Wonkette

Hey, remember back in the day four million years ago when a gal named Ana Marie Cox edited this humble publication, and she followed, outed, and interviewed a Hill aide who went by the name “Washingtonienne” and who had lots of anal sex and other kinds of sex that she wrote about on her blog called Washingtonienne? Yes, those were more innocent days when something as simple as a young heterosexual woman having sex with a variety of males could set the world on fire. Let’s take a trip down memory lane…a trip that ends on the Straight Talk Express! MORE »

Pat DeWine, son of outgoing Senator Mike DeWine (R-OH), beat up an old man in Cincinnati this week. This is how it went down according to this insanely laid-out conservative site (via this more reasonably-designed blog):

Did D-D-Defeated DeWine’s st-stuttering son really try to get in a fight with an innocent man minding his own business at dinner at the posh Bistro Jean Ro when he overheard him comment on the Defeated DeWhine? Did Commissioner hothead really try to put this person in a headlock after whipping his glasses off his face?

Naturally, DeWine has a slightly different explanation.

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The link, for the curious, goes to our story yesterday about Mike DeWine’s shittily photoshopped 9/11 ad. MORE »

The last we saw of the google-eyed incumbent Republican senator from Jeffrey Dahmer’s home adopted home state of Ohio, he was giving the bum’s rush to a libidinous junior office worker by the name of…wait, don’t tell us, it’s right on the tip of our tongue, you know the one who wrote the novel and posed for Playboy and is now running a dude ranch in California with the Fonz and Lenny and Squiggy and Josie and the Pussycats. MORE »

12:56 — First off: We shoud’ve been liveblogging the Gay Marriage debate instead. Secondly: Feinstein’s mic was left open long enough for us to hear her say, annoyedly, “He didn’t answer anything.” See ya at 1:30.

12:51 — The Feinstein questioning:

12:50 — So remember when Negroponte said people in secret prisons will remain there until the end of this open-ended War on Terror?

Hayden — Closed session.

How will we get good intelligence out of people who’ve been in secret prisons for 5 years?

Hayden — Closed session.

Waterboarding — hot or not?

Hayden — Closed session.

DoJ give you guys any new torture advice?

Hayden — Closed session.

Remember when the Inspector General said you guys were torturing people? Do you agree?

Hayden — Closed session.

Iran — you think they’re gonna get nukes pretty soon?

Hayden — Closed session. Oh, by the way, we are totally confident about our Iran intelligence. Yeah, it’s totally different from the Iraq thing. We, uh, learned lessons. Lessons were learned. Whoo boy, those lessons.

12:42 — Will you make a commitment that all the top officers at the CIA will be intelligence workers? Or something like that. Seems like an obvious yes. As CIA officials, they will be, by definition, intelligence officials. Right?

Hayden is bored and hungry. SO ARE WE.

He brought the question to NSA lawyers, three guys he trusts, with “a real comfort level,” that this was within the President’s authority. “They talked to me about Article 2.” Boy, that Article 2 — we should look that one up. Sounds like an exciting one.

Feinstein pushing hard on the “Everyone should follow FISA, and if you would just TELL US WHAT YOU WANT US TO CHANGE ABOUT FISA so you can legally keep doing what you’re currently doing illegally, we’re be MORE THAN HAPPY TO CHANGE IT. GET US OFF THE HOOK, HERE GUYS. WE DON’T WANT TO OVERSEE YOU! There’s a totally awesome gay marriage debate going on in the Senate right now that we’re missing ’cause of this bullshit.

“I want to ask you some questions about the fourth amendment.” She’s reading it to him! We thought he might do a double-take and drop his monocle when he heard the end of it. She should’ve said “SPOILER ALERT!” beforehand.

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As you may have heard in our Morning Roundup, the seven member subgroup of the Senate Intelligence Committee received their first White House briefing on the Bush’s domestic wiretapping nonsense. The Washington Post article on the briefing contained one section that immediately gave us a case of the WTFs.

Members of the Senate subcommittee — which, along with Roberts and Rockefeller, includes Republicans Mike DeWine (Ohio), Orrin G. Hatch (Utah) and Christopher S. Bond (Mo.) and Democrats Carl M. Levin (Mich.) and Dianne Feinstein (Calif.) — will not be able to share what they learn with the other eight members of the intelligence panel, according to rules the White House has proposed.

That is the foofiest fucking idea we’ve ever heard! How can a debate about intelligence priorities take place if the entire committee isn’t on an equal footing? Are the non-committee members going to have to sit in smaller chairs, too?

Here is how we imagine the future of the Senate Intelligence Committee:

[sorry, only super special Wonketteers can read after the jump]

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• Administration to propose major shift in nuclear energy strategy; program would import spent fuel for “recycling.” [WP]
• Expansion of Health Savings Accounts will be tenet of State of the Union address, Bush says. [WSJ, NYT]
• Democrats seek even more documents related to Katrina. Rep. Gene Taylor (D-Miss.): “What do they have to hide? Why don’t they just come forward and say, ‘This is what we knew, when we knew, and this is how we reacted?’” [NYT]
• Partisan divide over eavesdropping widens as Bush visits the NSA and Sen. Hillary Clinton calls his justification “strange” and “far-fetched.” Ken Mehlman: “Not only are the Democrats not learning from costly policy mistakes, they are not learning what happened from the political mistakes of 2002 and 2004.” [WP, NYT, WT]
• Administration rejected 2002 proposal by Sen. Mike DeWine (R-Ohio) to lower the standards for getting wiretaps of non-citizens approved. [WP]
• Bush “seems unlikely to reshape the political landscape with his speech”; no major initiatives expected. [NYT]
• Samuel Alito makes “victory lap” on Capitol Hill; Bush renominates Brett Kavanaugh to U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. [WP]

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