Well, she did stop short of accusing Chuck Schumer of being worried about losing donations from co-religionist contributors . . . But on today's Morning Joe, Mika Brzezinksi repeatedly claimed that Schumer was acting out of politics in opposing the Iran deal.

Battling with Bill Kristol, an exceptionally exercised Brzezinski broke out the over-the-top adjectives, branding opposition to the deal "ludicrous," "crazy" and "calamitous." What explains Mika's unusual outburst on this subject?

Bill Kristol has supported the removal of the Confederate flag from the South Carolina capitol grounds for 15 years. But when he took to Twitter yesterday to criticize the left's "frenzy of self-righteousness" in the wake of Charleston, he brought down on his head a deluge of ugly criticism.

On today's Morning Joe, Jonathan Capehart and John Heilemann eschewed the kind of scatalogical suggestions that had been made to Kristol on Twitter, but engaged in a barrage of criticism of their own.  Capehart accused Kristol of "belittling" the families of the Charleston victims, while Heilemann—telling Kristol he was "trolling"—sarcastically said that the Left doesn't need his help.

Not the endorsement someone heading into the Republican primaries would normally want, but it's the one Rand Paul got.  On today's This Week [hosted by Jonathan Karl in the absence of Stephanopoulos], far-left Rep. Keith Ellison declared that on a variety of issues he is "proud to stand" with Rand Paul.

Roll the video and watch Bill Kristol look on beningly as Ellison praises Paul.  Let's read Bill's mind: every Ellison accolade was another chunk of GOP primary voters lost for Kristol's least-favorite Republican candidate. In the unkindest cut, Kristol claimed that it was Paul standing with Ellison, not the other way around,since Ellison and his fellow lefties were first to stake out those positions and Paul has now decided to become a "liberal Democrat" on them. Ouch!

Looks like it's not just in Iraq where civil war is breaking out. Seems that it could also be happening at MSNBC, with Iraq ironically being the flashpoint.

Two nights ago, Rachel Maddow condemned TV shows that book original Iraq war hawks like Paul Bremer. Maddow specifically called out her very own MSNBC for having given Bremer air time.  And just where had Bremer appeared on the Lean Forward network? Morning Joe.  So you have to imagine that Joe Scarborough might well have had Maddow in mind when on today's show he said "I don't know why some people are so intellectually weak that they're afraid to actually listen."  Sniped Scarborough: if people "wanted to watch people just saying what they--what everybody else in a little circle believe, they could watch certain shows on prime time cable." Wonder which show Joe had in mind?  View the video after the jump.

At The Weekly Standard, William Kristol protested the conventional wisdom that Americans are incredibly weary of war, and so won’t project strength against Putin or other geopolitical foes.

He concluded: “Can Republicans do no better than shamefully to emulate Somerset and Obama (‘I assure you nobody ends up being more war-weary than me’)? Will no brave leader step forward to honorably awaken us from our unworthy sleep?” This drove radical lefty Charlie Pierce to verbally explode at Kristol the “sociopath” from his pit at Esquire magazine: