Southern Discomfort
Rachel started us off with a recap of the second day of confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor.

Before you watch the clips of Senator Sessions (R – Alabama), you might want to build a swearing booth yourself. Or slam your hand in a screen door as you watch to diminish the sting of fury and mortification.

Dahlia Lithwick of Slate.com dropped by, and is irritated enough by the whole thing to be particularly animated and fun.

Two more days of this magic to go!

3 Days of the Cheney
I must grudgingly give props to former Vice President Dick Cheney: The man does not plateau.

Over and over again, I think he’s made me so cynical that I can’t possibly be surprised anymore.

“What now?” I’ll think, “He wore a radioactive Oil King crown set with dark obsidian jewels? Yawn. He was drilling for crude from inside the White House with a liberal use of chloroform and giant, trained moles? What else is new?”

But then he reaches for the sulfurous blood-red stars and leaves me whomperjawed all over again.

Thank you, Dick Cheney, for helping me to discover new depths of my soul.

Rachel brings up a really good point about the latest round of shadow government power-grabbing that I haven’t heard anywhere else: Why were they scrambling so hard to hide it?

It’s the extra-credit flourish of incompetence that really takes my breath away on this one.

Not only were we sending secret death squads around the world, we were sending out assassination teams who sucked at it! They killed the wrong guy so many times that it became an international issue!

I hate to play Monday morning quarterback, but if I were running a clandestine murder outfit, I think I might call a check-in meeting early on. Like maybe after only the first or second innocent mailman or meter reader got offed.

At the very least, I would write “CHECK THE ADDRESS!” at the top of everybody’s MapQuest printouts.

On the other hand, maybe Cheney wasn’t very hands-on once things got up and running. Given the apparent number of needless deaths, I’m guessing he outsourced to KBR.

So the CIA routinely lies to Congress and has been merrily killing whomever they want (or, you know, close enough for jazz) for decades. I now understand that there is no way in hell that Cheney is not currently running a personal death squad.

Mr. Cheney, please hire a good proofreader; I have some very nice neighbors.

Ms. Information
Rachel reported that Governor Mark Sanford (R – South Carolina) ignored fifteen phone calls from his chief of staff while exploring the trails of Argentina.

Oh, great. Now we have to hear Sanford’s explanation about how he couldn’t pick up the phone because that wouldn’t be romantic.

Baseball fan Rachel also filled us in on the plight of the Iraqi national baseball team, which has no money for a diamond or even a full team’s worth of equipment. Please take a moment to pour some on the floor for the catcher.

Rachel said the TRMS staff is working on figuring out how to unstick the red tape involved in getting some equipment over there. Aww.

Ensign 2012!
I’m guessing Senator John Ensign (R – Nevada) saw Sarah Palin catch a lot of flack for resigning her post so early in her term. Do you think that’s what made him think announcing his plans to run for re-election in three years would be a good idea?

Because at least he can commit, right? Well, to his job, anyway.

Rachel welcomed back both Las Vegas Sun columnist Jon Ralston and the adorable payoff graphics to point out that there are as of yet no canceled checks to support the tidy, tax-and-campaign-finance-law-abiding explanation that Ensign’s parents paid off his mistress and some (But not all!) of her family.

How do you suppose they’ll explain to the kid who’s not going to college that it’s because he didn’t make the cut for mom’s adultery payoffs?

I guess that’s what they make birthday cards for.

Mr. Greedy
Let’s finish off with some righteous umbrage, shall we?

Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren has got the number of our country’s credit card issuers, which are currently flooding Washington and firing up their PR machines to fight the Consumer Financial Protection Agency.

I’m sure they have our best interests in mind. No? How about our best interest rates? Damn.

Anyway, Warren rocks and she is watching our backs. We should be too.

Did you want to have a word with your Senators or Representative after that? Me too.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to paint a desert canyon on my front door so that the Cheney death squad and their rocket-powered roller skates will just whack right into it.