Chris Matthews says a lot of things. So it's to be expected that sometimes they're smart and insightful, and sometimes they're embarrassingly wrong.

Just now, the MSNBC anchor, opining on the news that DOJ is dropping the charges in the Ted Stevens case, declared that the decision means "the charges should never have been brought, there should never have been a prosecution."

Um, no. The Justice Department made clear that it was dropping the case because of prosecutorial missteps -- specifically the failure to hand over a key piece of evidence to defense lawyers. The decision has almost no bearing on the merits of the underlying case against Stevens, who was convicted last fall of failing to disclose hundreds of thousands of dollar in gifts from an oil-services contractor.

Here's the video: