Yesterday was a tough day to be Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough, as political pundits were taking shots at him left and…left. The subject was Joe’s assertion that the media slept through the Joe Sestak controversy (an assertion with which I strongly disagree). First, DailyKos founder Markos Moulitsas attacked Scarborough via Twitter, and on last night’s Countdown, MSNBC colleague Keith Olbermann launched a veiled, but very nasty, attack on him.

Former talk show host (and MSNBC host) Phil Donahue was a guest on Joy Behar‘s HLN show last night tonight, and the subject of former HLNer Glenn Beck came up.

Donahue says he’s a viewer of the Fox News host, but also pointed to a Daily Kos video as a must-watch Beck crash course.

The MLB should boycott the 2011 All-Star Game in Phoenix over Arizona’s harsh new immigration law.

That is the idea being set forth by activists at Change.org and Daily Kos, who view the influx of tourism and publicity Arizona will reap from an All-Star Game, prominently featuring Hispanic players, as unwarranted.

Media Matters celebrated Tax Day yesterday by penning an optimistic take on Glenn Beck‘s seemingly unstoppable ratings success: the glory days are over. In an analysis aided by Daily Kos, Eric Boehlert asks readers, “Did Glenn Beck Just Post a New Ratings Low for 2010?” Well, if you include weekend rerun data and holidays in the study, then yes.

Ink-stained wretches, it’s not just you! The social media and Twitter elite fret about the future of journalism too — and wonder how it will survive the digital revolution. At SXSWi, there was no shortage of panels obsessively deconstructing this topic (and tweeting about it, natch).

Keith Olbermann hasn’t appeared on MSNBC since March 1 (and hasn’t anchored Countdown since February 24) while he cares for his ailing father.

But that doesn’t mean he’s disappeared from the web, where he’s been feuding with ESPN’s Bill Simmons, and last night took time to explain, in great detail, the history of some former MSNBC anchors.

Did Fox News try to hire Keith Olbermann in the late 90s?

That’s what the MSNBC host is saying in a Daily Kos comment left last night. He’s hinted at it before, but this time, he gets specific.

Keith Olbermann‘s Special Comment last night on his MSNBC show was about the undertones of racism within the Tea Party movement, and like he often does, he posted a portion on his Daily Kos blog.

Well that set off a series of back-and-forth comments between Olbermann and others about the diversity on the MSNBC airwaves.

Some of the biggest names in the LGBT and progressive blog world participated Feb. 15 in a coordinated effort to encourage the Human Rights Campaign, the largest gay rights organization in the country and a frequent object of blogger scorn, to put its heft behind efforts to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

“Hyper-partisan, painfully ignorant, pathologically dishonest, chronically unethical, intellectually unconscious, and jaw-droppingly stupid.” Yes, once in a while these words apply uncannily to the radical liberals over at Daily Kos, but today, they’re proof of why the blog commands so much influence in the political sphere despite their occasional flubs.

Blogger “Angry Mouse” has given Palin what reads as one of the most ringing, brutally honest endorsements for her 2012 presidential campaign to come out so far

Apparently, Daily Kos blogger Dante Atkins did not appreciate being reminded that his website was one of the few to predict a Martha Coakley victory in Massachusetts a few weeks ago, or being called insane, or dangerous, or, worst of all, insignificant. Which pretty much sums up how Fox News responded to the Daily Kos blog’s latest, inflammatory, research findings.

John McCain may have done his best to stow old Bush administration personalities away for his presidential campaign, but Fox News is reporting that a new poll shows former vice president Dick Cheney is actually a fairly popular choice among Republican voters to run for president in 2012. In a poll that was probably taken about a year too soon, 10% of a pool of 2,003 Republicans supported a Cheney presidential run.

As the Senate race in Massachusetts approaches the zero hour, last minute scrambling has turned ugly — and online. Beginning with the liberal blogs and their Scott Brown birther video and culminating in the president getting yelled at, now, two pillars of the political web — Daily Kos and RedState — have declared war with sabotage, intimidation and a fortified defense.

Liberal blogger and Firedoglake publisher Jane Hamsher has come under heavy fire for an appearance on Fox & Friends in which she promotes a petition to kill the current health care reform bill. Liberal critics paint her as a “useful idiot” being exploited by the right, and point out Hamsher’s own distaste for those on the left who appear on Fox.

Hamsher has responded to the criticism, but she’ll have to convince a tough critic: Jane Hamsher from July. That Jane Hamsher seemed to have a different set of priorities.

The MSNBC crossfire continues. On Thursday night, Chris Matthews dismissed the Democratic netroots as “troublemakers who love to sit in the back seat and complain:” you may recall that his colleague Keith Olbermann sometimes blogs at Daily Kos and recently used the platform to dismiss the health care bill currently under consideration. Yesterday, MSNBC’s Ed Schultz rolled a clip of Matthews’ remarks for Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas, who promptly fired back:

Just two months after devoting an episode-long Special Comment to the urgent need for health reform, Olbermann announced last night that he had given up on the health reform bill as it had evolved, calling it a scheme for “medical mobster protection money.” Olbermann even made the (just a bit melodramatic) claim that he would go to jail rather than buying whatever government health insurance emerged from the “hollow shell of a bill:”

Last night on The Ed Show, Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitas and former Colorado congressman and Republican presidential candidate Tom Tancredo faced off on health care reform. But a personal blow from Moulitas about Tancredo’s deferment from Vietnam due to depression caused the politician to tear his microphones off and leave the show.

What’s scarier: A Facebook poll asking people if President Barack Obama should be killed — with the response options: ‘yes,’ ‘maybe,’ ‘if he cuts my health care,’ and ‘no’ — or the fact that over 730 people voted?

More importantly, who was responsible for creating such an offensive and frightening poll?

When I saw this item at HuffPo, declaring that Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly backs the public health insurance option, I immediately thought “There has to be a catch.” But there’s not. Not only does O’Reilly nail why the public option is necessary, he also makes several comically half-assed stabs at pronouncing long lost Janeane Garofalo twin Nina Owcharenko’s name:

Is Bill O’Reilly a socialist? On the Wednesday night O’Reilly Factor, he surprised many by appearing to come out in support of a moderate form of the public option on healthcare. But was that really what he was saying?
The meaning of his remarks is likely to be hotly debated for the next few days — draw your own conclusions after the jump.

Even though we live in an era in which some people think it’s OK to interrupt the President of the United States on the House floor, we still have a strong political tradition of listening whenever former presidents have something to say. Which is why Former President Jimmy Carter made a big splash yesterday when he said that criticism of Barack Obama shows that there is an “inherent feeling” in America that a black man should not be President. How did cablers respond?

When it came to discussing the ‘truce’ story, Keith Olbermann addressed it on air and Bill O’Reilly did not. No big surprise there.

But Olbermann didn’t just address it – he spent an entire “Worst Persons in The World” segment on the matter. He wrote about it at his online home, the liberal community site, The Daily Kos. He jumped into the comments section until after 3amET this morning, responding to readers. In other words, he assured this story would not go away.

The New York Post reports a Long Island single mother of three was arrested Thursday for “scouting out and taking pictures” of an Air National Guard base, with an assault rifle, a shotgun and 500 rounds of ammunition in her car. The Daily Kos revealed today that this woman was a big Glenn Beck fan. Was it only a matter of time before a Fox News host like Beck was going to inspire a crazy person to act on their already simmering feelings of government antipathy?

Full disclosure: Joe Trippi is a guy with whom I am friendly. We’re not BFFs, but we talk from time to time about things not directly related to my role as a journalist and his as a source. I disclose this because it appears that community blogs, like Daily Kos, expect a chapter-and-verse dossier on [...]