How did Howard Dean go from vivid voice of the New Left to political hack defending Hillary Clinton at all costs? Joe Scarborough called Dean on it today, telling Howard he had become the "New England version of James Carville."

Dean, on today's Morning Joe, dismissed the latest Washington Post story suggesting possible financial improprieties at the Clinton Foundation as "a breathless piece of hot air" and, incredibly, Dean said he'd advise Hillary not to address the rising tide of questions. 

How bad are things getting for Hillary when the best defense some supporters can muster is that there was no corruption because Bill bilked the people who thought they were bribing her?

Last week, we reported on Hillary fan Dorian Warren suggesting that Bill was "running serious game on many of these countries saying oh, I'll talk to my wife, give me the check, and then never mentioning [it.]" On today's Morning Joe, Mike Barnicle made that same argument, claiming there was no quid pro quo because knowing Bill, he took the money saying "yeah, sure, I'll call him for you, and he'll never call."  Interestingly, Mika Brzezinski wasn't buying, saying that Newt's allegations of bribery "made sense."

On Thursday night, CBS and Spanish-language networks MundoFox, Telemundo, and Univision continued their silence on the latest controversy involving the Clinton Foundation and claims made in the upcoming book Clinton Cash about donations to the group while a Russian company purchased an American-owned uranium mine. Meanwhile, NBC ended its blackout on the story with a full report on NBC Nightly News, but downplayed the claims by touting an expert with the Soros-funded Sunlight Foundation, who declared that the book’s allegations offer “no smoking gun” regarding Clinton’s behavior.

On today's Morning Joe, ardent Hillary Clinton fan Howard Dean ran into a buzzsaw when he tried to defend her against serious charges of conflict of interest by going after the authors of the stories rather than the substance of the allegations.

Joe Scarborough ripped Dean's "comic-book politics" and called his conduct "unbecoming."  New York Times reporter Jeremy Peters accused Dean of maligning his fellow reporters, and Mika Brzezinski taunted Dean, saying "you can go on your little jihad against the author, but it's not going to change the facts."  

Michael Tomasky of the Daily Beast is prone to wild overstatement. For example, after the last elections, he counseled the Democrats to just avoid the Southern states after Sen. Mary Landrieu lost. It was "just one big nuclear waste site of choleric, and extremely racialized, resentment....Forget about the whole fetid place. Write it off.”

That same wild overstatement came in this new Daily Beast headline: “The Clintons Still Aren’t Corrupt.” The website pulled out this wisecrack for a text box: “I know the fact that she walks freely among us suggests to many people that she and Bill are so brilliantly devious that they always knew exactly how to get away with it.”