Have you ever been at a party and had a swell time drinking fancy drinks with nifty folks and suddenly you look up, it’s 3:30 in the morning, all the cool kids have gone home, and you’re stuck on a pee-stained couch drinking vodka and milk cocktails with a pimpled, silent loser pawing your knee? That is the story of the National Review, where David Frum says he’ll no longer be writing. (In this somewhat tortured metaphor, Frum is actually one of the “cool kids,” the party is over, and you have to give Kathryn Jean Lopez a ride home and hope she doesn’t vomit in your car.) MORE »

Will a single Republican stand up for John McCain, please? (And we’re not talking about you dumb-ass rednecks masturbating furiously to Sarah Palin’s tattooed lip liner; we mean the people with money.) Today, Bush speechwriter and conservative mealy mouth David Frum writes in the Washington Post that McCain is a total failure who is also destroying what little remains of the GOP. MORE »

About three and a half minutes into this LOOONG clip, you will see every liberal’s favorite girlfriend Rachel Maddow start arguing with David Frum about whether political humor is as discourse-cheapening and violence-inciting as shouting “Kill him!” at a political rally. “We all could do better,” says Frum, boringly. Then he says Rachel Maddow should invite Paul Wolfowitz on her show for a Serious Discussion, and then they both have a hearty chuckle because really, Wolfowitz? That clown? [MSNBC]

Former Bush speechwriter Matthew Scully trashes former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson in The Atlantic this month. Gerson didn’t invent the axis of evil! Also, he is a jerk! [Examiner]

Heavy Floods Inundate Britain, Texas and China. [New York Times]

Remember 2002, when we were all flyin’ high on paranoia and dread? Those reassuring warpigs in the Bush Administration knew what we needed: more enemies with more firepower, to keep America on its toes. And so Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and North Korea was enriching Uranium.

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Friday

• Baltimore native DMX at Love, 1350 Okie St. NE. $20. [Ticketmaster]

• 1958’s The Kraft Theatre. All the King’s Men [Parts I & II]. Sidney Lumet directed this adaptation of the novel by Robert Penn Warren. Free at 7PM. LOC’s Mary Pickford Theater. [LOC]

Saturday

• Comedians Ahmed Ahmed, Aron Kader and Maz Jobrani present their “Axis of Evil Comedy Show.” 7&10PM at the Warner Theatre. $27-$37. [Warner Theatre]

• Black Heart Procession at the Black Cat. 9:30PM. $12. [Black Cat]
• Free Grey Goose until 11PM at Century Club, hosted by former WPGC DJ Big Tigger. Carnegie Library. $25 in advance; Free before 10:30PM for men and before 11PM for women. [WP]
• Of Montreal at The State Theater. $12 at 7PM. [State Theatre]

Sunday

• Yes, yes you hate improv, but you also kind of love it. The Escapists at the Warehouse. $15 at 8PM. [Theater Mania]

• The Good Fight author Peter Beinart at Politics and Prose. “Liberals, he says, can oppose the totalitarianism which stalks the Islamic world today and at the same time fight for freedom from the inside out by becoming more democratic at home.” [P&P]
• Screening of Underground with new musical score for cello and piano. “Subterranean spaces of the London Tube are the setting for a thrilling rush-hour romance…with a chill a minute.” Free at 4:30 p.m. National Gallery. [National Gallery]

Things are looking bad on the whole smiting-dow-the-axis-of-evil front, WaPo reporters Peter Baker and Dafna Linza write. North Korea has developed several nuclear devices under the Bush administration watch, and Iran is briskly advancing its own (still reportedly civilian) nuclear programs. Iraq, meanwhile, well, let’s just say that if we were in fact permitted to use the word “quagmire,” it would save everyone a lot of time. “I’m tempted to say we’re 1-2,” says one administration official, “but that wouldn’t be honest.” Well, that’s never stopped them before. . . No reports as yet on plans to rename the Axis of Evil the Surprisingly Sturdy Band of Freedom-Hating Nukes-Deploying Advocates of Violent Extremism. — HOLLY MARTINS MORE »