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RachelWatch: More Troubling Information About “The Family”

Today: Ana Marie Cox talks Palin and the CIA hasn’t been talking to anybody.

C Street Band

We had such a nice time visiting the home for Congressional members of the far-right-wing religious group “The Family” that Rachel decided to whip up some potato salad and drop by again with Jeff Sharlet of Harper’s.

You want to watch this clip.

In addition to being a secretive, way-outside-the-mainstream religious group that likes to have its own channels for moving large amounts of money around, The Family has pretty explicit goals of consolidating power and an open admiration for Hitler’s management style.

And a dorm for several members of Congress.

Everybody enjoy that anxiety-based adrenaline spike? I find that clip keeps me much more on my toes than a cup of coffee. Though a tad more likely to scream and defensively thwack people in the face with my stapler if they tap me on the shoulder.

At Least He Bought Him Dinner

Rachel showed us an uncomfortably funny clip of conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks. Brooks claimed politicians are so “emotionally needy” that one Republican Senator spent an entire dinner with his hand on Brooks’ inner thigh.

Dude. Those were not emotional needs he was expressing.

Search & Seizures

But Rachel was not done messing with your endocrine system, so just say your farewells to that resting heart rate. Rachel moved on to the story of a CIA program so secret that the Director of the CIA wasn’t allowed to know about it. Need-to-know was pretty much limited to President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and John “Will Justify for Hugs” Yoo.

Great jumping catfish. So as far as we know, the CIA has just been running around doing anything, whenever they feel like it, based on a quick order from Bush, Cheney, Yoo, and some guy who was working the White House coat check that day. Bugging your mom’s Red Hat Ladies meetings, fixing ring toss games at carnivals, Making upskirt and toilet-cam videos for the Internet, whatever the hell they want.

I must say I am intrigued with John Yoo’s career strategy. Based on the torture memos and this last attempt to rewrite the Constitution on flash paper, he seems to be a really bad lawyer.

Every other lawyer I’ve heard talk about this say his memos suck so hard they could pull a waterboard through a garden hose.

It seems like Yoo sized up his lawyering skills and decided to create his own niche market by being willing to whip up a shaky legal justification for literally anything. And where did it take him? Straight to the top, that’s where!

Why hasn’t it taken him to jail yet?

All Politics Are Loco

The Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Sonia Sotomayor start today, and odds are she is a shoo-in. Republicans, however, are not going gently into that good night.

Or classily.

Rachel reported that, against all reason and several other good things, Republicans are still going to go with the poking-the-white-racist-hornet’s-nest strategy.

Way to go down in history, jerknozzles.

Last time I checked, true conservatism is not about being a racist dickwad. At what point do real conservatives get full up to their necks of this kind of repellent rhetoric and form a new party that’s actually based on their principles instead of race-baiting and religious posturing?

And why haven’t they yet? I know (and know of) plenty of conservatives who are just as disgusted by racism as any good liberal. How are they living with themselves and why aren’t more of them speaking out?

Are they gambling on a party resurgence? Is this really a party a thinking conservative would want to save anymore?

Seriously, guys. It wouldn’t kill us to have a few colors other than red and blue on the election map. And think of the fun you could have picking out a new mascot!

Or you could spend the next seven and a half years nodding and grinding your teeth while Newt Bloviates. Hell, you’ve got dental, right?

Melissa Harris-Lacewell of Princeton University dropped in to try to make sense of it all as Rachel essentially asked “But what can they possibly be THINKING?” six different ways. Harris-Lacewell, taking dead aim at the issues as always, pointed out that the Sotomayor flap and the revolting incident at the Valley Club swimming pool prove that we don’t get to relax into a post-race society just yet.

GOP in Exile

Governor (for now!) Sarah Palin heightened suspicions that she and Tina Fey are doing some sort of wacky life-switching prank by appearing on the “Firearms Friday” edition of The Michael Dukes Show in Alaska. With Ted Nugent.

Comedy has collapsed in on itself. There are no more jokes.

Ana Marie Cox dropped in with some good cheer, good analysis, and an excellent ice sculpture metaphor.

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