• VERY LIBERAL ERIC HOLDER TO APPOINT INVESTIGATOR TO INVESTIGATE WHETHER THERE IS ENOUGH EVIDENCE TO TO HAVE AN INVESTIGATION FOR CRIMES, SUCH AS TORTURE, BUT ONLY THE STUFF THAT GEORGE W. BUSH DIDN’T SAY WAS A-OKAY: Let’s meet the pre-pre-investigation’s purported new sexy independent prosecutor: John Durham from Connecticut! “Durham’s mandate, the sources added, will be relatively narrow: to look at whether there is enough evidence to launch a full-scale criminal investigation of current and former CIA personnel who may have broken the law in their dealings with detainees.” PSST: NEW MANDATE IDEA: Send Cheney to Bagram?? [WP]

Well, this is highly unsatisfying. We wanted to hear that Sarah Palin was one of the handful of lovelies with whom Mark Sanford “crossed the line” after a steamy meetup at the make-your-own-omelette buffet at some Republican Governors’ conference, but no. While we wait for shoes to drop and “real journalists” to do whatever they’re doing, up there in Juneau and Anchorage, the only reason anybody can come up with why Sarah Palin quit her job was that she was sick of all the ethics complaints being filed against her. MORE »

The number one problem facing everyone in the Republican party right now is that they cannot bring themselves to foot the bill for their own clothing, and this ends them up in terrible scrapes. Like Sarah Palin, the amiable Alaskan parasite whose popularity plunged after it turned out the money-soaked Republican National Committee was paying for all her suddenly tasteful clothes. MORE »

For further proof of just how bumblefuck a state Alaska is, look no further than the ease with which a couple of lawyers for the McCain campaign have destroyed the Troopergate investigation — which was a legitimate issue in Alaska for a while! — after half-assedly skimming off a few handy topic sentences from the Alaskan law code. Todd Palin and several other witnesses were subpoenaed to testify this morning, but no one bothered to show up, and the investigators don’t give a shit. And now the Alaskan legislator in charge of the investigation has announced that the probe will end, as originally scheduled, on October 10, without these key witness reports, cuz whatcha gonna do? MORE »

So apparently Sarah Palin, our favorite Alaskan governor, has a sister, and her sister was married to a state trooper named Wooten until they went through a “bitter divorce.” And then Palin and her husband and various others talked to Wooten’s boss, the public safetey commissioner, and said…Well, nobody knows what they said, but the public safety commissioner felt PRESSURED to FIRE WOOTEN. But he didn’t! And then mysteriously he got fired instead. MORE »

Mean people in Congress totally made Condoleezza Rice interrupt her usual routine by making her sit down and answer a bunch of boring questions about, you know, Iraqi government corruption, murderous Blackwater mercenaries, and a bunch of other stuff that she doesn’t know anything about. Ooooh… why does Waxman keep pestering Condi?

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Could it be — did Alberto Gonzales… lie? America’s Beloved Attorney General… a perjurer? The Justice Department’s Inspector General is investigating, and as part of that investigation they’ve sent out a handy “are you a political hack” questionnaire to hundreds of Justice employees. The Post has the .pfd — and you can fill it out at home! MORE »

Sometimes, we’re chuggin’ along, reading a pretty good think piece on this or that aspect of the political culture, and we get to a passage that just stops us in our tracks and causes us to reach for our first drink of the day. Earlier today, this, from a forthcoming Washington Monthly piece on whether Democrats will or won’t investigate the hell out of the administration should they win Congress back, was that passage: MORE »