Wonkette

Today’s installment in the Post’s “Everything You Knew About Dick Cheney (But Would Be Disappeared For Investigating)” series is all about, well, Christine Todd Whitman. It’s remarkable that a former Republican governor of New Jersey — we’re talking about Christine “Breathe Deep at Ground Zero, Kids, Good Ol’ American Know-How Will Clean the Asbestos Off Your Lungs” Whitman here — comes off looking like a model steward of the environment, but we’re comparing her to Dick Cheney, a man who tries to interpret the Clean Air Act as a call for the government to destroy the moon. MORE »

Julie MacDonald, the Interior Department’s Assistant Secretary of Fish, Wildlife and Parks, is in a bit of hot water for, well, the usual cronyism bullshit that every single hack in every single department is guilty of to varying degress. One of the complaints: she was a bit careless with sensitive DoI documents, and, you know, tended to forward a lot of them on to lobbyists and right-wing think tanks. Oh, and random 14-year-old internet nerds. MORE »

You can laugh at California laws if you want to — except in Berkeley, where that’s illegal — but environmental legislation in the most-populated state in the union generally makes it to Washington in a decade or so. Meaning, say good-bye to your precious plastic grocery bags that probably fill about 35% of your kitchen cabinets today. MORE »

As we continue honoring the birth of Richard Milhouse Nixon, let’s take a look at his liberal credentials.

If you only know “Tricky Dick” for his dictatorial presidency that very nearly ended two centuries of American democracy and first elevated amoral criminals such as Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld to the White House, then you’ll surely be surprised by all the stuff we’ve hidden after the jump.

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Way to go, hippies — we listened to you bitch about not irreversibly altering the Earth’s climate, we put some of your beloved “trees” on some mountains, and now they’re going to kill us all. MORE »

Bad news, everyone: Al Gore, whom we like again because he’s not running for anything, is definitely running for something. How do we know? Robot calls: MORE »

* Cenk Uygur tries to help an admitted oil addict. [HuffPo]
* Place blame on faceless oil barons, THEN pre-pay, THEN pump. [Wizbang]
* Poisoned, oil-coated, asthmatic fish — just like Mom makes it. [Jesus' General]
* Natural gas wants a piece of the action. [moxie]
* Pretending to have a lot of casual sex is just as awesomely satisfying as actually having it. [InkWell]

* Bush holds press conference to acknowledge “uncertainty in the country” over the situation in Iraq: “I understand people being disheartened when they turn on their TV screen. . . I believe we’re going to succeed.” [WP, NYT, W$J, USAT]
* $157m in federal funds have been directed to groups aligned with the administration’s social agenda and run by “political and ideological allies.” [WP]
* Bush “may be a lame duck, but he seems to be enjoying his swim,” writes Dana Milbank. [WP]
* Administration considers imposing fuel standards on vans and SUVs for the first time. [W$J]
* In shift, administration will ban the use of statements acquired through torture at Gitmo. [W$J]
* Six senators visiting Iraq urge “political compromises” for the sake of “national unity.” [WP, USAT]
* Senate will soon take up legislation on immigration restrictions. [WP]
* Lawmakers look to revise rules on material witnesses. [NYT]

* Over 1,300 Iraqis have died in the past week due to the sharp uptick in violence. Asks one Iraqi, “And they say there is no sectarian war? What do you call this?” [WP]
* 70% of Americans are against the Dubai port deal, including 58% of Republicans; Bush’s approval rating slips to 34% in NYT-CBS poll. [NYT]
* Coast Guard assessment cited “many intelligence gaps” in Dubai port deal. [WP, NYT, USAT, WT]
* Senate drafts bill to curb earmarks. [WP]
* India meets Bush with a new sense of empowerment. [NYT]
* Intelligence agencies remain in bureaucratic disarray. [NYT]
* Administration will oppose new United Nations panel on human rights. Kofi Annan: “I think we should not let the better be the enemy of the good.” [WP]

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An operative writes to alert us that certified blockbustersaurus Michael Crichton is testifying today before Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe’s Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. The man who gave the world Disclosure–you know, the book that demonstrated sexual harassment is a tool of oppression wielded by powerful women over their countless male-drone underlings–will now be holding forth on the state of global warning. His qualifications, you ask? He’s written a novel about on the subject, and–we hope you’re sitting down–the book in question, State of Fear, is, in the words of our tipster, “a heart-pounding, edge-of-your-seat story about its hero’s struggle against those who are trying to dupe the world into thinking global warming is a real problem.”  MORE »