The best way to see these double standards is to ponder 10 simple questions.

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First up, "This Week": Fast Eddie Snowden is hot on the move. How does he keep "bedeviling" US officials like this? It's a "cat-and-mouse game," and the U.S. "lost this round," says the breaking news correspondent.

Host George Stephanopoulos is now talking to Gen. Keith Alexander, director of the NSA. Mister General, Stephanopoulos asks, how did you let this guy out of Hawaii in the first place? Alexander is mentioning 9/11 and how Edward Snowden is making us vulnerable. "We are now putting in place systems" to track those with high-level security clearances. For example: "We've changed our passwords." Good luck, hackers.

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First, and solely because it starts a half-hour earlier than the other shows, we'll check out "This Week," where Jonathan Karl is substituting for George Stephanopoulos. "Is the U.S. going to get involved in another war in the Middle East?" Always, Jonathan Karl, always. Let's see what Marco Rubio has to say.

Rubio, a war-friendly Republican, says that President Obama blew it by waiting so long to get involved in Syria. (Assuming this really is the broad change in strategy it's been billed as.) Now who are we giving arms to? Al-Qaida "elements." What would President Rubio have done? Karl asks. Well, Rubio never would have allowed it to get to this point, of course. If Rubio were president, Syria would be a sunny democratic Utopia already, because he would have managed it so perfectly, you just have no idea how perfectly President Rubio would have done things.

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"This Week" promises to be a grand old time, as some producer has let civil liberties reporter and commentator Glenn"zilla" Greenwald on national television again to scorch the earth. Greenwald, of course, has been the lead reporter behind a number of top-secret leak reports this week.

"You are really on a roll," George Stephanopoulos congratulates Greenwald, of "the Guardian newspaper." (Full disclosure: I am a contributor to the Guardian U.S.) What are the key findings of your stories this week? Greenwald, talking super-fast to get it all in, has two. From the transcript:

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"SUNDAY SHOWDOWN!" George Stephanopoulos greets us, to open This Week. It's a political consultant versus another political consultant! Whose talking points will win? "Let's get right to it" with David Plouffe versus Karl Rove, before you even have time to run to the bathroom. Arianna Huffington, Gwen Ifill and the WSJ editorial page's Paul Gigot watch from the other side of the table.

Stephanopoulos shows poll numbers that indicate the public doesn't especially care about any of The Scandals, today's hot lead. Forty-four percent find the IRS targeting scandal the most important, however. And Karl Rove says if you look "inside the numbers," the public is still very unhappy with the economy. And the IRS collects taxes from the economy, so there you go: biggest scandal ever, searingly pertinent to all.

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“We’re going to put immigration on the [Senate] floor starting on June 10. I predict it will pass the Senate by July 4. We are hoping to get 70 votes, up to 70 votes, which means a lot of Republicans. And we’re willing to entertain amendments that don’t damage the core principles of the bill, but improve the bill – just as we did in [the Judiciary] committee.”

“These so-called scandals have not diverted us one iota” from immigration reform, he added.

Despite Schumer's rosy view of his colleague's ability to work together, a majority of voters do not believe Congress will pass the measure, even though 54 percent of Americans support immigration overhaul, as NBC News reports:

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Let's recap the scandals, in case you have been too busy having message board debates about Star Trek or deciphering new Kanye lyrics to pay attention:

1. Benghazi. Republicans insist the White House did something evil and incomprehensible involving talking points following the September 11, 2012 attack on the American consulate in the Lybian city. Recently, the White House released an email chain showing the process of drafting and revising the talking points.
2. The IRS. The IRS reportedly targeted conservative nonprofits for extra scrutiny of their tax-exempt status.
3. The Associated Press. The Justice Department sought access to, and received, a massive trove of phone data of AP journalists, as part of its investigation into a leak.

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The dog whistle quote came via NBC's “Meet the Press” Sunday from Peggy Noonan, who can no longer be taken seriously as a writer or pundit. When host David Gregory pressed her on the lack of evidence for her claims that the IRS scandal was worse than Watergate, Noonan insisted that the president “was giving a dog whistle to people who could launch this thing." The former Reagan-Bush speechwriter vividly summed up, in her thousand points of crazy style, where the IRS “scandal” went over the last few days: Obama didn’t need to order the tax agency to harass Tea Party groups (and his critics don’t need proof that he did so): his criticizing the group during the 2012 campaign, as well as blasting the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, represented an implicit order to do so.

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First, though, ABC's "This Week," the only one of the big three shows this morning to have another idiotic debate about budgets, began with George Stephanopoulos actually bragging -- bragging! -- that he had both Jim Messina and Karl Rove. Oh boy, two campaign strategists! When I am looking for well-considered and thoughtful commentary on national issues, I always turn to people who are good at managing political campaigns.

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Bush, capping a media-heavy week that sparked chatter about a presidential campaign for a third member of his family, tried to keep the conversation focused on his book "Immigration Wars." But as Bush wrapped up a conversation with NBC's David Gregory," he likened journalists and their questions about the 2016 campaign to drug addicts.

"Who's the hottest Florida politician right now? Is it you or Marco Rubio?" Gregory asked, referring to Rubio, a senator who is also a potential GOP contender. "Who are we more likely to see in the White House?"

"Man, you guys are crack addicts. You really are obsessed with all this politics," Bush replied.

The "Meet the Press" host interrupted, saying he'd been called a lot of things, but never a crack addict.

"OK, heroin addict. Is that better?" shot back Bush, the son of former President George H.W. Bush and brother of former President George W. Bush.

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I don't watch the Sunday shows. Basically ever. I watch clips if something particularly stupid happened, but for the most part, you can get everything you need to know about what happens on these shows by reading the brilliant liveblog by the Huffington Post's Jason Linkins, America's foremost Sunday show interpreter. While no one should pay attention to these shows, as long as millions of Americans watch them under the mistaken impression that they're seeing serious discussions of our most pressing issues with our wisest media observers and most influential political leaders, they should probably be monitored.

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CBS:

“Face the Nation” highlighted a series of views on gun control. New York City police commissioner Ray Kelly, whose job involves fighting crime, said universal background checks on gun sales could have a measurable impact. “About 6 million weapons estimated were sold last year without a background check. So that’s a significant, that’s the loophole that they talk about. I think the background check will also be helpful in identifying store purchases, making them more aware of the fact that their now on record and you can record purchases that they make.”

Universal background checks aren’t the bills in play right now. (Or at least not yet.) Instead, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D.-Calif.) defended the prospects of the assault weapons ban that she is sponsoring "because the American people are very much for it, " even though she acknowledged that it confronts an “uphill battle” to become law.

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Gun control:

The head of the National Rifle Association David Keene, in an interview on CNN's "State of the Union," was confident that efforts to ban assault rifles and high-capacity ammunition weapons would fail.

"I'm willing to say that guns in this country have as much influence as they always have, and perhaps more," he told host Candy Crawley.

Appearing on CBS' "Face the Nation," Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) -- a Congressman with strong NRA support -- urged an approach to curtailing gun violence that does not focus just on guns. "If you're just going to say it's all about guns, and we need gun changes and bans, then you're wrong," he said, noting that he and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) would be sponsoring a bill to launch a commission on "mass violence," which would look at cultural depictions of violence, mental health care as well as gun control.

Obama's senior adviser David Plouffe, who made the talk show rounds Sunday, told "State of the Union" that he believed there to be "consensus on Capitol Hill" over gun control.  "We think we can get 60 votes in the Senate and 218 [votes in the House],” Plouffe said.

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In a letter to NBC, obtained by the Washington Post, Attorney General Irvin B. Nathan said he decided to use “prosecutorial discretion” and not bring charges against Gregory, because “Prosecution would not promote public safety in the District of Columbia, nor serve the best interests of the people."

But, Nathan warned:

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On “Meet the Press” today, all pretense was gone and diplomacy jettisoned as Obama placed the blame for a potential cliff dive squarely on Republican intransigence. “The only thing I would caution against, David, is I think this notion of, ‘Well, both sides are just kind of unwilling to cooperate.’ And that's just not true,” Obama told host David Gregory.

“I mean if you look at the facts, what you have is a situation here where the Democratic Party, warts and all, and certainly me, warts and all, have consistently done our best to try to put country first,” he added, paraphrasing John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign slogan. The clear implication: Republicans have not put country first, prioritizing ideology instead.

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"I think there are a vast majority of responsible gun owners out there who recognize that we can't have a situation in which somebody with severe psychological problems is able to get the kind of high capacity weapons that this individual in Newtown obtained and gun down our kids. And, yes, it's going to be hard," Obama told host David Gregory, recalling the day he heard of the murder of 20 children in Connecticut as the worst day of his presidency.

Obama also discussed fiscal cliff negotiations. He repeatedly placed the blame on Republicans for failure to reach a compromise, noting the GOP "had trouble saying yes to a number of repeated offers." In contrast, the president defended his own record of spending cuts, telling Gregory:

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“I really think what David Gregory did while he was inadvertently flouting the law was illustrating in a very graphic, perhaps not intentionally, but in a graphic way just how silly some of these laws are,” NRA President David Keene said yesterday. We don’t often say this, but the NRA is absolutely right.

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Gregory was aggressively questioning LaPierre about whether he would support any new gun control laws when he may have run afoul of some which already exist in the District of Columbia.

And now, according to a report in Politico, Washington, D.C., police are investigating.

“The Metropolitan Police Department is investigating this matter,” said police officer and spokesman Araz Alali in an interview Tuesday. “There are D.C. code violations, D.C. code restrictions on guns, ammunition. We are investigating this matter. Beyond the scope of that, I can’t comment any further,” he said.

As Politico notes, D.C. has a restrictive gun control law -- and it's possible that whoever purchased or possessed the magazine could have crossed the line.

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