Sam sees his first California Sea Lions at the Central Park Zoo …

To Sam, the animals were no match for the giant metal acorns.

The first annual Golden Duke Awards are announced tomorrow. But as we gear up for the big event, I thought I’d share with you what some of the judges wrote about why they voted as they did in the individual categories …

Rick Hertzberg

Best Testimonial Trainwreck

First choice: Sara Taylor
Second choice: Lurita Doan

I found myself torn between Sara Taylor and Lurita Doan—the Betty and Veronica of the Rovian project to turn civil servants into Republican wardheelers.

Ms. Doan’s testimony was dominated by eye-rolling contempt for her questioners. But this cut both ways for me. On the one hand, it highlighted her amorality. On the other, though, it showed a certain kind of strength—not strength of character, exactly, but the strength that comes from mindless attachment to one’s tribe. It doesn’t have that much to do with politics per se. Doan is a Republican the way some people are Shiites or Sunnis or Serbs or Albanians. Or Mafiosi. She obviously believes that she did nothing wrong; indeed, she exudes contempt for the very idea of right and wrong in the context of partisan warfare. From her point of view, she was playing the game, her questioners are playing the game, and they’re a bunch of pious hypocrites for pretending otherwise.

Nevertheless, I prefer Taylor’s sullenness to Doan’s smirky condescension. I like the way she hides behind her blonde curtain, pouting like a teenager whose parents have found a joint in her underwear drawer. (It’s the exact opposite of Peggy Noonan’s airily confident hair flip.) I also like the way she throws around sophomore-year phrases like “broader political intelligentsia” in her attempts at bamboozlement.

But what singles her out as deserving the Dukie is her belief that she had taken “an oath to the President.” This sums up much of what is wrong with the Bush Administration, from its cult-of-personality code of allegiance to the Leader to its ignorant disregard of the Constitution. One is reminded of some of the indelible pratfalls of Watergate days, such as press secretary Ron Ziegler’s description of his previous denials of White House involvement as “inoperative” and Nixon’s own pithy “I am not a crook.”

Outstanding Achievement in Improbable Forgetfulness

First choice: Bradley Schlozman
Second choice: Alberto Gonzales

In this category, I have to say, I fell in love with Bradley Schlozman. He has a David Horowitz-like whininess that I found irresistable, especially combined with the faux-Trotsky, junior-college-professor beard. Throw in the overly fastidious manner, the Mel Blanc voice, and the all-around cravenness, and you’ve got a winner, in my view.

I also liked Sara Taylor again. It’s a wonder the White House didn’t send her to Baghdad to oversee five or six Iraqi ministries.

Susie Bright

Best Scandal — Local Venue

My pick: Bob Allen

Allen is is my personal Favorite Mess of the Year. He brings a whole new meaning to the GOP’s Southern Strategy- where you not only destroy other candidates through race and queer-baiting, but you actually rationalize your own hard-on with the same hateful bile.

Here’s a guy, who, if I may use the plain language of personal ads, “will pay to suck your gorgeous black cock,” pretends that HE’s a victim of racism, and the last true crusader against homosexuals everywhere. This man’s whole career is based on prudery legislation!

Allen’s downfall was such a Beauty and the Beast moment: the cop Allen propositioned is so good-looking he could be the new heart-throb on The Wire- while Allen is so homely, you’d feel sorry for him… if he wasn’t such a self-loathing disgrace.

Runner up: Rachel Palouse

Gee, I didn’t even know about Fumo, so he gave me pause. But I’m giving him some slack for not being a raving holy-roller hypocrite… just your garden-variety Catholic on the take. I mean, that’s frickin’ tasteful, at this point.

Instead, I’ll give my runner-up vote to Rachel Palouse, because she is offensive to everything the populist spirit of Minnesota represents, and my Twin-Cities-bred mother is surely rolling in her grave.

Best Scandal — Sex and Generalized Carnality

My pick: Richard Curtis

If I choose sheer trashy lunacy, something that would make Britney Spears look like a novitiate, then I have to pull my lever for Richard Curtis.

This married, fundie Christian Republican legislator and world-class hater, the joke of Western Washington, shows up one night in his negligee and stethoscope to have some hard-to-picture bareback sex with a down-on-his-luck porn star, named Cody Castegna. Curtis had picked up this kid at a local casino. Dude bargains the boy down to $1000 to have unprotected anal sex- that’s the part that makes me cry- then has the nerve to stiff Cody, and call the police to complain a whore ripped him off!

WTF!
It strains credibility that Curtis could have done any of this sober, and I am still waiting for the drug investigation- this has “meth fiend” written all over it. Really, the only thing missing was an inflatable sheep, and that might’ve just been left off the report.

(I almost gave my nod to Bob Allen, but I already knighted him in the Best Local category. See how nice I am?)

Runner Up and Possible Reversal: David Vitter

I have a giant caveat in this category, in case you obtain a smoking gun before the 31st.

If there is hard evidence that Senator Vitter is not only a prostitute-lover, but also a diaper fetishist- beyond the call girl hearsay we’ve read so far- then that revelation, along with his hilarious “Pampers Daddy” re-election video, would cinch the whole shit-faced glory of this award’s intent.

Vitter is my “if only” winner. You can make him my runner up. Give the straight man his due.

Dahlia Lithwick

Best Scandal — Local venue: I have to give this to Rachel Paulose. Ok so its not a sex scandal. But the whole Barbie Coronation thing? And the racial slurs? Plus the mass staff revolts? The religious zealotry? All of it topped off by her breathless claim, when it all hit the fan that this was all a result of “The McCarthyite hysteria that permits the anonymous smearing of any public servant who is now, or ever may have been, a member of the Federalist Society; a person of faith; and/or a conservative (especially a young, conservative woman of color.” As Eric Black observed that day: “Paulose, in a single 48-word sentence, played the race card, the gender card, the religion card, the age card, the ideology card, the Federalist Society card, and the Joe McCarthy card. That’s a large percentage of the cards available in the victimology deck.” Brava.

Runner Up: Richard Roberts

Best Scandal — Sex and Generalized Carnality: Has to go to Bob Allen. Here we have the trifecta: rabidly moralistic legislator, plus cut-rate anonymous bathroom sex, plus the most moronic (and racist) excuse ever proffered. The Daily Show made a Herculean effort but even they couldn’t gild this comidic lily.

Runner Up: Larry Craig

John Dean

Best Scandal – General Interest

President George W. Bush – While the nomination is for his “general politicization” of the federal government, one must read the subtext of that term. Bush’s politics have done for good government what war does for peace, what famine does for hunger, what Alzheimer’s does for memory, what Lee Harvey Oswald did for Dallas – you get the idea. This president has done more to damage our system of government, and weaken us around the world, than any of his predecessors. Bush is America’s worst president ever, only equaled by the abetting of his partner, Dick Cheney.

Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick, one of our Golden Dukes judges, takes a shot at the Bush administration’s dumbest legal arguments of 2007.

Our old pal Daniel Pipes, America’s premier Muslim-hater (though regrettably there’s stiff competition) rolls out Obama-Islam smear 2.0.

Perhaps goes without saying that it’s published at David Horowitz’s rag.

Late Update: Remember, of course, Pipes is on Rudy Giuliani’s foreign policy advisory team.

As the usual suspects prepare to gather in Oklahoma for another round of holding hands and singing the praises of bipartisan unity, Greg Sargent suggests one way to break the so-called partisan gridlock: simply weaken the GOP further.

The recording industry now says it’s a crime for you to copy songs from your own CDs onto your own personal computer.

John Edwards rakes in online campaign cash today following morning show appearances.

Mike Huckabee announces he will not run an attack ad against Mitt Romney, but proceeds to show the ad to the assembled media. Election Central has some video from the scene.

Don’t miss TPM’s Great List of Scandalized Administration Officials, newly updated for the 2008 model year.

As we get deeper into the campaign, I do not have a problem with excluding candidates who are not generating any substantial public support. Gravel, I think, was an example of that in the Democratic debates. But I think the Paulbots have a pretty good case for outrage with Ron Paul’s exclusion from the upcoming Republican debate in New Hampshire.

Paul’s supporters lay most of their claim to a place in the debate on his mammoth fundraising numbers. To me, the bigger issue is that Paul is consistently outpolling Fred Thompson, who is being allowed into the debate.

As you can see by this trendline chart which brings together all the public polls in New Hampshire, Paul’s support (red line — 6.2%) and Thompson’s (blue line — 3.1%) are both pretty anemic. But Paul isn’t that far off from Mike Huckabee (green line — 11.5%). And the key fact is that the excluded Paul is outpolling the included Thompson. So there is simply no objective criteria by which you include Thompson and exclude Paul, who by the way has vastly outraised Thompson.

It was unclear to me until just now whether the real factor here was the NH GOP or Fox News, the sponsor of the debate. But the state party is now calling on Fox not to exclude viable candidates. So, it’s not them. Or if it was, it isn’t now.

So, it’s all about Fox News. Paul’s out because he’s not a Fox News Bush-clone. Say whatever you want about the guy, Fox News shouldn’t be able to silence him because they don’t like his views.