'McLaughlin Group'

Last night they did one of two year-enders. In the category Best Comeback, Pat Buchanan named Ahmed Chalabi, who went from suspected Iranian spy to being welcomed at the White House, and Larry O'Donnell agreed. We wondered when they taped it, because:

The politician and onetime administration and U.S. newspaper source, Ahmed Chalabi, "appears to have suffered a humiliating defeat at the recent Iraq polls," NBC News reports today, according to the uncertified preliminary results. It said that preliminary results in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad indicate that Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress scored a minuscule 0.36 percent of the votes. In the Shiite city of Basra, the results indicate Chalabi, the current deputy prime minister who some neocons thought might soon head the country, had an equally dismal showing of 0.34 percent of the vote. In the Sunni province of Anbar, 113 people voted for him.

If Chalabi's as shrewd as reputed, he'll leave Iraq before the new government stuffs him back in the trunk of a car and extradites his ass to Jordan to serve his bank fraud sentence.