Al-Qaeda personally calls Brian Ross on his prop phone to confirm reports from Mike Chertoff’s gut. [The Blotter]

* Heard on the Hill: “On Friday afternoon, Capitol Police put out an all-points bulletin indicating that ‘multiple individuals were harassing or being too forward with Sen. [Barack] Obama (D-Ill.)’ inside the Hart Senate Office Building.” … The first 100 hours were neither first nor 100 hours… Senate still lazy, not working 5 day weeks. [Roll Call]
* Reliable Source: Famous women who’ve done famous things are approvingly listed and described. [WP]
* Yeas and Nays: FDR’s car auctioned, fetches less than a NAZI CAR… Moby was here. He dislikes DC, which should cheer up Washingtonians. Also, Alexandra Pelosi calls him “Baby Mo.” [Examiner]
* Washington Whispers: New DCCC head is trying to be BFF with DNC head Howard Dean… Michael Chertoff picked Beta over VHS. [USN&WR]

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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Michael Chertoff rented this tux, because the terrorists wanted him to buy. (Photo by Liz Gorman)

Congress and the American public must accept that the government cannot protect every possible target against attack if it wants to avoid fulfilling Al Qaeda’s goal of bankrupting the nation, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told a Senate committee Tuesday.

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• Rhode Island’s 15 minutes of fame are up as maverick Senator Lincoln Chafee wins GOP primary. [WP, NYT, USAT]

• Michael Chertoff tells congress that the US cannot “defend ourselves against every conceivable threat.” Nation’s petting zoos and popcorn factories now totally unprotected. [NYT]
• Hillary Clinton wins primary in a cakewalk, eats no actual cake. [NYT]
• Democrats feel NSA is inappropriately advocating it’s own spying program. [WP]
• Maryland elections display DC levels of logistical incompetence. [WP]
• States taking it upon themselves to increase minimum wage, “for the first time, a majority of states could require higher pay than the federal rate.” [USAT]
• Diplomacy now so obsolete reporters forced to write about who’s doing Condi this week. [NYT]
• Adrian Fenty will be next mayor of DC. [WP]

Washington people just never quit working. Bill Kristol rises early to have breakfast with congressmen, Michael Chertoff spends Friday nights securing the homeland’s movie theaters, and Valerie Plame reads political non-fiction on street corners cause she can’t get enough. And kindly father Alito (at right — ain’t he loveable?) spends his weekends carting his daughter’s luggage all over 37th street. This plus philandering soccer players, jaywalking TV gangsters, and mustachioed wrestlers, after the jump!

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• Bill Bennett: separated at birth from another fat blowhard. [Brains Over Bombs]

• The Condi Rice issue of Playboy will finally reveal her turn-ons, including, “a hard throbbing insurgency.” [The Anacostia Diaries]
• The massive anti-hotel-room-porn lobby badly stumbles when their ad featuring a masturbator in handcuffs incites more masturbation. [Pandagon]
• Power outage causes spontaneous orgies on Tokyo subway trains. [ Reuters]
• If you can’t get drunk on the plane, the terrorists have won. [BusinessWeek]
• Michael Chertoff got The Chase and Minority Report from Netflix last weekend, world to suffer. [Boing Boing]

Michael Chertoff, pretending he had anything to do with work of British police: MORE »

Vice President Dick Cheney, left, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, center, and Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff wait for the arrival of President Bush and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper in the East Room of the White House Thursday, July 6, 2006 in Washington. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

* Newly crowned Miss Virginia lives in Arlington. Judges praised her “full set of teeth,” putting her far ahead of the other contestants. [Metroblogging DC] MORE »

Bored with work? Still despondent over our nation’s shaming by Ghana? Your choices for free entertainment today include: MORE »