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Sen. Marco Rubio sent out a letter this Monday, calling for the IRS commissioner to resign in the wake of the latest dust up over the agency's admission that there were some conservative groups targeted by the branch in Cincinnati. The problem with his request -- the IRS commissioner when these scandals occurred was a Bush appointee who no longer heads the department:

Commissioner Douglas H. Shulman, who was appointed by President Bush in 2008 and held by President Obama, left the agency in Nov. 9, 2012. Any pre-election misconduct would have had to occur on his watch. The current acting commissioner is Steven T. Miller -- a permanent replacement has not been nominated.

When TPM originally posted their report on this, they had not heard back from Rubio's office. As they noted in their update, here's their response:

In response to TPM's query, Rubio's spokesman Alex Conant noted that Miller was deputy commissioner when the targeting took place. He did not suggest the IRS acted inappropriately under Miller's watch as acting commissioner.

"He was Deputy IRS Commissioner when all this occurred," Conant said in an email.

So after someone pointed out to them that it was a Bushie that was in charge when these supposed abuses took place, now he wants the acting-director fired, even though the practice was not continued under their watch. Chris Jansing couldn't be bothered to point that out in the clip above, where she basically just read Rubio's letter with no context.

Some saner coverage of the topic aired a little later on the network, with both Joy Reid and Katrina vanden Heuvel doing a fine job of trying to put this story into its proper perspective and with Reid making sure the audience knew just who Rubio was initially calling to have fired -- someone who no longer works for the agency. Vanden Heuvel made some very good points about the fact that all of these groups ought to be getting a lot more scrutiny after the flood of them that came in after the Citizens United ruling.

In the meantime, all this is going to be is an excuse for more Obama derangement syndrome out of Republicans -- which is in full force already -- and more partisan witch hunts in the form of more hearings from Darrell Issa.

Video and Rubio's letter below the fold.

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Melissa Harris-Perry was on vacation this weekend, but I was very happy to see her guest host, Joy Reid and her panel members go after Democrats and President Obama for pretending that this god awful proposal for chained CPI would not be a cut in Social Security benefits for our seniors who can least afford it.

Sadly we don't have the opportunity for a group of actual liberals to debate policy as we saw here very often and are usually treated to our millionaire beltway Villagers talking about how we must extract a pound of flesh from the most vulnerable among us to balance our budget on the cable news programs instead. This was definitely a welcomed change of pace from what we're treated to far too often on MSNBC, where we've got way too many of them pushing for more austerity and cuts to our social safety nets, because heaven forbid we can't have taxes on members of the beltway cocktail party circuit going up.

Harris-Perry guest: Potential change to Social Security ‘absolutely a cut’:

On Melissa Harris-Perry on Sunday, panelists discussed the fact that Social Security was on the table in fiscal cliff negotiations — which has “progressives calling foul,” said guest host Joy Reid.

She discussed a proposed plan to divorce Social Security benefits from cost of living increases and tie them instead to the “chained consumer price index,” which assumes that people will buy cheaper alternatives when products become expensive.

House Minority leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) claims that such a shift would not be a benefit cut and would strengthen the program, but others claim it would inevitably lead to reduced benefits.

Reid goes on, “As we await a [fiscal cliff] deal, one of the most looming questions we face is just what aspects of Social Security are on the table?”

Recently, 102 Democrats sent a letter to House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) requesting that a shift to chained CPI be removed from consideration.

As they noted, that got some real push back from The Nation's Richard Kim and their other guests, Bob Herbert and Raul Reyes.

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While discussing Florida's history of voter suppression on this Sunday's Up w/Chris Hayes, former RNC chair Michael Steele did his best to try to pretend that one, Republicans really don't want to keep people from voting and two, that there's no racism involved with what they're doing across the country with purging these voting rolls.

Thankfully we had Chris Hayes, Ari Berman and Bob Herbert there to counter Steele's arguments with some of those pesky things called "facts." Steele also did his best to try to downplay whether what's going on in Florida would make any difference in swinging an election or not. As Berman reminded him, since he's apparently chosen to ignore our very recent history, the number of people purged from the voting rolls when Bush had the state handed to him back in 2000 was twenty two times Bush's margin of victory there.

I turned this show on this morning and saw Steele on there and was really hoping he didn't remain as a guest for the entire show. So naturally he was the only one on there that didn't leave the set for the entire two hours. And this is the sort of nonsense we were treated to the entire time he was on.

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The panel on Up With Chris Hayes this Saturday of Sam Seder, Bob Herbert, Josh Barro and Victoria Defrancesco Soto had a discussion on the growing wealth inequality and lack up social mobility which are being made worse by things like Republicans wanting to cut a billion dollars in food assistance for the poor in their proposed Farm Bill.

Bob Herbert made a really great point late into the first clip when they were discussing the fact that SNAP, which used to be called food stamps, is subsidizing corporations that don't want to pay a living wage and that we ought to be raising the minimum wage among other things to remedy that. I think that's a point that is not mentioned nearly often enough when we see the likes of Paul Ryan demagoguing the needed expansion of the program. A good deal of those people using the program to keep from starving are not unemployed, but are the working poor.

More great discussion on the Romney's trying to rewrite the fact that they inherited great wealth instead of admitting they were born with huge advantages that most Americans are never going to be lucky enough to have below the fold.

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Chris Matthews cites a recent Gallup poll in the beginning of the segment—Conservatives Maintain Edge as Top Ideological Group—which shows those who would describe their political views as conservative at 40%, moderate 36% and liberal 20%. He goes on to take this leap about just what that poll means later in the segment which Bob Herbert rightly calls him on.

Matthews: There’s a big disconnect here in the polling and I’m looking at the NBC poll, we’re going to have it more here tonight, I’ve looked at the Gallup numbers—here’s the disconnect—the Republican Party is a lousy brand name right now. It is way down below one in five, but on every issue from semi-automatic weapons to traditional values to abortion to every…regulation of business…

Buchanan: Immigrants…

Matthews: …every issue the country is lurching to the right in ideological terms at the same time as the base of the Republican brand. How do you explain that Rob?

Herbert: Are you saying the country’s lurching to the right?

Matthews: On every issue—look at the Gallup polls.

Herbert: I completely disagree with you on that.

Matthews: Ugghh…

Herbert: You’re giving too much credence to this poll. Pat just said a moment ago…

Matthews: Why don’t you look at the polls?

Herbert: …that the Republicans can unite behind all these issues for the off year elections—they can’t even—they haven’t even been able to unite in this upstate Congressional district in the Congressional election that’s coming up next week. You’ve got Republicans lining up behind the Conservative Party candidate who’s putting the knives in the back of the Republican candidate. So where’s the unity?

Never one to let logic get in the way of his preconceived notion Matthews asks if this means the conservatives are more “powerful than ever” if they’re the spoilers in Republican elections. Herbert reminds him that turning the Republican Party hard to the right is not good for them winning elections nationally. Earlier in the segment he also reminded Matthews that Republicans are not leading in a related poll about who Americans trust to run the country.

Of course Pat Buchanan, ever the staunch Sarah Palin fan-boy thinks the party needs more ideological purity and goes on to call the Republican candidate from NY-23 a liberal. As Herbert notes, Buchanan's got a pretty strange notion of who should be called a liberal these days. I would imagine the false memes continually put out by or MSM has a lot to do with people's perception of whether they are liberal or conservative or not, as was reflected in that poll. When people continually hear unions bashed and liberal treated as though it were some sort of dirty word, it's little wonder they might shy from the label.

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Following Dick Armey living up to his first name on Hardball with his sexist remarks to Joan Walsh, Bob Herbert says he owes Joan Walsh and the viewers of Hardball an apology. I agree and if you do as well you can contact the show at hardball@msnbc.com.