The screenshot here is from a new intro that MSNBC’s “Hardball” has been using all week. Chris Matthews has turned his show into a one-stop shop for paranoid lefties to swap conspiracy theories and baseless speculation about the CIA leak case.

To give you an example of the kind of thinking that has led Matthews to re-brand his show complete with photo-negative graphics and fake mug-shots of every administration official connected to the war in Iraq, check out this quote from an exchange Matthews had with criminal defense attorney DeMaurice Smith and Democratic attorney Stan Brand on the day Scooter Libby was arraigned:

MATTHEWS: Let’s get back and fill that in. Because we know the first step in this chronology is that the vice president, according to the indictment, told Scooter Libby who Valerie Wilson was. She was working for the CIA and had some role in sending her husband on that trip to Africa. Then we know a month later