O’Donnell: She’s a Witccccchhhhhh!

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Okay, cue the laugh track. The latest dispatch from the bizarro Planet O’Donnell is that the tea party sweetheart who won last’s week GOP Senate primary in Delaware said she had dabbled in witchcraft. During a 1990s appearance on Bill Maher’s Politically Incorrect, she spilled this nugget and noted that she had once had a date on a satanic altar. (She didn’t explain what happened on this date.) This is just one more weird fact from Christine O’Donnell’s off-beat bio. And Maher says he has other footage of O’Donnell he’ll be releasing in the weeks ahead—unless O’Donnell agress to come on his HBO show.

The reference to witchcraft did seem to come out of the blue. But there is a family connection. As we reported last week, O’Donnell has a sister who is quite different from her. Christine O’Donnell is a fundamentalist Christian who has denounced homosexuality. Her sister Jennie is a Los-Angeles-based actor/director/spiritual healer who supports lesbian rights and who says she lives with her girlfriend. Jennie also has pursued many—that is, many—different spiritual pathways. On her LinkedIn page, Jennie writes:

I have studied and practiced many therapeutic methods, as well as many different spiritual practices, such as; The Eastern Philosophies of Buddhism, Taoism, Sidha yoga with Brahma khumaris and other yoga practices for self realization. Western philosophies of Christianity, Science of mind, Course in miracles, Catholicism, Native American Spiritualities, Judaism, Muslim, Sufi, Ancient Alchemy of the Emerald Tablet, Metaphysics, Wicca, Pagan and many other world spiritualities.

Did the sisters share their mutual interests in Wicca? These days, Jennie has been working on her sister’s Senate campaign and insisting Christine is not “homophobic.” But if Maher wants an interesting show and cannot get Christine, he ought to try to book Jennie.

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We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

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