Cast Your Vote

For the worst mug shot.

Nick Nolte.

Glen Campbell.

We'll leave Michael Jackson out of the running for now.

In other news, Augusto Pinochet has begun to push for his own canonization:

"I harbor no hatred or rancor. I am good, I feel like an angel," he said. "I have kindness. Whenever I can do something to help someone, I do it. To help anyone." ...

Human rights activist Lorena Pizarro said a more appropriate label for Pinochet would be an "angel of death."

According to an official report released by the civilian government that succeeded Pinochet, 3,197 people were killed for political reasons during the dictatorship and thousands more tortured and forced into exile.


Elsewhere
CrawlingWestward links to a story out on TalkingPointsMemo regarding stolen memos. Recall that several weeks ago people (and I use that term loosely) like Sean Hannity were aghast that some Democratic Senators dared to view the Iraq war in political terms (after all, it's not like Tom Delay ever politicized war--oh, wait a second).

The stolen memos in Marshall's story do not include the Intelligence Committee document--yet. But Orrin Hatch (R-Bondage/S&M) is in a delicate situation, to say the least. Already exposed as a hypocrite over the so-called judicial nominee impasse, Hatch now is forced to admit that one current and another former staffer seem to be thieves. Atrios notes sentencing guidelines for just such a crime. Kos rightly adds that investigators should look into whether this is a one-time criminal but basically stupid act, or if this is indicative of a pattern of behavior among Hatch's staffers.

I will give a small bit of credit to Orrin: unlike G.W. Bush's incompentence regarding the Plame scandal, Hatch got to the bottom of this rather quickly. Bush, in contrast, is hoping we've forgotten about his condoning a felony committed by someone in his Administration. We haven't, George.

Lastly, for now, Kos also comments on the latest Rethuglican attempt to smear Democrats/wrap themselves in the flag: the Bush television ad. Howard Dean's staffers thought they heard something odd--in the ad, Bush is reciting the State of the Union address. Last winter, he clearly stumbled over some of lines in the speech. Now, thanks to the magic of audio editing, he comes across clear and strong. Is this something the Democrats can focus on? In other words, if we can't even trust the basic accuracy of Bush's ads, how can we trust them on anything else?

The comments on the link above have a number of good points, both for and against the idea of publicizing the doctored ad. My own attitude is whenever you can attack, do so. If the Rethugs whine about this being minute, simply point out that the American people have a right to know the facts--then move on. But always be attacking. It's not like Rethugs haven't lied--hell, they've lied about EVERY aspect of their agenda to date: the economy is in shambles--no, a single quarter of 8 percent growth ISN'T a turnaround, and besides, a LOT of this growth is due to Keynesian, borrow-and-spend policies Bush has undertaken over the last two and a half years--the war is a bloody mess, with civil war in Iraq looming, Afghanistan is slowly boiling over, terrorism continues to be a worldwide problem, the tax cuts really didn't cut most people's taxes at all--this is the legacy Bush will be running on. And he needs to be hammered over the head with it.