Wonkette

Greasy shitsack Barack Obama has sold out yet again to the Corporates and Racists: “SI.com has learned that for the first time in history, a major presidential candidate may sponsor a race car in NASCAR’s premier series. According to sources, Barack Obama’s campaign is in talks to become the primary sponsor of BAM Racing’s No. 49 Sprint Cup car for the Pocono race on August 3. Details of the agreement are expected to be worked out over the coming days.” Oh ho ho, of course, a TELECOM IMMUNITY CUP CAR. Don’t spend all your blood money in one place, n00bama. [Sports Illustrated]

After an exciting day of voting, the Senate has voted in favor of the new FISA surveillance bill, 69-28, and George Bush will now sign it into law in his secret masturbatorium. MORE »

Wonkette Bitter operative “Carl” brings us a very important EMERGENCY WONK’D today, in which he spots Barack Obama at Eliot Spitzer’s hooker hotel in Washington D.C. Barry, of course, is in town today to vote in favor of the illegal FISA overhaul. But mostly he is just talking on his cell phone and riding in a foreign terrorism-supporting S.U.V. and ignoring “Carl” and his Bitter friends. Read the account, after the jump. MORE »

• OBAMA’S A LOSER: Uh oh, someone wants to look like a Tuff Guy by supporting illegal spying legislation that he previously… didn’t. And now every single comment board on the Internet will flood with great anti-Obama wits, writing “OOH WHOS YR DEM MESIAH NOW??” [Washington Post/The Trail]

It’s been a while since we last checked in on White House press secretary Dana Perino, America’s greatest asset. Do you think she’s learned what the Cuban Missile Crisis was since then? Probably not, since she is not smart. Yesterday’s press briefing took on the FISA surveillance extension — the one that those House Democrats refuse to make exactly into what George W. Bush wants, the traitors. Someone asked Dana if the Republicans were maybe going overboard by saying the Democrats’ stubbornness puts America at grave risk, since intelligence agencies can still “spy” and then get retroactive warrants. Dana responds that she knows nothing about the law. MORE »

We triple dog dare you to watch this piece of cinema on the front page of the House Republican Conference’s website. If they get nothing else out of the final FISA bill, House Republicans intend to finally render fiction writing useless. [GOP.gov]

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced last night that he was giving up his efforts to pass a so-called overhaul of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) bill before Christmas. The Administration’s wiretapping authority expires in February, but between Dodd’s supposed willingness to damage his chances at the Presidency to vote against it (you, know, do his actual job as a sitting Senator) and the recalcitrance of other Dems to provide blanket immunity to the phone companies for illegal cooperating in illegally tapping our phones, Reid just couldn’t get it done in time to drink some egg nog. So, they’ll come back in mid-January, dick around with it until the last possible second and then pass something that doesn’t do much to change the status quo, like usual. Aren’t we all glad we voted for a change in leadership last time? We got new faces but didn’t have to worry about a dizzying change in direction! [Washington Post]

* Bush admin: J/K everyone, FISA can totally have jurisdiction over the illegal secret wiretapping program. Please don’t yell at Alberto Gonzales too much today, Senate Judiciary Committee. [NYT, WP]
* The Bush legacy would’ve probably been something about creeping executive power, but lately he’s been conceding it to everyone. [NYT, WP]
* A “bipartisan” (read: involving Chuck Hagel) group of Senators prepared a useless symbolic resolution opposing THE SURGE in Iraq. Clinton wants to get tougher, withhold funds, give John Edwards a wedgie. [WP, WP]
* NYT prints dumbest lede this week: “The climate here has definitely changed.” [NYT]
* Condi Rice is in Berlin chatting about Israel and Palestine with German chancellor Angela Merkel. What Rice learned out there: people be sick of getting blown up. [CNN]
* Barack Obama will need to be careful about staying fresh, beloved over these next two years. [NYT]
* Everyone’s got an “exploratory committee.” Except Clinton, who might see her fundraising ability sonned by the early adapters. [WP]
* Ethics reform legislation stalls in Senate. Pig to have to find alternate source of lipstick. [NYT]

Terrorist Surveillance Program ruled to be in violation of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
Osama bin Laden, reached by phone, calls news “thrilling.”
NSA officials forced to put giant glass to walls of telecommunications companies, lean in close. MORE »

• Ever wonder what passive-aggressive uptight agriculture administrators do when they boil over? Now you know.

• Katherine Harris’s senate campaign reminds us of a kitchy 60’s feminist empowerment fantasy but we’re not sure which one. Oh well, there’s not many better ways to spend a weekend then smoking a joint and watching them all.
• When times are desperate, and you just have to meet Tim Russert, you might want to try showing up on Nebraska Ave. Sunday morning - you know what time - with a nice floral arrangement and a card addressed to, “the most interesting and important man on television.” We’re not sayin’, we’re just sayin’.
• As the Vanity Fair cover fades from memory, Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame decide it’s time to get theirs, hold press conference to let us know. Dick Cheney is shaking in his Allen Edmonds.
• Thanks to Arlen Specter using his “serious face” in negotiations with the White House, a secret court is now allowed to put it’s quarter in the slot and get a 30 second peek at the steamy domestic spying program.
• Is this heaven Osama? No. It’s Indiana, the place where terrorists’ dreams come true.
• We love going Bananas for the semi-monthly “Castro’s dead” rumors.
• The National Press Club makes an honest reporter out of the new and improved Jeff Gannon.
• Wonk’d, Washington’s celebrity sighting column of record, is entered as “Exhibit-W” in the trial for infamous Duke “laxer” Collin Finnerty.