(Permanent Musical Accompaniment To The Last Post Of The Week From The Blog's Favourite Living Canadian)

WASHINGTON—They cannot govern. The Republican Party as it is presently constituted, from party base to congressional leadership, is competent to do two things: complain and vandalize. If that wasn't made clear last November, it was made clear this week, when the entire government was turned into the biggest, gooiest, chewiest clusterfck in the history of democratic politics. It was the base who elected not only president*, but also all the members of Congress who got promoted up through the ranks when a great number of them probably should have been left back in Bug Tussle keeping Them off the golf course at The Club.

The congressional Republican majority doesn't need the president* to help it step on its dick, although his presence does add to the inherent comedy of any situation. This mess in the House Intelligence Committee is almost exclusively an intramural affair.

Chairman Devin Nunes, a former Trump transition team member, has drained every ounce of the committee's credibility as an oversight body. Democratic senior member Adam Schiff—no, not that Adam Schiff—is dead right about this. Schiff got completely fed up on Friday, when Nunes called an early-morning press conference, at which he contradicted himself and continued to appear as though he was running cover for the White House, and then later announced that he'd canceled a public hearing scheduled for next week at which James Clapper, John Brennan, and defenestrated US Attorney Sally Yates were scheduled to testify.

Curiously, former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, and longtime Trump associate Carter Page, both of whom have worked extensively with important figures in the Russian governmental-entrepreneurial kleptocracy, offered to meet with the committee to discuss the suspicions that have been swirling around them. Nunes hinted that he would allow Manafort and Page to decide whether or not they'll appear in closed session, which is another thing that drove Schiff up the wall. He met with reporters on Friday afternoon.

"We don't welcome cutting off the public access to information when we have witnesses who are willing to testify in an open session," Schiff said. "To take evidence that may or may not be related to an investigation into Trump and his associates to the White House was wholly inappropriate. All of us are essentially in the dark."

Nunes has to go. He's compromised to within an inch of his liver. He's also fathoms over his head in this situation.

(In fact, and maybe this is my years covering Massachusetts politics coming out, were I Paul Ryan, and I thought the White House was going to try and pin the failure of the healthcare bill on my zombie-eyed, granny-starving behind, I might drop word that I was planning to take the Intelligence Committee away from Nunes and hand it to some Republican not necessarily loyal to the administration. Since I don't think Ryan's politician enough to come out of the rain at this point, I doubt this will happen, but it would be fun.)

I still prefer a bloodthirsty young special prosecutor to a gathering of Beltway wise men as an alternative. But one thing I do know: This week of disastrous nonsense was four decades in the making, and the Democratic minority has no responsibility for prying the Republicans' feet off their own dick.

Exhibit B is, of course, the healthcare debacle. Whee! Governmentin' is hard.

The Master gave an interview to his own website this week, and it was completely, essentially Bob. He talked about his sudden turn toward recording standards.

These songs are meant for the man on the street, the common man, the everyday person. Maybe that is a Bob Dylan fan, maybe not, I don't know…I had some idea of where they stood, but I hadn't realized how much of the essence of life is in them – the human condition, how perfectly the lyrics and melodies are intertwined, how relevant to everyday life they are, how non-materialistic.

His memories of growing up in northern Minnesota during World War II are vivid and clear.

Not much. I was born in Duluth – industrial town, ship yards, ore docks, grain elevators, mainline train yards, switching yards. It's on the banks of Lake Superior, built on granite rock. Lot of fog horns, sailors, loggers, storms, blizzards. My mom says there were food shortages, food rationing, hardly any gas, electricity cutting off – everything metal in your house you gave to the war effort. It was a dark place, even in the light of day – curfews, gloomy, lonely, all that sort of stuff – we lived there till I was about five, till the end of the war.

And then there's this, perfect Bob, apotheosis Bob, telling a short saga about meeting Frank Sinatra:

Not really. I think he knew "The Times They Are a-Changin'" and "Blowin' In the Wind." I know he liked "Forever Young," he told me that. He was funny, we were standing out on his patio at night and he said to me, "You and me, pal, we got blue eyes, we're from up there," and he pointed to the stars. "These other bums are from down here." I remember thinking that he might be right.

Read the whole thing and realize that, among his other contributions, Bob Dylan is one of the great historians of the 20th Century. Old Blue Eyes, he never left.

Weekly WWOZ Pick To Click: "Surfing Tuba" (Boom Pah): Yeah, I still pretty much love New Orleans.

Weekly Visit To The Pathe Archives: Here's the special session of Congress that FDR called in January of 1937. Watch big government get big, thank god. Dig those reporters running for the phone booths.

History is so cool.

I would like to point out that, because of two great games on Thursday night, the Society is guaranteed one entrant in this year's Final Four. (If you come at the X, you'd best not miss.) If that's not enough to get Papa Francesco back over here, I don't know what is. C'mon, NCAA, get the man a ticket.

What the hell is Steve Mnuchin talking about? From The Hill:

"He's got perfect genes," Mnuchin continued. "He's got incredible energy, OK? And he's unbelievably healthy."

I find Mnuchin's gifts as a geneticist and microbiologist lacking. Perhaps he can arrange for someone to robo-sign away some of the president*'s waistline.

True political fact: as a legislative leader, Nancy Pelosi is, as the late Mr. Breslin once wrote of Joan Doar, a terribly fierce 15-round fighter and one baaaad lady generally. In the lounge of the Great Caucus Room In The Sky, Shirley Chisholm, Mr. Sam, and Lyndon watched Friday unfold, clinked glasses and ordered up another round.

Is it a good day for dinosaur news, Guardian? It's always a good day for dinosaur news!

Until now, many scientists have backed the view that the first dinosaurs emerged around 237 million years ago on the ancient continent known as Gondwana, that would later become the southern hemisphere, based on a host of immaculately preserved fossils from South America and Tanzania. However, the latest analysis identifies a Scottish specimen, called Saltopus, as the closest thing in the fossil record to what the hypothetical common ancestor might look like. Matt Baron, the graduate student who led the three-year project at the University of Cambridge, said that while it would never be possible to pinpoint the origin of dinosaurs with certainty his findings placed the northern hemisphere into contention. "It may just be that dinosaurs originated in Scotland," he said. "This is obviously going to be met with some hostility from Southern American researchers," he added.

I foresee terrible trouble coming from homeschooled Christian dinosaurs who will go to court to demand that the Scottish origin be taught as "just a theory." Teach the controversy. Of course, here with a rebuttal is Groundskeeper Willie.

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I'll have a recap of Friday's extraordinary doings tomorrow. Otherwise, I'll be back on Monday, with some frenzied blame-shifting gobshitery. Be well and play nice, ya bastids. Stay above the snake-line, and enjoy the shackles of affordable healthcare for a little while longer.

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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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