Over at Greg Sargent's blog we are shown this:

CIA Postpones Release Of Big Torture Report That Could Undercut Cheney

And over at the New Yorker , we are shown this: The Secret History, containing this about Panetta:

"The record of outsiders taking over the C.I.A. is mixed. John McCone, a California shipping magnate who ran the agency in the Kennedy and Johnson years, is often cited as being among the most successful directors; having been trained as a mechanical engineer, he was skilled at assessing threats posed by both conventional and nuclear weapons. But other outsiders have been met with intense hostility. James Schlesinger was named C.I.A. director by President Richard Nixon after heading the Atomic Energy Commission. Given instructions to "get rid of the clowns," Schlesinger dismissed or forced into retirement more than five hundred analysts and a thousand clandestine officers. He faced death threats, and his tenure lasted six months. In 1995, President Clinton appointed John Deutch, who had previously served at the Pentagon. Deutch tried to improve the oversight of clandestine operatives after evidence surfaced that an agent in Guatemala had covered up two murders. Deutch was reviled by many operatives, and he left the agency after eighteen months. Eventually, he was accused of mishandling classified documents and stripped of his security clearance. "You pick on the C.I.A. at your own peril," Michael Waldman says."

Note the last sentence: "You pick on the C.I.A. at your own peril," Michael Waldman says."

Are we having an "Oh, really?" moment yet?

Then consider Valerie Plame.

That's politics. You're welcome, and please pass the popcorn.

The depth of the GOP's ignorance, combined with the breadth of the lack of contact between the GOP and the rest of the world is, I confess, breath-taking.

Though I've long said here that they don't get it; and included in some post or another something about communication;I really had no idea how extensive, even all-encompassing, their ignorance and lack of contact are.

It's like they are a child, found in a basement after years of imprisonment, knowing only the company of animals, attempting to sniff the butt of his rescuer. They really cannot be blamed for behaving inappropriately. Can they? Read on.

Or it's like they've been recently released from a prison they constructed for their own selves; and, possessed by inappropriate feelings of betrayal, sally forth in Lady Vengeance mode. The only problem here is that they've only their selves to blame....and it's at this point one encounters The Pity Party Meme in the recent Twitter posts about Iran.

In my febrile imaginings, I expect some enterprising Young Republican to begin tentatively moving toward a National Reconciliation by opining "Like the Russians in 1991, our Party post-Reagan and post-Bush was just not prepared for Democracy. We blame our moms."

Here they are, actually: living in what they describe as the world's greatest democracy; a global example of how to correctly implement capitalism; surrounded by (for much of the planet's population) unimaginable wealth; saturated with marketing for tech wonders and gee-gaws bordering on kitsch; in a nation long past re-construction....acting like they've been exiled to a cave on Deprivation Archipelago in the year dot.

When the problem is really their ignorance flowing from an obstreperous, self-imposed exile from the civil, secular, commons that is our Republic.