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As Rachel reports Bart Stupak was not the only member of the C-Street Family that was having a bad day. Mark Sanford plead no contest to the 37 ethics charges filed against him. As Rachel noted, he's not quitting of course. And it appears investigators are starting to close in around John Ensign.

Report: Firms Linked To Possible Ensign Quid Pro Quo Subpoenaed:

The Las Vegas news station adds more details about who has been contacted by investigators looking into the John Ensign sex-and-lobbying scandal.

Perhaps most significantly, it reports that "[e]xecutives at card companies eCommLink, Selling Source and Pay Card USA have been served by the grand jury."

That matters because those are some of the companies which, the station reported earlier, asked for Ensign's help in avoiding new regulations, in exchange for a $28,000 donation to the NRSC, which was chaired at the time by Ensign. So the news that the card companies have been subpoenaed adds to the evidence that the Feds are actively exploring that possible quid pro quo -- which could have even more serious implications for the senator than allegations about his help for Doug Hampton. Read on...

Gotta' love these "family values" Republicans. Of course we aren't getting any cries from the media about when John Ensign is going to step down.

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Rachel Maddow revisits her interview with man-on-horse Hayworth from the previous evening with a bit of fact checking and defends her staff for their research. It's too bad she didn't have some of this info with her the night before when Hayworth was on. I was hoping she'd bring up some of McCain's problems with covering up for him, but she didn't go there. And you're right Rachel, there's not going to be a second interview. I'm surprised you got the first one.

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Dennis G. at Balloon Juice wrote an excellent post explaining how John McCain covering up for J.D. Hayworth's involvement in the Abramoff scandal was coming back to bite him in the form of Hayworth as a primary challenger. Hayworth was asked about his involvement in the Jack Abramoff affair on The Rachel Maddow Show and he used the fact that McCain did not bring him up during his committee hearings as proof of his innocence in the matter.

Hayworth: I’ll be very happy to point out how this may apply to the upcoming Republican primary. Senator McCain has joined the chorus of those attempting to link me to someone by the name of Jack Abramoff. Please don’t make the mistake of thinking that in any way I’m defending Mr. Abramoff. That’s not the case. I’m offering you a spirited defense of what I believe to be incorrect information that you have received.

But with reference to my immediate Republican opponent Sen. McCain, he chaired hearings you may recall of the Indian Affairs Committee and if memory serves I believe they were in the spring and summer of 2006. Never did my name come up in testimony. Never was I mentioned either during those hearings or in the committee’s final report. So the bottom line is this. I did nothing wrong and the people of Arizona will have a chance to decide that. As for John McCain, a man who says he’s a man of honor I think quite frankly he knows these charges to be incorrect and in desperation to keep his job, sadly he is now proving himself unfit for service in the United States Senate.

I highly recommend reading the whole thing since there is much, much more there, but here are some highlights of Dennis' post. The Grifter and the Coward…:

Both men are also linked to the Abramoff scandal. It will be fascinating to see if McCain will decide to release details about the Abramoff scandal that he has kept covered up for years in a desperate effort to hold onto his Senate seat. [...]

Hayworth went into debt to defend himself from possible charges related to the Abramoff scandal and he set-up the Freedom In Truth Trust to get others to help him retire this debt before he officially announced his run against McCain. Naturally, many of Jack’s other pals contributed to JD’s defense fund. I found Hayworth’s defense on the site to be laughable. Documents released so far in the Abramoff scandal prove him to be a liar. For example, JD says:

Here are the simple facts:

1. Abramoff contributed a grand total of $2,250 dollars to my political efforts. ($250 in 1996, $1,000 in 1998, and $1,000 to our leadership political action committee, TEAMPAC, in 1999.)
2. I never met with Abramoff concerning any legislation.
3. He never came to my office.
4. He never lobbied me directly on any issue.

The record proves him to be a liar on points 1 and 4. Point 2 is certainly a lie if you include a phone call as a “meeting”. There are numerous records citing direct discussions between Abramoff and Hayworth. It is unclear if these meetings/discussions took place in Hayworth’s “office”, so point 3 could technically be true, but only if you exclude meetings between Hayworth’s staff and Abramoff’s staff.

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As Rachel Maddow notes it looks like the Democrats have finally stopped trying to negotiate with Bart Stupak. Why it took them this long is beyond me. Stupak is now claiming that anyone who is against the language he wanted inserted into the health care bill is against babies and the cost they would add to the health care system. He's also not too happy with Rachel Maddow's reporting. Thankfully she doesn't care and continues to ask who was paying his rent at the C Street House. C.R.E.W.'s Melanie Sloan joined Rachel to discuss whether Stupak has violated the House rules by allowing his rent to be subsidized.

Transcript via Lexis Nexis.

MADDOW: As of yesterday, Congressman Bart Stupak`s attempt to hijack health reform in order to expand restrictions on abortion is over. Mr. Stupak`s bluff has been called. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told me in an interview yesterday that his claim about the Senate`s health reform bill includes federal funding for abortion is simply wrong. Several House members who voted with Mr. Stupak before on his anti-abortion language now are also admitting that Mr. Stupak`s claims about the Senate bill funding abortion don`t seem to be borne out by the facts.

The Senate bill, in fact, does not allow public funding for abortions.

If there was any doubt about the collapse of Mr. Stupak`s threat to use his discredited claims about abortion to kill health reform, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer put those doubts to rest this afternoon.

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The Rachel Maddow Show did some digging and it appears that Bart Stupak may not actually have all the votes he's claiming he has to stop the health care bill from being passed in the House. As Rachel also notes, since Stupak's requests for changes to the bill are either impossible to get passed under reconciliation or just based on lies about what's even in the bill, it's pretty obvious that he's just doing his best to get himself on the television for some face time so he can demagogue the abortion issue and it has nothing to do with the health care debate.

Bart Stupak might come to regret that if Rachel doesn't let up on the reporting she has done on the C-Street House and The Family. And as Susie noted, he's now got himself a primary challenger.

Maddow: Congratulations sir. I hope you’re enjoying your fifteen minutes. Now, who’s been paying your rent? Bart Stupak, you want to be famous? You’re getting famous right now. In terms of America getting to know you there is still one big piece of the puzzle you continue to dodge our questions about. Who sir has been paying your rent? Who paid your rent for years? You even got asked about it by your good friends at Fox today.

(Cut to Fox clip)

Maddow: Always paid fair market value. Um… here’s why we’re a little worried about that claim. As we’ve talked about before Bart Stupak lived at C-Street House in Washington for at least seven years. The C-Street House is a $1.8 million, twelve bedroom, maid service townhouse right near the Capital. We have documented it is owned by the secret religious group The Family even though The Family has recently denied that fact. The Family has in the past acknowledged subsidizing the rent for members of The Family who live in the house, reportedly charging about $600 a month. Even though Mr. Stupak denies being a member of The Family it seems clear from news reports at least that he was paying below market rent to live there. And if he wasn’t all he has to do is answer the questions that we have put to him repeatedly.

Who did you pay your rent to Congressman Stupak? How much did you pay? And do you know who was subsidizing the rest? Did you report that subsidy as an in kind donation? Did you report it as income to the IRS? These questions don’t go away because you moved out when the heat got to you. Mr. Stupak you have succeeded in using this abortion stunt to get on TV a lot. If you really want Americans to know who you are tell us who has been paying your rent. We just learned that Bart Stupak now has a Democratic primary challenger back in Michigan. Her name is Connie Saltonstall. She said she decided to challenge him because of this anti-abortion grandstanding on the health care issue. Turns out this is going to be a very exciting year for Bart Stupak after all and it’s not because he’s going to kill health reform.

You can Send The Democrats A Message They Can Understand and make a donation at Blue America to help Bart Stupak's challenger Connie Saltonstall among others.

I'm actually shocked that it took this long for Rachel Maddow to interview Michael Moore. They talked about Bart Stupak and how he's embarrassed the people of Michigan and how the Republicans even in the face of the biggest economic collapse since the Great Depression are still touting getting rid of regulations on the financial industry.

You can Send The Democrats A Message They Can Understand and make a donation at Blue America to help Bart Stupak's challenger Connie Saltonstall among others.

MADDOW: Joining us now is Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker, Michael Moore, who`s latest film "Capitalism: A Love Story" is just now out on DVD.

Michael Moore, I`ve wanted to have you on the show for so long. Thank you so much for coming in. It`s really nice to meet you.

MICHAEL MOORE: Thanks. I`m so honored to be here. I love watching the show and thank you very much.

MADDOW: You really watch it?

MOORE: I`ve been watching -- I`ll tell you, I`ve been watching this - - the whole Bart Stupak thing. As you mentioned, this is my congressman. I had no idea after, especially last week`s show, I turned the TV off, I said to my wife, our congressman lives in a brothel and he belongs to a cult. What`s going on?!

MADDOW: You know, he wants everybody to know that he didn`t belong to The Family for the eight years that he lived at The Family`s subsidized congressmen townhouse with all the affairs going on.

MOORE: Yes. And if he was living with, say, in house of skinheads, he probably would just say, hey, you know, all these kids were out skateboarding. He just said, yes, I`ve got a cheap room, come on in.

MADDOW: It`s amazing.

MOORE: Now, it`s totally amazing. It`s embarrassing.

You know, Michigan`s a great state. I live in his district actually. It`s 31 of the 80-plus counties in Michigan he represents.

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Chris Hayes of The Nation shows the amusing habits of Canadians during the gold medal hockey game in a graph Pat's Papers blog brings to our attention.

The water utility in Edmonton, EPCOR, published the most incredible graph of water consumption last week. By now you’ve probably heard that up to 80% of Canadians were watching last Sunday’s gold medal Olympic hockey game. So I guess it stands to reason that they’d all go pee between periods.

But still—the degree to which the water consumption matches with the key breaks in the hockey game is stunning.

Chris Hayes filling in for Rachel Maddow talks to Howard Dean about the protests held outside of the Ritz-Carlton "where the insurance companies were having their conference and plotting to kill health reform". Dean also weighed in on what he thinks should happen if the bill does pass -- the Senate should either include a Medicare buy-in or restore the House version which has a public option. He also thinks they should get rid of the individual mandate and that might make it a decent bill. I guess we'll find out if anyone's listening to Dean shortly if the bill does make it through the House.

Rachel Maddow spent the better part of her show recapping her coverage of the health care bill debate and how the Democrats allowing the bill to be delayed in Max Baucus' Finance Committee while they tried to get Queen Olympia Snowe to play nice with them opened the door to the likes of Dick Armey and the rest of the astroturf groups to organize well enough to start disrupting the town hall meetings. And then from there for the Republicans to mislead the public with every ounce of mud they could throw against the wall from death panels to cries of socialism.

You can watch the rest of the segments from the Playlist button in the MSNBC embed player once it starts playing.

It's really nice to see at least one person in the media looking into the activities at the C-Street House by The Family as Rachel Maddow has done. She follows up on the previous show's reporting and continues to ask, who's paying Bart Stupak's rent? She talks to Rev. Eric Williams who along with "12 other pastors have filed a complaint with the Internal Revenue Service challenging C Street‘s tax-exempt status".

MADDOW: In making a name for himself, though, Mr. Stupak has opened himself up to some questions about who he is and where he‘s coming from. Last night on this show, we talked about Bart Stupak‘s long-time Washington, D.C. residence. It‘s an 8,000 square foot, 12-bedroom mansion called C Street. C Street is reportedly run by a secretive religious group called The Fellowship or The Family.

And the members of Congress who live at C Street reportedly pay the paltry sum of $600 a month for rent—which is a sweetheart deal and is pretty clearly way below market value for that area. And that raises the question: who subsidizes the rent that Bart Stupak and those other congressmen pay—or paid?

Today, Mr. Stupak‘s office responded to our questions by informing us that Mr. Stupak moved out of C Street at the end of December. They provided us with a letter that he sent his constituents upon doing so. But they have, so far, declined to answer our questions about how much Mr. Stupak paid in rent, who he paid that rent to, and who subsidized his rent if anyone.

We have looked into it on our own, because we couldn‘t get answers from them. And tonight, we have some big news to report in terms of who Mr. Stupak seems to have been paying.

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Rachel Maddow again doing yeoman's work with reporting on the hypocrisy of the Republicans and their lies on the use of reconciliation to get the health care bill passed. If you haven't checked it out yet, Rachel has a new blog and here is more on this segment from her entry today -- Online items cited on The Rachel Maddow show 3/3:

Orrin Hatch honored to be called a liar by Rachel Maddow

Rachel Maddow (April 4, 2007) An Open Letter to Senator Hatch [Updated]

Republican OMG Code Red!!

Republicans cast doubts on Senate parliamentarian

Read on...

Sen. Sherrod Brown weighed in on why he thinks the Republicans are pushing so hard not to get anything passed and if he has any idea what they will do to keep the bill from passing. He said they're ready to keep them up all night if they try to add too many amendments. If that's true I say what took them so long? They should have been doing that before the tea baggers were taking over the town halls. I'm not wild about this bill but at this point I don't see how it is good for Democrats to not pass it. They get the worst of both worlds if it fails. They live with what the voters think of it after they see how it actually affects their own lives if they do. If they're not happy about it then it will be based on some facts and not Republican fear mongering and spin.

Rachel Maddow calls out Chuck Grassley, Lamar Alexander, John McCain and Orrin Hatch for lying about reconciliation and their own records. Rachel said it's time for them to grow up. I agree, but if these old men haven't grown up by now, it ain't gonna' happen....ever. They've got their lies and they're sticking by them and sadly most of the media is going to enable them while they do it. Thankfully Rachel Maddow is one of the few who is not and keeping me from being completely disgusted with our mainstream media and willing to call them for their behavior. The word "lie" needs to be used more often with these hypocrites.

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Rachel Maddow whacks the Republicans and the good folks over at ClusterFox who are aiding and abetting them for trying to conflate reconciliation with the nuclear option.

After playing a clip of Lamar Alexander saying that using reconciliation would be a “political Kamikaze mission” and “the end of the United States Senate” if the Democrats used it to pass the health care bill, Rachel notes Alexander’s hypocrisy on the subject. He was more than happy to use it for the Jobs & Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003, the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, the Tax Increase Prevention & Reconciliation Act of 2005 and the College Cost Reduction & Access Act of 2007.

Rachel then calls out all too often guest on the Sunday shows Grandpa McCain for his hypocrisy as well. As Rachel notes, McCain wants to change the Senate rules so reconciliation can’t be used for anything involving entitlements and the John McCain of the past felt a bit differently. McCain voted for the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 with Dick Cheney as the tie breaking vote which slashed Medicaid. McCain voted for the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1989 which overhauled the doctor payment system for Medicare.

She goes on to explain that the Republicans are now so desperate to win the debate on health care reform since they have already lost the votes in both houses of the Congress that their last resort is to try to conflate reconciling the two bills with the nuclear option, which would have eliminated the filibuster all together.

It’s good to see Rachel calling these guys out for their lies, but sadly too much of the public does not watch her show and is being propagandized by the likes of ClusterFox.

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Rachel Maddow calls out the Republicans for saying that Democrats passing the health reform bill through reconciliation is the same as the nuclear option. And as she notes, they are more than well aware that they are lying since they constantly threatened to use the nuclear option and change the rules of the Senate when they wanted to get Bush's judicial appointments confirmed.

Maddow: What's going on here is a deliberate attempt on the part of Republicans to define nuclear down -- to conflate these two totally separate things to demonize the way that Democrats have to pass health reform right now. By calling it the nuclear option even though the nuclear option is a real thing in the Senate, and this isn't that -- it has nothing to do with that. Perhaps the reason that Republicans are so unwilling to call this what it is, reconciliation is because they have a really long record of using reconciliation.

As Rachel notes budget reconciliation is how the health care system has been formed in the United States already and Republicans used reconciliation to pass the Bush tax cuts, twice. And it's been used to pass things like COBRA and SCHIP. No sooner did I turn her show off tonight and guess who was helping conflate the term reconciliation with the nuclear option? You've got it... ClusterFox.

Rachel Maddow talk to The Nation's Jeremy Scahill about the lastest Blackwater scandal where they stole weapons meant for the Afghan police. Scahill has a longer list yet.

MADDOW: Whatever the level of U.S. government oversight of the defense contractor Blackwater has or hasn‘t been, that level is very likely about to change. We have just learned that the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing that in September 2008, more than 200 AK-47s were signed out by a Blackwater employee apparently named for this guy.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ERIC CARTMAN, CARTOON CHARACTER: Hey, I‘m a cop and you will respect my authority.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MADDOW: That is Eric Cartman from “South Park.” Eric Cartman is the name that a Blackwater contractor used to sign out hundreds of AK-47s for Blackwater employee‘s personal use in Afghanistan. These were guns that were supposed to be issued to Afghan police. And no, there was no one actually named Eric Cartman working for Blackwater at that time. And no, Blackwater employees at that time were not even allowed to possess weapons in Afghanistan without permission—which, of course, they did not have.

In December 2008, after grabbing these weapons they weren‘t supposed to have, a Blackwater contractor jumped on the back of a moving vehicle with his loaded weapon. When that moving vehicle hit a bump, the contractor accidentally shot another contractor in the head. What happened to the “Dukes of Hazard” reckless shooter? Blackwater sent the shooter back home to the U.S.—that was it.

Blackwater was also nailed today for setting up a shell company for its operations in Afghanistan to avoid being associated with Blackwater‘s infamy.

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