Wonkette

Well, it would be nice if these guys ever went to jail for anything, but it seems unlikely that they will go to jail for this. A grand jury in South Texas handed down indictments against various current and former public officials connected with wrongdoing in private prisons — including, most notably, Dick Cheney and Alberto Gonzales. The prison company, The GEO Group, was charged with three counts of murder and manslaughter. This is an ugly, complicated story, so let’s cut to the chase: how many South Texas prisoners has Dick Cheney had shipped up to his basement dungeon in the Naval Observatory for experiments? MORE »

• Barack Obama explained how stopping global warming will also save the American economy. Green-collar jobs, people! [San Francisco Chronicle]
• A judge closed public access to the trial of three men allegedly involved in the murder of a Russian reporter. Jurors apparently wouldn’t go into the courtroom if members of the media were there. [BBC News]
• Vinegar Joe Lieberman may have escaped the wrath of his fellow Senators, but he still has his colleagues back home to worry about. [AP]
• PIRATE BATTLES rage across the earth’s many oceans, particularly the Gulf of Aden, where a suspected “pirate mother ship” has been sunk. Brigands still roam the seas, however. [AP]
• The heads of America’s three largest automakers testified before the Senate yesterday and managed to piss off everyone, Republican and Democrat alike, with their evasions coupled with pleas for billions more dollars so they can continue to make shitty cars that nobody wants to buy. [Washington Post]
• God closed that door that Sarah Palin was hoping to “plow through.” We are spared a Senator Palin … for now. [New York Times]

Times are tough, and nothing is funny, but sometimes the “real” God (the Economy) plays an amusing prank on various fools who bet on the fake god: “Oral Roberts University will lay off about 100 employees, days after it agreed to a near-$450,000 separation agreement with its former president who resigned amid a spending scandal. The layoffs represent roughly 10 percent of the university’s work force.” PS: You don’t really need to go to “university” to be a religious nut, so don’t worry! [Associated Press/NewsOK]

GOOD-BYE, TED STEVENS! “It’s official, and it’s a national tragedy: Ted Stevens has lost his Senate seat to some Democrat, in Alaska. Today, on his 85th birthday, the convicted felon and old white Republican Ted Stevens has been voted out of the office — voted out of office by Alaskans.” [AOL Political Machine]

Unlicensed artisan Sam Wurzelbacher, known to most Americans as “Joe the Plumber,” has gone from interviews on CNN/MSNBC/Fox News everyday and being the only talking point of a major party’s presidential campaign to much higher vistas: an interview with the Tufts college newspaper and the single most important journalist since Mencken, Michael Bendetson, “a freshman who has not yet declared a major.” Joe explains that he will never have any success doing anything popular again, except for that weird blog and book. MORE »

Hmm. It appears as though this is happening next summer. Should we see Sean Hannity’s Bill Ray Cyrus brood over an extended version of “Achy Breaky Heart,” or shall we instead go with Sean Hannity’s Oliver North, who will… sell weapons to us? In musical form? What? [Freedom Concerts '09]

• TED STEVENS EXPULSION POSTPONED: The Senate GOP Conference delayed a vote today on expelling Ted Stevens from their weird little club. They want to wait to see how the Alaska vote turns out! And, if you can even believe it, the MONSTROUSLY SLOW Alaska elections people are finally supposed to count the last major batch of ballots today. Mark Begich is ahead by 1,000-ish 2,374 votes and will probably win. But who knows? Sarah Palin could find some way to screw this up. [ADN]

For the past year, the liberal New York Times has published a comical fraud letter every Monday from its “lightning rod conservative” columnist, the Republican party operative Bill Kristol. This has provided your Wonkette with many posts! We were planning on ignoring him late last year, until the Times‘ opinion editor challenged us by calling Kristol a “serious, respected conservative intellectual” and us “intolerant.” Not only is the first half of that wrong, but Kristol doesn’t even care about his column! So will he keep it for another year? The douche himself speaks! MORE »

The new Attorney General for President Hopesalot is Eric Holder, who was the deputy AG back when Bill Clinton was doing whatever slimy stuff, etc., this is what you get, but wait! Doesn’t this character look exactly like a convicted space monster from the early 1980s? Newsweek reporter Michael Isikoff suggests Holder is actually a smuggler who ran spice out of Bill Clinton’s Mena Airport in Arkansas.

• Even though the Secretary of State job is off the table, maybe John Kerry will still be able to disappoint America as Secretary of the Interior. [Marc Ambinder]
• Joe Biden is not resigning from the Senate as part of a tricky seat-saving maneuver that will secure the position for his son Beau. [MSNBC]
• Mike Huckabee wants you to send him the most untoward stand-outs from your collection of amateur home videos. [Political Ticker]
• The new Draft Sarah Committee, or “2012DSC” in idiot, is up and running. There’s a photo of your gal tending to some moose blood soup on the cookstove and seven steps for supporting the effort, one of which includes “bookmarking this website.” [Jonathan Martin/2012DSC]
• Daily Kos is doing its part to make sure every resident of every state wishes Howard Dean a happy birthday. And then as a birthday president, some of Dean’s cheapest friends sent him an old graffitied trash can, because they hate him. [Daily Kos]