People waking up Wednesday morning to news that police had raided an apartment in the Paris suburbs, and killed two terrorists, were perhaps not surprised, if they had seen this Monday night introduction to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show. In the nearly 15-minute-long clip, Maddow delivers a detailed and stunning report of the link between the alleged mastermind of Friday’s Paris attacks and a nearly year-long series of terror incidents in France and Belgium. Abdelhamid Abaaoud, Maddow says, was “pinging like the sunrise” on security radar, and on Wednesday, police in Saint Denis came upon a hornets nest while pursuing him. The reporting is not original; the dot-connecting is, and it reflects the long-form journalistic possibilities, sadly rarely demonstrated, of cable news. —Jonathan Storm