I took it for granted that a leftist like Bernie Sanders would be opposed to the death penalty. Still, I was truly shocked to see Sanders—not in some throwaway comment on the campaign trail but in prepared remarks on the Senate floor—flatly call the death penalty "murder." On his MSNBC show this morning, Al Sharpton played the clip to illustrate how Sanders is working to differentiate his policy positions from those of Hillary Clinton, who says she supports the death penalty in "rare" cases.

Question: how can we begin to explain the moral compass of liberals like Sanders who call imposing the death penalty on adults duly convicted of heinous crimes "murder," but refer to the killing of innocent, unborn babies as "choice" or other grotesque euphemisms like "women's health?"

You wish he had named names . . . On today's Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough flatly stated "I do blame it on cable news" for "people wearing uniforms being a lot less safe today than they were before Ferguson."

So just which cable networks did Scarborough have in mind? Until last week [when he was relegated to the Sunday morning desert], Joe's own MSNBC was the Al Sharpton network. So surely Scarborough was pointing the finger at least partially at MSNBC itself.  But as he continued, Scarborough also identified other unnamed cable networks that he accused of "glorifying" Vester Flanagan and "promoting the next Roanoke-style shooting" by displaying his Twitter feed and other such info, which is what killers like Flanagan seek. 

The morning after Al Sharpton was exiled to the Sunday morning desert from his evening show, and not long after Ed Schultz and Alex Wagner were relieved of their hosting duties, Joe Scarborough has profusely thanked NBC News honcho Andrew Lack for making those changes.

On today's Morning Joe, Scarborough was discussing stunning poll results in which the first word that came to voters' minds about Hillary was "liar."  Asked what was the worst thing said about him in such polling, Scarborough answered "he works for MSNBC." But Joe then added, his hands steepled in a gesture of gratitude: "not any more though, cause things have changed. Thank you, Andy. Thank you very much." 

Last week, you may recall, an EPA bureaucrat fouled the Animas River in Colorado by accidentally unleashing a torrent of polluted water from an abandoned mine. Fast forward to today and the Obama/McCarthy EPA's announcement of a new rule intended to tighten methane emissions from oil and natural gas exploration. MSNBC host the Rev. Al Sharpton brought on EPA administrator Gina McCarthy to discuss the new regulation. 

As it was virtually impossible to ignore the Animas River contamination, Sharpton sought to quickly dispatch the issue before getting to friendlier territory.