The Republican Party has planned two big initiatives this week. They are set to filibuster an extension of unemployment benefits for the tens of thousands of Americans who can't find work.

At the same time they've launched their rebranding effort ahead of the 2010 elections. The effort is called "America Speaking Out." It's a fairly expensive campaign with a new website, produced videos, integrated voting tools and an expensive set at the Newseum to launch the effort.

The whole thing would be fine and Democrats could just spend their time mocking the odd platform ideas (like repealing Section II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964) if it was being paid for by a party committee like Michael Steele's RNC. Except that Republicans don't want Michael Steele anywhere close to their election platform. They decided to run the entire project from their minority offices in the House of Representatives.

That means that everyone reading Crooks & Liars is paying for the Republican Party's 2010 election re-branding efforts and helping foot the bill for the Party's platform in 2010.

They can't even claim that the effort isn't about the 2010 election. Kevin McCarthy, the NRCC's recruiter for 2010, said it was all about the 2010 elections in an appearance on ABC News this morning.

"There are a number of seats that you get just by being 'no,'" Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the California Republican spearheading the effort, told ABC News. "But you don't get a majority by just being 'no'. You've got to say what you're for."

Eric Cantor, the GOP's No. 2 in the House, said this about their new effort:

"Look, we understand we were fired in 2006 for a reason," Rep. Cantor said in an interview. "We have learned and we have grown. The election gives us a chance to say we get it."

Here's the deal. The RNC is going broke. The national committee is bleeding staff. The RNC's online operation is actually the worst political effort in politics at the moment, their website is actually still in Beta and they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to build it. They don't have the experience or the money to launch a Party re-branding effort. And Republicans in Congress hate and distrust Michael Steele. They don't want him to anywhere near their 2010 message.

And because of that taxpayers have to pay for the GOP's 2010 re-branding effort. By my estimation, the cost of the website, the video, the staff time, and the glitzy launch today at the museum may have cost taxpayers at least $100,000 -- and it's only the first day.

All that taxpayer money because the House Republicans don't trust Michael Steele and the RNC.

The Republican Party thanks you for bailing them out.

Download | play Download | play (h/t Heather)

This Week with George Stephanoupoulos notes the passings of impeached Arizona Governor Evan Mecham, civil rights activist Rev. James E. Orange, author Robin Moore and 7 soldiers in Iraq, bringing the casualty count to 3,972, according to icasualties.org.

File this under: No F*@king Way!

AP :

The Rev. Al Sharpton is a descendant of a slave owned by relatives of the late Sen. Strom Thurmond _ a discovery the civil rights activist called "shocking" on Sunday.

Sharpton learned of his connection to Thurmond, once a prominent defender of segregation, last week through the Daily News, which asked genealogists to trace his roots.

"It was probably the most shocking thing in my life," Sharpton said at a news conference Sunday, the same day the tabloid revealed the story.

Some of Thurmond's relatives said the nexus also came as a surprise to them. Doris Strom Costner, a distant cousin who said she knew the late senator all her life, said Sunday she "never heard of such a thing." Read more...

One of my favorite places to take my kids in San Francisco is Yerba Buena Gardens. In addition to the carousel, the playground and the ice skating rink that we enjoy is a memorial to Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr. King's words are inscribed on the marble wall, the permanence of which signifies their timelessness.

Dr. King was taken away from us on during a time of great upheaval and unrest, not unlike today. It is heartbreaking to me that forty years after his voice was taken from us, we see so little embracing of the wisdom of his words.

I found this homemade video on YouTube while searching for King's famous "I have a dream" speech. While King's legacy focuses on his work as a civil rights activist, it's important to note that he was very much an anti-war activist as well.

The next time I take my kids to Yerba Buena, I think I will take a few more moments at the King Memorial and read out loud to my kids his powerful words of equality and peace.

For years, retail giant Wal-Mart and its smiley face logo have lured American shoppers to its stores with a campaign to "rollback" prices. Now, as Kentucky GOP Senate candidate Rand Paul was just the latest to make clear this week, the Republican Party is waging a rollback campaign of its own. From health care, Social Security and Medicare to civil rights, abortion and the U.S Constitution itself, Republicans are trying to turn back the clock to 1964, or 1933, or 1861 or even before the Founding itself.

2009 1973 1965 1964 1933 1861 1787

2009. To be sure, Republicans would love to return to January 19, 2009. On April 1, 2009, House Republicans, all of whom voted against the $787 billion Obama stimulus bill, called for its repeal. (Georgia's Jack Kingston, one of over 110 GOP Congressmen taking credit for stimulus funds they opposed, said he would "gladly run" on the repeal of the recovery act.)

As for the new health care reform law, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in March declared his party's mantra for the fall midterm elections:

"I think the slogan will be 'repeal and replace', 'repeal and replace.'"

1964. Given his druthers, Rand Paul would flip the calendar back to the Middle Ages. But as his opposition to the Fair Housing Act, Americans with Disabilities Act, the minimum wage and above all the Civil Rights Act shows, Paul the Younger would like to start with 1964.

Hoping to literally whitewash his disastrous interviews with his hometown paper, NPR and MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, Paul ended the week by insisting he would have voted "yes" on the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Sadly for Paul, he also answered "yes" when Maddow asked him, "Do you think that a private business has the right to say we don't serve black people?" And as he wrote in 2002, Paul apparently longed for the days when Plessy v. Ferguson was the law of the land:

"A free society will abide unofficial, private discrimination, even when that means allowing hate-filled groups to exclude people based on the color of their skin."

1965. The next year brought two more targets for the conservatives' historical eraser: the Voting Rights Act and Medicare.

Republicans, of course, tried to block the health care program for America's seniors in the 1960's and tried to gut its budget in the 1990's. A decade ago, Newt Gingrich predicted the demise of Medicare:

"We don't want to get rid of it in round one because we don't think it's politically smart. But we believe that it's going to wither on the vine because we think [seniors] are going to leave it voluntarily."

Now, led by Rep.Paul Ryan (R-WI) and his "Roadmap for America's Future," leading Republicans want to privatize Medicare out of existence.

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