I have just done a quick search at News.Google.com just to see what media outlets in the Google roster have posted anything about David Dreier being knocked out of contention for the House Majority Leader position like a pre-ordained, gay-leaning priest trying to get into Pope Benedict XVI’s Catholic Church.

Well, it seems that too many bloggers applauded too loudly in favor of Hastert’s initial call for Dreier to succeed Tom DeLay — and now have selected House Majority Whip Roy Blunt to succeed the indicted DeLay.

Yes. . .Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, and George W. Bush have had their starring roles in the subversion of our system of checks and balances that makes American democracy work — but they are all in the Executive Branch. Chief executives try to be monarchs; they can’t help it.

Timelines — good ones — just undo ANY spin that Bill Frist’s team want to give to the Frist HCA scandal. Check out this sequence of events and information on HCA Stock courtesy of Think Progress. Compelling.

I can’t understand what the White House hoped to achieve with the President’s press conference today on America’s oil refinery problems in the Gulf. The President is right that we probably have too little refinery capacity fueling the U.S. market, but the “alternative fuels” strategy he is suggesting is ad hoc and isn’t serious.

More later. — Steve Clemons & Oakley the Amazing Weimaraner Ed. Note: Blogger Matt Stoller gets all the credit for the photo — and here is his post about Oakley’s puppishness.

This cartoon by Mike Luckovich at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution gets it just right.

Atrios pummels Senator Frist with some great material documenting Frist’s past comments about his holdings in HCA and undermining his credibility. Via Atrios, some excerpts from an ABC Report: Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn.

Major hypocrisy at the top of the Vatican hierarchy. . . The effort to ban gay-conceptualizers rather than gay-actualizers from the Catholic priesthood is just outright hypocritical and a violation of the rights of those who want to work in established Catholocism as a priest.

Yesterday TWN gave Vice President Cheney some credit for focusing on the aftermath of Katrina and the coming onslaught from Rita — while Karl Rove politicked at big fundraisers in North Dakota.