Rachel Maddow And Joe Wilson

She did it again.

A few days earlier, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow had hosted a tremendous segment comparing subsidies to ACORN with those going to Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman (ordered to repay the federal government $68 million and $500 million, respectively, for fraud); Blackwater (five employees charged with murder in the course of carrying out their government contract in Iraq); KBR (under investigation for electrocuting 16 American soldiers with shoddy electrical work in Iraq): ArmorGroup (under investigation for employees allegedly engaged in a prostitution ring in Kabul); DynCorp (employees involved in sex slave ring with underage girls); and Blackwater (five employees facing murder charges).

On Wednesday, Maddow took on (video below) the case of Representative Alan Grayson (D.- Fl.), who famously stated on the House floor

It‘s my duty and pride tonight to be able to announce exactly what the Republicans plan to do for health care in America. It‘s this. Very simply, it‘s a very simple plan.

Here it is. The Republicans‘ health care plan for America: Don‘t get sick. That‘s right, don‘t get sick. If you have insurance, don‘t get sick. If you don‘t have insurance, don‘t get sick. If you‘re sick, don‘t get sick—just don‘t get sick.

That‘s what Republicans have in mind for you, America. That‘s the Republican‘s health care plan.

But I think that the Republicans understand that that plan isn‘t always going to work, it‘s not a foolproof plan. So, the Republicans have a backup plan, in case you do get sick.

If you get sick in America, this is what the Republicans want you to do. If you get sick, America, the Republican health care plan is this: Die quickly. That‘s right. The Republicans want you to die quickly if you get sick.

Now, the Democrats have a different plan. The Democrats say that if you have health insurance, we‘re going to make it better. If you don‘t have health insurance, we‘re going to provide it to you. If you can‘t afford health insurance, then we‘ll help you to afford health insurance.

So, America gets to decide. Do you want the Democratic plan or do you want the Republican plan? Remember, the Republican plan: Don‘t get sick. And if you do get sick, die quickly.

Maddow noted the ludicrous statements about health care made by House Republicans Ginny Brown-Waite of Florida, Steve King of Iowa, Louis Gohmert of Texas, Paul Browun of Georgia, Virginia Foxx of North Carolina, and the ever-entertaining Michele Bachmann of Minnesota. After making the obvious inference about the hypocrisy of members of their party demanding Grayson apologize, Maddow noted

Holocaust? Always a bad choice of words unless you‘re talking about the actual Holocaust—at least in my opinion.

It is always a bad choice of words, inappropriate, and bordering on the reprehensible. Loathe to take attention away from the double standard the GOP is insisting on, and the accuracy of Grayson's charges, Maddow was too polite to dwell on the common application by conservatives of the term "Holocaust."

But let U.S. Representative Chris Smith of New Jersey explain. At the 31st Annual "March For Life" in 2004: "Like you, Americans want the abortion holocaust to end." Or Mike Huckabee in October 2007 at the Family Research Council's Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C.: "Sometimes we talk about why we're importing so many people in our workforce. It might be for the last 35 years, we have aborted more than a million people who would have been in our workforce had we not had the holocaust of liberalized abortion under a flawed Supreme Court ruling in 1973." (This quote has to be saved for posterity, and not only because of abortion.) And several activists and religious leaders have attempted to make an analogy between abortion and "h(H)olocaust" over the past several years.

So, yes, Representative Grayson should apologize, which House Republicans want him to do. He should apologize not for violating House rules (which, unlike Joe Wilson, he did not) and not for being wrong about Repub opposition to health care (he was not). He should apologize for trivializing the Holocaust. Right after Chris Smith and Mike Huckabee do the same.