Sunday morning toons: Special "Nin-cow-poop" edition

The Beijing Olympics (George Bush in attendance) managed to suck the oxygen away from almost every other topic in the tooniverse this week, including fact that, after years of detention and torture, the US managed to land the conviction, on the lesser of two charges, of . . . wait for it . . . Osama bin Laden's driver.

Expect next week's toon coverage to be all over John Edwards like fleas on a dog.

Let's kick things off again with Daryl Cagle's round-up of political cartoons.

p3 Picks of the Week: Mike Lane, Mike Keefe, Bob Englehart, Jeff Parker, John Trever, Patrick Chapatte, and Jimmy Marguiles.

Last week saw the death of one of the most dangerous men on the planet--if you happened to be running the old Soviet Union. Alexander Solzhenitsyn's passing is marked by Jimmy Margules, Steve Breen, and Gary Brookins.

p3 Special Mention goes to Kevin Siers for remembering that, unfortunately, the lessons of Solzhenitsyn extend beyond the borders of the old USSR.

This report just in: Jesse Helms (R - Look Away, Look Away) is still dead.

Ann Telnaes absolutely and indisputably brings home the gold this week in the Freestyle Newt Mocking event, where she totally nailed the dismount. Purists could complain that she left out "What a tah-rah-rah-goon-dee-ay," but those people have no appreciation of the joy of the sport. (Also of note: Does Gingrich's gravity-defying comb-over signal the new bipartisanship--since when his head bobs left, the hair weaves right?)

Opus knows it; you know it too: a summer is a terrible thing to waste.

The K Chronicles reflects upon a sorry excuse for a comic strip.

And speaking of Bugs Bunny taglines--and we were, or did you skip past that part, above?--here's a 1953 Bugs Bunny short that probably features more of them in seven minutes than any other you could find. See how many you can count:

This is the complete version of "Bully for Bugs," although it wasn't hard to find a hacked-up version of it during the heyday of editing the content of classic cartoons for violence. The result was just ridiculous: Time after time, we'd see the dazed and smoldering bull blinking at the camera, but there would be no clue what reduced him to that char-broiled state, since the 30-second set-up was now on the cutting room floor. Funny--I can't count how many times I saw this one as a kid, and yet I don't remember once swallowing elephant bullets (with explosive heads).

I make no promises about never having resorted to the Mexican Hat Dance gag, though.