Our compulsive cousin Oddjack has this just in on Harriet Miers’s chances for becoming associate justice. She might want to hedge on real estate, after all: MORE »

No caps because there’s no immediate threat. Relax! But a little under an hour ago, D.C. police blocked off streets near the Capitol building due to what was first reported as a “suspicious package” found in a car. Now Reuters is saying that one of the men inside the vehicle claimed to be in possession of an “explosive device.” All e-mails to the Wonk account varying on the theme, “Yeah, an arrest warrant,” may be sent to Brit Hume at FOX News. Also, you can gear-shift down from fear to boredom again: MORE »

I may be the only one haphazardly nudging Bono into the ranks of the vast right-wing conspiracy, but the unimprovably named J. Freedom du Lac of the Washington Post has got him groking with A.Q. Khan: MORE »

Sometimes the gods of Washington gossip-mongering smile, DeLay-like, upon us all. Will a more lapidary sentence be penned all day? I think it won’t. The Reliable Source, ladies and gentlemen: MORE »

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Great news! The preliminary results of the criminal probe that’s been on everyone’s lips these past months have been released. UN investigator Detlev Mehlis today published a 54-page document outlining his case in the murder of Lebanese politician Rafiq Hariri. Broadly speaking, Syria did it. The New York Times: MORE »

Remember him? He was the supply-side conservative think tanker who lost his job for opposing Harriet Miers’s appointment, and also for penning a book whose title openly compared Bush to Reagan (Bush lost). Bruce checked in with us yesterday to send along a Publishers Weekly press release. You can call off the guilty liberal pledge drive. He’s going to be just fine: MORE »

Three things you urgently need to know about Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH): He buys gas for his car, he loves bear claws, and he has a gambling problem. A monumentally less pressing fact about him is that he’s just won $853,492 in D.C. Powerball, because to judge by Slate’s Henry Blodget, that sum and a Bush tax cut won’t even get you an advanced warning not to ride the subway. MORE »

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Finding yourself inconvenienced by wrathful acts of God, the federal government and poverty? What you need is a nice, warm Uzi. And what luck! House Republicans have just approved a bill which limits The Man’s right to sue honest, hard-working gun manufacturers. Hey, they’re your last line of defense between death by drowning, and death by hollow point-induced hemorraghing. MORE »

He who has his finger on the pulse of America has been given the finger by America and we regret to inform you that it isn’t the middle. It’s the thumb. And it’s pointed up. MORE »