But unlike their others, this is Discovery’s first solo venture, having broken with BBC on the production of this project. North America producer Huw Cordey explained, “I think [the network] just thought, why don’t we just do one ourselves?”

The new series focuses on the vastness of the North American continent, from the Aurora Borealis to the shores of Costa Rica, first-ever footage of Hammerhead sharks and never-before-recorded audio of the vibrations made by jumping spiders—“kind of like a drummer bass beat.” The series took over three years to make with over 250 shooting excursions – on land, in sea, or by helicopter (the crew spent about 600 hours in choppers during filming). Some of these “unfamiliar” aerial shots are what Cordey is most looking forward to in the series.

Of course, bringing North America to life was not without its obstacles. The crew had a run in with Hurricane Irene, was almost trampled by bison while shooting a stampede from an ATV, and even had a “frightening” encounter with an overly inquisitive polar bear in Labrador, Canada – a huge wilderness area in northeast Canada and one of Cordey’s favorite locations that they shot in.

Cordey remembers encountering the majestic polar bear and thinking “oh that’s kind of nice you can hear the [breathing noises] of this bear snuffling outside the door.” That “nice” feeling lasted until he, and the rest of the crew, realized that the bear knocking at the door was not what they thought to be a Barren Ground black bear, but a polar bear – a frightening realization considering the polar bear is known to be one of the few animals that actually hunt humans. In fact, had the crew’s slightly paranoid pilot not been so concerned about the bolts on their cabin doors being aligned and re-screwed in, the polar bear may have gotten into their cabin. “I think back and that guy probably saved my life,” Cordey says, noting that the pilot was the butt of many jokes during that excursion because he was shouting at the mice that had taken up residence inside the rarely used cabin. “As it turned out, the mice were the least of our worries.”

But more than polar bear close-calls and mice-filled cabins, the one thing Cordey – who previously worked on three episodes of Discovery’s first series, Planet Earth – hopes viewers take away from the series is that the North American continent is far-reaching and full of extremes. Cordey told MSNBC that “if there’s one thing I hope people do feel and understand is how incredibly diverse and varied this continent is…So many people take all the extreme weather for granted. You’ve got it all here. You’ve got hurricanes and tornadoes and blizzards and drought and monsoon rains, everything’s here. This is what you have to put up with year on year. And there isn’t another continent like it.”

Hear more from Cordey during his interview with The Cycle hosts here. North America premieres Sunday, May 19^th at 9 p.m. EST on Discovery.

While he was out, the House Ways and Means committee held hearings and grilled soon-to-be-former acting IRS chief Steven Miller about what he knew and if he misled Congress during his hearings last year.  “Americans already hate the IRS and Republicans already hate the IRS and they’ve been trying to make the case that this is part of some bigger administration scheme to chill political speech,” Cycle co-host Krystal Ball said on Friday’s show.

Right now Republicans are trying to figure out how to make these scandals work in their favor for 2014 and motivate voters in what is usually a low turnout election. “I don’t think any of these will have long term resonance with persuadable voters,” UP host Steve Kornacki said. It could also be “a situation where Republicans go way too far and it provokes a backlash on the Democratic side that boosts their turnout in 2014 and hurts the Republicans.” Kornacki’s foreboding echoes Ari Melber’s, in which he tells the GOP not to place too much stock in scandal. 

The advice may be sound, especially because Republicans have yet to realize that most Americans don’t seem to care. A recent Gallup poll showed that only 54% of Americans are following the IRS scandal.

Still, even if the majority of Americans don’t care and Obama is out of town and pushing a jobs message, the scandals will still be simmering when the president returns.  Republicans will make sure of it.

Obama asked how old the students were and quizzed some of the kids on basic math. After the students answered a few addition questions, one student hesitated on a subtraction problem. “Subtraction is tougher than addition,” Obama said.

The president was in Baltimore to give a speech about job creation. He visited Ellicott Dredges, a manufacturing plant that makes equipment used for infrastructure projects, telling workers, “You might not know it if you were just watching the news, and you’re exposed to all the partisan battles and brinksmanship in Washington, but the truth is there are a lot of reasons to be optimistic about where this country is headed.”

Networks are “trying to get new ratings coming out that will measure everyone’s viewing patterns no matter how you watch the show. It’s all in the future. They are trying like heck,” said Brian Steinberg, senior TV editor at Variety Wednesday.

During the Upfronts this week, networks revealed their fall schedules and unveiled new shows.

“These are big advertiser parties,” said Brian Steinberg, senior TV editor at . “The networks show up with the best of what they have to offer. They’re trying to sell a bulk of their ad inventory for the fall. The five broadcast English speaking guys alone have $9 billion to sell, just in primetime…It’s a lot of money at stake.”

We’ve seen wall to wall coverage of 6-month-old emails regarding the critical topic of Sunday show talking points. A possibly overly broad, but lawful investigation of a leak that last year Republicans demanded be aggressively investigated. And the activities of some low-level civil servants who used improper criteria to scrutinize groups that deserved scrutiny.

Meanwhile, congressional Republicans have been awfully busy grilling Eric Holder…again. Sending out letters straining to tie the incident with the low level IRS bureaucrats to some broader scheme of the administration to “chill the speech of political opponents.” Calling for people to be thrown in jail. Impressively, they even managed to squeeze in a vital 37^th vote on repealing Obamacare. An effort that has consumed no less than 15% of their time on the House floor since 2011. Well done guys.

All of this calls for a reality check. A reality check for everyone, but in particular for Republicans, D.C., and the media. Because there is a real scandal this week. A scandal that is a national disgrace, goes to the core of our character as a people, and hurts our ability to keep our country safe.  It doesn’t have anything to do with the AP, or the IRS, and lord knows it’s got nothing to do with 6-month-old talking points.

This week, while people were generally running around setting their hair on fire, we learned that for the second time in two weeks, a military member who was specifically tasked with preventing sexual assault in the military, had himself been charged with sexual assault.

Unfortunately, this is no isolated incident or random horrible coincidence. Thursday, President Obama met with Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey to discuss the growing epidemic of sexual assault in the military. A new report estimates about 500 of our military men and women were assaulted every week last year. That pace means that 71 of our brave men and women will be sexually assaulted today.

Worse perhaps than the abuse itself is that after being attacked they will have nothing but bad options. Do they report the abuse to their commander who likely knows their attacker and who may even be their attacker? Do they undergo the second trauma of telling the horrifying details of their story only to be disbelieved and for their attacker to face no consequences? After all, out of an estimated 26,000 incidences of sexual assault last year, only 1,714 service members were charged, and only 238 of those were convicted. Or do they make the choice that 9 out of 10 servicewomen who were sexually assaulted last year made, which is to keep silent and try to quietly cope with the trauma that will be with them for the rest of their lives.

We are failing on a basic level to protect and honor our men and women in uniform. Thousands of men and women are being forced to undergo sexual assault with little to no legal recourse. That is a scandal worthy of action, attention, and setting hair on fire.

Is our political system so far gone that if a crisis can’t be tied, no matter how tangentially, to a political opponent, than it’s not really worth talking about?  If so, that’s a real scandal.

You can see it in Darrell Issa’s irate questioning of the Attorney General. Within the span of one minute at a House Oversight hearing, for example, you can hear Issa interrupt, chide and scowl at Holder, at one point scolding him,“You’re not a good witness! A good witness answers the question asked.” (This excerpt even has Issa channeling Al Pacino, as he thunders, “The lady is out of order!”)

It may be understandable that many are angry with Holder, given the serious allegations in the IRS and AP investigations this week.

But the heated exchange with Issa had nothing to do with those issues.

It was from a hearing last year, over a now forgotten dispute about the “Fast and Furious” gunwalking program. (Issa received internal emails from the Justice Department about the program, and then wanted the Justice Department’s internal emails about responding to the original request.) The history is instructive because it is the hidden mantle beneath this week’s dispute. The two men clashed in another dramatic exchange at Wednesdays’ House Judiciary hearing. Last year, Issa was so mad at Holder that he led the House GOP down an unprecedented course.

On June 28, 2012, the House of Representatives voted–for the first time in American history–to hold an Attorney General in criminal contempt. There have been many battles between Congress and the executive branch in our history, but no Congress ever took the extraordinary step of seeking criminal charges against the nation’s chief law enforcement official.

So while it’s popular to say our politics are polarized, and “both parties” are to blame, as a matter of historical fact, this House GOP is set a new precedent for politicizing the oversight process.

How many times can they overplay their hand?

Now, as the Justice Department is under scrutiny for seizing the AP’s phone records and it begins an investigation into the IRS, Republicans have already used up their most significant oversight power against the attorney general–and over a much smaller matter. (What are they going to do, vote for contempt again?)

Since Washington always begins with politics, the first analysis of the Republican predicament–call it Obama Scandal Obsession–is that Issa’s approach could hurt the G.O.P. as a party.

On Wednesday, The National Review warned Republicans that “scandal is not an agenda,” and they should not think scandals will “deliver election victories in 2014.” Charles Krauthammer and Bill O’Reilly have also jumped in, urging Republicans to stop putting Obama-bashing ahead of the facts. (Again, there are no reports that the IRS or AP decisions originated in the White House, so far, these are distinctly Obama-less stories.)

Yet beyond any self-inflicted damage to the Republican brand, the GOP’s response is more concerning because it undermines independent legislative oversight of the executive branch.  We need a real investigation into the IRS–one that is focused on protecting our rights, not pursuing a political vendetta against Holder or Obama. That is difficult to achieve, however, when top Republicans issue verdicts before collecting evidence.

The IRS scrutiny of political activists could turn out to be one of the most serious First Amendment violations in the federal government today. If citizens’ speech rights were violated by the government, that is a serious problem even if the president was not involved. That is the scandal and the legal priority: Our government must strenuously avoid viewpoint discrimination in the regulation of democratic activity–even just a hint of it, and even if it’s “only” caused by incompetence (rather than orchestrated bullying). That is the substantive concern, of course, and not whether the infraction can be exploited for some pre-cooked political attack.

So far, it doesn’t look like Issa’s committee will apply those priorities in its oversight. Instead, many House Republicans seem to think they’ve found another Watergate. For all the references to that trauma in American government, today’s Republicans have clearly missed a key feature of Congressional oversight during that period.

The Senate special committee on Watergate, which convened hearings which transfixed the nation, was careful to pursue a nonpartisan search for the facts. It was a Republican member, Howard Baker, who posed the canonical question about what the president knew, and when he knew it. And it was Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee–six of them–who delivered the key votes to advance Articles of Impeachment against their own party’s president. It was a model of independent and patriotic oversight, not petty politics.

That is another reason why today’s disputes are the furthest thing from Watergate–there is no evidence of crimes emanating from the White House, and very few signs of a Republican Party capable of conducting nonpartisan oversight in the Congress.

The House Republican Conference jumped on the banana stand bandwagon Wednesday, posting a parody of the Netflix series called “Arrested Economic Development” on their Facebook and YouTube pages. The digital ad attacks Obama for taking over the healthcare industry while the economy “lay in shambles,” echoing old refrains that Obamacare will raise healthcare costs for Americans despite promises of lowering them.

“‘There’s always money in the banana stand,’ they thought. His allies were all aboard,” the ad begins. But despite the support of the “president’s magician alliance”—Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden—some Democrats are starting to see the error of their ways. “I have made terrible mistakes,” the ad concludes.

Of course, that sentiment of regret comes not from a Democrat discussing Obamacare, but from a press conference of disgraced former-Congressman (and potential New York City mayoral candidate?) Anthony Weiner, who did make some terribly unforgettable mistakes during his time in Congress.

The Arrested web advert comes at a time when the GOP is rebranding to appeal to a younger audience. The National Republican Congressional Committee has “Buzzfeedified” their site, complete with anti-Obamacare explainers like “13 Animals That Are Really Bummed On Obamacare’s Third Birthday” and “The 11 Worst Things Your Tax Dollars Are Being Wasted On,” while Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has tried to GIF and meme his way to re-election.

The House GOP wants to find criticism in the banana stand. But it’s going to take more than a jab at Joe Biden with a water gun to get young’uns on board.

The DOJ disclosed on Monday afternoon that it had secretly acquired two months’ worth of phone records of AP reporters and editors as part of an investigation into unauthorized leaks to the press. The records include calls by AP reporters in New York, Washington, and Hartford, Conn. The news-gathering organization learned of the seizure from a letter received on Friday from the U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., Ronald C. Machen Jr.

“The scope of this action calls into question the very integrity of Department of Justice policies toward the press and its ability to balance, on its own, its police powers against the First Amendment rights of the news media and the public’s interest in reporting on all manner of government conduct, including matters touching on national security which lie at the heart of this case,” the committee wrote in the letter.

The protest was addressed to Holder and copied to Machen, and signed by more than 50 media companies, including MSNBC’s parent company NBCUniversal, along with ABC, CNN, the Washington Post, the New York Times Company, Time Inc., Dow Jones, the First Amendment Coalition, and the National Press Club.

The White House on Wednesday asked New York Sen. Chuck Schumer to reintroduce legislation from 2009 that would grant journalists added protection from federal seizure requests. The bill would allow journalists to ask a federal judge to deny subpoenas and offer better protections for sources.

“This kind of law would balance national security needs against the public’s right to the free flow of information. At minimum, our bill would have ensured a fairer, more deliberate process in this case,” Schumer said in a comment on Wednesday.

The committee in the letter reiterated the AP’s request for the DOJ to return the telephone records and destroy all copies, in addition to explaining how the department will mitigate the impact of the actions and announce any other pending news media-related subpoenas not yet disclosed.

The journalists said they could not remember a similar instance in the 30 years since the DOJ issued guidelines governing its subpoena practice as it relates to phone records from reporters. The guidelines enacted in 1980-specifically to cover telephone records-were developed to accommodate “both the interests of the government in prosecuting crime and the First Amendment interests in reporting on issues of public concern,” they wrote.

This week the Obama administration has also come under fire on two other issues. Officials have acknowledged that the IRS’ Cincinnati office wrongly targeted conservative groups, giving disproportionate scrutiny to their applications to become 501(c)(4) organizations. Questions and GOP conspiracy theories over the deadly attack in Benghazi, Libya, last September also continue to bog down his administration.

The list includes Bravo’s Andy Cohen, Today Show and Morning Joe host Willie Geist, her own Cycle co-host Krystal Ball, Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart, and UP’s Steve Kornacki to name a few.

In this week’s installment, NBC’s Luke Russert joins S.E. on the couch to help her read her fan mail. Luke, who Cycle fans may also know as BRO-ssert, poses a very important question to the viewer/tweeter. “If you hate her so much then why do you follow her?”

Be sure to watch the full episode of S.E.’s Tweet Bag and let us know who you would like S.E. to sit down with next to help her read through her mail. Happy Tweeting!