Morning Joe

Lawrence O'Donnell on Today's Morning Joe

This was an unbelievable display. I'm not talking about O'Donnell, but former Rummy speechwriter Mark Thiessen playing the "Who us?" card regarding 9/11. The Republicans are pathological regarding those attacks. They're in utter denial. And as soon as Lawrence O'Donnell calls out their bullshit, Scarborough cuts him off and throws to commercial.

Thiessen, by the way, has been justifying torture for some time now. Most recently in an online back-and-forth with Matt Yglesias, Thiessen insisted that waterboarding isn't like the Spanish Inquisition's waterboarding because the Bushies didn't tie down their victims. Good people.

Nevertheless, I love it how Scarborough constantly plays the "civil discourse" card and the "I'm not a radical ideologue" card -- until the subject of terrorism and torture comes up. Then he's shouting people down (as he did with Krystia Freeland), and cutting people off, and calling them crazy (O'Donnell), and saying they're too stupid to be on television (Jesse Ventura).

Spare us the self-righteous lessons in civil debate, Joe.

One more thing. For the record, the Library Tower plot in Los Angeles was thwarted long before KSM was captured, so it's a lie to suggest that waterboarding KSM somehow prevented the attack.