Ever gotten one of those wacky “trivia for reading on the toilet” sorts of books for your birthday, the kind that says, “an antiquated law in Missouri dictates that anyone who puts a mule in a bathtub must be publicly flogged”? Here is another bit of trivia you might find in such a book: apparently South Carolina decreed in 1880 or so that adulterers must pay up to $500 in fines and serve a year in jail. MORE »

The worst writer in America, Richard Cohen — that thoughtless, valueless, condescending, sociopathic sexist poster-boy for the vapidity of the Washington Post’s opinion section — has written such inconsistent snot today that for once, we’re not the only blog making fun of him. He even opened with a smug little “Blogger alert” — “I have written a column in defense of Dick Cheney” — as a holier-than-thou excuse to do no research for his barking, again. The blogs did not pay attention. Others have already pointed out that in his column two weeks ago he declared that torture “unequivocally” works and that any debate about such would be “silly,” while today he writes that despite his disdain (oh?) for Cheney, “I have to wonder whether what he is saying now is the truth — i.e., torture works.” But we thought “wondering” was only something a gay Frenchman would do? MORE »

Here is a Hot Scoop via our nation’s secret spy network, CSPAN: one of the main guys from John McCain’s VP vetting committee spilled salacious details on how and why Joe Lieberman did not get to be John McCain’s Sarah Palin. MORE »

Now that Obama has closed down the evil Gitmo prison camp, he’s left with 250 detainees that need to either be released or criminally prosecuted – of course, there’s that tiny little problem of Where, How and Why. MORE »

FIFTEEN GAZILLION angry citizens swamped the steps of the Supreme Court this morning to protest the takeover of the government by the radical Islamic Indonesian bastard orphan and known Kenyan Hussein “Barack” Obama. Some nut recently filed a suit alleging that Obama wasn’t born in Hawaii or somesuch, and so the Supreme Court agreed to review it, along with thousands of other cases they will also decide not to hear this session. A veritable handful of like-minded nuts decided to go to the Supreme Court in a dazzling show of support for this completely insane lawsuit. MORE »

The jurors in the corruption trial for corrupt Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens are now in their second day of deliberations, and they’re having trouble! It seems one among them is running around the jury room shouting schizoid psychobabble at the others, which is just not productive at all, and so the other jurors have tattled on her! “In a note to the judge, jurors asked that one of their panel be sent home. The note described the female juror as rude, disrespectful and unreasonable.” We hear that this lady juror’s name is Michele and she’s been calling her colleagues “anti-America” whenever they say anything. MORE »

Uncle Ted Stevens, the elderly fraud who “gets hysterical when he has to spend his own money,” will soon be going to trial for various lies related to the renovation of his Alaskan Sex Cabin in the wilds of Girdwood. The good people of the Alaska Wilderness Political Fund will be liveblogging the whole agonizing ordeal, from jury selection to the part where Ted Stevens snaps on the witness stand and declares “This whole court’s out of order!” and gets wheeled off for shock treatments while his Inuit pal throws a marble wash station out the window. Catch it all here. [A Bridge to Justice]

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 »

Every four years, a mysterious combination of negligence, incompetence, fraud, and criminality conspire to make a single state responsible for getting some doofus into the White House. In 2000, Florida took the honor; in 2004, it was Ohio. And every four years, Hendrik Hertzberg writes angry editorials about how the whole electoral college should be bombed from space as a Republican takes office yet again. So which state will we be able to blame when Sarah Palin is hastily sworn in as America’s 45th president after John McCain expires from gout and agues in the spring of 2009? MORE »

After Hillary Clinton lost, her annoying lawyer friend Lanny Davis had to find a new dumb job, even though he was never on staff to begin with. And so he became a columnist for where else, The Washington Times. Yesterday’s column did, in fact, have the comical headline quoted in this post’s headline. It’s some of that contrarian hot air you’d usually see nestled indiscreetly on the front page of Slate or TNR, linking to a boring article by some “legal correspondent” almost surely named “Jeffrey.” But this is different in some respects: it’s in the Moonie Times and it’s written by Lanny Davis, so somehow it manages to be even less edifying. MORE »

• THEY’RE MORE LIKE ‘GUIDELINES’: Attorney General Michael Mukasey announced today that former Justice Department officials like Monica Goodling will not face prosecution for hiring D.O.J. staffers based explicitly on their political views — i.e. how many awesome things they could say about Alberto Gonzalez in 20-second lightning round interviews. Mukasey’s statement came replete with a classic Bush Administration sound bite: “not every wrong, or even every violation of the law, is a crime.” Ha ha, the top legal official in the country just said that “violation of the law” and “crime” are different. [AP]