OH HO HO! “The Special Olympics is disputing the White House claim that its chairman, Tim Shriver, accepted Rahm Emanuel’s apology for calling liberals ‘retarded.’ … ‘Tim can’t do that. He can’t accept an apology on behalf of all people with disabilities.’” Rahm, in response, SWEARS TO FUCKING SHIT that he is THIS FUCKING CLOSE. He is THIS FUCKING CLOSE to KILLING EVERYONE. [Ben Smith]

Yesterday the websites were very upset with Alan Grayson for calling some some Bernanke staffer a “K Street Whore.” Because yeah yeah, he’s a loose cannon and it’s like soo crazy or whatever, but “whore”? Well apparently it’s a term that’s often “correctly” viewed as offensive to women, he… deadpans? “I offer my sincere apology. I did not intend to use a term that is often, and correctly, seen as disrespectful of women.” MORE »

Republican Arizona congressperson Jeff Flake spent the week on a desert island, literally, and someone asked him how this made him feel. Well, truth is, Jeff Flake hasn’t felt like a man since leavin’ the ranch. Nope, it’s impossible to feel like much of a man at all, with this fancy humans-only society-livin’. “I’ve felt like a pansy, I guess, and this made it feel like I was actually doing something again.” Like, he didn’t feel like such a queer again, on account of all the nature and shit. “Congressman Flake didn’t realize that that word can have a negative connotation. He simply meant ‘wimpy.’ He apologizes if anyone took offense to it,” said his spokesperson. Does this look like the face of a pansy to you?? [Ben Smith]

Nancy Pelosi wakes up every day and picks something to make worse. Today it is the ostentatiously minor “Alan Grayson Affair,” in which Floridian Congressman Alan Grayson went sooo crazy at some Orlando Kinko’s and came back with sassy hyperbolic poster-boards. Anyway, so Nancy Pelosi could have easily been like, “Alan: just mumble some bad-faith apology on Rachel Maddow or whatever and we will reimburse you for the Kinko’s purchases.” It being Nancy Pelosi, she of course did the opposite. MORE »

The notoriously frivolous Fairbanks Daily News-Miner appears to have been caught Making Fun Of Trig, and the managing editor has written an epic apology: “Today I must apologize to Mrs. Palin personally and on behalf of the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner for the choice of words used on the bottom of Wednesday’s front page regarding her speaking engagement in Hong Kong this week to a group of global investors. We used offensive language — ‘A broad in Asia’ — above a small photograph of the former governor to direct readers inside the newspaper to a full story of her Hong Kong appearance.” MORE »

Will someone throw some work at George W. Bush’s gang of ex-speechwriters? Recall “Matt Latimer,” an actual alien who wrote an essay for GQ magazine after stumbling across an encyclopedia of all known cliches that he found lodged under some forgotten moon rock on Mars. This latest one, “Josh Trevino,” is not as bad—because he’s not A. Matt Latimer or B. Hitler or his outer space equivalent, Space Hitler—but he’s a pretty horrific man. The evidence is two-fold: 1. This Josh Trevino co-founded pay-as-you go pornography search engine RedState.com. 2a. This is arguably not the most offensive thing Trevino has ever done. MORE »

Mark Sanford has been thinking awhile about this whole Joe Wilson thing, which really, if you think about it, makes sense to think about in terms of Sanford’s extramarital affair. (Lows by any other name!) Here is Sanford, giving some interview in South Carolina and just owning sixth grade’s most savvy rhetorical move: “The guy apologized, and then you can have a bunch of other people come back and say, ‘We want you to apologize again and again and again.’” Sympathy by the transitive property! There’s more: MORE »

• John McCain is still tilting towards earmark windmills, and shaking and asking his magic Twitter, rhetorically?, if, um, hellooo? it’s ever heard of another type of Internet called the Wikipedia and if so, why should the government endow public arts programs? [Hotline On Call]
• Those purple ticket people, the ones whom you might remember were inhumanly inconvenienced during Barry’s Inauguration, have for whatever reason demanded and received commemorative Joe Biden sex pin-ups from Diane Feinstein. [Ben Smith]
• Huffington Post comedy site DemocraticCongressionalCampaignCommittee.com has created a fun novelty form in which users “role play” as one of the many Republicans who were forced to apologize to Rush Limbaugh recently. Meme! [Top of the Ticket]
• Gordon Brown, dauphin of the forgotten island nation of Great Britain, addressed our Congress this morning and gave a special English-accented hello to Ted Kennedy, who was just today crowned the Governor-General of the British East India Company. [CNN Political Ticker]
• Obama is keeping his promise to Nevada, and is probably not going to dump America’s nuclear waste in its mountains after all. [Washington Post]

A ha ha ha, we had to do a Google search to make sure nobody had put that crack in a headline yet. So anyway yes, Michael Steele spoke ill of Rush Limbaugh on late-night television, and then Rush Limbaugh said mean things about Michael Steele on the radio, and then Steele had to apologize because Rush Limbaugh makes a gazillion dollars a year putting cigars in his face and pontificating on the radio whereas Michael Steele is just some loser from Maryland. MORE »

BACHMANN TO ADDRESS NATION: Ah, this is a typical thing people do when they are UTTERLY FREAKING OUT about their entire careers: “Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) has taped an advertisement apologizing for her televised comments calling Barack Obama anti-American, according to a Republican source familiar with her campaign’s decision.” It is still staggering that this one dingbat appearance on Hardball finally did the trick, after daily doses of such standard Bachmannia for the last two years. [Politico]

Ha ha ha Luke Russert, NBC’s Official Young Persons Correspondent, apparently made a terrible slip this morning and said “the smartest kids in the state go [to UVA], so it’s leaning a little bit towards Obama,” which was a terrible insult to all the remedial readers at the University of Virginia who will also vote for Obama. Naturally, an apology was in order. MORE »

Top McCain strategist Charlie Black — the one who lobbies for Iran — dominated this afternoon’s 2-hour news cycle by saying in an interview with Fortune magazine that if we had a terrorist attack right now, “Certainly it would be a big advantage” for John McCain. This line, of course, meant everyone had to feign shock over an accurate political truth, but voiced thus — that if there were a terrorist attack today, Barack Obama would be behind it, potentially hurting his electoral prospects. MORE »

In Heaven, a secret cabal meets every Shrove Tuesday to match up nutjob religious leaders with the presidential candidates they will embarrass the most. John McCain’s assigned kook is pastor John Hagee, an Evangelical preacher who loves Jews, the apocalypse, and long walks on the beach, and hates Mondays, broccoli, and Catholics. So it shocked everyone today when he acted like a complete hypocrite by refusing to stand by his crazy remarks about our papist brothers and sisters. MORE »