Eliot Spitzer was on the Today show this morning to chat with Matt Lauer about that time the latter fought a deer with his bike, and lost. Now look, jokes about how Eliot Spitzer made it with all the ladies are not funny anymore, at all (although it is funny in this interview when Matt Lauer basically asks Spitzer how many hookers he’s sexed, specifically). Spitzer is smart and goddamnit he should have another job! He should still be running New York! Total FBI-Wall Street conspiracy set-up with this guy, maybe. [MSNBC/Salon]

WE MUST KNOW THE GENDER(S) OF THE HOOKERS: “Cook County GOP chair and onetime aide to Gov. Jim Thompson, Gary Skoien …. had a restraining order taken out against his wife when she beat him senseless with his electric guitar after finding him in the kids’ playroom frolicking about with not one, but two prostitutes.” [Patriot's Quill]

It turns out that your Jake Tappers and Chuck Todds are in the minority when it comes to White House correspondents. Upwards of 98 percent of the people attending the White House’s daily press briefings are nutballs who don’t even write for news organizations and love to steal Politico’s chair. These insane people just like to hang out there, because it feels like “family” or “home” to them, spending hours in this cramped, low-ceilinged little bunker with Helen Thomas. MORE »

Alaskan dingbat Sarah Palin did something very important when she became governor of Alaska just 19 months ago: She had a tanning bed installed in the governor’s mansion — the one she refuses to live in, so she could charge Alaskan taxpayers $17,000 to sleep in her other tanning bed, at home in Wasilla. Now we breathlessly await confirmation that she also had a tattoo parlor set up in the executive office. [The Field/Narco News]

Law enforcement authorities had to break the sad news today that there will be absolutely no sexing at the upcoming Republican and Democratic National Conventions. Apparently, every four years a bunch of sex-worker advocacy groups issue dire predictions that prostitution will skyrocket in convention cities, and then everybody is horribly disappointed to discover that the only whoring that goes on is the very dull, “I’ll trade you one Bridge to Nowhere for your cloture vote” kind of crap that makes people hate politicians in the first place. MORE »

• HEADLINE OF THE DAY: “Plea Deal for Woman Accused of Having Sex With Senator’s Husband.” (And here’s what it’s actually talking about, and here’s the hooker gal, too!) [Washington Post]

Making a sadder story just a little bit sadder still, today the cops have revealed D.C. Madam Deborah Jeane Palfrey’s suicide note. Instead of blowing the lid of Dick Cheney’s particular perversions or David Vitter’s favorite style of Depends (logo of Elmo in wheelchair, masturbating), the two-page note is a heartbreakingly dull list of trivialities in grade-school girlish handwriting. MORE »

WHERE’S PALFREY’S BOX OF EVIDENCE? “On one trip down the stairs, she lugged a 2-foot-wide box she suggested carried materials related to her infamous court case. ‘This is my evidence,’ she told Strizack before carrying it out the door.” [Orlando Sentinel]

As America mourns the suspicious death of “D.C. Madam” Deborah Jeane Palfrey and gives up hope that anyone or anything can bring down Dick Cheney (or even David Vitter), let’s look back in anger at other recent suspicious suicides involving Our Federal Government. Did you know one of Palfrey’s escort-service contractor ladies also supposedly hanged herself? And what about all these FBI targets and mysterious CIA agents meeting weird, tragic ends? WTF, people, WTF? MORE »

And a sad story becomes sadder still: Deborah Jeane Palfrey was found hanging dead in a storage shed behind her mother’s Florida mobile home. Many pages of “handwritten suicide notes” were reportedly found in the shed by the Tarpon Springs police. Read the weird transcript, after the jump. MORE »

For the great crime of hooking up willing ladies with horny politicians, “D.C. Madam” Deborah Jeane Paltry was facing four to six years in prison, and today she was found dead in a shed behind her mother’s house in Florida. The men who paid for hookers through her service, such as Republican Senator David Vitter, have paid no price for their crimes, and they remain in power as the very people who make up the laws. Anyway, good-bye, Deborah Jeane. Though we didn’t know you at all, you had the grace to hold yourself while those around you crawled. They crawled out of the woodwork, and they whispered into your brain. They set you on the treadmill and then Dick Cheney had you killed. But Wonkette just sent your name to this moon spaceship, Deborah. Enjoy the ride to a better place! [Washington Post]