Sunday morning toons: Forgiveness and forgetting

How the Bush II Administration lied and stovepiped their way into the Iraq War.

How the Bush II administration was too smart to establish contacts with North Korea.

How strict constructionists on the Supreme Court are about to discover that the Framers thought that corporations are people but gays aren't.

How interracial marriage US (such as that enjoyed by Justice and Mrs. Clarence Thomas, the first of whom will soon be deciding the fate of gay marriage in the US) was once a hanging offense.

That p3 hasn't done a Sunday morning toon review for three weeks.

Well, one out of five ain't bad.

And I'm told that there's a national sporting event going on this month in which student-athletes who aren't allowed to make five bucks off of signing a T-shirt are competing on behalf of college teams that make tens of millions off the television rights to their performance, but since Butler University isn't in it anymore, to hell with them all.

Today's toons were selected, by divining the cartoonists' original intent, from the week's pages at Cartoon Movement, GoComics, McClatchyDC.com, Slate, Time, About.com, Daryl Cagle, and other fine sources.

p3 Picks of the Week: Mike Luckovich, Jack Ohman, Joel Pett, Walt Handlesman, Joe Heller, Chad Lowe, Nick Anderson, Steve Sack, Bill Day, Jeff Stahler, Rob Rogers, Clay Bennett, , Chris Weyant, Pat Bagley, Matt Wuerker, Jen Sorenson, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Best of Show: Jack Ohman.

p3 Award for the Best Adaptation From Another Medium (tie): Cam Cardow andDaryl Cagle.

p3 Legion of Merit: Adam Zyglis.

p3 Legion of Extreme Ultra-Merit: Gary McCoy.

p3 World Toon Review: Cam Cardow (Canada), Petar Pismestrovic (Austria), Loujie (China), and Ingrid Rice (Canada),


Ann Telnaes considers the cockroach: that creature that skitters for the shadows when you flip on the light.


Mark Fiore's Dogboy and Mr. Dan discover an important point together: Love Hurts.


Taiwan's Next Media Animation presents a story that I can't even manage a punchline for.


Tom Tomorrow considers the cushy living you can make if you're wrong about the right things.


Keith Knight asks a perfectly reasonable question: If one is good (even infallible!), why wouldn't five or six be even better?


Tom the Dancing Bug asks, among other things, Who could defeat The Puzzler?


Red Meat's Bug-Eyed Earl ponders the upside and downside of the whole “forgive and forget” thing.


The Comics Curmudgeon examines the most played-out cliché on the comics page.


Wild Elephinks, a tribute to pointless violence between species, was the fifth Fleischer Studios cartoon featuring Popeye. Directed in 1933 by Dave Fleischer, animated by Willard Bowsky and William Sturm, it features uncredited work by Billy Costello (Popeye), Mae Questel (Olive Oyl), and Sammy Timberg (musical direction). The two-bar theme when the elephant recalls Popeye whacking him is the 1915 song “Memories” by Egbert Van Alstyne and Gus Kahn. The theme when Popeye chases the gorilla is that staple of classic American animation, Liszt's “Hungarian Rhapsody #2.” When Popeye bests the elephant, the musical theme is “The Tiger Rag,” one of the most recorded songs in American pop history, first recorded in 1917 by the Original Dixieland Jass [sic] Band. Inexplicably, when the gorilla pushes the banana cart away, the music score does not feature “Yes, We Have No Bananas.” Go figure.

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The p3 Big Oregon Toon Block:

Matt Bors owns the Iraq War anniversary.

Jesse Springer mourns the striking of the clock at midnight:

Test your toon-captioning kung fu at The New Yorker's weekly caption-the-cartoon contest. (Rules here.)