Wonkette

Once upon a time there was a congressman named John Boehner, and everybody made fun of him because his name looked like “boner.” And then day somebody sent one of his local offices a Mysterious Package, which was leaking an Oily Substance, and everybody panicked because of the Terrorists. But! Turns out it was just bacon in the package: the sly prankster’s symbol for pork-barrel spending, or maybe how John Boner’s “package” is always “leaking oily substances.” [WLWT Cincinnati]

George W. Bush is so callous. Not only is he having a War and all those other things we don’t like about him (we’ve forgotten because of the election!), but now he is taking oxygen away from old people with his precious “budget cuts.” MORE »

Remember old what’s his name, that guy who did the Iraq deal, way back when? Well, he’s still apparently in the White House and still apparently trotted out for a photo op now and then for the people who have the worst job in journalism: White House correspondents during an election year in which nobody wants anything to do with George W. Bush. But he’s still the president, kind of, and he submitted his own budget that his staff wrote. And instead of, say, sending the PDF over to Congress, he submitted an entire laptop computer. MORE »

Acting President George Walker Bush revealed his new budget today for FY2009, and it’s the first to top $3 trillion! To put “$3 trillion” in perspective: that’s $30 billion times infinity, plus several billion more dollars. MORE »

* John Edwards will make a “serious” announcement today at noon, but will continue to resent Elizabeth Edwards for life. [WP, NYT]
* “Partisan witch hunt” is on! House subpoenas K. Rova, Albeady Gonzales, JoBo, Blanche Miers and more! [WP, NYT]
* Al Gore comes back to Capitol Hill just as “shrill” and “accurate” as when he left. [WP, NYT]
* Anti-war protesters at the Capitol feel safe under the “impressive bulk” of John Murtha. [WP]
* Several of the fired attorneys were the top seed in their divisions. [USAT]
* Justice Department really has the black lung. [WP]
* Congressional budget processzzzzzzzzz. [WP]
* FDA moves to trim payola. [NYT, LAT]
* Iraq funding bill has more farm aid than Willie Nelson. [USAT]

* That he thinks announcing his candidacy on Letterman is edgy doesn’t even make a top-ten list of things that suck about John McCain. [WP, NYT]
* Fired US Attorney invents conspiracy theory to help him cope with failure. [WP, NYT]
* Barry Hussein biographer writes 20,000 words in two weeks while political journalists doodle in their notebooks. [WSJ]
* FEC now dropping fines like it was the FCC. [NYT]
* Ken Mehlman charges corporate clients hefty sums to make sure they can keep making shit-tons. [WSJ]
* Congressional Republicans continue their long tradition of trying to hold down people of color by getting petty with William Jefferson’s committee appointment. What’s he ever done? [WP]
* Democrats find a nerd-king in their ranks, let him budget things to his heart’s content. [WP]
* Fill yourself with nostalgia for the age of the classic American liberal dandy. [WP, NYT, LAT]

* Cat fight causes John Edwards to fire his campaign bloggers. Malkin is front and center, obv. [Salon]
* List of administration’s “Top 25 criminals and scoundrels” is missing some obvious ones, gets points for trying. [CREW]
* Presidential approval rating graphs tell 10,000 words. [Political Arithmetik]
* Chris Matthews can’t control his potty mouth when it comes to phony farmers like George Bush, and, uh, Don Imus. [C&L]
* State Department employees find selves too good for Iraq. [TPM Muckraker]
* The No. 1 Google search result for “space diapers.” [Greinke.com]
* President’s budget will rip out Mr. Snuffleupagus’ still-beating heart and show it to him before canceling his show. [Think Progress]

* Hank Paulson carries the budget flag up to the hill, and by the end of the day is looking for an ATM to fully fund every program. [WP]
* President Bush has a sense of Morissettian irony over the Senate’s support of Gen. David Petraeus while opposing the surge. [WP]
* Luckily, Robert Gates has a back-up to the back-up plan. [LAT]
* Thanks to Walnuts, Ill Hill, and Barry Hussein the ‘08 election will likely cost over a billion dollars. [WP]
* MPAA uses actor from West Philadelphia to illustrate their blue-collar base. Patrick Leahy really liked The Queen. [NYT]
* Military wants civilian agencies to “step up” and “get ‘r done” in Iraq. [NYT]
* Which six states want to expand death penalty powers? Exactly the ones you think. [USAT]

* President Bush presents his budget. Grover Norquist says, “Yay!” Nancy Pelosi says, “Boo!” [WP, NYT]
* Rudy Giuliani plans to run for President in the same clipped-sentence, homo-loving way to which he is accustomed. [WP, NYT]
* “Senator McConnell led his Republican troops off a cliff,” to make sure American troops could be led into Baghdad. [WP, NYT, LAT, USAT]
* Henry Waxman is the Eliot Ness to Dick Cheney’s Al Capone. [NYT]
* Making less than $100K a year qualifies as “American Poor,” with all the paltry handouts to which you are entitled. [WSJ]
* Sexy astronaut love triangle features adultery, assault, diapers. [LAT]

* Thanks to the Iraq war and the rich getting richer, there’s a budget surplus projected for 2012. [WP]
* Senators facing reelection in 2008 increase pace of their waddling to escape reporters and pesky questions about Iraq. [WP]
* Walnuts McCain white washes his record of staff-bashing with new “Good Dude Doctrine.” [NYT]
* Barack Obama realizes he doesn’t have a guitar that only plays Purple Rain, chooses to focus campaign on message rather than rock star status. [WP]
* Immigrants and lawbreakers are first to face The Great DNA Harvest. [NYT]
* Traffic jam fetishists to rally against Administration’s “congestion initiative” funding. [WSJ]
* John Edwards has that not-so-fresh feeling. [NYT]
* “The nonbinding resolution would have no more force of law than the one approved Thursday commending the Miss America Organization .” [LAT]

* Henry Paulson and Rob Portman have been “unleashed” on Democrats who’re loud-mouthing about deficit reduction. [WP]
* Democrats thumping Bible on march to political center. [NYT]
* New “Sportsman’s Alliance” conservation group to advocate wildlife habitats be kept as pristine places to stroll about blasting animals with shotguns. [WP]
* Wayne Allard plans the work, works the plan, and marks the wall to count the days til he’s just scheduling tee times. [WP, NYT]
* President Bush maintains that law enforcement has the authority to look into exactly when and where terror suspects saved 39 cents on garlic hummus and triscuits. [WP]
* Interior Department Mineral Manager Johnnie Burton isn’t quite “perfect at everything.” [NYT]
* Condi’s looking forward to a threesome next month. [LAT]
* MLK day was inspirational for Russell Simmons, who now has an idea for a great new reality show. [NYT]

* President Bush gets on the budget balancing bandwagon, Democrats call bullshit. [WP]
* John Negroponte to leave the “in case of attack, fire this guy” position to be Condi’s deputy at State Department. [WP, NYT]
* Harry Reid has his Scotland golf trip, sans Scotland and golf. [WP]
* William Jefferson and other corruption tinged Democrats are An Inconvenient Presence for Nancy Pelosi. [WP]
* But she’ll be able to forget her troubles for a while as Wyclef Jean and Tony Bennet croon for her tonight. [LAT]
* Barney Frank speaks loudly, carries a small stick. [WSJ]
* Big Oil and Big Pharma are scared shitless of the Democratic Congress, look for their PR campaigns on screens and billboards near you soon. [WP, WSJ]
* Barack Obama is op-corruption in his op-ed. [WP]

Even American voters can occasionally figure out something that’s been right in front of them for several years. MORE »

• At his confirmation hearing, Gen. Michael Hayden deflects specifics, defends NSA wiretapping, distances himself from Pentagon brass, and urges a focus on the future of the CIA: “It’s time to move past what seems to me to be an endless picking apart of the archaeology of every past intelligence success or failure.” [WP, NYT, NYT, WSJ]
• Senate votes 63 to 34 to make English the “national language”; vote continues “the conservative turn that a major overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws has taken since the Senate began debate this week.” [WP, NYT]
• Judiciary Committee approves constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage; Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) says “good riddance” to Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.), who replies, “See ya.” [WP]
• Bush in Arizona: “It makes sense to use fencing along the border in key locations in order to do our job. We’re in the process of making our border the most technologically advanced border in the world.” [NYT, WSJ]
• BellSouth seeks a retraction from USA Today for “the false and unsubstantiated statements” about NSA phone logs. [WSJ]

MORE »