Congress joined the Bush Administration for a nice little barbecue on the South Lawn last night. The theme was Mardi Gras, so everybody could enjoy memories of New Orleans being destroyed by the Bush Administration and then pretty much left in that same condition years later. MORE »

Rudy Giuliani took a break from forcing abortions upon Christian women today and issued an exciting “Ten Commandments” for America — but Rudy thinks he’s better than God, so he had to make Twelve Commandments. MORE »

There are now two places on Earth where New Orleans isn’t a half-abandoned wasteland: Micheal “Brownie” Brown’s mind and Google Maps. MORE »

Our sister site Idolator already sorta posted this on Wonkette, but apparently nobody (including your editors) pays any attention to those things. So here, now and forever, is the stupid Fox News video of Republicans mocking black hip hop culture. MORE »

Yesterday: MORE »

* Heard on the Hill: Mary Landrieu said: “I often think we would have been better off if the terrorists had blown up our levees. Maybe we’d have gotten more attention.” Also trashed Mississippi… House GOP Flacks arrive at weekly meeting to find Cannon Caucus room double-booked. They were forced to move chairs themselves. [Roll Call]
* Reliable Source: Former State Sec George Shultz sports a suit pinstriped with his goddamn name. [WP]
* Yeas and Nays: Fun scene from Terry McAuliffe’s new book about his daughter playing “mermaid” in a pool with Hillary Clinton… Name expert on ‘08 contenders: Brownback “sounds like a good ‘ol Western boy,” “Mitt is a very ugly name,” “I love Vilsack because it’s foreign.” Karl Rove went to Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf. [Examiner]
* Under the Dome: Norm Coleman shows up for a vote, forgets tie. This is apparently a violation of Senate rules. Someone brought him a tie, though, so we can’t kick him out. Also the MN Democratic party lied about him “blocking” the minimum wage bill… Bono kept a “low profile” when he was here last. Despite this we still have to hear about it. [The Hill]
* Shenanigans: At last week’s National Review Institute’s Conservative Summit, you missed everyone passing around a doctored version of Rita Cosby’s business card with “For a good time, call…” printed on it… “Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., was spotted walking out the back door of that lobbyist mecca, Capital Grille.” [Politico]
* Page Six: JFK and Robert Stack will get you laid! [NYP]
* Rush & Molloy: Republicans hate Rudy. [NYDN]

Joe Lieberman: the most bipartisan man in the history of bipartisanship! He’s so averse to more of this petty inter-party squabbling that he won’t investigate the White House response to Hurricane Katrina after all! Despite, you know, heading the committee that’s supposed to oversee FEMA and kind of promising that he would before that election thing. MORE »

Bravely choosing to announce today despite Gerald Ford greedily consuming all the teevee news time from Beyond the Grave, John Edwards went down to New Orleans to show he’s the kind of person who will be photographed pretending to shovel mud with poor black people.

Let’s all laugh at more photos of the big event, after the jump.

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The DNC is delaying the Big Announcement because a) Micheal Bloomberg now hates Democrats and b) Denver is a joke and doesn’t even have enough hotel rooms.

We know this is like asking Hillary Clinton to be cuddly, but we have a single Christmas Request for the Democrats: Could you people have some balls for once in your miserable lives and do something meaningful?

Hey, Howard Dean: What you need to do is have the convention in New Orleans. We’ll tell you why, after the jump.

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We would like to like John Edwards because he is folksy and drawls and and his father was a goatherd or something, but this, John, is uncalled for: MORE »

Al Kamen reported yesterday that Homeland Security head Michael Chertoff is the proud recipient of this year’s “prestigious Henry Petersen award.”

The award is traditionally given to Department of Justice criminal division careerists who did their jobs well for a long time. Chertoff’s honor hasn’t garnered a lot of attention, but one guy who did notice was Miles W. Swanson, grandson of Henry Petersen himself. Swanson writes:

Today with horror I read in the Washington Post that Michael Chertoff is receiving the Department of Justice Criminal Division’s Henry Petersen Award, the most prestigious award for the DoJ’s Criminal Division. Besides being my grandfather, Henry Petersen was the Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Criminal Division, chief prosecutor for Watergate, and career employee at the DOJ. What makes this situation so horrible, besides the fact that Mr. Chertoff is a political appointee, an ass, not a career employee at the DOJ, and probably the exact opposite of my grandfather: I moved to New Orleans from D.C. a couple months after Katrina to do volunteer legal work. I staff a free legal clinic in the 9th Ward with the Common Ground Legal Collective as well as several bankruptcy/debtor relief clinics in and around New Orleans as part of The Pro Bono Project. As you can imagine, I deal with Mr. Chertoff’s mess on a daily basis. Normally, I go out to lunch with all the heads and award recipient and to the award ceremony (being held tomorrow [today -ed] at the DOJ) every year with my grandmother and mother to present the award. It’s probably best that I don’t go as they would have a tough time holding me back.

After the jump, Mr. Swanson’s letters to Mr. Chertoff and Assistant Attorney General Alice Fisher.

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