Lawrence O’Donnell began the week once again spending most of his program on the Trayvon Martin case, interviewing many of the major players in the story, including Sanford City Manager Norton Bonaparte, asking him to explain the investigation, what he knows about it, and whether he thinks his police chief will have a job after all is said and done in this case.

In a much-publicized CNN poll taken last weekend, 73% of all respondents said that George Zimmerman should be arrested for the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. Following a week of unsworn testimony by Zimmerman surrogates like “friend” Joe Oliver and brother Robert Zimmerman, Jr., pro-Zimmerman leaks by the Sanford police, and a campaign by some conservative news outlets to abet the smearing of Trayvon Martin, The Daily Caller boasts that “Public Opinion Shifts On Trayvon Martin Case.”

Earlier today, Mediaite’s own Noah Rothman delivered a pretty harsh assessment of Lawrence O’Donnell and Charles Blow‘s interview with George Zimmerman friend and former news anchor Joe Oliver on last night’s The Last Word, even comparing Blow to a Stalinist prosecutor. While their interview style was undeniably aggressive, it was necessary, and achieved what journalism is supposed to achieve: it revealed a multitude of truths.

On Tuesday, MSNBC’s The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell beat Maddow in the demo, bolstered by an aggressive grilling of George Zimmerman friend Joe Oliver. Also noteworthy was Chris Matthews‘ Hardball‘s fourth place finish.

On Tuesday night, MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell invited Joe Oliver, friend and spokesperson for unindicted Tryavon Martin shooter George Zimmerman, on his program “The Last Word.” O’Donnell also invited New York Times’ columnist Charles Blow to participate in the discussion. What followed was a theatrical performance that should give the overtly progressive network and O’Donnell’s audience pause.

Jon Stewart‘s back this week, and just in time to watch Lawrence O’Donnell interview an empty chair. On his show Tuesday, Stewart opened by poking fun at the O’Donnell interview — before deciding to do his own interview…with a fan.

On Tuesday night’s The Last Word, George Zimmerman friend and former news anchor Joe Oliver finally ran into an interviewer who has been watching the game films, and the result was an epic two segments of television that left Oliver’s premise, that he knows Zimmerman well enough to know he couldn’t have killed Trayvon Martin in cold blood, in tatters.

George Zimmerman‘s attorney, one Craig Sonner, seemed a bit out of his league when he tried to answer such difficult questions from Anderson Cooper on Friday as “where is your client?” and “did he tell you what happened that night?” So it may not be that big of a shock that he canceled his appearance with Lawrence O’Donnell last-minute tonight. What may come as a surprise is that O’Donnell went on and did the segment anyway, interrogating an empty chair about who was paying its legal fees and what it feared it would have to argue to keep his client out of trouble.

To mark today’s “million hoodie march” in New York in support of dead teenager Trayvon Martin, Goldie Taylor and Mark Thompson joined Lawrence O’Donnell dressed in hoodies to discuss the legal issues surrounding the shooting and the comments by police chief Bill Lee that Martin could “have done something differently, too.”

On Tuesday, MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell invited Florida Congresswoman Corrine Brown and Martin family lawyer Jasmine Rand onto his program in order to discuss the Trayvon Martin case, particularly the 911 call placed by George Zimmerman shortly before he allegedly shot the unarmed teenager.

The gruesome fate of Florida teen Trayvon Martin went mostly under the radar since his killing in late February but led the news cycle today. On tonight’s The Last Word, Lawrence O’Donnell spend a great deal of his program on the case, and in a discussion with Jonathan Capehart and Mark Thompson the two explained how they grew up with the fear that what happened to Martin could happen to them at any moment, without warning.

Talk show host and author Tavis Smiley stopped by the set of MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Friday, where he was taken back by one particular aspect of Rep. Paul Ryan‘s commercial on the House Budget Committee, which shows the Congressman walking down a hallway and discussing the nation’s budget crisis while noting that he had been “here, in Congress.”

Working women voters, do you really want to hurt MSNBC contributor Karen Finney? It turns out a vote for Rick Santorum will do that. During an analysis of exit poll data on The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell Tuesday night, Finney took it as a personal affront that working women were voting for the former Pennsylvania Senator. O’Donnell asked her what she made of the results. “This woman vote really hurts me!” Finney aggrievedly exclaimed.

If you get nothing else out of Lawrence O’Donnell‘s “Rewrite” segment tonight, remember only that Mitt Romney is a liar. That was the core message on tonight’s Last Word– that Romney lied about never favoring a government health care mandate but, more importantly, that no one will ever call him out for it, because the word “lie” is omitted from public discourse.

MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell invited congressional nominee Joe the Plumber (né Samuel Wurzelbacher) onto his show Thursday, where he tore into him for his support of Herman Cain’s famed “9-9-9″ tax plan — a plan, O’Donnell said, that would actually see some of Joe’s constituents experience a hefty tax increase.

Well, the big boss man, Dan Abrams, walked in the office a little while ago and, as always, started bragging about all the super awesome parties he gets to go to. Apparently, last night, he got to attend the premiere of HBO’s new movie Game Change. We wanted to know more about the festivities so we started browsing around online when we noticed something a little weird. It would appear that celebrity photographers aren’t fans of The Last Word.

The video of President Obama praising– and later, hugging– Professor Derrick Bell during his days at Harvard Law School has taken over most of today’s headlines, the evidence fully released tonight on Hannity. On tonight’s Last Word, Lawrence O’Donnell took the positive side of that video, noting that most students of President Obama’s stature on campus “sped away from controversy wherever it might erupt,” and interviewing a fellow student protester on campus.

Last night, MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell credited one particular Republican with sounding an alarm regarding the Blunt Amendment. The GOP must handle with issue with caution, he had warned, because soon “it stops being about freedom of religion and starts being about contraception, then Republicans will get routed in swing areas.” That Republican? O’Donnell’s network colleague Joe Scarborough, whom he’d invited onto the show in order to discuss the matter further.

MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell offered a heartfelt remembrance of the recently departed Andrew Breitbart, whom, he said, he got along with and with whom he rarely ever discussed politics. “The public version of Andrew,” he shared, “was not the version that I knew.”

On Thursday night, MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell lambasted presidential hopeful Ron Paul for being a “fake libertarian” by taking on socially conservative views regarding contraception. Mr. Paul, you’ll recall, is currently running as the Republican nominee.

The Rev. Franklin Graham‘s appearance on Tuesday’s Morning Joe is a fine example of created-for-cable “news.” Graham, son of revered teleevangelist Billy Graham, spent the morning in a logic-free attack on President Obama‘s faith, which was then shopped to the White House for phase two, and which has now progressed to the Last Word phase. In this case, MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell attempts to bring down the curtain on Graham’s absurd attacks in Tuesday night’s “Rewrite” segment.

Earlier today, I provided a blow-by-blow of the latest chapter in Politifact’s ongoing feud with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, including a rather detailed analysis of the fact-checking site’s dubious ruling on Lawrence O’Donnell‘s claim that critics of the GI Bill called it welfare. As it turns out, I needn’t have bothered. On Monday night’s The Rachel Maddow Show, host Rachel Maddow dispatched with Politifact’s absurd ruling in about 20 seconds.

MSNBC primetime star Rachel Maddow has had something of a feud going with fact-checking outfit Politifact, going back about a year, which makes the timing of Politifact’s questionable ruling about Lawrence O’Donnell‘s Lean Forward “GI Bill” spot very interesting. They gave O’Donnell’s claim that GI Bill opponents called the measure “welfare” a “Mostly False” rating just days after Maddow’s most recent attack on the site, but nearly three weeks after O’Donnell made the claim.

Lawrence O’Donnell‘s new “Lean Forward” ad for MSNBC takes on the GI bill passed during World War II to take care of soliders returning home from war. In the promo, O’Donnell described the bill as “the most successful educational program that we’ve ever had in this country” even though its opponents referred to it as welfare. But according to Politifact, that statement is not accurate.

MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell beat out Fox News and CNN in the 10 p.m. slot Thursday night — when he took on Foster Friess about his controversial contraception remarks — scoring 300+ in the 25-54 demo. Fox topped every other primetime slot.