The Senate’s pro-SURGE forces brought some awesome new ideas to the debate on Friday, but none was as powerful as the new reason for the Iraq War provided by the honorable Jeff Sessions (R-Cracker) — we had to invade and occupy because Saddam Hussein kept sayin’ he won the 1991 Gulf War!

Our libertarian brothers and sisters represent something like four or five guys nationally (despite their ridiculously disproportionate Washington representation — don’t you guys know that if you lived anywhere else in the country you might get a congressman?), but their candidates can always be counted on to stir shit up. Today’s laissez-faire heroes: MORE »

• Congressman says Baghdad and Manhattan are twinsies, cites availability of goods on street corners and porno video stores as examples. [Think Progress]

• Rick Santorum continues to go after the “virgin vote,” appealing to their sensibilities by likening the Iraq war to Lord of the Rings. [Salon]
• John Boehner eulogizes PageFuckerGate, brandishes The Eternal Hammer of Tax Policy. [Hotline on Call]
• Gorby reiterates: they’re real, and they’re spectacular. [Goldenfiddle]
• Ain’t no Alabama Congressman gonna spend his time learnin’ bout no “mozlawms.” [Hullabaloo]
• Republican incumbent in Wyoming race sees lead slip to only 7 — actual voters, not percentage points. [Political Wire]
• Bill O’Reilly will make you hate yourself, one way or another. [Fishbowl DC]

Bush shot down to Alabama to do a fund-raiser for Alex Baldwin Gov. Bob Riley, who has already raised four times as much as his Democratic opponent, Lt. Gov. Lucy Baxley MORE »

Former N-B-A star and avid gambler Charles Barkley has switched from Republican to Democrat and is still talking about running for governor of Alabama. Maybe 2010, he says. Here are a few other things he has said. MORE »

* Iraq security briefings headed for the president’s desk must have a shirtless grinning picture of Fabio on the cover. [Corporate Casual] MORE »

Former Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy “Ten Simple Rules for Arguing Before My High Court” Moore is running for Alabama Governor. What are his qualifications? Besides a notable disregard for your mortal “laws?” On his website, he provides solid proof that he has the experience necessary to govern that great state: MORE »

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• Bush nominates Harriet E. Miers to the Supreme Court; seen as “a woman who broke barriers in the male-dominated Texas legal world but brings no judicial experience or constitutional background to her new assignment.” Bush: “I know her heart. I know her character.” [WP, NYT, LAT, WSJ, WT]
• Miers likely to avoid partisan fight. Kristol: “It’s hard to explain why Harriet Miers is the right pick unless you’re trying to avoid a fight about someone who has expressed a conservative constitutional philosophy… it’s demoralizing for the president to pass over a host of publicly identified conservative constitutionalists.” [WP, NYT]
• DeLay is indicted for alleged money laundering; former majority leader says prosecutor “is trying to pull the legal equivalent of a ‘do-over’ since he knows very well that the charges he brought against me last week are totally manufactured and illegitimate.” Punishment for money laundering can be life in prison. [WP, NYT, LAT, WSJ, USAT]
• Many conservatives express skepticism, disappointment about Miers; responses range “from hostility to silence to praise.” [WP, LAT, NYT, WT, USAT, USAT]
• Nomination viewed as “more like a bunt than a bid for a home run,” writes Ron Brownstein. Bush “has no appetite, at a time when he and his party are besieged by problems, for an all-out ideological fight,” suspects Richard Stevenson. [LAT, NYT]
• Critics allege cronyism, the perception of which “is especially risky because it comes at a time when the White House has been accused of putting under-qualified political associates in top positions throughout the government.” [LAT, USAT]

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