While surely the implications of this news are big in the Kennedy context — could it be the family is relinquishing its hand on America's political system? — it also opens the door for a new generation of political dynasties. But, sadly, the prospects are dim.

The most obvious choice would be the Bush's, a family that has produced two presidents and Jeb. Since Barbara's basically a persona non-grata and Jenna's working for Today, the family's brightest star could be George Prescott Bush, President Dubya's attorney nephew who's also a real estate honcho. That combination, plus his good looks, could make him a good candidate to maintain the family's standing as a preeminent political family.

With Bill being a former President and Hillary as Secretary of State, some are hoping Chelsea Clinton will keep the family's lawmaking legacy alive. She seems to have little interest in politics and therefore won't help build a nascent dynasty. Sad.

We're thinking that the Obama girls may be the nation's best bet for political nepotism. Yeah, the girls are still in school, but the First Family has already been compared to the Kennedy clan and their revered "Camelot." If these girls choose — or if the family pushes, as should be done in all political dynasties — Sasha and Malia Obama could carry the torch for a new American royal family.

Perhaps there's another family out there, toiling away to break into the Washington scene. We sure hope so. This country could use more nepotistic clans who ingrain themselves into our democratic system. It seems antithetical to the American dream, yes, but this nation's democratic roots are also long-addicted to the ups-and-downs of political family drama. And we all know addictions must be fed.

The company in question, Premiere Election Solutions, became a constant drag for Diebold after it was revealed that the company's CEO was a major George Bush supporter. As if that weren't bad press enough, it soon became clear that Diebold's machines were easily hacked, a revelation that led some local election commissions to ban the machines. Some even accused Diebold of breaking the law, which shouldn't really come as much of a surprise.

With the controversy swirling about them, Diebold executives decided to distance themselves from Premiere Election Solutions. And now this sale means the company will no longer play a role in national elections.

Many of Diebold's opponents will cheer this move, but the division's new owner, Election Systems & Software may not be much better. The company, the largest of its kind in the United States, and its products have also been implicated in malfunctions, including the 2004 presidential election. In 2006, three states filed complaints about ES&S machines. The company blamed poll workers, of course, but did end up paying the state of Indiana $775,000 for its troubles.

The most politically-alarming incident was way back in 1996, when Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel won 56% of the vote in an election that many thought he would lose. It was later revealed that Hagel was once the CEO of American Information Systems Inc., which would later rename itself Election Systems & Software and produced a majority of the machines that led to Hagel's big win. Not a very reassuring coincidence.

Thus, the virtual shadow hanging over American elections has simply shifted, not dissipated. As for Diebold's election career, it will continue in Brazil, where it supplies machines for the national elections. Those poor saps.

Image via markth314's flickr.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.The secret to a long marriage: A his-and-hers harem of 'Chorus Line' cast members. [TMZ]

Remember when Barack Obama busted a move for Ellen DeGeneres?

Or when Hillary Clinton shimmied for child-porn-loving Fox News producer Aaron Bruns?

Or when Dubya did an African tribal dance?

Politicians, please keep dancing! It is better than speeches.

Obama's answer: Golly, I don't know! "I didn't accompany, uh, President Bush on his various summits, so I don't know, uh, how he was operating, and I won't, uh, warn against warrant a guess on that." And then he goes on to say he's going to do brand-new things like "lead by example" and "show some element of humility." Not that Obama knows whether the last guy did that stuff or not. But Obama? He's going to do more of it!

Sixteen years ago, Bill and Hillary showed up late for coffee with Bush's mom and dad, according to Second Acts, a book about life after the presidency. And unlike the Obamas, who brought along Joe and Jill Biden, the Clintons showed up with Hollywood producer pals Harry Thomason and Linda Bloodworth-Thomason. Thanks for staying classy, Barack!

(Photo by Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images)

Jamilla El-Shafei, a Maine activist who previously organized actions outside the Bush family home in Kennebunkport, led 200 people in launching their shoes at an inflatable figure of George W. Bush in Washington, D.C.'s DuPont Circle neighborhood.

When Mutandar Al-Zaidi chucked his shoes at Bush, it was widely reported as a gesture of disdain culturally specific to the Arab world. Over the weekend, San Franciscans also staged a symbolic shoe-throwing event near the waterfront. Besides offering a nice visual coda to the Bush Administration, it should also put to rest the notion that shoe-throwing is somehow a friendly gesture in the rest of the world.

More photos from the protest, via Flickr and This Ain't Hell:

Update: One Bush protester took the idea a bit too literally! Fox News reports that a man has been arrested for throwing a shoe over the fence onto the White House lawn:

(Photos by theogeo and Jonn Lilyea/This Ain't Hell)

People say, 'How can I help on this war against terror? How can I fight evil?' You can do so by mentoring a child; by going into a shut-in's house and say I love you.

—Washington, D.C., Sept. 19, 2002

It's just so magically strange. The image of walking into a shut-in's house and whispering gravely "I love you," then turning around and leaving. Perfect! And, now that the long national nightmare is basically at an end, I think we can laugh a little less bitterly about his wacky turns of phrase. (Well, sort of.) What's your favorite?

In YouTube form! Because, that's how we demand things of our leaders these days. Basically people are making mash-ups of the West Wing opening, but with Barack and his cabinet members being featured as cast members rather than Leo, CJ, and the gang. It's such a cute little dream of a wish!

Except, sigh, it won't be that way. Because nothing will ever be like The West Wing. Never was, never will be. Bush started a White House grease fire while trying to make a bowl of cereal one night, and it's not gonna be easy to put out. The West Wing was a product of boom-time America. There was no Iraq War on the show. There was never a Katrina. Or a Prop 8. But in Obama's world — that is our world — all those things happened. And more. Much, much more.

The West Wing was such a wonderful bit of screen magic. It premiered in post-Lewinsky 1999 as a shadow government alternative to the Clinton administration. Here's how it was supposed to have gone down, creator Aaron Sorkin and his colleagues seemed to say. Sure, President Bartlett lied about having MS and had his wife pull some chicanery during the cover up and stuff. But that was like the biggest scandal of them all. (Oh, and he smoked — just like Barry!) Mostly it was just young, adorably rumpled people like Josh walking-and-talking around the office, piling word upon left-of-center word. They talked us into a belief that the dirty business of executive politics really isn't that dirty after all. Or at least it doesn't have to be.

And then Bush came along and then September 11th happened. And the whole fantasy was shattered. NBC aired a stand-alone episode in which the characters had a deep and thoughtful discussion about the nature of terrorism, and then they moved on. Back to President Bartlett and his sage wisdom, his gruff belief in the purity of some misty-eyed American ideal. Meanwhile in the real world, Bush and his Decepticons waged war with civility and diplomacy, basically ruining America forever. Eventually people stopped caring about The West Wing—the real world drama was just too horrifying and urgent to ever comfortably reenter that Washington idyll's atmosphere. Plus the show kinda started to suck.

A Sorkin-less crew of writers revitalized the show, creatively at least, in their final season with an eerily-similar-to-Obama story about Jimmy Smits running for president against old, rattly Alan Alda. The critics loved it. No one watched it. The show aired its final episode on May 14th, 2006.

And then Hope and Change happened and now everyone wants to press and hold that rewind button for even longer. Forget the terror of the last eight years, forget the way Clinton fucked up his legacy. Let's go alllll the way back to 1992. This is how it should have been. This is how it will be. With the young people! And the smarts! And the talking!

Still, we like the YouTube mash-up. Apparently someone sent a similar one to CJ herself, Allison Janney!

That is, you know, if Facebook is to be believed. Just doing a simple search for "Bush" in the Events application yields dozens of listings for "End of an Error" or "Bush Bash" parties. Everyone is so happy to burn the outgoing terriblest-president-ever in effigy and get drunk and feel the cathartic shift of soul-crushing pessimism being reduced to an act of remembrance! It seems a bit like yelling angrily while a new baby is being born (maybe the Scientologists are onto something there), but whatever. In some ways the getting rid of Bush-anger experience is probably more powerful than the "omigod, new Change!!!" one. At least we know for sure that the leaving is actually going to happen.

So why not throw one for yourself? Michael Musto knows where to get supplies.

Winters, an Irish protestant who flew a B-17 bomber across the Atlantic for Israel and helped sell the fledgling nation two other planes, served 18 months in jail for violating the 1939 Neutrality Act and a then-active arms embargo on Israel. He became only the second person ever to be granted a posthumous pardon after quite a bit of lobbying from the likes of Steven Spielberg and other friends of Israel.

But a tipster, who claims to have info from the Israeli prime minister's office, says all that pleading wasn't the reason Winters name was cleared: Bush didn't want to pardon Jonathan Pollard, a former intelligence officer in the U.S. Navy who's serving a life sentence for spying for Israel. "Israel wanted Jonathan Pollard released from prison. So Bush threw them a bone and pardoned a Zionist hero," says the tipster. Israel acknowledged that he was a spy in 1998, and has since been actively lobbying for his release. At this rate, he may get pardoned in 2046.

Connell's plane went down over Akron, Ohio, last Friday, and he was killed instantly. The plane reportedly ran out of fuel — which is a suspicious way for Connell, an experienced pilot, to go.

Rove, the evil-genius political mastermind behind George W. Bush's presidential campaigns and the Republican Congressional races of this decade, relied on Connell to run the technical aspects of his campaign machine. In an interview with Alternet, New York University professor Mark Crispin Miller said lawyers in the case called Connell the "Forrest Gump" of Republican dirty tricks:

Well, the lawyers in the case refer to him as a high-IQ Forrest Gump, by which they mean that he seems to have been present at the scene of every dubious election of the last eight years. We're talking about Florida in 2000. We're talking about Ohio in 2004. We're talking about Alabama in 2002. He seems to have been involved in the theft of Don Siegelman's re-election for governor. There's some evidence that links him with the Saxby Chambliss-Max Cleland Senate race in Georgia in 2002. To be Karl Rove's IT guru seems to have meant basically setting it up so that votes could be electronically shaved to the disadvantage of the Democrats and the advantage of Republicans.

Connell was set to testify in a case of alleged vote tampering in the 2004 Ohio election. He'd been getting death threats, according to his lawyer, and asked to be taken into protective custody. He was also allegedly involved in the deletion of White House emails — a factor which played into the Rove-linked scandal over the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame.

And now Connell's dead.

The Times, in a thoroughly silly series called "The Reckoning," spent a lot of time interviewing lots and lots and lots of respectable economic experts, and then ignoring them and totally making up a story about who's at fault for the housing bubble, according to black-eyed White House flack Dana Perino, who is only now recovering from the wound she incurred in the Baghdad shoe-throwing incident. And the White House is mad, mad, mad!

The thing is — and it kills us to admit this — we're kind of with Dubya on this one.

Look, no one likes the fact that Wall Street has disappeared and billions of dollars are missing and overpriced condos are now slightly less overpriced. But are we supposed to believe that our George W. Bush engineered a worldwide economic collapse just in time to screw over his Democratic successor? Come on. That would imply some kind of diabolical cunning, some evil competence.

Now, if the Times had found a way to pin this one on Cheney, we would have totally believed them.

(Photo by Eric Draper/White House)

Apparently, "Perino suffered an eye injury when she was hit in the face with a microphone during the melee" as Iraqi security goons wrestled Muntader al-Zaidi to the ground , reports the AP.

Thomas Tamm, a Justice Department attorney, has revealed himself to Newsweek's Michael Isikoff as the key source who tipped off New York Times reporters to the existence of a secret wiretapping program, ordered by White House officials, which operated outside the laws which govern spying on U.S. citizens.

The Times reporters, Eric Lichtblau and Jeff Risen, won a Pulitzer for their story. Lichtblau wrote a book about it.

And what has Tamm gotten for outing what is almost unanimously seen as a gross violation of the U.S. Constitution? He's $30,000 in debt; loopy right-wing blogs are deriding him as a Bush-hating lunatic; and he could face years in prison on charges of leaking classified information. Alberto Gonzales, the former attorney general who ended up resigning in disgrace over the program, said the leaker "hurt our country."

Tamm is a deeply implausible country-hurter. Hegrew up in a family of high-profile FBI officials. As a toddler, he crawled around the desk of J. Edgar Hoover. So it was all the more shocking when FBI agents busted into his Potomac, Md. home last year and interrogated his wife and children. (Tamm was not home at the time.) That incident prompted the first speculation that Tamm was a source for the Times stories.

It's easy to be cynical about the timing of Tamm's revelation. With Barack Obama set to take office, Tamm can expect a Justice Department which is unlikely to press charges. And the nation seems eager to find some good guys to dredge from the muck of Bush's reign. But that shouldn't minimize Tamm's courage. Instead, it just speaks to the powerful opponents he had to defy to tell his story.

(Photo by Nigel Parry/CPI for Newsweek)

What makes this more embarrassing is that this is the second time our outgoing president has paid for the domain name. Yuma Solutions, a Web-development firm based in Tallahassee, Fl., which has done campaign-website work for both Dubya and his brother, former Florida governor Jeb Bush. Yuma bought the domain name in March 2007, but didn't notice it was due to be renewed. George Huger, a Web developer for North Carolina-based Illuminati Karate, saw it on a list of expiring domain names, and snapped it up.

The thing is, I'm in no position to point and laugh, since the same thing happened to me a few years ago. I bought a domain name, mistakenly thought I'd renewed it for two years, and missed the renewal notices when they went to a defunct email address. I didn't spend nearly $35,000 to get it back, but it still hurt. So I'd cut Dubya some slack on this one: He is no stupider than a gossip blogger.

Oh, and? After Yuma finishes spiffing up the library website, it might want to work on getting better search-engine placement. Right now, if you search for "George W. Bush Presidential Library," one of the top results is georgewbush.org. Which is funny, but not the correct website!

Our vantage point in the clip defies easy interpretation like that provided by the Early Show anchors here; we actually sense a more fraught conversation upon the president's approach:

Bush: "Ms. Streisand."
Streisand: "Mr. President."
Bush: "It's like, I'm supposed do this thing, like, where—"
Streisand: "I know, I know. Just... whatever. Quickly."
Bush:"I bet that's not the first time you told a guy that."
Streisand: *scowls*
Bush: *kiss*
Streisand: "That's enough."
Bush: "Come on, at least—"
Streisand: *touches Bush's shoulder* "That's enough."
Bush: "Cool, sorry. Hey, tell Joshie I'm pulling for him. Oscars and everything."
Streisand: "OK."
Bush: "Except—"
Streisand: *smiles, clears throat*

At which point Bush shuffled to the next honoree, George Jones, though the video ends just before the point when we imagine the country legend offered his profuse gratitude and leaned in to inquire how hot Sarah Palin really is in person. Congrats to all the winners.

• Streisand and Bush Awkward Kiss [YouTube]

Or, officially, W. — The Official Film Guide, an obsessive, somewhat addictive gathering of footnotes for amateur scholars ("14. Cheney - Unitary Executive Theory") and culture mavens ("80. W. loved Cats) alike, crammed with supporting details and citations behind some of W.'s more out-there moments. Like "W. on Non-Alcoholic Beer":

“I’ve won," said George W. Bush, one week before Election Day. A couple of reporters on the plane appeared unconvinced. But Bush was supremely confident, leaning against the bulkhead with a Buckler near-beer in his hand… [James Moore, Wayne Slater. Bush's Brain]

Or, our favorite, "W. as Paul Bunyan":

On most of the 365 days he has enjoyed at his secluded ranch [in Crawford], President Bush's idea of paradise is to hop in his white Ford pickup truck in jeans and work boots, drive to a stand of cedars, and whack the trees to the ground. [...] Sometimes this activity is the only official news to come out of what aides call the Western White House. For five straight days since Monday, when Bush retreated to the ranch for his Christmas sojourn, a spokesman has announced that the president, in between intelligence briefings, calls to advisers and bicycling, has spent much of his day clearing brush. [Lisa Rein, The Washington Post

]

And all this time we thought the president spent those long, languid days kicking back with a book. Who knew?

• Debating 'W.': Getting Bush Right [Slate]

• 'W.' — The Official Film Guide [Lionsgate via MCN]