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RachelWatch: Duly Noted

Today: Rachel gets autotuned and Nancy Pelosi gets backup from the Nerd Brigade.

Drip, Drip, Drip

I know it seems impossible that the torture story could be getting even creepier, but it is.

Rachel led off with piece after piece after piece of evidence to support the gut-wrenching story that the Bush administration was not really waterboarding people to prevent imminent attacks.

They seem instead to have been torturing people to try to find a link between Iraq and Al-Quaeda in order to justify their made-up reasons for staring a real war.

The intensity and severity of interrogations were stepped up NOT because of a belief that new attacks were imminent, but because the administration was frustrated at the prisoners’ failure to provide connecting evidence that never existed.

We were stuffing people into boxes, slamming them into walls, and simulating drowning for the noble and urgent cause of political ass-covering.

And people wonder why Canadians sew giant maple leaves to everything they own when they travel.

Jane Mayer, author of The Dark Side, painted an unsettling picture of a terrified, obsessive Dick Cheney who was meddling with the CIA to a disturbing degree.

I realized as I watched this report that, given the choice of realities, I would actually prefer the one in which the truth that gets revealed is Bush and Cheney pulling off latex faces to reveal alien lizard heads.

Kangaroo Court

Wacky WereBush Fridays continued with the Obama administration’s newsdump announcement that we will be re-starting military tribunals at Guantanamo. Yes, those would be the same ones that Obama stopped because they were actually managing to be less fair than testing to see if the prisoner weighs the same as a duck.

Air Force Major David Frakt, a defense counselor at Guantanamo, joined Rachel to laugh bitterly at the idea that his client would be getting any actual justice, noting that coerced evidence and hearsay evidence are still totally fine in military tribunals and essentially suggesting that his client would have a fairer shot if he were tried via cootie catcher.

Ms. Information

If you had any doubts that the credit card industry had gotten to-hell-with-everything bold over the last several years, Rachel sliced right through them with the Hello Kitty credit card.

No, it’s a real thing. Hello Kitty credit card. At least your tween’s debt will be adorable.

Rachel was pretty darned excited because Superfilly Rachel Alexandra was set to race in the Preakness this weekend, and rightly so.

Jockey Calvin Borel rode Rachel Alexandra to a stunning win in the Kentucky Oaks, and then the next day rode Mine That Bird to win the Kentucky Derby at 50-1 odds. And how was your work week?

Both horses were entered in the Preakness, and Borel chose to ride Rachel Alexandra in spite of the fact that only four fillies had won the Preakness in the history of the race.

SPOILER: I think we just might see another story on Rachel Alexandra Monday night.

Karl Remarks

Rachel reported the long-awaited news that Karl Rove, bristling with taser spikes, grappling hooks, and tranquilizer darts, is finally being brought back under the rule of law.

Rove spent four hours on Friday talking to a special prosecutor about his alleged role in the politicization of the Department of Justice.

Rachel welcomed former U.S. Attorney David Iglesias, who is seems pretty sure that Rove’s role was along the lines of “leading man.”

Rachel Re: Dear Diary

You know that dweebalicious thing you do? The one your family and friends make gentle fun of because it’s a little too much? Always having two pens and a mechanical pencil with you or reorganizing your class notes every night or saving every postcard you ever got or, oh, I don’t know, marking every single thing you do and every person you talk to and what you ate at precise 10-minute intervals all day long?

Well keep doing it, and do it with pride. Because going quietly, calmly, steadfastly Nerdcore just smacked down the CIA.

Cocktail Moment

Because it was Friday and because the lead story may well have sent you spinning into a nauseating existential crisis, the good folks at The Rachel Maddow Show — and perhaps the Universe itself — thought you deserved a treat.

Thus, a tasty bonus clip of some autotuned news, featuring a newscaster you may have seen before.

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