The Hill’s Jeff Dufour has former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers recalling this moment with Chicago Bears great Gayle Sayers, who was on a USO tour in Vietnam …

  … as their plane was catapulted off an aircraft carrier in rough seas.

Sayers, clearly nervous about the whole thing, looked to Myers for reassurance, which he gave despite his own nerves. “Not that I knew it was OK,” Myers explained. “I just didn’t want him to die all tensed up.”

To two Extreme Mortman favorites, Jeff Dufour and Patrick Gavin.

Click here for the happy details.

We finally find out courtesy this press release:

SIOUX FALLS–Democracy in Action, a grassroots group of progressive women in Rapid City, has endorsed Jack Billion in the Democratic primary for governor.

That’s right — a candidate who’s actual name is Jack!  Hilarious!

Find out more about Dr. Billion here.

And a million thanks to The Hill’s Jeff Dufour for tipping us off.

The Hill newspaper’s star gossip columnist Jeff Dufour has more brilliance in today’s “Under the Dome” offering. Great Ludacris catches from the White House Correspondents Association Dinner. You’ll see why we’re Extremely big on Jeff Dufour these days. And don’t forget to remind yourself of the other blogs Jeff Dufour reads.

Extreme Mortman today begins a new regular feature — a peek inside the blog-reading habits of our nation’s top reporters and media celebrities. Here is Jeff Dufour, the hard-working, very talented, and very funny features editor for The Hill newspaper. He writes the influential and widely-cited “Under the Dome” gossip column. And now, Jeff Dufour:

I generally begin with Drudge, Wonkette’s Gossip Roundup and Hotline’s Wake-Up Call’s Gossip Buffet to see, in the immortal words of Johnny Caspar, “What’s the rumpus?” (and of course, to see if they’ve linked to anything of mine).

Around lunchtime, it’s on to National Review Online’s The Corner and Daily Kos to see what’s happening on wing right and wing left. I’m always curious about the difference in tone: NRO tries to keep it light, while Kos is generally full of bile and venom. I’ll also usually stop at Cilizza’s “The Fix” on Washingtonpost.com, which is already a good place for some quick meta-analysis.

On days when the Senate is in, I’ll check More from the Floor, produced by Sen. Pat Leahy’s staff. It’s IMHO one of the most underutilized resources out there — a blow-by-blow account of who’s saying what on the Senate floor, in something close to real time. Only a couple congressmen have blogs they update with much frequency: Reps. John Conyers and Mike Conaway, for instance.

I’ll generally finish the day with James Taranto’s OpinionJournal and Mediabistro’s Fishbowl DC for some media news. Perhaps another go at Wonkette: The new writers have proven they can dish the potty humor like Ana, but it remains to be seen if they can still break news. And I do try to check DCist, if for no other reason than there might be a happy hour special I’m unaware of.

Also Read: Blogs The Famous Media Reads: Jake Tapper & Blogs The Famous Media Reads: Howard Fineman

Leave it to America’s leading gossip columnist, Jeff Dufour of The Hill Newspaper, to come up with this gem.

Jeff reports on “Star Wars” creator George Lucas’ appearance this week with House Dems. His story also reminded me of Lucas’ obsession with all things Senate.

Seriously. Every “Star Wars” movie opens with this bleak assessment: “The Senate was in turmoil.”

And there it was again, in Jeff’s column, in something Lucas said at the Cannes Film Festival last year:

“One of the main features of the back story [of the saga] was to tell how the Republic became the Empire. At the time I did that, it was during the Vietnam War and the Nixon era. The issue was … not how does a dictator take over but how does a democracy and Senate give it away? The parallels between what we did in Vietnam and what we are doing now in Iraq are unbelievable.”

To which I only want to say: Hey, George — stop Hanoing me. Can’t we let Saigons be Saigons?

And since Lucas has solved Vietnam and Iraq, maybe he coulld finally explain Jar Jar Binks.