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Sure, Chuck Hagel might have been a bumbling, stumbling mess at his confirmation hearing yesterday. But the real story was how awful were the Republicans who questioned him. That was the collective judgment of today's Morning Joe panel. For example, so contemptuous was Joe Scarborough of Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, that the Morning Joe host announced that he would not even mention him by name. "Clown show" was the panel's operative phrase for the Republican performance. Andrea Mitchell, Mika Brzezinski, Mike Barnicle et al. joined in the Republican roasting. View the video here.

Is it possible to have a principled opposition to raising tax rates to avoid the fiscal cliff? It seems that Joe Scarborough doesn't think so. On today's Morning Joe, Scarborough suggested that those on the "far, far right" in the "conservative entertainment complex" and in the ranks of political consultants who oppose tax rate hikes do so out of base material motives. According to Scarborough, speaking of such "far, far right" tax-increase opponents, "conservatism is a racket for a lot of people to get very, very rich." View the video here.

Calling them "Cheetos-eaters living in their mothers' basements," Joe Scarborough, angered by criticism by conservative bloggers of a segment on last week's Morning Joe, has told them to boycott the show. Last week, Morning Joe ran a clip of the crowd chanting at a Romney campaign event. Morning Joe superimposed a screen graphic indicating that the crowd had been chanting "Ryan!" Romney was then seen instructing the crowd to instead chant "Romney-Ryan!" Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski proceeded to rip Romney for what was depicted as an egocentric display. In fact, there is considerable controversy as to what the crowd was...

Bay Buchanan, one of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's senior advisers, got into quite a heated exchange with MSNBC's Joe Scarborough on NBC's Meet the Press Sunday. After Scarborough took issue with Buchanan implying that she was the only conservative present on a panel filled with liberals, Buchanan replied, "You know, Joe, on this set, you appear to be one of the four"

Joe Scarborough's "intuitive gut reaction" to the mess in Wisconsin is that Gov. Walker's holdout against union pleas for collective bargaining "seems kind of un-American" to him. It supposedly pained the self-described small-government conservative to say it, but he held to his opinion on Monday's "Morning Joe." "I'm going to get killed for saying this," Scarborough hesitantly prefaced his confession. "I'm going to get so killed for saying this – I hate to say this, but the concept of telling people that they

Joe Scarborough and Donny Deutsch consign Sarah Palin’s political career to the ash heap — certainly not the first time anyone’s done that — after her video response to the slanderous accusations of the media regarding her supposed responsibility for the Tucson shootings. Wasn’t that the conclusion media analysts had been flacking before her response, too?

Joe Scarborough tells the "right" that after tax cuts, you "can't call Obama a socialist." Scarborough says President Obama has become a "Jack Kemp Democrat."

Republicans have a problem. The most-talked-about figure in the GOP is a reality show star who cannot be elected. And yet the same leaders who fret that Sarah Palin could devastate their party in 2012 are too scared to say in public what they all complain about in private. Enough. It’s time for the GOP to man up. Everybody knows that Palin is a busy woman. The former half-term governor of Alaska stays so busy these days that one wonders how this mother of five manages to juggle her new reality show, follow her eldest daughter’s dancing career and launch...

Republicans have a problem. The most-talked-about figure in the GOP is a reality show star who cannot be elected. And yet the same leaders who fret that Sarah Palin could devastate their party in 2012 are too scared to say in public what they all complain about in private. Enough. It’s time for the GOP to man up. Everybody knows that Palin is a busy woman. The former half-term governor of Alaska stays so busy these days that one wonders how this mother of five manages to juggle her new reality show, follow her eldest daughter’s dancing career and launch...

Joe Scarborough leveling harsh criticism at Sarah Palin: not news. Joe Scarborough claiming that—off the record—"all" conservative leaders and talk radio hosts with whom he's spoken agree with his criticism: news. Scarborough made his astonishing claim on today's Morning Joe in the context of commenting on his latest anti-Palin piece in today's Politico. This is far from the first time that Joe has taken shots at Palin. As I've reported, he has blamed the former Alaska governor for the GOP's failure to win the Senate, and claimed that Palin knows she can't win the presidency but is in it for...

Republicans have a problem. The most-talked-about figure in the GOP is a reality show star who cannot be elected. And yet the same leaders who fret that Sarah Palin could devastate their party in 2012 are too scared to say in public what they all complain about in private. Enough. It’s time for the GOP to man up.

Anyone critical of President Obama being in India right now is an "idiot," MSNBC's Joe Scarborough bluntly served on his morning show, which prides itself on being a safe haven for different views. India is "exactly where [President Obama] should be" right now, he opined. With Council on Foreign Relations president Richard Haass on as a guest Monday morning, Scarborough clamored that President Obama "needs" to be in India right now for the sake of U.S. foreign policy. "I would send my President to India, like once a month, if I could, for long weekends," he emphasized. Scarborough hit left-wing...

Joe Scarborough believes Christine O'Donnell's win has cost Republicans the Delaware Senate seat and their best shot at a Senate majority. And the Morning Joe host made no bones about singling out the person he considers responsible: "I blame Sarah Palin," said Scarborough bluntly on today's show. Scarborough's comment came not long after Morning Joe aired a clip of Karl Rove's scalding comments about O'Donnell, which I noted here last night, in which among other things the former Bush adviser declared that O'Donnell "doesn't evince the characteristics of rectitude and truthfulness and sincerity and character that voters are looking for."...

When Joe Scarborough wondered out loud "how many times can you set your hair on fire?" before viewers stop being shocked, you might have thought he was talking about Keith Olbermann, the man whose scenery-chewing soliloquies inspired an instant-classic Saturday Night Live skit. But no, Joe was speaking of Glenn Beck. Perhaps the shot Scarborough took at Ed Schultz a couple weeks ago exhausted his monthly quota of internecine MSNBC insults. On today's Morning Joe, Mika Brzezinski and Joe took turns ripping Beck's promotion of the rally at the Lincoln Memorial he's staging Saturday on the anniversary of Martin Luther...

Joe Scarborough, former congressman from Florida and co-host of MSNBC's agenda-setting wake-up show Morning Joe, has protested, kindly and loudly (he is kind and loud), when speculation arises about his presidential ambitions. He points out that MSNBC is not the platform a conservative would use to build street credentials among his base. He insists he enjoys his current job, turning down entreaties from Republicans to run for Senate by noting that he has more influence as a broadcaster than as a member of the saucer cooler. Nonetheless, a studio apartment industry has arisen of conservatives who think that Scarborough might...

It's not about fear Joe, it's about right and wrong Scarborough: "Even at that stage in my life, that young stage when we think we're right, they're wrong, I would have been embarrassed by what's happening at ground zero and I'd be embarrassed, because to fear the building of this center down there at ground zero is to admit American is weak....It is basically a Muslim version of a 92nd street Y, that's what this place is gonna be"

It's already been documented that the media have, at least initially, ignored the allegation that global warming alarmist-in-chief and former Vice President Al Gore faced a sexual assault charge in 2006. But why? Although not know for its enlightening commentary, ABC's June 24 broadcast of "The View" offered an answer for that question. Subbing a moderator for the show's panel was MSNBC "Morning Joe" host Joe Scarborough, who explained their decision to ignore it was based on "insufficient evidence" despite the police report documenting the allegation. "This is an interesting story," Scarborough said. "A 2006 police report surfaced of a...

I don't know when or where or even if Joe Scarborough's radio show airs in my area, nor do I care. The other night, a friend caught this clip from his radio show and sent it to me. It's about a blog that is published by the organization I head. "NewsBusters, which just loves writing negative articles about me, I don't know why, a lot of really false ones and I don't know what's actually gotten into Brent Bozell, but he actually goes out of his way to write false articles about me now ...They just distort the news for...

Joe Scarborough was surely right about one thing: he's going to take some flak . . . On today's Morning Joe, Scarborough said that Sarah Palin has been "lowering the bar" with her public pronouncements, asserting that she hasn't done the necessary homework to permit her to speak seriously on the issues. Joe also claimed that while "top conservatives" are afraid to take Palin on publicly, they express views similar to his "behind the scenes." View video here.

Joe Scarborough has expressed serious doubts as to his Republican affiliation, and made clear that House GOP whip Eric Cantor "is not my friend." But caution to those who assume Joe has gone left: he has clarified to this NewsBuster that his critique of the GOP comes from the right . . . Scarborough's stunning comments came on today's Morning Joe in response to Dem Bob Shrum's taunting of Joe over his ostensible GOP membership, in the context of Pres. Obama's attempt to rescue Martha Coakley from the rubble of her campaign. View video here.