The 112th Congress may go down in the history books as the "Do Nothing" Congress, but Lawrence O'Donnell made sure that people will hear about what Senator Harry Reid did accomplish.

In his "Rewrite" segment Wednesday, he praised both Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid and Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell for working together–out in the open, with C-Span cameras rolling–to get the fiscal deal passed in a “truly bipartisan vote” to raise income tax rates.

After the fiscal cliff deal came and went, the U.S. Senate quietly did a lot of work with the help of just a few devoted legislators. With McConnell’s support, Reid succeeded in pushing through a slew of nominations on behalf of President Obama.

“Harry Reid, who every day does much more than most people in the news media realize, and definitely accomplishes much more than the news media ever reports, pushed through pages and pages of nominations for President Obama yesterday when everyone was focused on what the House would do on the fiscal cliff vote. And Harry Reid did that with the active but invisible help of Mitch McConnell who did his part to make sure that no Republicans would vote against any of those nominations. And what did the United States Senate do today, that dysfunctional United States Senate? According to the news media, absolutely nothing.”

O’Donnell argued that the Senate leadership deserves far more credit than most people realize:

“So what is the truth? Is the Senate a hopeless dysfunctional place? Does Mitch McConnell hate Harry Reid so much that Vice President Biden had to be brought in to negotiate the final terms of the Senate fiscal cliff deal? The answer is that the truth is complicated, but the news media hates complications. The news media craves personal drama. McConnell hates Reid, or Boehner hates Reid. The news media, like screenwriters, loves the last minute rescue by the improbable hero, in this case, Joe Biden. That’s an easy story to tell. The truth is more complicated.”

I believe O'Donnell on this, but I'm having a hard time wrapping my brain around Mitch McConnell as the tough mediator who kicks Republican Senators in the @ss and gets them moving. But it is nice to hear that some of them are getting work done, and that they're aren't out playing golf or swilling drinks at the country club bar.

Lawrence O'Donnell condemned NRA president Wayne LaPierre on Friday for his press conference about the Newtown massacre in a special edition of his MSNBC show, "The Last Word."

O'Donnell doesn't usually work on Fridays, but he made a special exception for LaPierre. The gun lobbyist called for armed police officers in every school. To say his comments were widely criticized would be an understatement.

O'Donnell called LaPierre a "lobbyist for mass murderers," and blasted him for trying to score cheap points with NRA members during his press conference by making a point to note that the media had gotten a fact wrong about the power of the gun shooter Adam Lanza used.

“Is there really something to quibble about in how powerful a bullet is when it is heading toward a six-year-old at the speed of 3200 feet per second," asks O'Donnell. "What kind of desperate, cornered rat would dare to mention that the Sandy Hook shooter could have used a more powerful bullet? Could have what? Done more damage? Made the bodies of six-year-olds even more difficult to identify?"

All of O'Donnell's comments were spot on, and I'm just going to give you the full text of the rest of his remarks, and I give him extra kudos for getting through his commentary without a single word that needed bleeped!

"So today, the NRA announced that it has a solution. Complete solution to gun violence in America, mass murders in America. Their solution is the national school shield program, a police officer with a gun in every school.

Now, he didn`t announce a national movie theater shield program with a police officer in every movie theater in America. Wayne LaPierre has in fact never spoken one word about 6-year-old Veronica Moser Sullivan, who was murdered in that movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, along with 11 other people, and 58 wounded, 58.

All of that, death and savagery was delivered from an ammunition delivery system so big it isn`t called a magazine. It`s called a drum. It holds 100 rounds.

Wayne LaPierre is the lobbyist who made it possible for the mass murderer in the Aurora, Colorado, movie theater to be able to shoot and kill and wound so many people without reloading even once.

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On the “Rewrite” segment of his show Wednesday night, MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell said the only way for the New York Police Department to remain respectable was for the department to terminate any officers who prevent reporters from covering protests.

NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly has said that he had ordered officers to avoid interfering with media access. However, earlier in December police officers prevented the New York Times from photographing arrests at an Occupy Wall Street protest.

O’Donnell said officers that violated the non-interference policy should be fired, not just disciplined.