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Here's something you don't see happen every day. Peggy Noonan actually got called out for attempting to repeat one of her favorite talking points -- that President Obama could somehow wave a magic wand and force the members of Congress to behave the way he wants them to -- and on Meet the Press of all places.

GREGORY: And-- and yet this week as-- as this was going on, as the investigation was going on, the Senate defeats a background check bill for-- for guns. So we-- we are confronting this violence but still very divided about how we react to it and try to solve it.

NOONAN: Yeah, I think the essential problem is that Americans at this point don’t trust their government so much to do the right thing. They are skeptical of all bills on things that they care about to-- to lower the conversation a little bit, get it down to-- to mere politics, I guess. I think there is a problem when you’ve got 90 percent of the American people wanting something like background checks and a president who is just re-elected and riding a wave, can’t make anything move that way. I think there is a problem there, and I think he is having, as somebody said, a problem with the levers of power.

KEARNS GOODWIN: But maybe the problem is also the structure of the Senate. You know, at the turn of the 20th century when public sentiment wanted a lot of things done to deal with industrialization and the problem of the slums, the Senate was impossible to move because it was millionaires in there. They finally realized they have to have direct election of senators. They used to be elected by the state legislatures and they’re only susceptible to special interest. Maybe that’s the trouble now, that structural Senate given the 60 votes that are needed, given who they listen to, given the power of special interest, public sentiment cannot penetrate. And we’ve seen it now for the last decade. That’s what the dysfunction is about. It’s not just the Senate, it’s the Congress.

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If anyone wants to know who is winning the media wars for the way they've governed and for an example of how no bad behavior by the Republicans ever goes unpunished, look no further than this segment with MSNBC's Chuck Todd and his panel on this Thursday's The Daily Rundown.

Todd more or less accused President Obama of being responsible for Republicans not wanting to work with him and continuing their obstruction and making sure our government does not function, because heaven forbid, President Obama is out there raising money for House Democrats. Even though Todd admitted that the GOP is playing politics and using this as an excuse not to work with him, he turned right around in the next breath and asked if there are some of them who might have been willing to cooperate with him, but who are now going to legitimately be turned off by the campaigning.

Given that the Republicans entire governing philosophy since President Obama has been elected has been just to obstruct everything he does, even if it means blocking things they previously supported, he should have known the answer to his question before he asked it.

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It would be nice to see the Republicans called out like this more often for being willing to sabotage their own government if they don't get their way or like the results of the last election. Chris Matthews called them out for just that during his "let me finish" segment on this Tuesday's Hardball: Obama, not the GOP, wants to keep government working:

Let me finish tonight with this.

I think the difference between the Democrats and Republicans is getting as wide as the Grand Canyon.

Watch how they do it:

President Obama wants to keep the government running. Republicans threaten to stop it. It’s relentless. The fiscal “abyss,” the “debt ceiling,” the “sequester,” the end of the “continuing resolution.” Different words, different deadlines, all detonate the same explosion. Threaten to crash the government if you don’t like the way it’s doing something if you don’t like who the American voter has elected.

Isn’t this what the Republicans did back in the old days? If you don’t like government—Guatemala, Iran, the Dominican Republic, Chile—just bring it down.

Guess what? The Republicans are now using that tactic here at home. If they don’t like who’s been elected, they find some way to undermine it, discredit its leaders, whatever it takes to destroy it. We’re using the ways of the old Cold War CIA to destabilize our own country.

Look at the impact these constant threats to shutdown the government are having on public confidence. It’s undermining it, making people forever nervous about the basic ability of America to even have a government.

Is that patriotic? I don’t think so.

Now if we could just get his producers to spare us from the sort of "fair and balanced" discussion he had on the same topic earlier in the program with Michael Steele laughing at the notion that his party behaves this way even though it's obvious he knows full well it's true, and freaking "Fix the Debt" Ed Rendell supposedly representing the left -- maybe we'd be getting somewhere.

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Fox News host Sean Hannity on Thursday congratulated Republicans for successfully using a filibuster to temporarily block a president's nominee for secretary of defense -- former Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) -- for the first time in the history of the U.S. Senate.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Wednesday said Republicans should feel "shame" for the unprecedented obstruction, but Hannity called the outcome a "major win for the GOP."

"Republicans say it is premature to close the debate over the nominee and say that before that any confirmation vote will take place, they want answers from Hagel and the White House about what exactly President Obama was doing the night of the Benghazi terror attack that killed a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans," Hannity noted on Thursday.

"It's the first time a filibuster of a cabinet nominee has been used," he added. "And needless to say, this marks a major win for the GOP, and pretty embarrassing defeat for the president."

Fox News political analyst Juan Williams pointed out that Hannity "must have missed the news" that "Republicans have basically said that in a week they will vote to end the cloture, end the filibuster and approve Chuck Hagel."

"So, nobody in this town thinks there's any chance that Chuck Hagel, one, is either going to resign or, two, is going to be denied the office of secretary of defense," Williams explained. "What we're really seeing here is a political game."

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When your petulance, mugging for the cameras and obstruction get so bad that it's even too much for bully Joe Scarborough, you've got problems. Morning Joe Crew Rips Republicans For Hagel Obstruction: ‘It’s A Colossal Mistake’:

Republican Joe Scarborough is tired of his party’s mistreatment of Defense Secretary-nominee Chuck Hagel and its continuing, all-consuming focus on Benghazi.

The focus of Scarborough’s ire this morning on his MSNBC show Morning Joe was Sen. Lindsey Graham’s announcement on Sunday that he will place a hold not only on Hagel, but also on CIA Director-nominee John Brennan -- until he gets further action from the White House on Benghazi.

Scarborough lashed out at Graham and his neoconservative cohorts, unable to believe how misguided their attacks on the Obama administration have been:

SCARBOROUGH: If you’ve got a working class guy who has voted Republican every four years and he turns on the Sunday shows and he’s flipping around the channels and he sees Republicans in February still talking about Benghazi, saying they’re going to hold up the picks for secretary of defense and CIA director for something that happened back in the fall, and they are continuing on this…to hold up this and talk about it on Sunday morning, it’s a colossal mistake.

[...] Graham has been seeking out “the truth” on the attack in Benghazi, Libya that left four Americans dead for months now, despite an ample amount of facts already having been uncovered. A Cabinet nominee has never been filibustered by the Senate, leaving Graham’s threat in a position to make history.

Regular Mike Barnicle wasn't much kinder. After Scarborough said the other members of the Senate basically need to tell Graham to get off of the television, he followed with this:

BARNICLE: Reading the transcripts is pretty disturbing, what Sen. Graham had to say yesterday. He basically said --and I'm paraphrasing here --if the President of the United States had picked up the phone and called someone in Libya, he could have saved the lives of the Americans.

Clearly, evidence means nothing to him. Clearly the timeline of events means nothing to him and someone should give Sen. Graham a Snickers bar and tell him to go sit in the corner until he's happy about something. It's disturbing.

I said before Graham's not going to stop as long as there's no punishment in the media for his behavior. Perhaps this is a start on seeing that happen, but until media outlets quit putting this arrogant, irrational twit on the air, he's going to keep it up.

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As Dave already noted, Sen. Lindsey Graham was back on the air this Sunday, still flogging their latest Benghazi "scandal" that somehow President Obama was disengaged during the embassy attacks on the anniversary of 9/11. I'm not sure just how much more hateful and nasty this man can manage to be before he starts getting called out for his behavior by members of the media, but Face the Nation's Bob Schieffer seemed pretty shocked and exhausted by the time Graham finished his rant here.

Sadly, however, he did not ask Graham what the hell was wrong with him or why the public should care about this drummed up non-scandal that he refuses to let die.

Lindsey Graham To Place Hold On National Security Nominees Over Benghazi Attacks:

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is threatening to place a hold on key administration national security nominations unless President Obama explains how the White House reacted to the Benghazi attacks and who “changed” the talking points used by U.N. ambassador Susan Rice during back-to-back appearances on the Sunday political talk shows in September. Appearing on CBS’ Face the Nation, Graham insisted that Republicans shouldn’t “allow Brennan to go forward for the CIA directorship, Hagel to be confirmed to Secretary of Defense, until the White House gives us an accounting.” “Did the president ever pick up the pohne and call anyone in the Libyan government to help these folks,” Graham asked. “What did the president do?”

Since Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and General Martin Dempsey testified before Congress last week, conservatives have seized on a portion of the testimony to argue that President Obama went “AWOL” the night of the Benghazi attack.

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Someone needs to explain the definition of insanity to Bloody Bill Kristol. During a discussion on Fox' Special Report With Bret Baier, Kristol was asked about the Republicans and their recent efforts to "rebrand" the party, and it seems Kristol believes if they just start obstructing President Obama again and vote for things like repealing "Obamacare," they won't have to worry about how they look!

Of course, no one on the panel pointed out to him that that is exactly what they've been doing already for the last four years and it hasn't gone so well. Not that what the others want to do -- keep the same policies but just try to make them sound more palatable to the public -- is going to work, either.

And note to Kristol: Your party doesn't care about doing anything to improve access to health care, making it more affordable or regulating the banks. We don't need to hear their words or yours to know that. All we have to do is look at their voting records to see what their priorities are. The notion that the GOP has any alternatives to fixing anything that is not more of the same is laughable.

Here's more from Real Clear Politics: Kristol: GOP Should Worry Less About Looks; Act On Conservative Principles:

BILL KRISTOL, WEEKLY STANDARD: If I hear another politician talking about rebranding the party or changing the image, why don't they just advance policies? Republicans control the House of Representatives, right? They very much dislike Obamacare. Fine, pass a bill repealing Obamacare or delaying it and then pass a replacement. It's not going to pass the Senate, President Obama's not going to sign it, but it will show how Republican policies help.

Republicans dislike the financial regulations in Dodd-Frank, pass different regulations that help community banks. If you can't pass the whole thing, pass bite-sized pieces of legislation that would help the country. I mean, I really think they should talk less about rebranding themselves and actually pass some legislation, either big legislation or medium-sized bites that which embody conservative principals.

JOHN ROBERTS, FOX NEWS: Why have they been losing so badly on messaging, Bill?

KRISTOL: They haven't been losing that badly on messaging. They lost the presidential election by 3 points, they held the House of Representatives, the Democrats got 1 million more votes for the complete House out of 110 million cast, or something like that. And if they simply govern effectively, if they do their best in the House and they oppose President Obama, they'll do fine. They should worry less about how they look and they should just act according to conservative principles.

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As Adam Peck at Think Progress noted, this is just the latest version of McConnell saying the Republican's top priority should be defeating President Obama rather than governing: Tea Party Senator: ‘I Don’t Think What Washington Needs Is More Compromise’:

For the last two years, Republicans in Congress have achieved new levels of obstructionism never before seen in Washington, passing fewer bills than any other session of Congress since such information began being recorded in the 1940s.

But if voters sent a message to the GOP in November by reelecting President Obama and voting out Republicans in both the Senate and the House, freshman tea party Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) seems to have missed the memo. He appeared on Fox News Sunday:

I think the fiscal cliff deal was a lousy one, but moving forward with the debt ceiling and those who believe in limited spending and solving the debt…I don’t think what Washington needs is more compromise, I think what Washington needs is more common sense and more principle.

Cruz has said that he would not have voted for fiscal cliff agreement. Pressed by guest host John Roberts, Cruz extended his no-compromise agenda to everything from new revenue to gun control to the impending nomination of former Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) as Secretary of Defense.

I remember back when we had someone named Bush as president and the right wing screaming about our politicians being akin to traitors if they didn't want to support his agenda and go invade a couple of countries on the credit card. Now it's just considered business as usual.

Full transcript below the fold. Roberts was so guest hosting terrible he actually made me miss having Chris Wallace on there.

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After watching Ali Velshi fill in on some of CNN's coverage over the holidays on this "fiscal cliff" debacle, I would definitely be happy to see him take Erin Burnett's place on CNN in the evening. He corrected wingnut Rep. Tim Huelskamp on the air this Tuesday and the following evening after the House finally voted to pass the Senate's bill, he didn't let Rep. Tom Cole get away with trying to blame S&P's downgrade of our credit rating on the budget deficit.

After Cole again explained that he was happy with the Republicans passing this deal because they got a lot of what they liked and that they planned on leveraging the debt ceiling to get some of the spending cuts they want, Cole said this:

COLE: We didn't have a downgrade because of the debt ceiling debate. We had it because we weren't dealing with our deficit. This is...

VELSHI: That's not entirely true. (CROSSTALK) No, no, It's not entirely true.

COLE: It actually is. (CROSSTALK)

VELSHI: Congressman, I really enjoy talking to you. I think you're one of the best around. It's just not entirely true.

COLE: Look, you can't have trillion dollar deficits for four consecutive years and have it going forward...

VELSHI: Give me five minutes and I'll pull out S&P's report. I mean, I'm not the guy to have this fight with. I don't know as much about Congress as you do, but I do know about this.

Velshi went on to give him a hard time about the Republicans not being able to get their act together in the House and he's exactly right, that report did not blame the deficit. It blamed the politicians not being able to work together.

When Cole attempted to put most of the blame for the Simpson-Bowles commission going nowhere onto President Obama, Velshi reminded him that their vice presidential candidate, Paul Ryan voted against the plan as well. Velshi didn't give Democrats a pass for their part in any of this brinksmanship we've seen going on, but he made sure to let the viewers know we're dealing with a really dysfunctional House right now.

It was nice to at least see the Representative not be allowed to get away with just completely revising history. I'd have been happier after watching this if he wasn't allowed to pretend that it's going to be acceptable behavior for them to continue their hostage taking during this upcoming debt ceiling debate. I've still got my issues with Velshi, mainly due to the fact that's he's on board for austerity measures and cuts to our social safety nets and like so many of them, seems obsessed with the deficit instead of getting Americans back to work. But compared to Burnett, who he's been filling in for, he's a breath of fresh air. It would really be nice to see more of these anchors do what he did here again, which is call out a politician on the spot when they lie on the air.

For a little reminder, here's what that S&P report said about the downgrade:

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During part of CNN's god-awful coverage of these ongoing negotiations over the expiration of the Bush-era tax cuts and the defense spending sequestration that none of them in Congress like, Your Money host Ali Velshi was co-hosting their live coverage, and he allowed Tenn. Rep. Marsha Blackburn to get away with painting the Democrats as the ones who are being stubborn and unreasonable during these talks, and to lay the blame for no deal being made on the Senate.

She did get some push back from Velshi, but of course it was the sort we see on that network all the time with the false equivalency game, where they're pretending like "both sides" are acting like petulant children for not reaching some deal and painting cuts to Social Security as harmless and a solution to our budget deficits, even though they'll cause a lot of pain for poor seniors and Social Security does not contribute to the deficit.

Velshi asked Blackburn who was at fault for the impasse, after complaining about the markets potentially reacting to the intransigence in Washington, why they were screwing around until the last minute before coming to a deal and Blackburn's response was that the Senate could have prevented this if they'd just passed all of the legislation that the House sent over to Harry Reid's desk. Paperwork! How dare Harry Reid not pick up their paperwork and send it all through?

Never mind the fact that we are supposed to have three co-equal branches of government and that they knew full well they were wasting everyone's time sending bills over they knew had no chance in hell of passing, or that some of them didn't even have support from Republicans in the Senate or that they were at fault for the bills being held up.

Here's more on some of what she cited here: House ‘Reconciliation’ Bill Was Anything But.

Democrats make last-minute stab at tax extenders

Preventing Crushing Defense Cuts

Too his credit, Velshi came back and reminded her that the House couldn't even pass Boehner's "Plan B" debacle that went down in flames just before Christmas. That said, he let her get away again with pretending that herself or the House Republicans have an ounce of interest in bipartisanship or working with anyone and doing anything other than obstructing if they don't get everything they want.

I don't know how many people watch Velshi's show on the weekends, but he's on there every single week, screaming about this impending doom if the Congress fails to work out a deal and then he brings in hacks like Stephen Moore and economists from right wing think tanks to debate about it. Or he's got Norquist on there every time you turn around. You can add him to the list of Villagers who seem intent on painting anyone that doesn't want to inflict some pain on our seniors and the most vulnerable among us as not being Serious, or adults. As Digby noted today: Fiscal cliff notes: The Villagers are stimulated by the prospect of human sacrifice.