Over at the Washington Monthly, Kevin Drum is pointing out the existence of photographic evidence that President Bush has a disturbing compulsion to touch bald heads. One wonders whether he asked first, but given his penchant for assigning arbitrary nicknames to people (including his wife!) without even bothering to tell them first (leading to some political difficulties and Newsweek calling him the "nicknamer-in-chief"), I'm guessing probably not. Rubbing the bald spots on the heads of your visitors seems to be to be a good way to eventually end up with a righteous ass-kicking, but fortunately, this sort of thing doesn't happen to the man at the head of the world's largest military. It's good to be the king... er, president.

The pictorial evidence began with Julie Saltman's photo entry, which struck her more as the image of the president devouring another soul, or possibly just preparing to suck out his victim's brains. Kevin's searching led him to the collection of photos at Rigorous Instituion, which seem to take on a homoerotic theme, and are ended with pictures of Jeff Gannon/James Guckert, who used to make a living as a gay escort before the White House gave a press pass and used first to help cover up the vendetta outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame, and then later to act as a Republican shill during White House press briefings. Politics makes for strange bedfellows, indeed.

The entertainment of the speculation aside, I think we can safely assume that George is not, in fact, a former (or current) customer of Mr. Guckert's nonpolitical services, but the fun continues over at JuliusBlog, where some images seem to show the president showing his religious devotion by the laying on of hands (including some images with captions), and ending with the headrubber-in-chief patting the head of a turkey.

... which may not be all that different from what he does in the White House, sometimes.