Parker J. Bena - NEW! Weeks on chart: 1 - So it looks like "Republican Marty" might have just been the tip of the iceberg (see Idiots Week 15). Last week the fine, upstanding Parker J. Bena - a Republican activist and one of last year's presidential electors for Virginia - was arraigned on charges of possesion of child pornography and lying to the FBI. Bena reportedly told the feds that he had received an unsolicited e-mail containing pictures of children (some as young as three years old) performing various sexual acts, but agents learned that he had in fact voluntarily entered a number of child pornography websites and downloaded the images himself. We trust that this champion of traditional conservative values will enjoy being on the receiving end of whatever it is they do to child pornographers in prison these days.

Arnold Schwarzenegger - RETURN! Weeks on chart: 3 - The yawn-fest that is Arnold Schwarzenegger's on-again-off-again love affair with the idea of running for Governor of California is... off again. Last week the hunky Austrian pervert announced that due to the importance of receiving a multi-million dollar payoff for making "Terminator 3" he would sadly not be available to serve the Californian public this time around. Coincidentally, the announcement came just one day after Arnold learned that the National Enquirer would be publishing front-page allegations of his extramarital affair with a mysterious 41-year-old brunette. A Schwarzenegger spokesperson promptly came out with the tediously predictable announcement that - surprise! - the allegations had nothing to do with his decision not to run for office. Especially the allegation that the mystery woman first had sex with Arnold when she was 16 (in the interests of full disclosure - he would have been 28).

Christie Todd Whitman - RETURN! Weeks on chart: 4 - How low can she go? Obviously rock bottom is not good enough for the masochistic EPA chief. Perhaps she's planning to retrieve our spy plane from China by tunneling there. Whitman earned herself yet another horribly embarrassing slap in the face from the Bush administration last week by appearing on morning talk shows and announcing that a White House task force will not recommend drilling in the ANWR. Um, not so fast, Christie. Soon after her appearances the White House began to distance itself from the comments, with Karl Rove saying that he was "mystified" as to where her statements might have come from. In an additional blow to Whitman's career, "friends" have started coming out of the woodwork and saying things like "she's a team player" and "she's in it for the long haul" - a sure sign that a politician is in trouble. With odds already shrinking on Whitman bailing out before the next one hundred days are over, perhaps it's time that those friends mention something to her about the benefits of trying to avoid looking like a complete ass.

George W. Bush - RETURN! Weeks on chart: 12 - Dubya must have been a bit miffed at his exclusion from last week's Idiots list, because he obviously decided to make damn sure he'd get back on this week. With Sino-American relations already strained, GW appeared on ABC's "Good Morning America" and managed to reverse 30 years of U.S. policy in a single spectacular brain-on-vacation incident. Yes, America would do "whatever it took to help Taiwan defend herself" against a Chinese attack, explained the soft-headed one, clearly departing from the U.S.'s previously (and deliberately) vague policy on the area. But in follow-up interviews a confused Bush said that he "strongly supports the one-China policy," (the notion that Taiwan is not an independent country) while simultaneously continuing with his hawkish military-action rhetoric. Soon afterwards, Winston Lord, a former ambassador to China, explained "It's pretty clear to me that this was inadvertent," and the White House spin machine started spinning itself senseless. "The president's words speak for themselves," said Ari Fleischer. "The president said what he wanted to say... He took the position he took because he believes in it. It's what the president believes." So what is it that he believes exactly? No wonder Christie Whitman is confused!

Jeb Bush - LAST WEEK: 2 Weeks on chart: 5 - A double whammy for Jeb this week. First, he's come up with a cunning way to get out of the drilling-off-the-coast of Florida predicament. It turns out that Jeb didn't mislead voters when he promised them that George wouldn't drill off the coast of Florida. Oh no no no. But see, George never said anything about not drilling off the coast of Alabama did he? Aha! So it's perfectly fine that the White House is considering a plan to allow new oil and gas leases in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Alabama - 30 miles from Pensacola, Florida. Next, Jeb decided to weigh in on the Charlie Ward controversy. Ward, a New York Knicks guard, said in a recent New York Times article that Jews are 'stubborn' and persecute members of their own faith who become Christians. Ward also happens to be the volunteer spokesman for Florida's "Born to Read" program, and according to Jeb, his anti-semitic statements are A-okay. He's "entitled to his opinion" said Bush. (For your information, Katherine Harris also defended Ward, calling him "an extraordinary role model for children.")

Rush Limbaugh - RETURN! Weeks on chart: 5 - What's the matter Rush, feeling the heat? The Prince of Lies, once a rabid Fox News fanatic, was last week heard by one of our readers bashing Bill O'Reilly live on air. It would appear that the Fat One is getting a little worried by Bill's popularity among his right-wingnut listeners - and so he should be. Once the reigning king of conservative crazies, Limbaugh must now feel that O'Reilly is challenging him for the crown of shame. But what exactly was El Nutbo's problem with O'Reilly? Our reader reported Rush saying that the big difference between him and Bill is that he "doesn't try to shove his opinion down his listeners' throats." Zoinks!

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison - NEW! Weeks on chart: 1 - "Senate staff are compensated for the purpose of assisting senators in their official legislative and representational duties, and not for the purpose of performing personal or other non-official activities." - so says the Senate Ethics Manual. But now Kay Hutchison, the junior senator from Texas, is causing a bit of a stir on Capitol Hill. It was alleged last week that she is indeed using her staff for unofficial and personal duties - duties which include chauffeuring her husband around town, checking out the mall sales at Tyson's Corner, Virginia, and bringing bagels and coffee to her home every morning and waiting on the doorstep without knocking until the door is opened. In fact, a source in her office reported that Hutchison threw a fit when a staffer showed up one morning with bagels from Union Station and not from her favorite bagel shop at Dupont Circle (halfway across town). However, it's not the first time that Hutchison has been in trouble for this kind of behavior - when she was Texas' state treasurer back in 1993, several staffers publicly accused her of making them perform personal tasks, and she was indicted by a grand jury for official misconduct that same year. Guess old habits die hard...

The Media Research Center - NEW! Weeks on chart: 1 - We hear from one of our readers that the conservative Media Research Center (whose mission, they claim, is "bringing political balance and responsibility to the media") were having a good old moan about Matt Lauer last week. Apparently while Lauer was interviewing George W. Bush he had the gall to say, "So you can look me in the eye and say that you are a President committed to cleaning up the environment?" Goodness, what a mean thing to ask! But there's more: the MRC were also whining that CBS "used Earth Day to allow unlabeled liberals to bash Bush's environmental record." Our reader suggests that perhaps the junta should issue armbands to everyone on the left for the purposes of identification (and rounding up later). Finally, the MRC bashed Time magazine for having its feature on greenhouse gasses "underminded" by... a letter it printed from a reader who disagreed with the article. C'mon Time, what were you thinking!

David Horowitz - NEW! Weeks on chart: 1 - Upon hearing David Horowitz's pronouncement that "campus censors are on the run," after Horowitz reported that only 14 of 48 liberal colleges ran his infamous "reparations" ad, David Mazel of Salon tried a little experiment. Suspicious of conservative pundits who were espousing conservative colleges as champions of the First Amendment, Mazel sent an pro-choice advertisment to twelve conservative colleges. The ad claimed that "God Is An Abortionist" and contained two biblical quotations which backed up the theory. Surprise! Only one of the colleges agreed to run the ad - the other eleven refused for a variety of reasons. Mazel reports that things are looking up though. Apparently David Horowitz has claimed that he will continue to fight "until American campuses are rendered safe ... for expressing different points of view." And you can be sure he'll include all the conservative campuses. Right?

Dan DeGrow - NEW! Weeks on chart: 1 - And finally... Dan DeGrow, Michigan's State Senate Majority Leader, is really quite upset about David Jaye and his various booze/violence issues (see Idiots week 15). So much so that he's setting up a special committee to have Jaye expelled from the State Senate. Which is all well and good. But DeGrow had this rather odd comment on Jaye's drunken assault and subsequent arrest: "Maybe thirty years ago it was okay to drive drunk and slap a woman and do other things... In 2001, it's not OK." Um, excuse us, but was it okay to slap women thirty years ago? I mean, we know it was okay to drive drunk because President Bush and Vice President Cheney did it, so, you know, it must have been okay. But I guess we weren't aware of the slapping women thing. Wow, you learn something new every day! See you next week!