HOMAGE TO P. LATTRAUX! I'm a little sluggish this morning, so let's do like showbiz professionals and turn to the sure-fire: Friday Toons at FreeRepublic.

Today's reading of the rightwing id shows signs of malaise -- the Miers episode clearly left a bad taste (in both senses of the term: see the Kristosl Pee-shop file) -- but nothing that can't be dispelled by hate, hate, hate for Hillary! (And, for the nostalgic, John Kerry.)

For close readers, we have a nice lineup of race-related conservatoons that lay out the party line: 1.) Liberals don't respect black people; 2.) Black people (excepting those that look like an ectomorphic Ziggy) don't respect black people; and 3.) the new version of the old slogan is, "Democrats fuck dogs to make hippies."

They're all over the Condi Photoshop incident, but approve this caricature, which makes the Secretary of State look like Alfred E. Neuman after a severe beating.

I'm not sure I get this one -- why is Shelley Long celebrating our 2,000th Iraq casualty? And a comment sent me to the Faithmouse site, where I was confronted with this -- evidently aimed at Garrison Keillor (see "alt" text), but for what? Maybe the artist is mad at Keillor for something he did in a dream...

All and all, pretty tame -- but that's what happens when enterprising citizen journalists discover a hot underground craze: the weekends become bridge-and-tunneltime, and one must drop by on Thursdays for the real thing. Paydirt: This is my favorite cartoonist of 2005 -- he makes Gary Panter look like Piranesi! Not even Google knows him. But I do, and now so do you. Spread the word: in this heavily-armed survivalist camp lives a genius. You read it here first!