MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow rehashed the Boston Globe‘s highly-disgusting, animal-cruelty-alleged anecdote of the time Mitt Romney strapped his Irish setter, Seamus, to the roof of his car during a family road trip. “Even if you’re okay with the dog being strapped to the roof of the car, once the dog has been up there for hours and is sick, once he is ailing, you take a hose to him and put him back up there and keep driving with him still strapped to the roof of the car for more hours?!” Maddow exclaimed incredulously. Newt Gingrich‘s new attack ad featuring the anecdote put the story back in the news.

On Wednesday night’s The Rachel Maddow Show, the story of how Rick Santorum and wife Karen dealt with the loss of their newborn son Gabriel again became fodder for criticism of Santorum’s presidential prospects. Although he handled it in a marginally more delicate fashion than Alan Colmes did (for which he apologized), MSNBC contributor Eugene Robinson cited the incident as a “weird story” that might put off some Republican voters.

Filling in as host of The Rachel Maddow Show Thursday night, Up With Chris Hayes star Chris Hayes threw another log on the Newt Gingrich serial hypocrisy fire, tying the candidate’s failure to get on the Virginia Republican primary ballot to a 2009 Gingrich op-ed that excoriated the “enablers” of ACORN‘s “long history of engaging in voter fraud.”

For those of you who love a good feud (and who doesn’t, right?), MSNBC star Rachel Maddow has attracted the Eye of Mordor that is Koch Industries’ PR department, and on Thursday night’s show, made the most of her appearance in their field of vision. Taking aim at Koch Facts’ relatively weak reaction to a blog post by Maddow producer Laura Conaway, the host excoriated the company for fighting legislative efforts at job creation, trashed them for picking on her producer by name, and challenged the Koch brothers to “man up” and come sit for an interview.

At the center of the debate over America’s stagnant economy, high unemployment, and deficit spending is the role of tax rates. President Obama has recently proposed a jobs bill designed to increase work force through infrastructure projects, paid for by the closing of some corporate tax loopholes, and yes, increasing some tax rates on the super wealthy. Obama’s detractors, primarily the GOP, have stated that it’s the super wealthy and corporations that are providing jobs, and raising their taxes would only hurt the economy. Last night, Rachel Maddow challenged that assertion effectively, using the privately held Koch Industries as the avatar for her supposition that the conservative rhetoric just doesn’t add up.

Rachel Maddow slammed Speaker of the House John Boehner for unprecedentedly delaying President Obama’s address to Congress for insignificant votes that he said couldn’t be moved. On her MSNBC program Monday, Maddow reported that Boehner had complained there would be important votes scheduled for Wednesday that Obama’s address would conflict with and thus could not be interrupted.

A casual ad lib from Friday night’s The Rachel Maddow Show has conservative blogs triumphantly calling host Rachel Maddow an “apparent closet racist” and wondering if their own fellow travelers could get away with calling President Obama a “boy king.”

Of course, Maddow’s remark, in context, an affectionate comment about how the presidency has aged Barack Obama, wasn’t a racist jab, but this is really not about her. It’s about the right trying to obtain a permission slip to call the President “boy.”

One night after former Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell walked off their set and into a media maelstrom, CNN’s Piers Morgan Tonight topped the network’s lineup, both in total viewers, and the target 25-54 year-old demo. Thursday night’s episode of PMT pulled in 809,000 total viewers, and 241,000 in the demo, placing it a close third behind MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show, and topping the rest of CNN’s offerings for Thursday.

Conservative website (and Birther hub) WorldNetDaily has published what can only be described as “process server porn,” posting a cell phone pic of MSNBC star Rachel Maddow at the moment she was served a lawsuit. Maddow is being sued by “Christian rocker” Bradlee Dean for, among other things, pointing out the spelling of his first [...]

When people turn to Tucker Carlson‘s DC-based political website The Daily Caller to check the political winds, this probably isn’t what they have in mind. On Tuesday morning, The DC‘s Jeff Poor reported on the possibility that Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) farted on The Rachel Maddow Show‘s air. The DC posted a clip of what is pretty clearly Frank shifting on a noisy chair, and even went so far as to contact Rep. Frank’s office for comment on the matter.

We reported Friday that the marriage pledge that GOP hopeful Michele Bachmann (R-MN) was first to sign contained a bit of not-so-fine print that made a stomach-churning comparison between the era of slavery and the presidency of Barack Obama. The group behind the pledge has since removed the reference (along with a “sorry you were offended” apology that doesn’t acknowledge the fact that their “research” was a lie), and Bachmann’s campaign delivered a statement with all the sensitivity of a burlap condom.

Missed in all of the pornography-banning outrage over the marriage pledge that GOP hopeful Michele Bachmann (R-MN) was first to sign is a bit of not-so-fine print that makes a stomach-churning comparison between the era of slavery and the presidency of Barack Obama. To be fair, there’s a lot to hate in The Marriage Vow, but right at the top of page one is the paragraph that insists that black children born into slavery had a better shot at two-parent glory than those born under President Obama’s watch.

Early this morning, news broke that the FBI had captured Whitey Bulger, the infamous gangster who’d been on the run for 16 years and inspired Jack Nicholson’s character in The Departed (God, I hope that means he actually liked to throw handfulls of of cocaine at hookers and bring big dildos to movie theaters!). And how did the FBI finally catch him? Well, they used an interesting plan of paying for ads to air in front of women’s shows like The View in the hopes that a lady would recognize Bulger’s girlfriend from a beauty salon. Sounds crazy, right? Well, Rachel Maddow and Bill O’Reilly thought. That’s why they were mocking the plan just days (and in O’Reilly’s case, hours) before it turned out to, y’know, be completely successful.

Rachel Maddow opened a segment last night by running a clip of Senator Scott Brown thanking GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney for his support in his special election victory speech. She follows up by alleging that Romney had claimed to have been living in his son’s “unfinished basement,” which has led one of Romney’s lesser known opponent, Fred Karger, to ask the state of Massachusetts to investigate if Romney was legally able to vote, or did he commit…voter fraud! (Duh, duh, duh!)

On Tuesday night’s The Rachel Maddow Show, eponymous host Rachel Maddow noted what appears to be a peculiar pattern of reporting by Politico. Running down a litany of stories stretching back 20 months, Maddow noticed that the DC website had managed to mention the P90X workout ten times during that span, including several front page stories, and wondered aloud, “Are they (Politico) in love?”

Rachel Maddow devoted some time to potential Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum tonight to share the tale of a classic Catch-22 come full circle – and what Team Maddow is doing to help. The theme for the segment: “Dog pee can’t stop Santorum.” Clearly, this is going to get weird – and Maddow, it seems, was just fine with that.

A famous media Wiz once said “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain,” but we believe that what happens behind the TV screen is important to understanding what ends up on it. In today’s inaugural installment of Mediaite In the Control Room, we bring you the insights of Bill Wolff, the Executive Producer of MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show, as he talks about what makes the show tick, and where it fits in the cable news landscape.

Filmmaker Michael Moore is angry, very angry. Appearing last night on The Rachel Maddow Show, Moore spoke passionately about the current financial strain that state and federal governments are feeling and pointed the finger at corporate fat cats and “anybody who works on Wall Street.” If this sounds like a polemical version “second verse, same as the first,” don’t be fooled. This version of Moore’s enmity to America’s wealthy came complete with hand cuffs and a demand for justice.

Over the weekend, a report surfaced that an end to the standoff in Wisconsin was imminent, and that the so-called “Wisconsin 14″ were ready to return to the state to vote on Gov. Scott Walker‘s (R-WI) “budget repair bill.” On her program Monday night, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow called that “bad reporting,” and interviewed State Sen. Jon Erpenbach, who told Maddow that State Sen. Mark Miller, the legislator quoted in that report, was singing a very different tune to Erpenbach.

On Wednesday night, Mediaite’s Frances Martel wrote a lengthy, thoughtful piece of media criticism centered around Princeton Professor Melissa Harris-Perry‘s appearance on The Rachel Maddow Show, concluding that Harris-Perry’s point about the historical context of the Michael Vick story was “lost in translation.”

A week after Countdown host Keith Olbermann and guest Michael Mooresparked a Twitter protest over their dismissive treatment of rape allegations against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, Moore made an appearance on The Rachel Maddow Show in which he failed to address the protest directly, but made their imprint obvious in his transformed rhetoric on rape accusations. In a crowning irony, the man whose zeal for transparency-God Julian Assange started this protest finally made direct acknowledgement of it…in a private Twitter message to #MooreAndMe creator Sady Doyle.

A week after Countdown host Keith Olbermann and guest Michael Moore sparked a Twitter protest over their dismissive treatment of rape allegations against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, Moore made an appearance on The Rachel Maddow Show that was much anticipated by those protesters. He did not apologize for his earlier assertion that Julian Assange was only accused of consensual sex with a broken condom, nor did he retract it.

Rachel Maddow turned her attention toward Fox News on her program tonight to—wait, don’t grab your pitchforks just yet! It turns out that the MSNBC host comes in peace… if your name’s Shepard Smith, that is. Maddow praised Shep for the “hullabaloo” he’s been making in the name of the 9/11 First Respodners bill. She’s just thrilled that a man whose network actually matters to Republicans decided to hold Republicans accountable. “All hail Shep Smith at Fox News,” she declared. “And I’m not kidding.”

First rule of gloating? Get your facts straight, else you’ll look the fool. Case in point: MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow‘s recurring Debunktion Junction segment in which she explores the veracity of rumors and stories on her radar. Last night she was very proud to confirm a Roll Call report that former Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell would be guest hosting Fox & Friends around Christmas. Turns out that, according to a Fox News spokesperson, this report is in fact, untrue. (Sad trombone sound.) Updated.

Like a lot of liberals, Rachel Maddow is pretty disappointed with President Obama‘s decision to capitulate to Republican tax cut demands, as well as the forceful defense of his actions he made in a press conference today. But unlike most liberals, Rachel Maddow has a TV show—which tonight gave her the perfect opportunity to go through each point Obama made during his press conference and refute them, one by one.