*HOW MUCH DID THEY PAY FOR THAT ONE:* The kids at Radar hear that the New York Times will endorse Hillary Clinton for president in a weekend editorial. Somewhere Paul Krugman is skipping and singing his favorite gleeful showtunes, while Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd are moving to France in whiny sobs. [Radar]

Each week, veteran Condiwatcher Peter Huestis (also known as Princess Sparkle Pony) provides a summary of the searing wit and infinite wisdom of America’s Favorite Princess Diplomat™!

Listicles, of course, are the year-end gift writers give themselves. But you know what? It’s been such a peculiar year for the Condibot that it would be totally criminal not to look back and reflect on its thrilling awkwardness. Join me on an epic journey through my personal (hey, get your own column!) favorite special moments in Dr. Ferragamo’s 2007, and my picks for AP’s Condirazzi photos of the year, after the jump…

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Each week, veteran Condiwatcher Peter Huestis (also known as Princess Sparkle Pony) provides a summary of the searing wit and infinite wisdom of America’s Favorite Princess Diplomat™! Last week was all about Condi’s big Carnival o’ Peace™ in Annapolis. Yes! That was only a few days ago! Not much happened, but that didn’t stop people from writing about it. Plus: more excerpts from Elizabeth Bumiller’s Condiography which is maybe going to be serialized in Maureen Dowd’s column. And, finally, it was Mean Caricature Week! After the jump, we’ll relive the Condiweek that was.

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Imus is back, and what better way to celebrate than with this most truthy music video “Nappy Headed Hos” by white boy rap duo Accident of Birth. The lyrics strafe the political landscape: James Carville! Maureen Dowd! Snakes in the head! Tim Russert! Rush Limbaugh! Frank Rich! Tucker Carlson! And then, as if it could get any better, they toss in Humboldt County weed, Devo, John Lennon, Snoop Dogg, the Grateful Dead and Maker’s Mark!!? WTF? Quick, somebody sign these guys! MORE »

Now that TimesSelect has been brutally ousted, we’re gonna post all of the NYT’s op-eds all the time because they’re all just terrible. Maureen Dowd naturally seemed like a great place to start, but a peek at her column from yesterday showed that she had given the space to… Stephen Colbert! That’s some kinda genius, Times! How about you have Stephen Colbert always write MoDo’s column? Or just fire Bob Herbert. Either/or.

A Mock Columnist, Amok [NYT]

Yesterday’s Maureen Dowd column (oh, thank heavens for the end of TimesSelect!) was a wacky inside joke in which Dowd wrote ostensibly from the perspective of Justice Clarence Thomas, railing against Al Gore and disguising it as Anita Hill. Thomas refuses to apologize for denying Gore the presidency because he is a bore. It has been a while since we actually read MoDo regularly, so maybe our grasp of her grasp of irony is a bit rusty, but the whole thing is kinda funny considering how Dowd herself is nearly as responsible for Al’s political destruction as one vilified member of the court that sold him out! MORE »

“Web pundits like Markos Moulitsas of the Daily Kos and Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo score high likability ratings with certain population segments, but their awareness numbers, which are more important than appeal, E-Poll notes, are barely on the radar screen. The same is largely true of elite newspaper columnists like Thomas Friedman, Maureen Dowd, Robert Novak, E.J. Dionne and Holman Jenkins.” [Forbes]

And just like that, TimesSelect is gone. Everyone can read year-old Bob Herbert columns again! For free and everything! We haven’t read a Times op-ed in two years (we did have a TimesSelect subscription, but still, it was kinda annoying). Thankfully the New York Times knows exactly what the nation needs right now, and they’ve given us, on this, the first day of totally free content in so long, the trifecta of terribly annoying and increasingly irrelevant columnists: David “BoBos Drive Like This” Brooks, Maureen “All the Democrats Are Pussies Except Hillary Who is a Dyke” Dowd, and Thomas “My Dr. Phil Mustache Is Here to Reassure You That Losing That Manufacturing Job Was a Good Thing” Friedman. Ye gods put it back behind the paywall, please. Yes, we did read them all. We’ll save you the trouble: MORE »

* John Boehner is not supposed to mention the immigration bill is “a piece of shit.” [On Call]
* Fred Thompson frees his son from the burden of leaching off his father’s PAC. [MoJo]
* John Murtha only eats breakfast with people whose planes he can buy. [Worldwidestandard]
* “Fucking Maureen Dowd is like launching a bottle rocket into the Grand Canyon.” [Rude Pundit]
* All you ever needed to know about political history you learned from watching Point Break. [McSweeneys]

* Phil Gailey, Marueen Dowd, Mark Shields, David Broder and Brian McGrory talk about The Best of Mary McGrory at Politics & Prose. Free at 7PM, followed by tequila shots and oil wrestling. [P&P]
* Working Assets co-founder Peter Barnes has a way with metaphor: “It’s time to ‘upgrade’ capitalism by reclaiming the commons. Barnes shows that the market, like a computer, is run by an operating system, one that inherently gives the ‘right of way’ to profit-maximizing corporations who redistribute their profits to only a sliver of the population.” Learn more at Busboys & Poets, where he’ll discuss his book Capitalism 3.0: A Guide to Reclaiming the Commons. Free at 6:30PM. [DC Independent Media Center]

The Post today takes a look at how jury selection’s going over at the Scooter Libby trial. It ain’t easy, it seems, to find impartial jurors in Washington, DC. MORE »