Joe Scarborough does his best job of helping the Linda McMahon campaign along with his feigned outrage over their hit piece that the New York Times was happy to write for them. I don't think there's the slightest chance in hell Joe Scarborough isn't already fully aware of all the problems with the story on Blumenthal that our own Nicole wrote about yesterday, so this ridiculous hissy fit of his appears to me to be nothing but pure theater. Mika Brzezinski goes so far to say that even though they know the McMahon camp fed the newspaper the story that doesn't matter, because the content of the story is completely true, which it isn't. I don't believe for one minute that she doesn't know better as well.

Joe Conason joined the set just after this segment but didn't bother to point out to Scarborough what he wrote about here.

Bush lied about his military service, and so did Reagan:

Richard Blumenthal's apparent misstatements about his military service -- as reported so tendentiously in the New York Times -- have delighted Republicans who once considered the Connecticut attorney general unbeatable in his state's U.S. Senate race. Now that we know the videotape cited by the Times also includes Blumenthal accurately describing his service in the Marine Corps Reserve, their jubilation may be premature. Whatever the ultimate verdict on the Blumenthal story, however, it's worth noting that he was hardly alone in misstating -- or falsely recollecting -- the facts about his stint in uniform. Leaving aside Lindsey Graham, who has puffed his "wartime" service for years, such mythmaking is indeed characteristic of the politicians most revered by the GOP.

Take George W. Bush, whose controversial service as a Texas Air National Guard pilot was shrouded in mystery, evidently because he wanted to conceal the basic facts of his privileged admission to the TANG and his strange departure from its ranks. In his 2000 campaign autobiography, ghosted by Karen Hughes, Bush claimed that after completing his training in the F-102 fighter plane, "I continued flying with my unit for the next several years." That simple sentence was entirely untrue, according to records eventually released by the Bush campaign, which showed that he had never flown in uniform again after his suspension from active duty in August 1972 for failing to show up for a mandatory physical examination. Read on...

Maybe Conason didn't feel like having Scarborough scream at him like a mad man first thing in the morning after watching him in action in the above clip, but it's too bad he didn't ask him why he never got this upset about Bush or Reagan, but we already know the real answer to that. As always, IOKIYAR. When a Democrat does something stupid like this, they must come grovelling back and apologize repeatedly and that will still never be enough for the media, who in this case won't quit exaggerating what he said. A Republican does it and not only do they never admit or apologize for what they did, but the media gives it a shoulder shrug, or in the case of Dan Rather who tried to report on Bush not showing up for his military service, they do a hit piece on him. The double standard is really disgusting.

h/t Handypants for the Salon link.