Wonkette

A brief primer for those of you kind enough to email us tips. We love and desperately need you, so don’t take this the wrong way, but… the Maryland Senate race is boring. Comparatively, we mean. Ok. A Ben Cardin (Cardin’s… not the black guy, right?) had a staffer who wrote an anonymous blog that said questionable things about Oreo cookies, black people, and grope-y old Jews. And, you know, congrats to Wizbang, you cracked this one wide open (though we’re pretty sure we got the same email you guys did on September 14), you deserve all the credit… MORE »

• MD Lt. Gov. hospitalized by 19-year-old girl. [AP via FOX]
• Whole Foods: Yuppie pimp yenta. [IAAL]
• TSA keeps DC safe from pork. [HTBSFP]
• New urbanism vs. COOL BIG SHINY FIRE TRUCKS. [WaPo]

• Non-voting congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton stubbornly refutes Stephen Colbert’s claim that DC is not in the United States. Even though his mind is made up, she continues trying to confuse him with facts.

• We suspected there might have been some photoshop foul play, but it turned out Katherine Harris just wasn’t in the front of the picture. First time for everything.
• Montana Senator Conrad Burns boldly ignores post-9/11 decorum and balls out a team of firefighters. Burns’s own performance review to be completed in November.
• No surprises here, the worst campaign in America, is run by exactly who you think it is.
• Ann Coulter (pot) calls Bill Clinton (kettle) gay (black).
• Eliot Spitzer loves the wacky-backy as much as you do.
• If any OMB fraud auditors mess with Elaine L. Chao, they’ll end up with a government contracting officer’s severed head beneath their sheets.
• Dana Milbank sets the chattering class a chattering with a mystery quote from a republican candidate. But, as we all know nothing in DC stays a secret very long.

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We’re entering a third day of the “Michael Steele is/isn’t George W. Bush’s secret homeboy” story? How? Why?

Maryland Democratic Party Obtained Secret Email Between Steele Campaign and Washington Post That Discussed Quotes BEFORE Story Was Published MORE »

The rumors of Michael Steele’s keen campaign skills may have been overstated.

Republican Senate candidate Michael Steele on Wednesday called President Bush his “homeboy,” reversed course on having the president campaign for him and said he was joking when he described his Republican affiliation as a scarlet letter.

It’s possible that the interview excerpts in the Washington Post miss the subtlety or flow of Steele’s comments on the Chip Franklin Show, but… no, he just doesn’t make sense, does he?

“The president doesn’t want a sycophant in the United States Senate. He wants an honest broker for the people of Maryland. He doesn’t want a ‘yes’ man. He wants someone who’s going to be genuine in his approach to solving the problems. And that’s me,” Steele said.

By “not a sycophant,” he means “someone who calls him homeboy.” By “not a ‘yes’ man,” he means “a guy who’ll apologize at warp speed if ever he says something vaguely mean about the POTUS.” MORE »

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This headline appears on the front page of the Washington Post Metro section, above the fold: MORE »

* Reliable Source: Author Christopher Buckley says the main character in “Thank You for Smoking” is a “very different kind of cat” from Jack Abramoff: “He’s not in it for the money. He has issues with authority — he doesn’t like being told what to do. That was the common theme among the lobbyists I interviewed while doing the book.” [WP]
* Inside the Beltway: Sens. Allen and Clinton lead ‘08 poll of insiders. . . “Republican heavy hitters” come out for Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele’s Senate bid. [WT]
* Lloyd Grove’s Lowdown: Maureen Dowd is “flattered” that she was the inspiration for Katie Holmes‘ character in “Thank You for Smoking.” [NYDN]
* The Scoop: 5,000 witches petition Bush for recognition of Wicca faith. [MSNBC]

• Bush, showing emotion, urges patience with Iraq: “As the Iraqi forces gain experience and the political process advances, we will be able to decrease our troop levels in Iraq without losing our capability to defeat the terrorists.” Sen. Reid responds: “After nearly 1,000 days of war in Iraq, our troops, their families and the American people deserve more than just a Bush-Cheney public relations campaign.” [WP, NYT, WT]
• Bush admitted “some setbacks,” but “offered nothing new substantively.” [WP, USAT]
• Bush’s advisors doubt that the war will be a “determining factor” in ‘06 House races; still unknown “is how Americans will be able to measure any progress, and whether it is realistic to believe his ambitious goals.” [NYT]
• Bush “came much closer than he has before to matching the hard-nosed assessments of the war that have long been made by American commanders” in Iraq. [NYT]
• Bush “is staking the rest of his presidency on his conviction that the conflict can be won.” [USAT]
• Alito, as member of the Reagan administration, designed a strategy for eventually overturning Roe v. Wade. [WP, NYT, LAT, USAT]
• Court of Appeals hints it might repeal Bush’s power to detain Jose Padilla. [NYT, WT]
• Military planted positive articles in Iraqi newspapers as a component of “‘information war’ against an insurgency adept at spreading its message through local and international media, largely with violent acts.” [WP, NYT]
• Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) comes out in favor of Murtha’s plan for withdrawal. [WT, USAT]
• Pentagon directive mandates plan for post-conflict stability in the next war. [WP]

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One of the season’s favorite GOP talking points concerns a 2002 incident where Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, who is black and Republican, had Oreos thrown at him by detractors, who were hateful and presumably Democratic. It’s been bandied in a boatload of dispatches ever since, and recently prompted RNC chair Ken Mehlman to demand his DNC counterpart Howard Dean renounce the ugly racist incident. MORE »