• The race for who will ultimately lose to New York Governor David Paterson's desire to appoint state Attorney General Andrew "Shucking And Jiving Is Not A Racist Phrase" Cuomo to Hillary Clinton's Senate seat is on! Bill Clinton, Nita Lowey and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. are out, Caroline Kennedy might be in. [CNN, The Hill, New York Times, The New Republic]
• Senator Lisa Murkowski told Governor Sarah Palin not to even think about the 2010 primary, but plans to kick her designer-clad ass if she does. [Politico]
• Governor Bill McGrabbyhand Richardson will be your next Secretary of Commerce. [Washington Post]

• Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, imitating Clinton, Kennedy and Lowey, swears that he asked to not be considered by Obama for a Cabinet position.[LA Times]
• Al Franken might really be closing the gap in his never-ending race for Minnesota's Senate seat. [The Hill]
• A judge in Texas has thrown out the crazytown indictments against Dick Cheney and Alberto Gonzales, as if that were unexpected. [Huffington Post]
• The Canadian government is in turmoil because of the financial crisis, so the Prime Minister is going to try to get the Governor General to suspend Parliament while he cuts some commercials and this sounds all way more complicated than it probably needs to be. Hooray for the separation of powers. [Reuters]
• Still wondering why the financial crisis happened? Moe Tkacik digs out this little tidbit from the biography of former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, when he tried to sell 19 financial sector CEOs on the Sarbanes-Oxley requirements that they sign off on their own financial statements: "I would resign rather than be expected to know everything that's going on in my company. It's just not tenable," said an unnamed financial-services CEO. "That's what I have a board for, that 's what I have a chief financial officer for. I simply can't be held responsible for what all of those people do." Well, I guess that explains it. [Slate]

• The word is, again, that Hillary Clinton has been offered and will accept the Secretary of State job. It might not happen until after Thanksgiving, officially, though, because Obama announced he's rolling out the economic team first on Monday. [NY Times]
• Some people are a little concerned about who else she might bring to Foggy Bottom, though. [Washington Independent]
• On that economic team roll-out Monday, the top dog appears to be Timothy Geithner, the current president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, who it's said will be our next Treasury Secretary. [The Hill]
• He might well be sharing the stage with Bill Richardson, who everyone is saying will be the next Commerce Secretary. Interesting note: if he is, he'll be the second Latino in a row to hold the position, like Clinton would be the second woman in a row at State. [CNN]

• What will presumably get announced when the Clinton nomination is official is the identity of Obama's national security adviser — who, speculation holds, will be Marine Gen. James L. Jones (Ret.). [Huffington Post]
• By the way, get your Hillary campaign memorabilia now — she's still selling office equipment from her campaign to pay her debts. Taking the Secretary of State gig might mean she'll never pay off those vendors, as she would be prohibited from raising money for the debt by law. [Politico]
• Some Obama volunteer is making his own personal stimulus package by trying to sell, on eBay, a binder and speech he or she pilfered from a pre-election rally. Classy. [LA Times]
• A bunch of elementary school kids at the Ludlow Elementary School on Long Island petitioned for — and received — a more permanent campaign keepsake: they've renamed their school Barack Obama Elementary School. [ABC News]
• If you're not a fan of Big Brother, stay the fuck away from the inauguration. [Associated Press]
• And, onto policy issues, there's now yet a third competing Democratic health care reform package — in addition to the pre-emptive health care legislative strike by Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus and the package that Ted Kennedy, chair of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, has promised, Oregon Senator Ron Wyden has one, too. No wonder even Hillary Clinton couldn't get anything done 15 years ago. [The Hill]
• Upstart Congressman Henry Waxman, when he wrests the gavel of the Energy and Commerce Committee from Auto Industry Michigan Congressman John Dingell, is expected to push for Obama's energy and environmental reform plans. [LA Times]
• But a repeal of the military's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy will likely wait until later in the 2009 — or even 2010 — while Obama and his staff soothe the Pentagon's fears that other dudes will be checking out their junk in the barracks, as though that hasn't gone on the entire time anyway. [Washington Times]
• The crazy, goat-herding, rooster-owning prosecutor who, from his trailer parked outside the courthouse, engineered an indictment of Dick Cheney and Alberto Gonzales showed up for court today and acted, predictably, completely crazy. Because he's crazy. [Brattleboro Reformer]
• Speaking of, Fred Thompson is engineering his return to acting, but no one is really sure how well he's going to fit into the Gossip Girl cast. [Huffington Post]

• The California Supreme Court this afternoon granted a hearing to the Prop 8 opponents' challenge to the ballot measure that eliminated same sex marriage rights in the state. It did not, however, issue a stay that would have allowed same sex marriages to continue. [Equality California, California Supreme Court (pdf)]
• Missouri finally finished counting its votes and has narrowly gone for McCain. Obama still gets to be President, though. [Politico]
• A judge has ruled that Al Franken's campaign is entitled to written reasons why certain absentee ballots were rejected, which is expected to help his efforts to oust Norm Coleman. I'd bet the voters whose votes were rejected would like to know that sort of thing, too. [Politico]
• But the Dow fell again, so we're all pretty well screwed for now no matter what. [Huffington Post]

• Not as screwed as the automakers, who aren't going to get their piece of the bailout pie, a quest that was not helped by Mitt Romney— the primary candidate who won Michigan by kissing their asses earlier this year — saying that they should be allowed to go bankrupt. [NY Times, NY Times]
• And the auto industry's favorite Democrat, Michigan Congressman John Dingell — who has been chairing the Commerce Committee to their benefit for 2 years — lost a preliminary vote to keep his Committee chairmanship to upstart Congressman Henry Waxman. So it's really been a shitty week for them so far. [Politico]
• But they are definitely not as screwed as Republican crackpot John Ziegler, who decided to give an interview about his crappy new poll that says all Obama voters are poorly informed to Jezebel Crush Object Nate Silver and ended up, in the face of Silver's superior brain, telling him, "Go fuck yourself." Don't mess with our man, John Ziegler. [FiveThirtyEight]
• In a fit of crazy, Michelle Bachmann blithely declared that she never said that thing about investigating Congress members for being un-American that everyone heard her say. [Politico]
• Even crazier is Joe the Motherfucking Plumber, who has an enormous crush on Sarah Palin. Hustler, are you listening? [Huffington Post]
• Nearly two weeks after it was first reported, Obama's people have confirmed that strategist David Axelrod will join his Administration as a senior adviser along with Greg Craig as White House counsel. [Reuters]
• Dick Cheney has been indicted — along with former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales — on state charges in Texas that his financial interests in Vanguard Group (which runs some prisons there) are tantamount to participating in that company's abuse of power. Don't get your hopes up: prosecutor Juan Guerra "has a history of launching eccentric court and political battles," as though that needed to be said. [The Telegraph]
• Republican Senator Arlen Specter announced today that he plans to fuck with presumed Obama AG nominee Eric Holder about his role in the Marc Rich pardon at the end of the Clinton Administration, as though any of his constituents care. Apparently, Specter is fully prepared to hop on the train to Crazy Partisan Town with the rest of the Republican Party and ignore his many years as a moderate that have helped him get reelected. [Politico]

Mukasey's order sends the case back to the Board of Immigration Appeals, which, one hopes, will not act like complete assholes the second time around. Mukasey pointed out that female genital mutilation can, indeed, be inflicted more than once — making the ruling factually wrong — and that further persecution need not take the same form as the initial persecution to qualify the woman for asylum. So, the Bush Administration finally did something right... only, actually, it's all their fault in the first place.

Because, lest you forget, the immigration court judges are some of the many people Alberto Gonzales's minions — Monica Goodling and Kyle Sampson — helped get onto the bench based on a thorough vetting of their loyalty to George W. Bush and a not so thorough vetting of their immigration law background. In fact, many of them had no immigration law qualifications whatsoever when they began to serve as immigration judges. Some had previously attempted to get non-immigration judgeships and failed, due to a lack of qualifications in the field of law they'd actually practiced, but Gonzales, Goodling and Sampson ran the immigration court appointment process with little attention to pesky details like that. In fact, when they were running the immigration courts as a loyalty-reward outlet center, only 4 seats on the immigration courts were open to a competitive application process. Studies have shown that those who were hired while the Three Musketeers were at the helm (most of whom remain on the bench) are significantly more likely to reject asylum applications than judges hired under competitive application processes that actually have an immigration law background.

So, really, Mukasey wasn't doing anything more than he was hired to do — which is clean up the shit at the Justice Department that Alberto Gonzles, left behind. So, hooray for doing the right thing, eventually and under pressure from Congress! At least this asylum seeker will get to stay. The other ones the Bushies have been busy deporting, well, good luck to them.

AG: Don't Deport Genital Mutilation Victim [CNN]
Genital Mutilation Victim Gets A New Chance At Asylum In U.S. [LA Times]
Immigration Judges Lack Apt Backgrounds [LA Times]
Immigration Judges Often Picked Based On GOP Ties [Washington Post]
Vetted Judges More Likely to Reject Asylum Bids [NY Times]

Anyway supremely weird-looking Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff (seriously, what sort of rodent does he look like? Or is it a skeleton? Anna is going with "eagle muppet," which I can sort of see) is said to be the leading contender to replace.

Embattled Attorney General Resigns [NY Times]
Attorney General Resigns [Washington Post]