffe was the internationalist, suggesting all terrorists should perhaps be entitled to the same due process, be they Saudi, Kuwaiti or American.  Stein and Scarborough had to enlighten Wolffe about the special protections the Constitution extends to U.S. citizens. View the video after the jump.

At the same time that rising Republican Senate stars Rand Paul and Ted Cruz were making history with a filibuster Chris Matthews, on Wednesday's Hardball, insisted Paul and Cruz must be heroes to hate groups.

During a segment on the liberal Southern Poverty Law Center's new study about an increase of anti-government hate groups, Matthews demanded which politicians they supported: "Who do they root for?! They don't root for Rand Paul? Pat Buchanan? I mean who? They must like this new guy Ted Cruz. They must love Ted Cruz, c'mon!" (video after the jump)

"As we talk about history, today marks the 6-year anniversary that Scooter Libby was convicted of lying and obstructing in the leak investigation which led to your cover as a covert CIA operative being blown," MSNBC's Thomas Roberts noted at the close of his March 6 MSNBC Live interview with Valerie Plame. "We're getting word now that he has had his voting rights restored," the MSNBC anchor added. "How do you feel, as you look back, hindsight being 20/20, about what that moment in time did to your life, where you are today?"

Plame answered that she and her husband Joe Wilson "worked really hard to rebuild our lives" and that they "wish that there had been further repercussions," because, "The whole episode is just a small example of a larger pattern of behavior that we saw under the Bush administration." But alas, speaking of history, this short exchange was a bit misleading for viewers as it was Colin Powell confidante Richard Armitage who had leaked Plame's name to columnist Robert Novak, albeit inadvertently. From CNN.com on September 8, 2006:

Whoah!  What place was Mika Brzezinski talking about?  On today's Morning Joe, Brzezinski said that at a place where she used to work, "any woman who did anything or got to the top immediately had something revealed to the press or online or whatever that would bring them down."  And whatever happened to solidarity among the sisters?  Mika added: I suggest that some might even argue that it's women doing that."

We don't know which employer Mika had in mind, but before coming to MSNBC, by far Brzezinski's longest stints were at CBS. View the video after the jump.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average hit an all-time high on Tuesday.

But you wouldn't know that if you watched MSNBC's Hardball where two guests actually made the case that this really isn't an all-time high due to inflation (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

Within minutes of the death of death of repressive socialist Hugo Chavez on Tuesday, MSNBC featured ex-Washington Post managing editor Eugene Robinson to fawn over the "quick," "popular" leader. Though Robinson allowed that "freedom of speech suffered greatly" under Chavez, he praised, "He provided medical attention that the poor of Venezuela hadn't received before, and, and, frankly, it was the first time in many decades that a leader had paid that kind of attention to the poor majority in Venezuela." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

With a nostalgic grin on his face, Robinson told guest Hardball host Michael Smerconish about the time he met the "quick-witted" anti-American. "He came to the Washington Post and there were several of us waiting to greet him," the liberal journalist giddily recounted. Robinson continued, "I didn't know if he spoke English at the time, so I introduced myself to him in Spanish when he got to me in the line, and he shook my hand and looked up at me and kind of grinned and said, 'hello, my name is Hu.'"

In what appears to be a daily theme on MSNBC, the liberal network seems to find new ways to smear the Republican Party.  The latest example from the liberal network was on the March 5 Now w/ Alex Wagner on March 5, when the all-liberal panel took to smearing Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R-Va.) on his bid to be the next Governor of the Commonwealth. 

The liberal panel, including host and former Center for American Progress employee Alex Wagner, spared no mercy in their vicious attack on Cuccinelli.  Wagner introduced the segment with strong vitriolic rhetoric: 

In an interview with left-wing MSNBC host Rachel Maddow on Tuesday's NBC Today, co-host Savannah Guthrie used dire language to describe the current budget sequester: "It was supposed to be something that forced both sides to the table, mutually assured destruction. Cuts that were so bad they would never go into effect. Here we are in the sequester era. How does this end?" [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

Maddow responded by turning up the hype even further: "In Prohibition, the government came up with the brilliant idea that to stop people from drinking, they would put poison in industrial alcohol....what they did was poison a lot of people. This [sequester] is the same kind of thing." Guthrie seized on the comparison: "And part of the effect though is this poison, to borrow your metaphor, it's not a poison that kills you overnight. Apparently it's a slow, rolling poison."

As NewsBusters reported earlier, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman and MSNBC's Joe Scarborough had quite a heated discussion about the budget, debt, and the economy on PBS's Charlie Rose Monday evening.

Near its conclusion, Scarborough actually scolded Krugman for pompously behaving like a sighing Al Gore (video follows with transcript and commentary):

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman and MSNBC's Joe Scarborough had an at times heated discussion about budget deficits, debt, and the economy on PBS's Charlie Rose Monday evening.

At one point Krugman got so rattled by the facts that he actually said Scarborough quoting what he had said in the past was making an ad hominem attack against him (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Confession: I yell at my TV while watching The Ed Show and Morning Joe because Twitter spambots are also boosting those programs.

Apparently the use of spambots to boost Rachel Maddow's show which was revealed here on Saturday now includes at least two other MSNBC programs: The Ed Show and Morning Joe. This revelation was made by liberal blogger Paul Bibeau at the Goblinbooks blog. First he establishes his liberal bonafides in no uncertain terms before presenting his Twitter spam case against those programs:

Ping-pong diplomacy worked with China, so why not b-ball diplomacy with North Korea? Mika Brzezinski is clearly not buying that line of logic. On today's Morning Joe, Brzezinski confessed to being "angry" with George Stephanopoulos for having the extraterrestrial otherwise known as Dennis Rodman on This Week to discuss his recent trip to North Korea, which included meeting with its new leader, Kim Jong Un.

Mika didn't spare her fellow MJ panelists, calling them "idiots" when they persisted in discussing Rodman's trip and TW appearance.  View the video after the jump.

If the Supreme Court strikes down section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, it would be a "one of the most jaw-dropping acts of, you know, judicial activism activism that we've seen in probably a generation," MSNBC's Chris Hayes insisted on the March 1 edition of Now with Alex Wagner.

That line of argument is certainly debatable, but Hayes decided to go way off the deep end by then saying that the conservative jurists on the Court, particularly the chief justice and Antonin Scalia were devoted to an "adolescent" jurisprudence on issues of racial equality, because they, wait for it, believe that the law should be colorblind:

Bob Woodward is a legend in modern journalism, especially for fellow liberal reporters. But that all is for naught now that Woodward has committed the cardinal sin of criticizing the White House for an operative's use of what apparently is a fairly common tactic: a harsh bullying of the press in order to demand even more favorable coverage than the Obama-friendly press already lavishes on Team Obama.  It centers on Woodward reporting that sequestration was the White House's idea.  This morning Matt Lauer, on the Today Show, questioned Woodward's judgement, saying "I'm a little surprised you've gone public with this."  Even, the New York Times offered no refuge for Woodward.

He isn’t the only one.  Clinton operative and op-ed columnist Lanny Davis has received similar treatment, and veteran White House reporter Ron Fournier at National Journal also reported threatening emails and calls. But in today’s broadcast of Morning Joe, co-host Mika Brzezinski decided to give deference to Obama acolyte David Axelrod’s days as a journalist for the Chicago Tribune in order to portray Woodward as going over the line in his reporting on Gene Sperling's harassment:

President Obama held a White House press conference Friday afternoon to discuss the sequester, which takes effect officially this evening. But when reporter Christi Parsons of the Chicago Tribune got her chance to ask a question, she didn’t ask about the sequester at all. Instead, the Obama-friendly journalist lobbed the president a softball regarding California’s Proposition 8, which enshrines traditional marriage into the Golden State's constitution: [Video below. MP3 audio here.]

"Mr. President, your administration weighed in yesterday on the Proposition 8 case. A few months ago it looked like you might be averse to doing that. And I just wondered if you could talk a little bit about your deliberations and how your thinking evolved on that. Were there conversations that were important to you? Were there things that you read that influenced your thinking?"

Updated | Ever since becoming a full-time employee of MSNBC, conservative columnist and pundit S.E. Cupp has seemed to take it upon herself to rebuke the conservative movement from time to time on air, for which, of course, she is rewarded with applause by her liberal colleagues. 

Earlier this week on her program The Cycle, Cupp said that she will no longer speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) due to their policy refusing gay groups GOProud and Log Cabin Republicans from sponsoring the conservative gathering. Cupp had earlier accepted a speaking invitation (see screencapture below page break) for the 2013 event, and Cupp had no such objection last year, when she both spoke at and held a book signing at the conference.  [See video after jump.  MP3 audio here.]

"He's a troll...He's like the guy in your blog comment threads using the N-word."

So actually said MSNBC's Rachel Maddow about Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia on Comedy Central's Daily Show Thursday (video follows with transcript and commentary):

David Axelrod has written Gene Sperling off as a political lightweight lacking the tonnage to have intimidated Bob Woodward in their dust-up over the sequester. 

Appearing on today's Morning Joe, Axelrod sarcastically asked "what is Gene Sperling going to do to Bob Woodward?  Bob Woodward, who faced down H.R. Haldeman as a young man, feels intimidated by Gene Sperling?"  You really have to hear the sneer in Axelrod's voice as he pronounces the name "Gene Sperling" to appreciate just how far under the bus Axelrod was willing to throw a fellow member of Team Obama.  View the video after the jump.

Turns out today is the 159th anniversary of the founding of the Republican party.  So who did Al Sharpton have on his MSNBC this evening to discuss it supposedly from the GOP point of view? "Republican" Abby Huntsman, daughter of Jon.

After somehow divining that if Abe Lincoln were around today he would want a "conversation" on immigration and gay marriage, Abby described today's Republican party as populated by people who want "absolutely no government."  View the video after the jump.

How do you go from being a gutsy hero of the MSM to a wuss in one minute? Take on a Democrat president instead of a Republican.  Using her most sarcastic scared-little-child voice, on today's Morning Joe Mika Brzezinski mocked Bob Woodward for saying the White House threatened him over his reporting on the sequester.

Mocked Mika:  "is he really afraid of a little aide who said that to him? Really?"  View the video after the jump.

The Morning Joe panel was tough today on the Obama White House for threatening Bob Woodward by telling him he would "regret" his reporting that it was the Obama administration that had devised the sequester,   In the course of the opening segment, various panel members described the Obama White House response as "mickey mouse," "pathetic" and "childish."

But at the same time, a theme emerged that there was nothing unusual about a White House trying to intimidate reporters.  Mark Halperin said "the Bush White House regularly would engage in the same kind of tactics." And Joe Scarborough and Andrea Mitchell shared stories of having been threatened by the Bush and Reagan White Houses, respectively.  Andrea named names.  Scarborough did not.  H/t readers Ray R. and cobokat. View the video after the jump.

In a closing commentary on Wednesday, Hardball's Chris Matthews ranted that  opposing gun control could lead to the assassination of a future American president or politician. Matthews fumed that he supports new restrictions because "the next mass shooter could well emerge out of this pack" of the "politically nutty."  

He lobbied, "Check the shooters of John F. Kennedy and Jerry Ford, who got shot at twice. Look at the men that shot Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King and Malcolm X and George Wallace. They all had political motives and they all had guns." In the very next sentence, Matthews sneered, "And if you're not against this movement, you're with it." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

MSNBC’s propensity to selectively edit video to smear conservatives has reached a new low.  Speaking on her self-titled show on February 21, host Rachel Maddow openly admitted to playing edited footage of Senator John McCain to smear the Arizona Republican.

Speaking last week, Maddow aired footage of McCain addressing a constituent whose son was killed last year at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, who spoke to Senator McCain about her belief that “These assault weapons allow a shooter to fire many rounds without having to reload. These weapons do not belong on our streets.”  [See video after jump.  MP3 audio here.]

The Washington Post's Bob Woodward continues to break ranks with his Obama-loving colleagues by holding the President's feet to the fire concerning the looming budget sequester.

Just days after he wrote a piece in the Post exposing the inconvenient truth that it was indeed the White House that initially proposed sequestration during the 2011 debt ceiling debate, Woodward appeared on MSNBC's Morning Joe Wednesday saying that Obama's decision to not send the USS Truman to the Persian Gulf as a result of these deliberations was "a kind of madness that I haven't seen in a long time" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Chris Matthews featured her as a "Rising Star," someone who with more seasoning might someday entertain a presidential run.  But newly-elected Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane came across as more of a not-ready-for-prime-time-deer-in-the-headlights.

Appearing on today's Hardball, Kane came out with this mind-boggler: "I think the people of Pennsylvania would accept a limit on the amount of clips. You know, I believe and I think a lot of people feel the same way that you don't have a right to go into a classroom and take down a class of children in under a minute."  Really going out on a limb there, Rising Star! View the video after the jump.