This evening, the Rachel Maddow show starts now. Early for a change. I have something to spend this time doing. Exactly. Thanks, my friend, appreciate it. Thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. Very happy to have you here tonight. Who here is old enough to have ever used a typewriter . I took typing class and it was on a typewriter. Im that old. Typewriters started off with a mechanism that looked like this. You pressed a button on a keyboard for a specific letter, but then a little arm, a little bar would swing up from the guts of the keyboard and smack that letter into the inked typewriter ribbon, and thereby pressed the imprint of that letter on to the paper, right . So that was the mechanism. Each keystroke on the typewriter would cause a piece of metal to fling itself up toward the paper. A different little bar with a different letter on it for each keystroke. That was how they started out. But then in 1961, ibm changed all of that. Ibm invented a whole new kind of elect
and when that got found out in 1984, that was the time when we were finding out a lot of other things that were very, very bad about our embassy and the russians spying on us and spying on that embassy around that time. one of the biggest scandals, one of the biggest failures ever on the part of the united states when it came to spying and russia started in 1969, when then president richard nixon came to hard-fought agreement with the soviet union. and the agreement was that the soviets would be allowed to build a new soviet embassy in washington. and we, simultaneously, would be allowed to build a new american embassy in moscow. that was agreed to after much negotiation in 1969. they weren t actually ready to start construction itself in moscow until a decade later in 1979. but if you think about that time in modern u.s. history, this was a very chilly part of the cold war, right? and by the time the u.s. was ready to start construction on our new embassy is no guo in 1979, the sure f
lose the race. if there is ever a circumstance where republicans could lose you re looking at it right now. but you can t look at this history and say roy moore is certain to lose this thing. it is possible he ll get elected. and what do you make of the washington machinations today what the republican party could or might do to basically rid themselves of him to keep him out of the senate or to expel him from the senate if he does win? if he does win, look, it s hard when you look at the statements that are being made right now about the intent to expel, and also the rationale for expulsion. the comments being made about roy moore s character, about roy moore s actions, these look like comments that will be very difficult to walk back from if you re a republican. so the republicans won t be able to change their mind? it s hard to see them saying eh, the people spoke. they ve already said look, there is an election, but we re not going the wait for the election to say this man
and as republicans deal with a not-quite-exact but weirdly similar situation on their hands now, now a republican candidate for senate, accused of sexual misconduct against teenagers, honestly, there s no one better suited in the united states senate to manage a crisis like this. to end a crisis like this, than mitch mcconnell. there is no one who has more apt experience for how you make a problem like this go away. calling for roy moore to drop out of the senate race in alabama is a thing. calling for alabama voters to reject him and vote for his opponent instead, that s a thing. but roy moore isn t just trying to win a random contest. he s trying to join something. he s trying to join the united states senate. and that body has considerable say over whether or not roy moore gets to do that. and yes, they could wait until after the election to start working then on expelling roy moore once he gets to washington, but the senate could also begin holding hearings on roy moore right now a
interesting, nonetheless, deciding decid deciding to withhold their release. but they are part of the assassination collection. one interesting document that i ve noticed, and i haven t looked at all of them, is a document from two days after the assassination. if you want to see examples of federal bungling, this is a document that the house assassination committee found apparently from j. edgar hoover where hoover was explaining why he does not want an independent investigation of ruby s killing of oswald and of oswald s killing of the president. he says, we were intercepting oswald s conversations in mexico city and we intercepted a male going to the soviet embassy in washington, both of those had information relating to oswald s state of mind and that information didn t go to the secretary service. by the way, it s j. edgar hoover, so he also thinks that jack ruby is gay. i don t know why.