Okay, we’re moving right along on our end of the year Muck-O-Rama contest, the winners of which are going to be announced on December 31st 2007. We’re well on our way to picking out our panel of distinguished judges who’ll be picking the winners (about half way there). We’re going to be announcing our award categories next week, based on your suggestions and then we’re opening it up to your nominations. Biggest crook? Biggest fib? Biggest self-inflicted dignity loss in congressional testimony?

To refresh your memory, check out yesterday’s episode of TPMtv, with some of the choicest moments of Bush administration congressional testimony bamboozlement from 2007 …

Fred Thompson says Fox is biased against him.

Of course, Thompson’s campaign has been a joke, probably the highest ratio of train wreck to expectations in recent political memory. But with Fox’s open alignment with the Giuliani campaign, he actually has a point.

One day this year, while I was walking down 6th avenue, I noticed that the manholes said Made In India on them. I remember thinking that you really must have gotten to the point where transport costs are close to negligible when the cost of shipping an incredibly heavy manhole cover from India to New York City doesn’t put a dent in the cheaper costs of production. Now a stringer photographer for the Times went to location (‘factory’ seems a questionable word choice) where they’re made.

Rep. Julia Carson (D-IN) announces she has terminal lung cancer.

Those numbers of Iraqis flocking back to Baghdad because of the improved security situation? Seems those numbers are being pumped and massaged like everything else. Not that people aren’t returning to Iraq because the levels of violence have dropped substantially — just a lot fewer than the Iraqi and American governments have been saying, and the American news media have been reporting.

Not much fun being in the minority? Trent Lott’s stepping down is another signal that the GOP has next to no chance of recapturing the Senate in 2008.

As near as the crack TPM staff can figure, no one seems to know why Trent Lott is resigning abruptly in the second year of his current term in office, when he actually seemed possibly on his way back to being Minority Leader in the senate. Roll Call says the decision was “precipitated by a desire to spend more time with his family and a general fatigue of Congress.” If so, that’s a pretty rapid onset desire to spend time with the fam.

Any ideas?

MSNBC says this …

While the exactly reason Lott is stepping down before he finishes his term is unknown, the general speculation is that a quick departure immunizes Lott against tougher restrictions in a new lobbying law that takes effect at the end of the year. That law would require Senators to wait two-years before entering the lucrative world of lobbying Congress.

The White House has gone from moving the goalposts in Iraq to just quietly taking them down altogether.

Do Dems really have a shot at picking up Trent Lott’s Senate seat in Mississippi?

FoxNews.com headline of the day:

“Bush to Act as Key Negotiator at Mideast Peace Talks in Annapolis”