This was a remarkable Wednesday in Washington, and not just because it was one of those delightful days in which you can hear your sweat congeal the minute you hit an air-conditioned hallway, which reminds us that Our Nation's Capital is a swamp that traded malaria for politics, as Paul Scofield's Mark Van Doren says in Quiz Show. It was a remarkable Wednesday because almost the entire day was dedicated to exercises in unreality – or dysreality, depending on your ideological whammer-jammer. The main event, of course, was the extravaganza mounted outside the capitol by Tailgunner Ted Cruz and Donald Trump to inveigh against the done-deal Iran nuclear deal, about which more anon. But the undercard featured a meeting of the House Judiciary Committee in which one of the most important legislative committees in our government gathered to discuss what are almost assuredly doctored videotapes. The committee set itself in judgment of a sham, a lie, perpetrated on the gullible, and on the people whom the gullible send to Congress. Let us be plain. Planned Parenthood is not in the business of selling off babies for parts. Anyone who says that is the case, or implies that is the case, or hints that is the case, is perpetrating a fraud on the politics of the country.

Ever since the deceptively named Center for Medical Progress released Plan 9 From The Womb, their manufactured horror film about fetal chop shops, state after state has launched its own investigation and found that Planned Parenthood's activities in regard to fetal tissue donation conform to all applicable state laws. This was true in Massachusetts and it was true in Indiana. Elsewhere on Capitol Hill yesterday, the Democratic members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee issued their own report that found PP innocent of any wrongdoing.

But the majority on the House Judiciary Committee is a different box of rocks altogether. It is the '27 Yankees of wingnut fauna. Issa! Gowdy! Gohmert! King! Even Blake Farenthold, the shebeen's incumbent Royal Regent of the Crazy People. It being too damned hot for kangaroo suits, this astonishing assemblage of legislative flotsam wore their civvies to today's production of -- and I am not making this up, it really was the official title of the hearing – Planned Parenthood Exposed: Examining The Horrific Abortion Practices at The Nation's Leading Abortion Provider."

Nobody from the Center for Medical Progress was called to testify, of course, because some Democrat might ask them why their videos have been judged to be fudged by just about everyone who doesn't work for the Center For Medical Progress. And nobody from Planned Parenthood was called, because, come on, really? The panel consisted of two "abortion survivors," and James Bopp, Jr., a conservative legal superstar who cut his teeth in the anti-choice movement but since has branched out into voter-suppression and the destruction of campaign finance regulation. A walking example of the unified field theory of wingnut law, is Mr. Bopp.

The testimony was pretty much as you'd expect. Gianna Jessen, one of the "abortion survivors," and someone who has made a nice career out of it, appealed to the committee, "How many Lamborghinis have been purchased with the blood of murdered children?" (No, no. The right thing to ask is "How many Priuses have been purchased with the blood of murdered children?" That's the proper wingnut two-fer.) Jessen's fellow "survivor," Melissa Ohden, was forced to admit that, no, the abortion that she survived did not take place at a Planned Parenthood clinic but, what the hell, this wasn't specifically about PP anyway. It was, as Congressman Steve Cohen pointed out, another front in the endless campaign to restrict reproductive freedom, which is why the committee was treated to Jessen's unhinged religious hysteria, and the mournful countenance of Congressman Trent Franks of Arizona, who was worried about all the little things. The little babies with their little hearts and their little faces that abortionists rip open to scoop out their little brains. Halfway through Franks's statement, I began to expect bats to come flying out of his ears. He even brought convicted babykiller Kermit Gosnell into the mix, even though Gosnell has as much to do with Planned Parenthood as Charlie Manson does with thoracic surgery. Franks linked Gosnell and Planned Parenthood at the end of his statement, a lovely little bit of Grand Guignol McCarthyism that would give a wharf rat the dry heaves. That was the way it was in Washington on Wednesday. Everybody pretended to believe all the lies because it was too damn hot for the truth.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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