Noted Dick Cheney-basher Chris Matthews, on Thursday's "Hardball," finally found an area of common ground with the former Vice President – his endorsement of moderate Texas Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison over Rick Perry in the Texas governor's race. However, even a bit of praise from the MSNBC host came with a vicious shot, as Matthews sneered, "You might think an endorsement from Dick Cheney would be like a dinner invite from Uday and Qusay Hussein, but not in Texas."

After making the comparison to the brothers who infamously tortured Iraqi athletes for losing on the field, Matthews went on to ponder: "Can the torture man boost her backing from conservatives in beating secessionist governor Rick Perry?" [audio available here]

The following Matthews outbursts were aired on the October 29, "Hardball":

On Wednesday’s Newsroom, CNN’s Rick Sanchez used a recent pro-Texas secession rally in Austin to renew attention on Governor Rick Perry’s April 2009 speech to a tea party where he appeared to endorse this political view. Sanchez, along with CNN political analyst Roland Martin, later strongly hinted that Governor Perry could be painted as a racist for using “states’ rights” language.

Sanchez began the last segment of the 3 pm Eastern hour with a clip from a rally organized by the Texas Nationalist Movement, where Republican Debra Medina (who was not identified by the anchor or by the on-screen graphics) quoted from Thomas Jefferson in her plea for Texas secession: “Stepping off into secession may, in fact, be a bloody war. We are aware. We understand that the tree of freedom is occasionally watered with the blood of tyrants and patriots.”

Medina is running for the Republican nomination in the Texas gubernatorial race in 2010, which pits her against Governor Perry. Despite this detail, the CNN anchor then raised the possible tie to the executive’s tea party speech:

CNN correspondent Carol Costello aired a fair report on Friday’s American Morning about the several states which passed resolutions that asserted their rights under the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and asked for viewer responses on the issue, but later stated that her “favorite [viewer] comment so far...‘asking for states’ rights is asking, you know, the children to be the parents’” [audio clips from the report are available here].

Costello began her report,  which aired just before the bottom of the 6 am Eastern hour, with the question, “should states’ rights trump the fed?” She also highlighted the premise that “the concept of states’ rights is as old as America.”

The CNN correspondent used three sound bites from Texas Governor Rick Perry’s speech to a tea party in April 2009, which was widely circulated around the Internet. She also featured clips from an Republican state legislator from Oklahoma and a constitutional law professor.

In their latest article analyzing the extramarital affairs of the deplorable Governor of South Carolina, Mark Sanford, the Associated Press demonstrates once again that the word ‘logic’ has somehow become lost in translation.

In a piece entitled, Sanford’s extramarital affair a problem for GOP, the AP gleefully discusses the topic of Sanford’s misdeeds and their potential effect on the Republican Party – a valid analysis.  However, it takes no more than two paragraphs before the author dispenses with the aforementioned term ‘logic’, and decides instead to inexplicably link and attack several other GOP governors who have nothing to do with this affair.

How is it that MSNBC's Rachel Maddow toiled for years as a student before before earning a doctorate in political science at Oxford -- yet managed to avoid studying the American Civil War? 

How else to explain Maddow's commentary last Thursday in response to tea party protests nationwide against dubious tax policy and runaway government spending?

Here's what Maddow said in previewing an upcoming segment --

Rick Perry, the governor of Texas, appears to have his sights set on higher office. What is higher office if you're already governor in Texas? Of course, that would be president of Texas. The return of Confederacy in American politics as seceding from the Union comes back into Republican fashion.

Yeah, I laughed too -- "Republican fashion"? Those pundits at MSNBC make the darndest claims, don't they?