Great news, everyone: America is now .0000000001% less insane and bigoted! Barack Obama signed a final administrative repeal today of the Jesse Helms-authored travel and immigration ban on persons with HIV/AIDS. It only took 22 years for our government to realize that the HIV virus is not the very contagious “gay flu.” MORE »

It’s time for our weekly feature about funny Washington Post reporters who also photograph well. (This is the first and last installment.) Meet Anne “E.” Kornblut, WaPo national politics ace reporter. On that washingtonpost.com chat thing yesterday, she admitted to writing some kind of hilarious fake Bush acceptance speech poem, typed “LOL” in response to a Jesse Helms joke, and said this about Hillary maybe trying to still get the nomination: “She really does seem to have moved on in my view. Her supporters are another matter.” [Washington Post/Fishbowl DC]

Maybe Senator Elizabeth Dole teaches a community college English class on the side and wants to show her students a cartoonish, real-life example of “irony,” because that’s the only way to explain her current episode of retardation. She has introduced an amendment to the HIV/AIDS/etc. relief bill nearing completion in the Senate that would rename it after dead Senator Jesse Helms, the famous hero who once said, “There is not one single case of AIDS in this country that cannot be traced in origin to sodomy.” This Senate bill, interestingly enough, will probably contain another amendment — this one from John Kerry and Gordon Smith — to remove the HIV travel and immigration ban for foreigners hoping to enter the United States. This ban, of course, began in 1987 and is called the “Helms Amendment.” So basically, Boo Elizabeth Dole! Elizabeth Dole has gonorrhea! [HuffPo]

Meet a brave American Hero: L.F. Eason III, the “29-year veteran of the state Department of Agriculture” who chose early retirement over the foul task of lowering the American Flag to half mast for the dead bigot Jesse Helms. MORE »

Mike Huckabee appeared on Hannity & Colmes last night to weigh in on Barack Obama’s complete move to the center in the last few weeks. Now, we made up our minds about this slimeball Obama after Charles Krauthammer observantly noted that Obama “assiduously obliterates all differences with McCain on national security and social issues” in his positioning these days. If one thing is true in this life, it’s that Charles Krauthammer HAS THE MIND OF TWENTY EINSTEINS. And yet here comes Mike Huckabee, offering yet another take on Obama’s all-encompassing triangulation. Huckabee says everything we’ve always thought but never quite realized: Barack Obama — to his detriment — is becoming less and less like Jesse Helms every single day. MORE »

As we all know, racist old colostomy bag Jesse Helms bravely died on the patriotic anti-gay July 4 day of American Independence … or did he? Our sources in North Carolina say there’s an insane nursing-home cover-up engineered by the Jesse Helms Center’s goons to make gullible racist Americans believe Helms died and went to Hell in the early hours of July 4, when his rancid body actually expired on the night of July 3! MORE »

Hello everyone. How were your Fourth of July weeks? Well that’s wonderful. The worst Fourth of July experience this year was probably that of Jesse Helms, who hilariously died. But important founding father Thomas Jefferson also died on the Fourth of July (five, ten years ago-ish), and that’s why President Bush spent his holiday at Jefferson’s house, Monticello, among the ghosts of his “mocha” bastard slave children. And then RADICAL LEFT protest group Code Pink harassed him a bunch of times, just like they did every day when Jefferson lived his naked life with Sacagawea. [YouTube]

• JESSE HELMS: AMERICAN GARBAGE Read your editor’s obituary for Jesse Helms, and let’s all laugh together. [AOL Political Machine]

We interrupt your Fourth of July with some Breaking News: Jesse Helms was apparently still alive, and now he’s dead, hooray! He was a sour troll and a bigot, and it’s a testament to every rotten thing about this country that for a quarter century, he was one of the most powerful people in American politics. [LAT/NYT]

All we can say is that our Anonymous Hill Staffer needs to get laid. There is notable lack of actual sex and a surfeit of the simulated variety this week, as well as a couple lessons in increasing your word power (among other things).

AHS also let us know that he’d been drinking less than usual this week, because, apparently, a lot of work has to get done in Congress before everyone skips town on Friday. It’s Jesus’ fault, natch. “It’s his birthday or his anniversary coming up next week, so everyone’s going home to be act like they’re good Jesus-lovers.” On that note, this week’s installment of Ask A Hill Staffer is after the jump.

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• Reliable Source: Scooter Libby met with lawyers at a cafe near Union Station, openly discussed the leak case, drank diet Dr Pepper, and purchased cookies. . . Bushes have lunch with Rep. John Dingell to celebrate his 50 years in Congress. [WP]
• Inside the Beltway: Bono changed Sen. Jesse Helms‘ views on AIDS. . . Terry McAuliffe’s book is titled “Bring it On!” [WT]
• Page Six: Maureen Dowd: “If there had been no Monica Lewinsky, there would have been no Sen. [Hillary] Clinton. She had to run as a victim because she was seen as so controlling”. . . Bill McCuddy of Fox News: “One of our makeup artists got Kofi Annan ready for a TV appearance at the U.N. the other day. Kind of embarrassing, when she told him the makeup was oil-based, out of habit he gave her food.”. . . Karl Rove, dining at 21 with Ken Mehlman, devours beef tenderloin. . . Hillary Clinton’s deputy state director, Tyson Pratcher, will run for Harold Ford’s congressional seat [NYP, NYP]
• Cindy Adams: Jeanine Pirro expected to run for attorney general instead of the senate. [NYP]
• The Scoop: Viggo Mortensen: “I