The Rachel Maddow Show Blog

Rachel is back in the saddle today after being carted off to TeeVee Land to fill in for Keith Olbermann yesterday.  So thank you to David Bender for filling in and thank you to all of our callers.  If you want to hear more of David you can catch his show Politically Direct every Sunday on Air America Radio.

On today's show Rachel will be talking to sports writer Dave Zirin about how he became a target of state police surveillance and the unceremonious way in which he found out about it.  And then Paul Rieckhoff will be here discussing his latest story up on Huffington Post right now: the ongoing saga of the Pat Tillman cover-up.

Welcome back to the work week, everyone. On this Monday we greet you with open arms and a Young Turk! Cenk Uygur from the Young Turks will be here live talking about the Netroots Nation conference and the Vice Presidential guessing game. Did you see that Bob Novak is reporting that McCain will announce his VP THIS week?! And then Cathy Zoi, the CEO of Alliance for Climate Change, will be talking about Al Gore's monumental challenge: for our nation to commit to producing 100 percent of our electricity from renewable energy and truly clean, carbon-free sources within 10 years. Learn more about Gore's challenge here.

David Bender is filling in for Rachel again today and he'll be taking your calls, (866) 303-2270

Does one person really have to work out 4 times in one day? hmmm

On today's show David Bender, host of Politically Direct and Rachel's political guru, will be calling in from Netroots Nation in Austin, Texas to let us know what's happening at the left blog world's prom.  And then Iraq expert Juan Cole stops by to talk about whether or not Bush has really agreed to a timetable for troop withdrawals in Iraq.

Good morning/afternoon/evening TRMS fans! On today's show Rachel will be talking to Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean about his southern state voter drive launching today in Crawford, Texas. No word yet on whether or not he had time to clear some brush. Also, Rachel welcomes Ben Smith from Politico.com back to the show. They will be talking about John McCain's poor and potentially damaging sense of "humor."

Afghanistan is back on the front pages. And that is good for Obama because he's the one who put it there. He is leading the discussion. But it's also bad news in terms of what is actually happening on the ground-- violence, and lots of it.