Congressman John Doolittle of California — Tom DeLay’s scumbag buddy who took a bunch of dirty money from Jack Abramoff — might be wussing out after all. Doolittle’s chief of staff denies it, but the re-election campaign is already almost broke and he nearly lost his 4th District “safe seat” in the ‘06 midterms that swept away his crooked sweetheart Richard Pombo, from California’s 11th District. [TPM Muckraker, Politico, OpenSecrets]

The FBI subpoenaed as many as 10 associates for Al Sharpton yesterday, demanding financial records dating back to 2001. According to some source who talked to the New York Daily News, “The FBI and IRS are investigating whether Sharpton improperly misstated the amount of money he raised during his 2004 White House run to illegally obtain federal matching funds.” This is all well and good, but can’t we prosecute someone a little more important, for something a little more devious? [NYDN]

Attorney General Mukasey announced today that the FBI had added more than 220,000 crazy people to its list of people prohibited from owning guns that gun dealers are supposed to check - since June. Only 28 states currently provide the FBI with any data about dangerously mentally ill people who probably shouldn’t be toting guns around. [Washington Post]

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Above: Robert Mueller’s notes on his meeting with the President following the dramatic Gonzales visit to Attorney General John Ashcroft, delirious and sick in his hospital bed. Not since the C.I.A. revealed the mythical ‘family jewels’ have we been so thrilled by a declassified intelligence document! We can only imagine what it might say under all the redactions! Probably “fuck fuck fuck cock cock vagina.” Or maybe “The President and I had a nice laugh about our blatantly illegal warrantless wiretapping program and how no one would ever know or impeach us or anything. Then we made out.”

A DC Scene Fades to Black [The Lede]

Has your life of hallucinogenic experimentation led you to decide to persue a career hunting aliens and investigating paranormal activities, like on The X-Files? But are your many drug-related arrests ruining your chances with the FBI? Good news, weirdo — they’ve relaxed the standards! You’re in! MORE »

In the Watergate era, “Deep Throat” was supposedly a government insider who met Bob Woodward in a parking garage and moodily smoked cigarettes while wearing a trench coat. The fact that Woodward himself was a government spook recently transferred from Naval Intelligence to the Washington Post newsroom led many to assume “Deep Throat” was a group of CIA bigshots nervous about the Nixon Administration turning the nation into a dictatorship, or something. Anyway, Nixon finally gave up for the sake of the country and everybody won Academy Awards for “All the President’s Men” and Henry Kissinger is still at large. MORE »

Nobody could find Ted Stevens at the Capitol today because he kept disappearing whenever they caught a glimpse of him, but CNN’s Dana Bash chased him down a stairwell or something and this is the hilarious transcript of the videotaped interview, which we’ll try to find for you later. Or just watch CNN; they’ll repeat it soon. MORE »

As the longest-serving Republican Senator ever, Ted Stevens has obviously committed enough crime to make Dutch Schultz blush. He’s less ostentatious than your Duke Cunninghams and less perverted than all those under-70 whippersnappers who keep fucking whores and little boys, though, so we never thought we’d see him go down in our lifetime. Which means it’s a pleasant surprise to see the FBI and IRS raiding his huge ski resort home. MORE »

Hey, the IRS and the FBI are raiding Ted Stevens’ house! [KTVA]

On April 27, 2005, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales told the Senate intelligence committee that there hadn’t been a single case of the FBI violating civil liberties since the establishment of the Patriot Act. Naturally, this means that there had been at last six reports of “legal or procedural violations” that Gonzales had personally received. MORE »