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Sean Hannity really is a nasty piece of work. He spent his entire show this Wednesday evening giving Trayvon Martin's killer, George Zimmerman an extremely leading interview where he walked him through a lot of the answers and at times talked more than Zimmerman did.

This interview comes in the wake of recent questions about whether Hannity is paying for Zimmerman's defense, which of course Hannity denied.

As Think Progress reported, here's how Zimmerman responded when asked if he had any regrets: George Zimmerman Says He Wouldn’t Do Anything Differently: ‘It Was God’s Plan’ For Me To Kill Trayvon Martin:

Tonight, George Zimmerman — who is currently facing second degree murder charges for killing Trayvon Martin — participated in a highly unusual interview on Fox News with Sean Hannity.

Hannity asked Zimmerman if he regretted getting out of his car to follow Trayvon, carrying a gun, or anything at all about the night he killed Trayvon Martin. Zimmerman said he regretted nothing because he believed “it was all God’s plan.” He also said there isn’t anything he would do differently in retrospect. [...]

Update: At the very end of the interview, Zimmerman goes back and to the question and says “I do wish there was something, anything I could have done that would have put me in the position where I didn’t have to take his life. And I do want to tell everyone…that I’m sorry that this happened.”

As they noted, Martin's father responded to Zimmerman's statement tonight as well. Lawrence O'Donnell and his panel members Joy Reid and Jonathan Capehart weighed in on the interview on MSNBC and Reid addressed something I was wondering as well, which is why Zimmerman's attorney would subject him to the extra scrutiny this interview is going to bring him ahead of his trial. Reid explained it was made clear that his attorney Mark O'Mara was willing to have him appear on Fox to get his fundraising going again.

You can watch that interview below the fold.

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MSNBC's Ed Schultz took Fox's Bill O'Reilly to task for his claims that the media is somehow inciting racial violence with their coverage of the Trayvon Martin shooting during his interview with the lawyer for the Martin family, Benjamin Crump, and for O'Reilly's claim during that interview, that the media would not just let this story die a slow death were it not for the national outrage and attention it has garnered.

As Schultz rightfully pointed out, O'Reilly is already on record trying to dismiss the racial problems we have in the United States, so his claim that he can be trusted to keep a story like this in the national spotlight without other pressures are dubious at best.

O'Reilly unwittingly pointed out during that interview with Martin's lawyer, exactly why the media should not stop covering the case:

CRUMP: What we hope we have is is dialog saying, how can this investigation have happened like this where you get to say an unarmed kid is killed and he's allowed to go home that same night.

O'REILLY: Because of that law in Florida. That law in Florida changes everything.

O'Reilly seemed to be oblivious to the fact that Florida is not the only state where these sorts of laws have been enacted and "changed eveything." O'Reilly told Crump immediately following the quote above that "In another state, that never would have happened."

Schultz responded by noting that's far from the truth, since we now have a ton of other states in America with similar laws on the books. Schultz played a recording that I first saw on Chris Hayes' show last Saturday, and was just horrified by, of a man in Texas who called in to a 911 operator and told that operator he was going to kill two men who were robbing his neighbor's property. We then hear the audio of the man shooting and killing those two men dead after being told repeatedly by the person on the phone not to go out there and not to take matters into his own hands.

What Hayes' show did not air was the footage from Fox News where the above mentioned man from Texas, Joe Horn, was being propped up by the right as some kind of hero for shooting those two men and pretending that his life was in danger, before ignoring the warnings not to get involved in the burglary or take the law into his own hands.

I agree completely with Schultz when he said this in response:

SCHULTZ: Bill O'Reilly can say there's no reason to cover the Trayvon Martin case, but Joe Horn proves him wrong. As long as these "stand your ground" laws are on the books, Americans have the right to kill other Americans without being physically threatened. We've seen it.

Schultz also asked why O'Reilly wasn't bringing on Republicans from Florida like Jeb Bush who signed that awful "stand your ground" law, or Marco Rubio, the Senator from that state to defend it.

Ed Schultz followed up with an interview with the lawyer for Martin's family, Natalie Jackson and MSNBC regular Jonathan Capehart and got their opinion on the "stand your ground" laws and some of the news that's been slowly leaking out on Zimmerman and his temperament.

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I'm not some big fan of MSNBC regular Jonathan Capehart because frankly the man regularly just glosses over or minimizes just how crazy the Republican Party has become these days and chalks a lot of it up to just politics as usual, when I don't think there's anything normal about how far the GOP has fallen off the cliff to the right, but the treatment he received by both host Joe Scarborough and guest New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie on this Thursday's edition of Morning Joe just sickened me.

As most people who visit this site probably already know, Gov. Christie vetoed the gay marriage bill in New Jersey and that ended up being the main topic of discussion during this segment. When Capehart tried to pin Christie down about why he thought it was acceptable to put a civil rights issue up for referendum with the voters, he ended up being bullied and talked over and interrupted by both Christie and Scarborough.

Christie is trying to have it both ways with this debate and deflect how rotten it is that he had a chance to single-handedly give a group of people in New Jersey the right to be married by signing that bill into law, and blamed his decision on the Democrats, because they claimed that a majority of people in his state wanted it, while not wanting it subjected to the will of the voters. So naturally it's all their fault because he had no other choice than to decide to try to prove them wrong instead of doing the right thing. He also tried to claim that both he and President Obama have the same stance on gay marriage.

When Capehart attempted to explain that that's not true since Obama has instructed his Justice Department not to defend DOMA, or the Defense of Marriage Act and that he has never issued any veto threats if the Congress would actually pass a law allowing gay marriage, Christie decided it was best to just talk over him and hammer him about what Obama's stance is on gay marriage. I'll give Capehart credit for this much though and that is he got Christie to admit that civil rights should not have been put up for a vote a half century ago. He didn't have that same luck trying to get him to relate that struggle to those wanting marriage equality for the LGBT community today.

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Sen. John Ensign will finally resign from his seat in the Senate effective May 3. Lawrence O'Donnell said this is the kind of thing that generally happens after the Senate Ethics Committee lets them know they're going to recommend expulsion.

From The Hill -- Sen. Ensign to resign:

"It is with tremendous sadness that I officially hand over the Senate seat that I have held for eleven years," he said in a statement. "The turbulence of these last few years is greatly surpassed by the incredible privilege that I feel to have been entrusted to serve the people of Nevada. I can honestly say that being a United States senator has been the honor of my life."The senator plans to send his resignation letter to Vice President Biden on Friday.

Ensign is under a Senate Ethics Committee investigation over claims he violated ethics rules in the aftermath of an affair with Cynthia Hampton, the wife of former top aide Doug Hampton, whom he helped obtain a lucrative lobbying job.

He cited the investigation in his statement.

"I will not continue to subject my family, my constituents, or the Senate to any further rounds of investigation, depositions, drawn out proceedings, or especially public hearings. For my family and me, this continued personal cost is simply too great," he said.

The committee ramped up its investigation earlier this year, including hiring an outside counsel. The investigation would be dropped, however, if Ensign is no longer a member of the Senate.

The resignation announcement started speculation the committee was closing in the senator. [...]

Rep. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) has already announced he's running for Ensign's seat, and it's possible Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval would appoint him as Ensign's replacement.

If he's appointed, it would give Heller an advantage over Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-Nev.), his likely general election competition.

Berkley was heavily recruited by Democrats to run and is considered the strongest competition to Heller. She quickly won the backing of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

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As Digby pointed out, The Politico's Jim VandeHei went on the air and basically said that the NAACP provoked Breitbart into posting his doctored video because they were being mean to those non-racist tea baggers by pointing out the racist elements within the movement.

VandeHei did nothing but remind me of why I have an extreme amount of disdain for the Drudge hacks over there at their site that got themselves pushed into the main stream riding the Drudge gossip rag model of hyping whatever unsourced bull pucky our political class wants to push into the media without having their name attached to it, but that causes a buzz on the Internet and gives the hacks in what passes for journalism in the "mainstream" media an excuse to repeat their stories as though they are news and not spin and with of course no reporting on just who fed the story line to the hacks over at The Politico or Drudge to begin with and who wanted it to become a headline for the day.

Anyone who's willing to do interviews with Dick Cheney where he receives no push back and then just regurgitates his crap unquestioned into our political dialog as The Politico has done really doesn't deserve any time on our airways, but there on MSNBC are these hacks as part of their news coverage and on a ton of their shows, day after day as though they've got anything other to offer us than Republican Party line spin for the day when they're on.

For more on that there's the reporting from Media Matters on what we're seeing VandeHei participate in here. The Right-wing Media Spin Cycle: Lie, Terrify, Win, Repeat.

This interview was no exception. Digby was also kind enough to take the time to time to transcribe VandeHei's hackery and that's below the fold.

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There's nothing that aggravates me more than listening to a bunch of overpaid, over privileged bunch of Washington insiders that are never going to have to worry about how they'll manage their finances past retirement age because they're members of the DC Villager club, telling the rest of us how we'd better just "get used" to the fact that these people would rather keep their tax breaks for the rich and have endless military occupations than to make good on the social contract made when they set up a system to assure that the poorest among us didn't fall into abject poverty during their senior years and that there is a social safety net for the most vulnerable among us. Mika Brzezinski did not say in those exact terms that we should "gut" Social Security but I don't have any doubt that is exactly what she was talking about.

I don't know what the salaries are for any of these people and if anyone who contributes to this blog that has more time than I do to find out would want to share that information, it would be appreciated, but if I had to guess, and I'd say it's a pretty safe to say all of them are making enough money that they don't have to worry whether Social Security is there or not for them to retire comfortably.

But Miss Mika is going to tell the rest of us that we'd better just get used to having that money taken from what is, as Susie noted, a pay-as-you-go program which funds itself and just isn't going to be there for you crybabies that think you ought to get something back from that money you paid into the system.

These people disgust me so badly there are no words. It's let them eat cake at its worst, and I really hope the public doesn't stand for it any more than they did when Bush was trying to sell us this nonsense.

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Behold the cast of Morning Joe in full tizzy mode because Jimmy Carter dared to state the obvious about the not too thinly veiled racism behind the right wingers protesting President Obama at these Tea Bag protests, and with Joe Wilson's disrespectful outburst on the House floor calling him a liar.

From Media Matters who has more on Joe Scarborough and friends from the same show--Conservatives express outrage about charges that their attacks on Obama are racist.

A bit later Michael Eric Dyson joined the show and unlike Jonathan Capehart, actually tried to beat back some of Scarborough's nonsense. Joe apparently doesn't think that Rush Limbaugh has ever made any racist remarks.

Note to Eric Dyson. If Scar and Mika follow through and have you back on the show some time soon to talk about this some more, go get the mile long list of racist crap that's come out of Limbaugh's mouth that Media Matters has documented and have the list in front of you to read off to them the next time they have you on. Facts and actual quotations from Boss Limbaugh are not their friends.

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Jebus. Marsha Blackburn won't pull back from the fear mongering on "death panels" and it's even too much for Joe Scarborough to take. Blackburn actually says " but to have that heavy, long arm of the Federal government reach into something that is a very, very personal, personal decision is distasteful to me, and I think it is distasteful to our nation's seniors".

I've got two words for you Marsha. Terri Schiavo.