I’ve been going after MSNBC host Joe Scarborough a lot lately because that station is letting him run around unchecked for countless hours as an “objective journalist.” I’m fine with “objective journalists” injecting a little bit of opinion here and there, but there isn’t a moment when Scarborough is on camera that he isn’t spinning stories for Mitt Romney. It’s ridiculous and I can’t think of any other news anchor on cable or network television that is allowed to feign the role of an unbiased reporter while incessantly pushing a campaign’s narrative.

If MSNBC wants a pro-Romney point of view then they should get a neutral moderator and bring in talking heads from all sides. But having a Romney propagandist moderator defeats all efforts at neutrality. Add in MSNBC’s go-to conservative talking head Pat Buchanan — whose sister is a top adviser to the former Mass. governor — and it might as well be a Romney campaign strategy session.

And I’m not the only one calling Scarborough and MSNBC on the spin overkill. On Thursday’s Morning Joe, Scarborough spoke with Mike Huckabee (above video) and attempted to bait him into agreeing that the only reason John McCain was on his way to winning the GOP presidential nomination was that “there were three conservatives splitting the conservative vote.” In his words, this gave McCain, “the moderate,” room to sneak through. Scarborough also promoted the spin that “conservatives are coalescing around Romney.”

Huckabee’s candid response was that Romney was never a conservative until he decided he wanted to be president and that he has no credibility whatsoever. And the punch line about Romney’s “conservatism” was priceless: “Here’s a man who didn’t hit political puberty in the conservative ranks until 60 years old.”

So, once again, is Scarborough really fair?

Presidential candidates Barack Obama and Mitt Romney have trumpeted “change” as part of their message to to voters. Actually, Obama trumpeted change — Romney just saw that it worked and “changed” his platform to incorporate change. And that message has apparently resonated with members of the South Carolina General Assembly who have embarked on a surprising series of attempts to bring change to this state.

First, the House introduced legislation to change the way the state chooses constitutional officers. The bill, H. 4620, would allow the governor to appoint the secretary of state, state superintendent of education, commissioner of agriculture and adjutant general.

If passed, it would become a constitutional amendment to be decided upon by voters. Currently the public elects these constitutional officers every four years.

Speaker Bobby Harrell added:

The House also passed the “South Carolina Plan” which proposes comprehensive illegal immigration reform.

Jim Harrison, House Judiciary Chairman said, “This is the plan our state needs to combat illegal immigration. Our citizens have told us loud and clear, this is the plan they are backing and want to see passed into law this year.”

The number of illegal immigrants in South Carolina has exploded in the last decade 15 fold from the estimated 5,000 that were here ten years ago. To date, there are an estimated 75,000 illegal aliens residing in our state.

“The South Carolina Plan helps our state fill the void in our illegal immigration laws that the federal government has left us with,” said Harrell. “This is the strongest reform plan ever considered by our General Assembly. If our state does not act on this plan, while our neighboring states do, we could become a safe haven for illegal aliens and our taxpayers will bear that cost.”

Harrell continued:

Along with passing The South Carolina Plan (H. 4400), the House also amended a Senate bill (S. 392) with the more comprehensive House plan and voted to send The South Carolina Plan to the Senate in two identical bills.

Years from now when the story is written about the 2008 Republican presidential primary and John McCain’s now-likely historic ascent to victory, it is quite likely that Florida Gov. Charlie Crist will be given credit for being “The Kingmaker.” Crist, who is surely at the top of McCain’s short list of potential running mates, put his neck on the line and made a brilliant political move at exactly the right moment when he endorsed the Arizona senator last week. That act will forever be seen, rightly or not, as delivering the state to McCain and with it his party’s endorsement in the general election.

But what will go down as, at best, a mere footnote in the history books is that South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford had the exact same opportunity as Crist — and he balked.

Had Sanford not abstained from endorsing and thrown his support behind McCain — whom he backed in 2000 — in the week leading up to this state’s primary, he would have likely been praised for delivering a Palmetto State win. He could have punched his ticket to the big show and soaked up overwhelming national recognition. In doing so, it would have been he, not Crist, that now finds himself the odds-on favorite to be McCain’s running mate.

Instead, Sanford’s post-gubernatorial ambitions of seeking a larger office have been left out in the cold. If Sanford had any delusions about being vice president, they’re now gone. He has lost a rare opportunity to become a major player on the national scene and keep South Carolina in the limelight.

Sanford had a clear shot at becoming the next vice president and possibly even making a run for president in the future, but he missed his Mark.

Rep. Bob Inglis of South Carolina’s “Fightin’ Fourth” District took to Comedy Central’s Colbert Report Wednesday night as the 50th installment of the show’s 434 part series “Better Know a District.” During the interview, Inglis was “grilled” for providing “faulty umbrella intelligence” to President Bush in a letter he wrote about the Iraq troop surge. Inglis is the first South Carolina Congressman to take part in the Colbert Report’s Better Know a District segment.

Here’s another bit of total B.S. from MSNBC’s “unbiased” news host/secret Mitt Romney spinster Joe Scarborough. On Tuesday, he presented as fact the bogus Romney spin-machine claim that if Mike Huckabee wasn’t in the race, Romney would be winning.

But here’s what the exit polling showed:

Huckabee supporters preferred McCain by five points while the Giuliani vote was split between McCain and Romney, with Romney getting a one-point edge.

So not only was Scarborough dead wrong about Romney winning by a few points, but he completely lied about the “countless Republican voters all across this state” who said “a vote for Huckabee is a vote for John McCain.” He lied about those voters “breaking Mitt Romney’s way.”

He lied about the evangelical voters going for Romney.

He lied about the Giuliani “moderates” who were going to “break for John McCain” to snub Romney.

And he did all of this in advance of Romney’s loss, on Romney’s behalf, so that he could push the Romney narrative and insulate his guy from the damning results.

In fact, if Huckabee wasn’t in the race, McCain would have won by a much larger margin. It also appears that there is an “anybody but Mitt” mentality that is shared by supporters of multiple campaigns.

But Scarborough unabashedly continued his pro-Romney ranting despite all these facts and said, “I don’t give a damn what anybody says tonight, John McCain will not get conservatives behind him in the fall.” Apparently, he must have also missed the part of the exit poll that had McCain winning conservatives 35 percent to 32 percent in the Republican-only primary.

Inevitably, when MSNBC lets Scarborough — who resembles the reactionary right wing radio hosts more than a supposed “impartial journalist” — run loose for at least eight hours a day spewing Romney’s propaganda, they make their political coverage look like a joke.

So, once again, is Scarborough really fair?

There’s a reason that the South Carolina presidential primary exit polls showed Mitt Romney lost handily to John McCain among the 31 percent of voters who listed the War in Iraq or terrorism as the most important issue facing the country (52% to 7% with the former group, 33% to 13% with the latter). He can’t — or won’t — make up his mind about whether or not he supports a timetable for troop withdrawals from Iraq.

Romney went on Good Morning America in June 2007 and said he favored a “secret timetable” for withdrawal — although Sen. Joe Lieberman made a great point Tuesday that secrecy ends when you shoot your mouth off about it on national television — but soon changed his mind when polls indicated the successful troop surge led to increased support for the current Iraq policy. When the McCain camp called him on his waffling, yet again, about a serious foreign policy matter, Romney tried to play the victim.

Unfortunately for him, that move may have cost him the GOP nomination, no matter how his campaign tries to spin it. Especially in light of new evidence from Team McCain that leaves little doubt about Romney’s deliberate equivocating on the surge.

In June 2007, when there were already good signs that the surge was working, Romney told an interviewer, “I think we would hope to turn Iraq security over to their own military and their own security forces, and if presence in the region is important for us than we have other options that are nearby.” [...] That may seem innocuous enough now. But you remember how things were at the time. That was the way both Democrats and Republican supporters of withdrawal described their plan in those days. The idea was to pull U.S. troops out of the fighting in Iraq, hand over the fight to the Iraqis, and station U.S. forces “nearby” or “over the horizon.” That was how advisers to Hillary Clinton described their preferred option. It was how people who supported the Baker-Hamilton commission report described their ideal option. They didn’t call for immediate and total abandonment of Iraq — and very few do so today. When people who favored withdrawal explained their plan, it was as Romney described it. The fact that he also talked about “timetables” in an earlier interview, albeit secret “timetables,” also puts him in what was then the withdrawal camp.

If “President” Romney ever had to deal with a crisis, and there’s a good chance that as the leader of the free world that might happen, there wouldn’t be enough time to check the latest poll numbers. There wouldn’t be enough time to call his army of lobbyists. There wouldn’t be enough time to go over flow charts and business models. He would have to act and act fast.

Thankfully, it doesn’t look like there will ever be a President Romney.

I’m not sure if this would violate the Uniform Drinking Age Act, but Rep. Fletcher Smith is sponsoring a bill that would allow service members under the age of 21 to purchase alcohol.

All the service member would have to do is show his or her military identification card to the bartender or store clerk.

State law prohibits the sale or possession of alcoholic beverages by anyone 21.

It doesn’t make sense to prohibit a young soldier, Marine, airman or sailor from having a drink, said Smith, D-Greenville.

“They’ve proven they’re adults,” Smith said. “They have the maturity that an average 18-year-old wouldn’t have.”

However, Smith’s bill is opposed by highway safety advocates. And if it becomes law, South Carolina could lose up to 10 percent of its federal highway funds. Last year, that money totaled $287 million. [CHUCK CRUMBO - The State]

Two points here. First, I’m all about members of the military being able to drink at 18. In fact, 18 should definitely be the minimum legal drinking age everywhere. But if that should apply to anyone, it’s those who serve our country.

Second, who cares if we lose the 10 percent federal funding? It’s not like it was going to go to anything other than the bloated state budget and the deep pockets of the pork-loving lobbyists.

All signs indicate that no, MSNBC host Joe Scarborough is not fair. Not at all. Even if I ignored the signs though, I could just turn my television to “The Place for Politics” and wait five minutes or so for this “objective journalist” to take the screen and present “bias free” news and commentary. And yes, everything in quotes is sarcasm.

For example, in the above clip Scarborough Wednesday prefaced a question to Mitt Romney by claiming — as if 100 percent factually true — that half of the credit for John McCain’s Florida presidential primary win goes to “the fact that he lied about [Romney's] position on getting out of Iraq.”

But who’s really “lying” here? Watch the video to see (hint: It’s not McCain).

Worse than his lies though is the fact that MSNBC continually lets Scarborough get away with constantly spinning for Team Romney and doing so from a position of feigned impartiality. Every time the guy is on camera he’s pushing their narrative.

If Chris Matthews and company really want to restore any of the credibility lost by Scarborough’s antics, they would cut down on his face time or outright fire him. Seriously, do they really need to have a guy with a blatantly pro-Romney agenda hosting a six-hour block of political news coverage every the morning and making twice-hourly appearances for the rest of the day?

So is Scarborough, as MSNBC tries to argue, really fair? And if not, why does MSNBC keep him around as anything more than just a talking head?