Count Craig Crawford as a dissenting voice in the media storm blaming the Clintons for the injection of race into the Dem primaries. The Congressional Quarterly columnist and MSNBC political analyst offered his unconventional wisdom on a special Saturday edition of Morning Joe today.

CRAIG CRAWFORD: I never understood exactly what Bill Clinton said that was supposed to interject race, actually. I know he was arguing at arm's length with Obama about the war and some other issues. It wasn't clear to me -- I mean the most direct reference to race I saw in this campaign was interjected by the media after New Hampshire trying to say that for some reason Obama lost New Hampshire because of racism. I never followed that one either.

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Did I miss the joke? Was there something funny about what Pete Stark (D-Calif.) said on the floor of the House, claiming that President Bush sends our soldiers to Iraq to get their heads blown off for his amusement? Craig Crawford can apparently see some humor in it.

Crawford appeared on today's "Morning Joe," and while the MSNBC political analyst certainly didn't approve Stark's statement, he did try to soft-pedal it, smilingly portraying it as just one more outburst from a congressional scamp.

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Does it get much lower than this?

After first extolling the "F--- Bush" headline, MSNBC's David Shuster, substituting for Tucker Carlson today, later engaged in a grotesque game of "gotcha," exploiting an Amercan soldier killed in Iraq to make his partisan point.

Chatting with Newsweek's Richard Wolffe and MSNBC analyst Craig Crawford, talk turned to the controversy surrounding the editorial in the Colorado State student newspaper headlined "Taser This: F--- Bush" [f-word spelled out in headline].

Wolffe went first, and was patently delighted by the incident. With a hearty grin, he observed . . .

At first I thought I might have misunderstood. Lester Holt surely didn't mean to imply that befriending the NRA jeopardizes a politician's reputation for being tough on crime, did he?

Oh yes he did.

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On this morning's "Today," weekend co-anchor Holt introduced a segment on Rudy Giuliani's Friday speech to the NRA, in which Rudy tried to take some of the sharp edges off his prior anti-NRA positions . . .

Don't look for Arianna Huffington to be sitting down to a chummy luncheon with Hillary Clinton anytime soon. Huffington has been no fan of Clinton for some time, considering her insufficiently, and inauthentically, anti-war. But on today's "Morning Joe," Huffington took her animus to another level, accusing Hillary of an ultimate Dem sin: "swiftboating" an opponent, namely Barack Obama.

HUFFINGTON POST FOUNDER ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: After the CNN debate, I think it was ridiculous the way she and her campaign attacked Obama for saying he would engage in diplomatic talks with dictators. That is sort of a classic example of swiftboating your opponent. Like the equivalent of what Republicans do anytime Democrats call for troop withdrawal and they are talking about "cutting and running" or "precipitous withdrawal" or any of the clever little phrases.

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Since last week, MSNBC's Countdown show has reached new levels in displaying personal insults as host Keith Olbermann, as well as regular guest Craig Crawford of Congressional Quarterly, have repeatedly made fat jokes about the subjects of their conversation. Both their targets were conservatives – Fox News Chairman and CEO Roger Ailes and Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert. While Ailes was at the receiving end several times last week, once directly called "fat ass" by Olbermann, on Monday's show guest Crawford took a cheap shot at Hastert's weight. While discussing the possibility that Republicans would "throw Hastert under the bus" by forcing him to resign over his handling of the Mark Foley sexual abuse scandal, Crawford quipped: "Well, if he fits, if the bus has a lot of clearance." (Transcripts follow)

You can watch Imus in the Morning for a couple of years before this will happen, Don Imus thinks a guest goes too far with a joke. Normally, the I-Man enjoys finding humor in the agony of public figures. On today’s program Craig Crawford tried to play along and tested his new Samuel Alito material at 6:44.

Craig Crawford: "I actually think, you know, the wife leaving the room crying, that made all the evening news and, you know, it was the better video and made him look like a sympathetic figure. Although, you know, she started crying when Senator, when Lindsey Graham said Alito is not a bigot, that seemed to make her cry. I guess she thought she had married a bigot. It was surprising to her to hear that he wasn’t a bigot."