On Laura Ingraham‘s radio show, Karl Rove defended the Bushes against a series of comments, including Sarah Palin‘s reference to the Bushes as “blue-bloods” and Mike Huckabee saying the Bushes “weren’t for me.”

Rove called Palin’s blue-blood remark “unnecessary” and suggested that going after the Bush family showed weakness: “Governor Palin ought be confident. She’s got a right to run.”

While delivering remarks in the Rose Garden about financial regulatory reform, President Obama was briefly upstaged by a scurrying rodent. The critter’s cameo sparked heated debate over its zoological identity (was it a rat? a mouse? a vole? WTF is a vole?), some Zapruder-esque photos, and a raft of rodential quips. The little guy even got a Drudge link and a Twitter shout-out from Press Secretary Robert Gibbs.

One of the previously anonymous small businessmen who purchased a billboard displaying a goofy-looking George W. Bush asking “Miss Me Yet?” over a Minnesota highway has revealed his identity. And as much as Gretchen Carlson tried to goad some anti-Obama sentiments out of Mike Rivard on Fox and Friends in an exclusive interview this morning, he remained faithful to his ambiguous agenda of pointing out something hilarious and then brushing aside any political repercussions.

When former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge’s book first came out, there was a lot of vigorous overselling of the tome as a smoking gun in the politicization of terror alerts. While Ridge’s book seems to indicate he had concerns that efforts to raise the alert level might have been political, it is hardly proof of that. However, Ridge appeared on last night’s “Rachel Maddow Show,” and promptly tried to walk back even that suspicion.

When a high-ranking government official meets an establishment journalist, the ensuing fawning at the feet of power can sometimes be too much to bear. Last weekend, Chris Wallace was compared to a “teenage girl interviewing the Jonas Brothers” for his lack of incision in a televised segment with former Vice President Dick Cheney. And then there’s Rachel Maddow, who on last night’s episode of her MSNBC show was the most well-prepared “teenage girl” on TV, calmly dismantling every argument put forth by former U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge.