Today: Is Newt Gingrich wearing a mink stole?
Fierce Advocate?
Rachel led off with the story that the Supreme Court has declined to hear the case of Captain James Pietrangelo, who after 13 years of service was fired for being gay under the monumentally stupid Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell law.
The Court turned down the case at the request of the Obama administration. Rachel noted that President Obama once promised to be a “fierce advocate” for the LGBT community.
I guess he meant “fierce” in the America’s Next Top Model sense: Just posing.
Just in case you wanted to see what an actual advocate looks like, Congressman Rush Holt (D — New Jersey), Chairman of the Select Intelligence Oversight Panel, joined Rachel in the studio to talk about his co-sponsorship of a bill to overturn DADT.
Red Alert
Scott Roeder, the man accused of walking into Dr. George Tiller’s church and murdering him in cold blood, called the Associated Press and claimed that he knew of “many other similar events planned around the country as long as abortion remains legal.”
Rachel welcomed back the fascinating Frank Schaeffer, a former member of the anti-abortion movement and author of Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back.
I know it’s hard to control who shows up for your political rallies, and frustrating to be associated with the jerkballs who always seem to find room in their schedules to do so, but Schaeffer is right.
If you want to be seen as legitimate — and if you don’t want people to confuse you with the scary guys on the fringe — you have to be vigilant about policing your own. And about turning the lawless scumbags over to the authorities.
People in the anti-abortion movement can learn something from the porn industry in that regard. Not that they ever look at porn.
Ms. Information
In a reminder that the whole point is to hire spies who don’t look like spies, Rachel gave us the odd story of former State Department official Kendall Myers, 72, and his wife Gwendolyn, 71, who are accused of spying for Cuba for nearly 30 years.
The story does not (yet) include car chases or shooting at people while wearing evening clothes, but does include information drops via shopping cart. Someone more skilled at such things tthan me, please write a novel called The Boring Spy.
Rachel also alerted us to a rich source of international crazypantsery: Iran is having a Presidential election this week, and it looks like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may be on his way out.
Which is odd, because a story about being surrounded by light during a speech so compelling that no one in the audience could blink is usually just the thing to turn an election around.
Ahmadinejad also accused the wife of a political rival of faking her way into graduate school.
Can you imagine living in a country so sexist and politically unsophisticated that someone would think it’s a legitimate tactic to suggest that an educated woman couldn’t have gotten into a good school on her own? Sorry, what? Oh.
Awkward Dinner Plans
Every time I let my attention waver for 30 seconds and forget what a complete weasel Newt Gingrich is, he looms into camera range and reminds me.
R
He has, in Rachel’s excellent neologism, “Newtracted” his Twitter whine about how Judge Sotomayor is a racist, but then hit the talk shows to say that while he certainly didn’t mean she was a racist, he did mean she had said racist things. Or in his own neologism, “racialist.”
I’m sorry. I would like to retract my earlier comparison after a protest by deeply offended members of the International Association of Mustelidae. The word “weasel” should not have been applied to Newt Gingrich. I just meant to say that his statement is clearly ferretlike.
All of this plays into an apparent slap-fight with Sarah Palin about who should speak at Monday’s Republican Congressional Campaign Committee fundraising dinner.
Pulitzer Prize—winning columnist Eugene Robinson dropped in to have a very fun chat with his pal Rachel about how “politicians of a certain age should not be allowed near social networking” and Gingrich’s demonstrably stoatish statements.
The two brought up the point that the people who are howling about Sotomayor have been so busy being polecatastic that they have apparently failed to realize that they are trying to take down a nominee who will probably shift the court a bit to the right.
At any rate, I hope the dinner was enjoyable, and that Newt waited until the meal was served instead of burrowing into the henhouse again.
One More Thing:
Sotomayor fractured her ankle Monday morning while running to catch a plane. She received treatment after catching the flight and stopping in at the White House, then rested up by attending six meetings.
I think the prospects for the Supreme Court’s summer government league decathlon team are looking up.
Brace yourself for the upcoming flurry of Republican sound bites about how they’re concerned over Sotomayor’s chronic airport tardiness.
GOP in Exile
Rachel showed us some almost sweet footage of Norm Coleman talking about how the Democratic Party only did well in the last election because of their “grass e-roots.” And then he repeated it over and over, and even spelled out “Grass-space-e-hyphen-roots.”
I guess he didn’t want anyone to think he was saying “grassy roots,” which I believe are among the possible side effects of Ambien.
Hard Labor
Laura Ling and Euna Lee have been sentenced to 12 years of hard labor in North Korea.
Rachel raised spirits a bit by explaining that even a guilty sentence makes it easier to negotiate for their release, and then brought in Andrea Mitchell to convince you that the world is going to blow up in the next six seconds.
Cocktail Moment
Rachel congratulated the state champion Rochelle High School Women’s Track Team, which has only one member, Bonnie Richardson.
Ms. Richardson, I know you are used to working alone, but if you are willing to team up with Judge Sotomayor, I think you have the makings of an unstoppable Amazing Race team.
