President George Bush Jr. today lifted the executive ban on domestic offshore drilling for oil and natural gas, the same ban that his liberal father instituted 20-ish years ago. Take that, old retreating hack! But before the oil companies can start drilling off of your dock, Congress must lift its ban. Well that should be tough! We predict that Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi will whine about this for a good week, maybe 10 days, but should have a piece of drilling legislation ready for Bush’s Rose Garden signin’ desk by next Friday. [Bloomberg]

Seems that at least one president of the United States I can think of is going to have an awkward Christmas dinner with his parents. Out on the stump for Hillary, Bill Clinton said yesterday that he and George Bush Sr. will go around the world cleaning up Junior’s mess as soon as Hillary becomes president. Poppa Bush has been silent on the issue, so we have to assume that he said he’d do it. Only the RNC issued a statement saying something along the lines of, “Get serious. There’s going to be a Republican president in 2009 who will continue to fuck up the world.” [CNN] – Greg Wasserstrom