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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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Digby flagged this segment from this Sunday's Fareed Zakaria GPS, and as she noted, Zakaria seems to be singing a very different tune now on whether austerity is popular with the masses in Europe than he was four years ago. And as she noted, being wrong never seems to get anyone kicked out of the club once you've gained entry as one of the Very Serious People by our corporate media.

Fareed Zakaria four years ago in a post called The Center Holds: In Britain even pain is popular":

Three weeks ago the new chancellor, 39-year-old Tory George Osborne, presented a budget that promised to get Britain’s fiscal house in order with sharp cuts in spending, coupled with tax increases. It landed in the midst of a heated debate across the industrialized world about how to best get the economy back on track. Osborne and his boss, Prime Minister David Cameron, have come down firmly on one side of this debate, hoping that a major effort to reduce the deficit will reassure bond markets and investors that Britain is a safe and compelling place to put their money.

Leaving aside the economics of this, what struck me as I spent time in Britain last week was the politics of deficit reduction. Having announced major cuts in popular programs, plus hefty tax increases, the Cameron government might be expected to be losing popularity by the day. But in fact the budget was well received by the public—though attacked ferociously from the left—and the governing coalition has actually inched up a bit in the polls.

There are several possible reasons for this. Cameron has played the public role of prime minister exceedingly well, making a pitch-perfect apology for the British Army’s wrongful use of force in Northern Ireland in 1972, and handling himself on the global stage with grace and ease. It’s also true, of course, that the effect of the cuts and taxes have not yet been felt, and when that happens, the government’s poll ratings might plunge. But clearly the honesty of the budget has resonated with voters.

It’s heartening to see a government do something that it must have thought would be deeply unpopular, and then be rewarded by the public...

I love this description of how he reacted to the commentary from his guests. Potted plant indeed:

Zakaria still rails against "entitlements" (which his earlier guest Stephen Haas described as a "cancer" to no objection from anyone) but he hasn't exactly come clean about the disastrous effects of the austerity measures in Europe that "heartened him" so strongly, has he? No, today he sits there like a potted plant while the bill of indictment rolls right over him.

But then he's a card-carrying Very Serious Person which means never having to say you're sorry.

Ain't that the truth? I don't always get a chance to watch all of his show every week, but I don't recall seeing him doing much to rebut that flawed economic study by Reinhart and Rogoff which the right has used to justify austerity as well. Most of our corporate media has done their best to ignore that, even as many of them, as Zakaria was here, have finally been forced to admit that maybe that whole push for austerity isn't working out so well.

Full transcript below the fold.

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Joe Scarborough is back at it again, apologizing for torture and telling lies about whether it works. Every time I think this show can't get much worse, I turn it on like I did this morning and realize I'm wrong. This had to be one of the more disgusting segments I've watched in a while, and that's saying a lot for this show. Scarborough and his panel members, David Ignatius and Jon Meacham, did their best to help revise history and help Scarborough play torture apologist while discussing the new film coming out this month, Zero Dark Thirty.

Glenn Greenwald has more on the problems with the premise of this movie: Zero Dark Thirty: new torture-glorifying film wins raves:

Earlier this year, the film "Zero Dark Thirty", which purports to dramatize the hunt for and killing of Osama bin Laden, generated substantial political controversy. It was discovered that CIA and White House officials had met with its filmmakers and passed non-public information to them - at exactly the same time that DOJ officials were in federal court resisting transparency requests from media outlets and activist groups on the ground that it was all classified.

With its release imminent, the film is now garnering a pile of top awards and virtually uniform rave reviews. What makes this so remarkable is that, by most accounts, the film glorifies torture by claiming - falsely - that waterboarding and other forms of coercive interrogation tactics were crucial, even indispensable in finding bin Laden.In the New York Times on Sunday, Frank Bruni wrote: "I'm betting that Dick Cheney will love the new movie 'Zero Dark Thirty.'" That's because "'enhanced interrogation techniques' like waterboarding are presented as crucial" to finding America's most hated terrorist. [...]

The claim that waterboarding and other torture techniques were necessary in finding bin Laden was first made earlier this year by Jose Rodriguez, the CIA agent who illegally destroyed the agency's torture tapes, got protected from prosecution by the DOJ, and then profited off this behavior by writing a book. He made the same claim as "Zero Dark Thirty" regarding the role played by torture in finding bin Laden.

That caused two Senators who are steadfast loyalists of the CIA - Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Dianne Feinstein and Armed Services Committee Chair Carl Levin - to issue statements definitively debunking this assertion. Even the CIA's then-Director, Leon Panetta, made clear that those techniques played no role in finding bin Laden. An FBI agent central to the bin Laden hunt said the same.

What this film does, then, is uncritically presents as fact the highly self-serving, and factually false, claims by the CIA that its torture techniques were crucial in finding bin Laden. Put another way, it propagandizes the public to favorably view clear war crimes by the US government, based on pure falsehoods.

And Mediaite's Tommy Christopher did a nice job of breaking down just how dishonest this Morning Joe segment was: Joe Scarborough Claims Zero Dark Thirty Torture Scene True, Screenwriter And Facts Disagree:

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I would just like to remind CBS' John Dickerson of one thing. That "pound of flesh" he's talking about Republicans wanting to take from President Obama before they'd ever agree to increasing tax rates, is not actually coming from the President. It's coming from average working class Americans and seniors.

It would be nice to see the debate framed that way on these Sunday shows, when these pundits are casually discussing what pain Republicans would like to inflict on our population, rather than this just being some political game. I don't expect we'll see that happen any time soon though.

SCHIEFFER: Well, some people are actually saying maybe -- I'm hearing some liberal Democrats say let it go over the cliff. I mean, would they really do that? I mean, because what would happen, then you would have, I guess, the tax cuts would expire, but would they let these draconian cuts in, say, defense spending, where basically, the military wouldn't be able to buy gasoline for their vehicles and that kind of thing.

FOROOHAR: I think it's a dangerous argument. Now, I think the truth is if you go over the cliff for a couple weeks, no, that's not going to be a disaster to the economy if there's a deal in place, if a deal gets done quickly. But if you're on the cliff, off the cliff, and back on for weeks or months end that would have a really devastating effect not only on the economy but trust in our political system. And it's worth noting a recent Harvard Business School survey found most business leaders in this country see political dysfunction as the biggest impediment to growth.

SCHIEFFER: John.

DICKERSON: We used to walk up to the brink, now we basically live at the brink. All of this is the fourth or fifth round of negotiations of these budgets. And if you think about the politics of this, what is being debated is not just the central issues of taxes and spending that are key to both parties, but you have a president enjoying an election that he just won. He is doing well in the polls. The Pew Foundation put out a poll and said basically 53 percent of people would blame Republicans if we go over the cliff, only 29 percent would blame the president. CNN, 45 Republicans, 34 the president. He's feeling good about his political position.

You have got Republicans trying to figure out their new place in the world. And you have these various serious issues at stake. Basically, the thing to keep the eye on the ball here is the president wants Republicans to agree to increase rates. In 2010, Republicans were brought to office by anti-tax activists in the Tea Party. Their number one issue -- don't raise rates. So the president is asking them to do something right at the heart of their party. Two-thirds of the Republicans who were re-elected, were re-elected with big majorities, 60 percent. It's OK with their constituents if we go over the cliff because they're standing on principle. So how are they going to get the Republicans.

How is the president going to get Republicans to increase rates? He's going to have to do something on entitlements that allows those Republicans to say, hey, we -- sure, we agreed to increasing rates, but look at the pound of flesh we got from the president. The problem, is the president thinks he did well in this election. He thinks the country is behind him. He's not into giving a pound of flesh. They'll give something on entitlements, but so far it's not big enough to give Republicans what they need to get the vote here which is why we may go over the cliff.

And it's not just liberal Republicans -- Newt Gingrich, no liberal he, saying that the fiscal cliff is all - it's just a charade. It's something liberals are trying to do to get Republicans to agree to tax increases.