Amazingly, a San Francisco technology startup failed to give George W. Bush's henchman the recognition he felt he deserved.

Twitter's Evan Williams took his son to work, if only virtually.

Daniel Victor of the Harrisburg, Pa.'s Patriot News conducted some journalistic anthropology.

The Daily Show's Rob Corddry reported quality-control issues at the Cheesecake Factory.

Lifecaster Julia Allison needed some help to overshare, for once.

Did you witness the media elite tweet something indiscreet? Please email us your favorite tweets - or send us more Twitter usernames.

Rove is not yet actually in jail, so we are holding off on the champagne. Though he will never actually go to jail, so maybe we should just have champagne anyway?

Karl Rove personally ordered the firings of a bunch of too-liberal US Attorneys and he was also behind the politically-motivated corruption charges against the former Democratic governor of Alabama, and everyone knows this, and frankly what Rove and co. did to the entire Department of Justice is terrifying and will broadly hurt American in many, many ways for a generation. But, you know, Rove probably just lied about it all, because why not? Is anyone going to actually fight the divine right of Presidents to do whatever the fuck they want all the time without actual consequences? No. The Constitution is basically enforced on the Honor System, you know.

And Rove might testify again, and maybe someday some of his testimony might become public, and someday and in some form John Conyers' committee might release some sort of report, and on that day, justice will have finally been served.

Yes, it's absurd to argue with straight face that "walling" isn't so terrible, or that America's enemies will, somehow, cleverly exploit the country's apparent limit of 183 waterboardings against a single individual.

But Jon Stewart and company made the pro-torture spin-storm seem farcical on a whole other level, thanks in part to an incredible Karl Rove clip, and of course one Peggy Noonan.

You should really watch the whole segment below, but we've distilled the best minute and a half above.

And guess who is crazy: action film director John McTiernan. He's just directed The Political Prosecutions of Karl Rove, an inaction film of sorts about how his indictment in the Pellicano case was politically motivated.

See, McTiernan had Pellicano wiretap a producer he was fighting over money with and then the FBI called him about it, and McTiernan was all "nope I didn't do that," and, well, that is not legal, to make false statements to the FBI. McTiernan pleaded guilty and was sentenced to four months in proson. But then McTiernan got mad that he was the only rich Hollywood prick facing actual jail time over this mess, so he fired his lawyers and withdrew his plea and made this documentary, apparently. He's due to be reindicted.

Anyway. McTiernan has never really thought he should get any jail time for his crime, and he's made it clear from day one that because he is a rich and successful director who is also, at heart, a Good Person, he should not be punished for lying about having everyone wiretapped. How dare they prosecute a man who's always portrayed the FBI in a positive light?

She also scolded Mr. McTiernan for saying in an e-mail message to his previous lawyer that he was "offended" at the idea he could be prosecuted because he had "refused to make movies in which F.B.I. agents are the bad guys," and for complaining that his legal woes could get in the way of his making a "patriotic movie."

McTiernan apparently doesn't remember how when the FBI shows up in Die Hard they are all working from the old terrorist playbook, and Gruber is playing them for saps, and only McClane and lowly LAPD desk jockey Reginald ValJohnson are interested in actually stopping those sons of bitches. Remember? Agents Johnson and Johnson, no relation? God, that movie rules. Anyway. The FBI are not "bad guys" in that movie but they are getting in the way of McClane doing his job, dammit, which is why, 20 years later, director John McTiernan had to lie to them.

Sadly this new movie does not look as awesome as Die Hard, or Die Hard With a Vengeance, which is just as awesome. This new movie looks as bad as Rollerball, frankly.

According to The Political Prosecutions of Karl Rove, the entire Pellicano case was all about digging up dirt for an anti-Hillary Clinton campaign video, because that makes sense. Why else but to derail Hillary would anyone go after noted Great American Ron Burkle?

The film notes that the prosecution allowed federal officials to compel two of Mrs. Clinton's biggest contributors - the entrepreneurs Ron Burkle and Stephen Bing - to testify before a grand jury. Mrs. Clinton, the film says, was widely reported to have had help from Mr. Pellicano when her husband was accused in 1992 of having had an affair with Gennifer Flowers.

Now it is actually certainly true that politically motivated investigations and prosecutions of prominent Democrats were one of the many dirty deeds of the Bush administration, but they were more likely to go after people like Alabama Governor Don Siegelman than to target a scummy Hollywood private eye and the assholes who hired him.

We think McTiernan should cut a deal with the prosecutors: they will not re-indict him if he stops making weird conspiracy documentaries and signs on instead to Die Hard 5.

Senator McCain has his inconsistent and deeply personal conceptions of "honor" and "justice," which means that occasionally he fights for completely symbolic things that we nonetheless approve of wholeheartedly, like this. Free Jack Johnson! McCain is a huge boxing fan, of course, and he's teaming up with Peter King and Ken Burns today to urge President Obama to pardon Johnson for his 1913 violation of the Mann Act.

Burns has been fighting for Johnson's pardon since 2004, but he ran into trouble with the last administration:

Burns said he spoke about the petition a couple of times with Bush, who as governor of Johnson's home state of Texas proclaimed Johnson's birthday as "Jack Johnson Day" for five straight years.

Bush gave Burns a phone number which led to adviser Karl Rove, Burns said, but Rove told him a pardon "ain't gonna fly."

Yes, right, of course.

Anyway let's all listen to Miles Davis (with Sonny Sharrock, right, jazz nerds?) and root for Johnson's century-late justice!

They're Twitter buddies even!

The girl who wrapped herself seductively in newspaper and took other sexy photos for her now-defunct website SimplySheena.com (her new site SheenaTahilramani.com is "coming soon"!), has the fancy title of chief of staff for Karl Rove & Company, which according to a Google search and Nexis' archives involved, most recently in November, serving as his spokeswoman. Plus he's one of the four people she's following on her Twitter page. She also seems to have a chummy relationship with a certain Kyle Rove and Sean Louis Rove, though their relationship to Karl is unclear. Nephews perhaps?

So from journalismy Julia Allison to buddy-buddy mouthpiece for the evil Richelieu of the Bush Empire. Here's lookin' at you, Sheena.

David Axelrod isn't having it.

Dick Cheney said pretty much outright that Obama's crazy plan to stop violating the basic principles of our democracy by holding a bunch of uncharged people in an offshore military prison indefinitely would lead to ten million more 9/11s.

Andy Card got somehow more dickish by going smaller with his little dig: Obama didn't wear a jacket in the Oval Office and so therefore he has no respect for the office of the president. That is just some business school bullshit, as every single president ever has worn whatever the hell they want to their own office, which is in their house, after all.

And finally Karl Rove wrote a little editorial about how Obama didn't know how the fix the economy (the economy that his administration broke) and the congressional Republicans were all heroes for vowing to do nothing but cut some more taxes while wailing about the fucking deficit.

So David Axelrod, Obama's campaign narrative guru and current "senior advisor" had a little interview with the Washington Post and said he was "disappointed" by Cheney and "surprised" by Card. But Rove, Rove got the best response of all!

Of Rove's criticism of Obama's economic stimulus plan, Axelrod said: "The last thing that I think we are looking for at this juncture is advice on fiscal integrity or ethics from Karl Rove — anyone who's read the newspapers for the last eight years would laugh at that."

Burn. Except of course that no one has read the newspapers over the last eight years, doesn't David Axelrod read the newspapers?

Spy cofounder Kurt Andersen couldn't believe it had all happened..

Software entrepreneur and technopontificator Mitch Kapor, once a candidate to be Obama's CTO, apologized for suggesting the all-new president looked old.

Boing Boing blogger Xeni Jardin hated capitalism.

Air America radio hostess Ana Marie Cox looked for politically amiable shelter.

And evil genius turned Beltway pundit Karl Rove fled town altogether .

Anyone else's tweets we should keep an eye on? Send us their username.

Really, should we be shocked that George W. Bush's former deputy chief of staff is there, or that he's so late to the game? Having exited the administration, Rove is following a familiar script in reinventing himself as a pundit, and the punditocracy, like the rest of the media, loves Twitter. The brevity the service forces on its users makes for a soundbite-friendly environment. And Rove is a technophile — remember how he was spotted using an iPhone, long before they were sold at Wal-Mart?

And look, Rove is already chatting up Joe Trippi, Howard Dean's former campaign manager. We've added KarlRoveChannel to our list of the Twitterati. This should be delicious.

On Christmas Eve, I received an email from Afghanistan, with thanks for helping to facilitate the tour. Attached was a picture of the videographer and his team, ready for that night's mission. Bearded and scruffy, covered with weapons and standing in a rude shelter, they were all wearing bright red Santa Claus hats. It was the best gift I received this Christmas.

Then he went to "The NSWF Dinner" and watched a video of some Seals "snatching and grabbing" in Afghanistan and he promised to send the video to the president.

Juvenile larfs aside, Rove is a vile scumbag and his roly-poly delight at the fact that young men permanently scarred by his mismanaged office pet projects don't feel sorry for themselves is our national disgrace.

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.

Then they were all beaten, repeatedly, by Iraqi Security forces and sent to a military internment camp for additional beatings.

Deborah Solomon's painfully, quippy interviews usually reveal more about her than about the interview subject in question, but it looks like she hit a nerve with ole KR:

Do you see the election results as a repudiation of your politics?
Our new president-elect won one and a half points more than George W. Bush won in 2004, and he did so, in great respect, by adopting the methods of the Bush campaign and conducting a vast army of persuasion to identify and get out the vote.

Ah yes, Karl. The idea to get more people to vote. You came up with that in the early 1500s when you were working as a blacksmith in a small Scottish village. Next, Solomon unravels the terrifying web that connects Barack to Karl:

Have you met Barack Obama?
Yes, I know him. He was a member of the Senate while I was at the White House and we shared a mutual friend, Ken Mehlman, his law-school classmate. When Obama came to the White House, we would talk about our mutual friend.

Are you going to send him a little note congratulating him?
I already have. I sent it to his office. I sent him a handwritten note with funny stamps on the outside.

What kind of funny stamps?
Stamps.

Do not lick the stamps, Barack. That's the least Bill Ayers can do considering what a pain he's been over the last few months.

Emory University professor Westen crafted Message Handbook for Progressives From Left to Center because, he says, he wanted "to rebrand progressives using language that's as evocative as the language of the other side, and stop using phrases that just turn people off."

If the resulting document — which the Times reports is a must-read for all Democratic operatives — makes you think of Karl Rove's taint, that's probably a good thing:

To think this whole time we were half-stepping left when we should have been pivoting. Damn! Like Rove's brilliant way of framing fringe issues, Westen's book is a must-read in how not to let the right convince voters to vote Republican based on any of those pesky constitutional amendments. The Obama campaign doesn't officially use Westen's book, but he's made an impact in other areas:

Bill Jones, a moderate Democrat in a conservative, wealthy section of suburban Atlanta, said talking to Dr. Westen had helped him make the decision to run for Congress against the Republican incumbent, Representative Tom Price.

Among other recommendations, Dr. Westen encouraged Jones to make his background as an Air Force veteran a prominent part of his biography. "It wasn't a contrived approach like 'how can we create a persona?' " Jones recalled. "It's 'be the person you are.' "

You can see how Jones uses the approach in this campaign commercial.

A Psychologist Helps Repackage the Democrats' Message [NYT]

Locking Obama up before he even arrived in Washington turned into a brilliant steal for publisher Crown, but at the time the income from Obama's three book deal was crucial for the senator's rising star. Barnett made it happen for the young pol, and he did it far cheaper than most agents. Indeed, much of Barnett's success in attracted big-time clients can be traced back to his unusual practice of forgoing the usual commission on a book, and just billing his clients hourly for their time.

Barnett's influence doesn't end in the publishing world, as last decade he was given the unenviable task of informing Hillary Clinton about her husband's indiscretions with Monica Lewinsky. Despite being employed by friends on both side of the aisle, Barnett isn't universally admired. His first big sale was Geraldine Ferraro's autobiography Ferraro: My Story, and literary agent Esther Newberg doesn't recall Barnett having an impressive debut or career:

Esther Newberg is thanked for her contribution “above and beyond that of literary agent”. Newberg, whose clients include Thomas Friedman (currently number three on The New York Times non-fiction bestseller list) and Patricia Cornwell (number three on the mass-market fiction list), doesn’t agree with Barnett’s account of the Ferraro negotiations. “He didn’t work with me. He did the contracts later. I sold the book in an auction. He watched."

In part, it's Barnett's willingness to represent Republicans including Karl Rove, Paul Wolfowitz and Lynne Cheney that bothers Newberg.

She adds that "three-quarters of the people he [Barnett] represents are morally repugnant to me". Apprised of Newberg’s comments via e-mail, Barnett replied: “[She] taught me a lot, but seems to have regretted it – and been jealous about it – ever since.”

Indeed, Barnett's connections are so extensive that he's a fixture on The L Word chart:

image from Muckety

The Washington Insider Who Made Obama Rich [FT]

In McCain's terrible new speech today on how none of us know who this mysterious and dangerous terrorist Barack Obama actually is, he says, literally, that Obama gets "touchy" and "angry" whenever he's attacked or criticized or accused of lying. As Josh Marshall points out, this is called "projection," because Obama actually remains infuriatingly cool and collected in the face of things that would drive us insane. Meanwhile, McCain is notorious for his temper, for his pettiness, and for his grudges.

So naturally McCain found that he was being criticized by everyone for lying all the time, and he decided that meant that he was hitting a nerve with Obama (and not just all the dudes in the press who used to have man-crushes on him), and decided further to expand this into a whole new line of attack. A line of attack based entirely on projection.

So when we said "a brilliant new twist on Karl Rove's old dictum" what we actually meant was "a sad foray into the extreme disconnect between perception and reality that is probably the logical conclusion of Rovian politics."

Anyway, if she only had "confidence" like O'Reilly she would be fine. Because "confidence" is what the Sarah Palins of this world need more of.

Click here to listen to the voice mail.