What punishment does Lindsay Lohan deserve?

You might argue she should get off easy.  After all, when Lohan was arrested for investigation of misdemeanor driving under the influence and with a suspended license, and felony cocaine possession, perhaps she wasn’t hurting anyone but herself.  A victimless crime.

But in reality she hurt a great many people.  For starters, our soldiers in Iraq.

Last year, Lohan reportedly told Elle magazine:  “I’ve been trying to go to Iraq with Hillary Clinton for so long.  Hillary was trying to work it out, but it seemed too dangerous.”

Iraq’s too dangerous for whom – Lohan?  The way she drives, nothing’s too dangerous.  For Hillary?   Nah.  Perish the thought.  Heck, Hillary debates Kucinich.  You don’t think that takes guts?

Lohan told Elle: “I wanted to do what Marilyn Monroe did (during the Korean War), when she went and just set up a stage and did a concert for the troops all by herself. It’s so amazing seeing that one woman just going somewhere, this beautiful sex kitten, who’s basically a pinup, which is what I’ve always aspired to be.”

Hoo-ah!  Beautiful sex kittens – and presumably we’re still talking about Lohan , not Hillary – are just what our soldiers need right now.  That and body armor.  But they really need Lohan, that fearless sex kitten.  “I’m not afraid of going,” she told Elle. “My security guard is going to take me to a gun range when I get back to L.A., and I’m going to start taking shooting lessons.”

She would have been better off taking driving lessons, not shooting lessons.  But it’s a little too late for that kind of guidance, eh?  Alas, entertaining Iraq is now a dream deferred, if not forever dashed.  Lohan could have been for our Iraq troops what Stallone was for Vietnam vets and Schwarzenegger was for cyborgs.

Assuming Lohan does go to jail, depriving America of her talent for any period of time is a hardship that hits the political world worst of all.

Promoting her work in “Bobby” –  the politically-charged movie centering on Robert Kennedy’s assassination – Lohan said, according to the BBC, “I feel I have always been somewhat politically engaged.  I strongly encourage people of my age and generation to have a say and to vote, and to involve themselves in what’s going on in the world, because they are living in it.”

Living in it, indeed.  But Lohan was being far too modest.  She did more than just get an entire generation to vote.  She possess a unique wisdom – the wisdom of sending e-mails.  The kind which mention Al Gore.

And what better way to engage the world politically than invoke the almighty Al Gore.

In December, Slate ran what it claimed is an e-mail Lohan sent to 18 people.  The e-mail says, among other things (and we won’t embarrass Ms. Lohan further by including the obvious [sic’s]):

“I am willing to release a politically/morally correct, fully adequite letter to the press if any of you are willing to help. … I have such an impact on our younger generations, as well as generations older than me.  Which we all know and can obviously see.  People are just mean. …I am willing to do anything I need to get my life the way it should be and the way I work for it to be. … Al Gore will help me came up to me last night and said he would be very happy to have a conversation with me.  If he is willing to help me.  Let’s find out.  Hilary Clinton, Bill Clinton … would be willing, if we just ask.  If we just ASK.”

That ending, by the way, is sensational dramatic flair.  If … we … just … ASK.  Very Captain Kirk.  Works will with, Help me Obi Wan Al Gore, you’re my only hope.  And with Gore’s extended family, R2D2 and C3PO.

After that note appeared, a Gore representative told Access Hollywood: “I can confirm for you that Mr. Gore has only met Ms. Lohan once, very briefly, at the GQ Men of the Year dinner last week. There were hundreds of other guests.”

Of course, just because they’ve met just once doesn’t mean they still can’t love/hate each other.  Earlier last year, Gore told Jay Leno, “I’m in this HUGE feud with Lindsay Lohan.”

So throw the book at Lindsay Lohan.   She’s betraying America’s soldiers.  She’s abandoning a generation aspiring greatness and ballot access.  And she’s playing hard to get with Al Gore.

Is that any way for a sex kitten to act?

Here’s a joke I wish I would have thought of earlier.

First, the set-up:  Saturday’s Washington Post has this Howard Kurtz piece:

A journalistic assessment of Hillary Clinton’s cleavage became the most improbable presidential campaign controversy yet as her team yesterday rolled out a fundraising letter calling a Washington Post column on the subject “grossly inappropriate” and “insulting.”

One week after the piece, by fashion writer Robin Givhan, took note of the Democratic candidate’s relatively low neckline during a speech on the Senate floor, senior Clinton adviser Ann Lewis urged donors to “take a stand against this kind of coarseness and pettiness in American culture.”

That’s all well and fine.

More intriguing, however, is that the Post website again runs this picture:

Above the picture it says “Enlarge This Photo.”So I did.

Ah, they’re right.  Much better that way.  Just like plastic surgery.

That might come as a surprise to many people — particularly those who read the newspaper.
But apparently not to Tony Blair’s press secretary Alastair Campbell.

We read this in the Post’s Sunday Book World review of his massive new book “The Blair Years”:

Visits to Washington and dealings with U.S. administrations inevitably figure large in his account. Campbell was dazzled by Bill Clinton, spooked by Dick Cheney, and respectful (at least in the published version) of George W. Bush, with whom he discussed drinking problems (Campbell’s was worse than the president’s), running and God (Campbell is a believer in the former and a non-believer in the latter). Visiting this newspaper with Blair in 1996, he found chairman Katharine Graham “impressive” and the editorial board “very right-wing.”

“Very right-wing”?  We’ve been following the Post’s editorial migration toward at least the middle for a while.  (Are we allowed to steal the Left’s terminology and call it “maturation”?  Nah, they’d never allow it.)  But “very right-wing”?  We’d like to read the book to see any evidence.

… is also a rare Stephen Colbert, who has a broken wrist, moment:

Colbert and his cast stopped by the White House on Friday to spread the drama a little further. He and his crew staged a mock briefing in the White House briefing room, where Colbert sat in the front row, raised his wounded limb and was called on by presidential press secretary Tony Snow.

Snow also signed the cast and engaged in a few minutes of banter with Colbert as the cameras rolled. The cast was to be auctioned off later to raise money for military families.

Here’s the latest from the presidential campaign trail, as reported in today’s Washington Post:

A debate moment that might have quickly come and gone has erupted into the sharpest battle of the Democratic nominating contest, with Sen. Barack Obama yesterday comparing Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s position on meeting with the leaders of hostile states to the adamant refusal of President Bush and Vice President Cheney.

“You’ll have to ask Senator Clinton what differentiates her position from theirs,” Obama challenged reporters on a conference call, stoking a fire ignited four days earlier when both were asked how they would approach countries such as North Korea and Iran if elected president.

Actually, preconditions are neither Bush nor Cheney policy. They’re Clinton’s — Bill Clinton’s.

A 1998 Asia Week piece about former Tiananmen Square protest leader Wang Dan:

Wang was by far the most prominent veteran of Tiananmen in prison, but not the only one. Human Rights In China (HRIC) recently published a list of 158 people from Beijing alone who remain incarcerated in connection with their activities during those fateful spring days nine years ago. The group is providing U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright with a list of names in preparation for her trip to China to lay the groundwork for President Bill Clinton’s planned state visit in late June and early July. Wang’s release is believed to have been an American precondition for the summit, although both sides deny it.

Good policy then, good policy now.

What do we look like to the Brits these days?

Let’s peek inside Toby Harnden’s must-read blog at the Telegraph:

While on a somewhat smutty theme today, I spotted two potentially misleading headlines this morning.

“Shooting Claims Man in Clinton” in the Washington Post looked like a damn good 2008 campaign story until I realised it was about a man being gunned down in the town of Clinton, Maryland.

I had Clintons on my mind when I saw “Bill could generate family feuds” on the Politico site. I was imagining paternity suits against her husband dogging Hillary’s bid for the White House. Sadly, nothing of the sort. Yet?

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) may not be the Bush Administration’s greatest fan these days.  But some things in life are more important than Attorney General Gonzales.  Like flying Air Force One.

Specter was aboard Air Force One this morning for President Bush’s quick flight to Philadelphia for the ALEC convention.  Of course, Philly is Specter territory.  But so is Air Force One, as we can see from this photo helpfully provided on his Senate website (from a previous flight to Pittsburgh).

Literally.

From today’s Washington Post story on the closing of legendary restaurant A.V. Ristorante — and the impact on equally legendary Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia:

When Scalia arrived, his party was shown to the justice’s usual spot, a rear room, away from the other diners. At meal’s end, he walked to the old metal cash register to pay and say goodbye to the owners.

“We’re going to miss you,” Scalia said. Vasaio announced that the justice’s last meal was on the house.

On the house?  We know you can’t do that for members of Congress anymore.  But can Supreme Court Justices still get their pizza with red anchovies comped?  We’ll let the lawyers decide.

Tony Snow at today’s White House news briefing:

The House Judiciary Committee has just voted along partisan lines to have a criminal contempt of Congress referral against White House legal counsel and the White House Chief of Staff. For our view, this is pathetic. What you have right now is partisanship on Capitol Hill that quite often boils down to insults, insinuations, inquisitions and investigations.

Monday’s Democratic presidential candidate debate set two important milestones:

1. The establishment of YouTube as an official player in politics; and
2. The establishment of the precedent that politicians will answer questions from anyone – even snowmen. In fact, with so many Senators running for president, soon we’ll hear this on Capitol Hill: “I’d like to thank my good friend, the distinguished snowman, Mr. Frosty.”

What’s next?

It’s only a matter of time before other hugely popular websites get in on the action and sponsor their own debates.

Here are likely suspects for hosting future presidential debates – and the questions candidates will probably get:

The Amazon Debate

• What’s your favorite book?
• What’s the last book you’ve read?
• What’s on your nightstand?
• Beach reading?
• Book if you’re by yourself on a deserted island?
• Book if you’re at 1% in the polls?
• Book if you’re caught on video decking an intrusive photographer?
• Do you only care whether your name is in a book’s index?
• The last book you authored – who wrote it?
• To qualify for free shipping, would you care to double the amount you’re already spending with us?
• Why do you think that people who purchased your autobiography are also reading Dr. Seuss?

The Peapod Debate

• Let’s see if you connect with average, every day Americans: How much does a gallon of milk cost?
• How much with tax?
• How much with your bonus shopper card?
• How much if you add the driver’s tip?
• How much if you deduct all the impulse purchases you won’t make by not being there in person?
• How much if you deduct your cost of gas?
• How much for a gallon of vodka, instead?

The Netflix Debate

• Do you prefer widescreen or full screen?
• Do you watch the bonus features?
• With director’s commentary or without?
• Would you ever use your DVD as a coaster?
• Ready to return to Blockbuster?
• Who should win Best Supporting Actress?
• To begin the debate, would you like to thank the Academy?

The EBay Debate

• How much would you pay for this portrait of dogs playing poker?
• How much for this pink flamingo for your front lawn?
• How much for the matching pink flamingo for your back yard?
• How much would you pay for this double-wide?
• How much for this portrait of Al Pacino in “Scarface”?
• How much would you pay for this Pink Floyd album?
• How much would you pay for this freeze-dried Lindsay Lohan spittle?
• Does this look infected to you?

The Monster.com Debate

• What’s your salary range?
• Do you work well with others?
• Why the gaps on your resume?
• Why the gaps in your teeth?
• Did you have spinach for lunch?
• Any felonies you’d like to reveal?
• This is a question from Washington Post opinion-shapers: How’s your cleavage?

The Drudge Report Debate

• Hurricanes: Friends or foes?
• Is it the heat or the humidity?
• Will melting glaciers save this two-headed mouse?
• Will melting glaciers save Hillary Clinton?
• Aliens at Roswell, NM: Forced to land by heavy fog and light drizzle?
• The Lost Continent of Atlantis: Did hurricanes from the Bermuda Triangle cause the demise?
• Can unicorns survive gale force winds – and Hillary Clinton?
• Hot enough for you today?

The Expedia Debate

• Window or aisle?
• May I see your ID?
• Your preferred seatmate: fat guy or screaming baby?
• Do you possess any firearms?
• Do you think it’s funny to joke about airport security?
• Can you tell us your best “Hi, Jack!” joke?
• Have these bags been with you through the entire debate?

The Wonkette Debate

• Do you like your snark with or without post-irony?
• Which giggly naughty words make you laugh?
• What dastardly terrorist does the name Obama sound like? How about Kucinich?
• Can you make fun of this picture?
• Does this look infected to you?

And, of course, the Google Debate: Tell us something we don’t know already know about you. Hint: It’s impossible.