The best American fiction of the last 25 years, courtesy of the New York Times and a veritable who's-who of contemporary novelists.

How Dan Brown didn't win is beyond me.

In honor of Mother's Day, The Hill asked a dozen Representatives to describe the best advice their mothers ever gave them. To summarize: Al Wynn's mom is crazy; John Boehner's mom is boring; Darrell Issa's mom is strict; Steve Chabot's mom is prescient; Jim Moran's mom is nurturing; and Thaddeus McCotter's mom is sad.

Why Mike Hayden's right for the CIA: because he can smell a rat.

A few years ago, when Steven Vardy began receiving cryptic e-mails from the descendants of exiled African leaders who wanted to transfer millions of dollars into an American bank account and offered a big cut of the proceeds, he turned to a former student for counsel.

"I asked him 'what do you think of this?'" said Mr. Vardy, a distinguished professor of history at Duquesne University. "At first I thought they were terrorists, trying to transfer money."

Mr. Vardy's former student, who happened to head the largest electronic spying agency in the world, not only smelled a rat, but knew the breed.

Don't worry, Gen. Michael Hayden told his old professor. "He told me he knew about it and they weren't dangerous. They were just people trying to make a little money out of me," Mr. Vardy said.

You don't say.

To anyone looking for something to read, I'd very highly recommend Maid for a Month, a five-part series by the [Toronto] Globe and Mail's Jan Wong. Ms. Wong and her two teenage sons spent a month undercover as members of the working poor, so to speak, and put together an admirable read-in-one-sitting version of Nickel and Dimed. If nothing else, it'll make you feel guilty about how dirty your bathroom is.

The fine folks at Agence France-Presse are owed a great debt for this, the best headline I've seen in days:

Mike Huckabee was on the Colbert Report this past Tuesday, but I didn't get around to watching it until about half an hour ago, so I'd like to quickly mention it now: every time I see the man, he makes me laugh, and then he makes me cry.

Laugh, of course, because he's such a witty, likable guy; and then almost immediately cry, because his likability makes it altogether too easy to forget how far to the political right he really is (gay marriage, abortion, evolution... these are all things that Mike Huckabee doesn't believe in¹).

As I mentioned to my distinguished former co-editor this evening, I honestly think that Huckabee's rather unique² combination of tremendous likability and tremendous conservatism has the potential to make him as dangerous to the left as the early-90s Bill Clinton was to the right. And that makes me nervous.

1 - That last one is actually not even an exaggeration.
2 - Name another likable conservative, I dare you. (No offense, distinguished former co-editor.)

CNN.com headline right now:

No word on whether or not "CNN Headline Writer" is one of them.

Why some people are Democrats
Part one in a one-part series

A frequent reader (ha!) explains her allegiance to the Democratic party: "Republicans hate poor people. ... And gay people. ... And the Constitution. ... And trees. ... And happiness." Too true, Reader. Too true.

John Kenneth Galbraith died on Saturday. The New York Times has a nice obituary up, ending thusly:

He remained optimistic about the ability of government to improve the lot of the less fortunate. "Let there be a coalition of the concerned," he urged. "The affluent would still be affluent, the comfortable still comfortable, but the poor would be part of the political system."

From about a week and a half ago (I drafted this and forgot to post it): Rep. Peter King (R-NY) apparently broke into the office of Rep. Jo Ann Emerson (R-Mo.) and amended her constituent correspondance:

Nobody expects to get a letter from a member of Congress that ends with an expletive.

But that's what happened when Rep. Jo Ann Emerson, R-Mo., recently corresponded with a resident of her southeast Missouri district. The letter ended with a profane, seven-letter insult beginning with the letter a - "i think you're an ..."

Asshole. I think "asshole" is what they were going for there.

Howard Kurtz, on the Tony Snow appointment:

Once, in a less partisan time, it was considered a normal career move for a respected journalist to do a tour of duty as a White House spokesman. Steve Early did it for FDR. Jim Hagerty did it for Ike. Pierre Salinger did it for JFK. Ron Nessen did it for Gerald Ford.

But modern presidents have opted for political publicists who, by and large, have protected the boss, stuck to the talking points and felt comfortable stiffing the press. Some were helpful away from the microphones, of course, but they had spent their careers promoting, deflecting and denying rather than digging out facts.

All of which makes the Snow appointment a fascinating one, especially for an administration that has often seemed to give the media the back of its collective hand.

The big news, of course: the smuggest press secretary in the world resigned (under pressure?) awkwardly this morning. The top of the possible replacement list, amusingly, is currently employed by Fox News: integrity specialist Tony Snow.

Update: On Call's got coverage galore.