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Our corporate media has been trotting these Bushies back out for years on end now, so it's no surprise that we'd eventually see Alberto Gonzales take his turn. I guess the producers of Morning Joe thought there was no one better for their audience to hear from when it comes to Department of Justice scandals than Gonzo.

It does seem his memory has improved slightly since 2007, when he couldn't recall much of anything when testifying before Congress.

Steve Benen summed up his appearance this Wednesday quite nicely. After first explaining why it's likely Gonzales has kept such a low profile since leaving office and the fact that he went through quite a bit of trouble finding a job, he reminded us why he has absolutely no credibility to be commenting on the DOJ and journalists: Alberto Gonzales returns from obscurity:

The former A.G. nevertheless appeared on MSNBC this morning, apparently ready to address some of ongoing controversies. He seemed inclined to give the Obama administration the benefit of the doubt when it came to subpoenaing Associated Press phone logs, but this nevertheless stood out for me.

Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales recalled on Wednesday a time when he was confronted with a "very serious leak investigation" similar to the one that has embroiled the Obama administration this week. But, he said, he went a very different route and decided against subpoenaing a reporter's notes.

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Nothing like watching a bunch of overpaid, millionaire pundits yucking it up and having a grand old time discussing whether the administration has happily thrown their base under the bus with -- no regard for the lives of those who would be affected by these policy changes.

That's exactly what the audience was treated to on this Friday's Morning Joe on MSNBC. These millionaire pundits probably would not find the hippie punching so humorous if any of of them thought they might have to rely on Social Security to get by in their old age.

Carville: I Think Obama Likes Angering Liberals (VIDEO):

Democratic strategist James Carville said Friday that he doesn't think President Barack Obama is sweating the criticisim he's taken from his liberal base over a budget proposal that includes cuts to Social Security.

Appearing on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," Carville said he thinks Obama relishes the commendation he's received from deficit hawks like New York Times columnist David Brooks and host Joe Scarborough. Asked by co-host Mike Barnicle how the President will respond to the outrage from the left-wing of the Democratic Party, Carville was blunt.

"I think he likes that," Carville said. "I don't think he's upset. He got a very favorable Washington Post editorial. 'Morning Joe,' very favorable commentary right here. I guarantee you if he's up watching this right now. Got a good David Brooks column. He's kind of excited this morning. This is kind of important to him."

But Carville added that the White House is not "totally out of bounds" with its budget, arguing that the proposal will "throw the Republicans off" and that Obama is desperate to strike a grand bargain with the GOP.

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After again endorsing his sister in the upcoming House race in South Carolina and after her opponent, former Gov. Mark Sanford's appearance on Morning Joe this Wednesday, where he was given a big wet kiss by the crew of the show and Scarborough announcing that it was "going to be, Morning Joe vs The Colbert Report," Stephen Colbert was more than happy to respond.

COLBERT: Oh... oh... it is on! Morning Joe vs The Colbert Report. Did I want this fight? No. [...]

Of course in some ways, it's always been Morning Joe vs The Colbert Report, though technically at that time of the morning, my network runs a P90X commercial. Yes. It's all about the muscle confusion. Where as Joe's show is just about confusion, in that sometimes people confuse it with news.

But not this morning folks. Because this morning was just pure infomercial for his old buddy, Mark Sanford.

After showing footage of the lot of them sucking up to Sanford, the worst of it being Mike Barnicle, who actually told Sanford that "he was struck" by Sanford's "honesty" over his affair, after he got busted "hiking the Appalachian Trail" with his mistress and if "there was any fear of that honesty coming back and playing a perilous role" in his political future, Colbert responded.

COLBERT: Oh, that's some in depth reporting. You know, Woodward and Bernstein may have had Deep Throat, but Mike Barnicle is doing something similar to Mark Sanford. I just hope... I just hope Mike can breathe through his nose. Because he's right. He's right. When Sanford finally surfaced, the first thing that everybody thought was "Man, that guy is being so honest about how much he lied." And I'm sure he would have been just as honest if no one had caught him.

Well, it's my turn Joe Joe. I'm going to shock some people right now, and endorse my sister, Elizabeth Colbert Busch for Congress. Yes... yes... yes... she's a Democrat, but she's a businesswoman, a job creator, who when raising three children on $14,000 a year went back to school, built a twenty year career in international trade and is now leading Mark Sanford in two consecutive polls.

Are we ready to do this nation! Yeah! Yeah!

And I tell ya. I'll tell ya. Mark Sanford should thank you Joe Scarborough, because I would not have done that, if you had not inspired me.

I look forward to seeing if the crew on Morning Joe actually acknowledges this segment and responds to it, or if they choose to try to pretend it didn't happen, or worse yet, if they respond and selectively edit Colbert's remarks and spare both Scarborough and Barnicle from the worst of his criticism. We'll find out shortly.

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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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The hosts of MSNBC's Morning Joe on Wednesday ripped into the National Rifle Association (NRA) for using President Barack Obama's daughters in an advertisement opposing new gun safety measures.

On Tuesday, the pro-gun lobbying group sparked outrage by releasing an ad calling Obama an "elitist hypocrite" for opposing guns in schools while allowing his own daughters to be protected by armed bodyguards. The ad comes one month after 20 children were gunned down at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, and just days after the NRA released a first-person shooting game for Apple's iPhone and iPad targeted at children as young as four.

After reviewing the ad on Wednesday, MSNBC contributor Mike Barnicle immediately denounced it as "political pornography."

"What's wrong with these people, Mika?" MSNBC's Joe Scarborough asked co-host Mika Brzezinski. "You have children who had no say in the decision in whether their father, who is going to step forward to be president of the United States, to run for president -- one of the most bone-crushing, sacrificing things any husband or wife can do to their family. And the second they make that decision, their children and their entire family have targets on their backs."

"And the NRA is putting something out?" he continued. "What's wrong with these people? Putting out apps that 4 year olds can play on the anniversary of the Newtown murders and now putting out an ad talking about the president's daughters."

"They are out of step, out of the mainstream, totally out of sync with what's going on in our society and, quite frankly after seeing that, I think that some of the people who run that thing are sick," Brzezinski agreed. "I really do. I think they are sick in the head. And I'm serious. I'm embarrassed right now. I'm embarrassed for our country, that we have a section of society, the NRA, which should have a voice certainly trying to protect a constitutional amendment. I understand that. There's a really legitimate debate there, [but] they just took it, they just brought it down to the lowest, most base level. I don't even want to -- it's now fringe."

"They are now a fringe organization with millions of mainstream Americans, gun, hunting guys and women that love to hunt," Scarborough noted.

"You should be embarrassed to be part of the NRA at this point," Brzezinski insisted. "I was even going to try and understand the people running to gun shops and loading up on these high-capacity weapons, assault weapons and magazines. I was willing to understand this debate and understand their fear of laws changing and try and discuss it on this show, but after seeing that, honestly, I'm done. They're done. This ad is the final straw."

"It can't be a real ad!" Scarborough exclaimed.

"That's so sick," Brzezinski lamented. "That's some sick person that did it at home in their basement."

"It's just disgusting people," CNBC host Donny Deutsch piled on. "It just gets to a point where it's below human decency."

"This is how they mark the anniversary of Newtown," Scarborough sighed. "I've never seen an organization as out of touch and extreme with middle America as this one... The NRA's worst enemy could not be doing the damage to this once-respected, mainstream organization as [NRA CEO] Wayne LaPierre is every single day."

"I'm terrified," Brzezinski concluded.

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I don't know who Chuck Todd thought he was kidding on MSNBC's Morning Joe this Thursday, but it seems it might be himself. He started out this segment pretending that if President Obama just reached out to Republicans and gave them more of what they want on this so-called "fiscal cliff" deal to try to get a "grand bargain," then maybe they'd get around to working with him on immigration or gun control.

TODD: There is incentive I think for the President to do whatever it takes, even if it means maybe going further than he ever anticipated in trying to get a big deal, because if he's got to spend all of 2013 dealing with budget impasse after budget impasse, so he can't get it done here in this lame duck. Then it takes January. He's got to use his inaugural and the State of the Union to argue about fiscal and deficit issues and tax issues. Then you have the debt ceiling.

I mean, if that's how the first three or four months play out, when does immigration get done Mike? I'm still trying to figure that out. When does he get to the gun issue which they seem intent on trying to do? When does he start dealing with energy? There's a whole domestic – and by the way, let's remember second term – domestically they don't last four years. You've got about a year, maybe a little bit more before the mid-term election when you can get something done through Congress.

So, if this is – and by the way, the bitterness that is setting in, in the personal relationships between the President and Mitch McConnell, the President and Speaker Boehner – I think make it that much worse.

He turned right around just a little bit later and contradicted himself, saying that the Republican base is never going to allow any compromise with the President and that their voters won't reward it. And he called them "playing with political fire" because the one group of their constituents they do care about, the business community, might finally get sick of them holding the debt ceiling hostage and putting our economy at risk.

I'm not sure where Chuck Todd has been for the last four years, but I've seen absolutely no evidence that any Republicans plan on compromising with the President, ever on any issues. I don't know why he believes if he just caves in on these negotiations and of course throws his base under the bus, which is what you know Todd is talking about here, that he'd get a year out of them to work on anything. If they come forth with any legislation on either immigration or gun control, you know it's going to be something awful that no one on the left will want to vote for, like turning immigrants into some sort of underclass that never has a chance for citizenship or to unionize, or putting more guns in our schools.

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Shorter Joe Scarborough from this Wednesday's Morning Joe: the beatings will continue until morale improves, or how dare you point out facts about how Republicans treat unions because you're going to hurt their tender feelings, and then they'll have to hurt you some more.

Scarborough really is just a snide, mean S.O.B. because there's no way in hell he's stupid enough not to realize that what he's asking here is, as Harry Reid might put it, a clown question bro. To their credit the Teamsters' James Hoffa and the AFL-CIO's Richard Trumka were way too polite to Scarborough or for that matter, any of the rest of them on the panel that morning, in response to their ridiculous questions. After poking both of them about the Democrats' extremely stupid decision to hold their convention in an anti-union state, which it's too late to change now, here's how Scarborough started things out:

SCARBOROUGH: What can unions do? What can Republicans do to start moving towards the time where the support is a bit more diversified? [...]

HOFFA: Well the problem in the Republican party, they veered to the right. I mean did you see their platform? National right to work. This was the most shrill convention last week against unions, you know, pounding their chest on how they beat up workers, you know, how they did this and how they took away collective bargaining rights. They thought that was a positive.

It was so negative that it... all it does is turn people off. This party is not reaching out. They can't reach out, especially when they're talking about national right to work, getting rid of project labor agreements. They're just going far and far to the right. They're like the John Birch Society, like in 1964. They're just going off the edge. And you know...

SCARBOROUGH: I will tell you what. I asked you how the two sides can come together. Boy, that kind of talk really helps a lot. I feel like embracing you right now.

HOFFA: You've gotta' reach out babe and nobody's reaching out. There's nobody there and that's the problem and if you hear what they're talking about in their themes, it's just unbelievably, right-wing, anti-labor.

Which put an end to Scarborough's feigned indignation, but led to such inane questions as Tom Brokaw asking them why any of the white guys in their unions vote for Republicans; Mike Barnicle asking why Republican politicians beating up on unions makes them popular. Followed by Al Hunt asking them why they're not supportive of Romney because he claims he'll be tougher on trade with China.

If any of these men were actually reporters and not overpaid pundits, they would not need to be asking the union leaders these questions. If they want to know how Republicans can get away with pulling the wool over workers' eyes to get them to vote against their own economic interests, all they've got to do is go take a look in the mirror. The media has been happy to help Republicans trash and demonize unions for a long, long time now, and they're going to sit there and pretend they're not fully aware of what attitudes and what policies have led to their decline.

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Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul on Tuesday admitted that he got a monthly Social Security check, a program that he eventually wants to eliminate.

During an interview on MSNBC, Paul insisted that he would preserve Social Security longer than some of the others in his party.

"I want young people to opt out of Social Security," the Texas congressman told MSNBC contributor Mike Barnicle. "In my more pragmatic stands on how we get to the place I want to go, actually I'm probably offering a program where some of these programs that we have taught people to be so dependant on, I would probably preserve them longer than others because we are going to lose them because of the bankruptcy that is coming."

"Are you on Social Security," The Huffington Post's Sam Stein wondered. "Do you get Social Security checks?"

"I do," Paul replied.

"You just told younger generations that they should wean themselves off of this social contract but you haven't done it yourself," Stein noted. "You're not the wealthiest man in Congress, I'm not saying that. But you have enough means to take care of yourself in retirement. Shouldn't you provide an example?"

"No," Paul said. "I think the programs are so designed, just as I use the post office too. I use government highways. I do that too. I use the banks. I use the Federal Reserve system. But that doesn't mean you can't work to remove this. The same way on Social Security, I am trying to make a transition."

"I personally don't see any inconsistency in that," he added.

(h/t: Mediaite)

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On this Monday's Morning Joe, host Joe Scarborough spent a better part of the morning ranting and raving about how Mitt Romney's time at Bain Capital isn't going to hurt him in the general election should he win the Republican primary race. He really was at his most obnoxious during the latter part of this segment when guests Suze Orman and Jeffrey Sachs dared to suggest that Elizabeth Warren's arguments about how the financial sector has led to the destruction of our economy and the amount of debt most households are carrying now.

As Sachs pointed out, what has most people upset is the level of fraud we've seen from the big banks and the subsequent bailouts after making incredible amounts of money and it's the fraud that has most Americans very angry right now. That led Scarborough to go into this rant, which Mediate took note of this morning as well -- Joe Scarborough To Suze Orman: Debt Growth ‘Not Just About Big Business; It’s About Big Government’:

You know, I keep hearing about all of the problems being big businesses and big banks. And yes, there has been fraud. But we’re sitting here ignoring what is going on all around us. We have historical trends that are exploding in our faces. You look this past weekend, look what happened on Friday. France downgraded because of massive debt. Eight other countries in Europe, downgraded because of debt. Our federal government keeps getting bigger by the year, and we keep sitting here scratching our heads going, “well, what are we doing? Why are more and more people going into poverty? It must be big business’s fault.”

The federal government keeps growing by the year. The debt keeps growing. When Democrats are in power, the federal government gets bigger, and debt gets bigger. When Republicans are in, when Democrats are in, it gets bigger. And I hear Dr. Sachs saying all morning about Mitt Romney’s “right-wing radical plan.” That’s a bunch of bunk! It is bunk. Mitt Romney doesn’t have a conservative plan. If he did, I would already be on board with him. But he’s going to be a big-government Republican who is going to follow a big-government Democrat who followed a big-government Republican in George W. Bush. I mean, come on, we have to break this trend. And it’s been going on for 30, 40 years. The government just keeps getting bigger. And our debt keeps getting bigger. Crowding out takes place, and we just sit here trying to blame big business. That’s not going to sell with middle Americans moving forward.

What they failed to note over there was Sach's response, or the fact that Scarborough's rant is completely hypocritical given just which party is responsible for the debt we're seeing right now.

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Joe Scarborough ordered MSNBC's control room to censor conservative columnist Ann Coulter Tuesday after she called 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain (R-AZ) a "douchebag."

Coulter was explaining why Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich were superior to John McCain when her mic was cut.

"I don't think consistency is such a great value," she said. "John McCain was consistent."

"What did I say? Douchebag?" Coulter asked as the audio briefly returned.

"Just blur it all out," Scarborough told the control room.

"OK, well they got the general drift of that," Coulter continued. "Consistency is not a great thing, and especially someone like John McCain who consistently annoyed conservatives, bragged about annoying conservatives, and would claim he was courageous by attacking conservatives and getting good press in The New York Times."

Coulter is backing Romney, who she says is now a true conservative because "he's flopped to my positions."

"I think Romney is conservative now," she opined. "[W]hat do [Republican voters] not understand about 'Massachusetts most liberal state in the union, he ran against Teddy Kennedy'? I mean, you're flipping from positions you held when you came within five points of taking out that human pestilence."

While Scarborough was not offended enough by the "human pestilence" slur to order Coulter bleeped, guest Mike Barnicle did object.

"We miss him in Massachusetts, and I think the country, and especially the Senate," Barnicle said. "[I]f Ted Kennedy had been alive, that health care debate would have lasted about five months."

MSNBC's Morning Joe has a history with not bleeping dirty words. In 2008, Scarborough didn't even notice at first that he had used the word "f*ck" on the air himself. And earlier this year, the network suspended Time's Mark Halperin after he called President Barack Obama a "dick."

The FCC doesn't regulate cable channels like MSNBC, and even if they did, "douche bag" is a word that is heard regularly on the public airwaves.

It's not clear why MSNBC would choose to censor "douchebag," yet let "f*ck" and "d*ck" make it on the air.

But McCain's daughter, Meghan McCain, who just began working as a commentator for MSNBC last week, probably appreciates the gesture.