Scooter Libby, Joe Lieberman, Bush 41, Bush 43, and Mitt Romney all have at least one thing in common: They’ve been the recipients of Mel Sembler’s largesse and his fund-raising effectiveness.

Sembler, a Florida shopping center developer who founded a controversial non-profit group of drug treatment centers for adolescents, helped raise millions for the elections of Bush the elder and Bush the younger.

Hunt Oil’s controversial production-sharing deal with Kurdistan is “legally uncertain” and has “needlessly elevated tensions” between the Kurds and the central Iraqi government, a senior State Department official in Baghdad told The New York Times.

Dallas-based Hunt Oil is run by Ray Hunt, a close friend and advisor of president Bush.

The New York Times is backing down - somewhat - on a controversial ad placed by the liberal advocacy group MoveOn.org that infuriated conservatives.

Under the headline “General Petraeus or General Betray Us?” the full-page ad contended that the American commander in Iraq was “constantly at war with the facts” in giving upbeat assessments of progress and refusing to acknowledge that Iraq is “mired in an unwinnable religious civil war … Today, before Congress and before the American people, General Petraeus is likely to become General Betray Us.”

The first family of Dallas is not named Perot, or Cuban, or Jones or Hicks.

And it won’t be Bush when the president leaves the White House in 2009 and returns to Big D.

The first family of Dallas is Hunt.

It has been ever since Haroldson Lafayette Hunt moved his oil company to the city in the 1930s so he could be closer to his banker and good train service.

It’s even truer today because of Ray Hunt, the most powerful Hunt - and there have been a lot of them - since old H.L. While H.L. was always trying to find a U.S. president who would listen to him, his son has found one in George Bush.

President Bush nominated former judge Michael Mukasey as the next attorney general on Monday.

As a federal judge in New York, Mukasey has presided over a number of high-profile terror cases, including those of defendants in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. He also signed the arrest warrant against Jose Padilla.

The nomination indicates a desire on both sides of the aisle to fill the post quickly, with minimal conflict. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) described Mukasey as “a lot better than some of the other names mentioned.” At the other end of the spectrum, conservative editor William Kristol also endorsed Mukasey.

U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, under intense fire from both Democrats, resigned today.

Saying he had “lived the American dream,” Gonzales announced that he would leave office Sept. 17. He had received heated criticism for the firing of nine assistant U.S. attorneys, and for his congressional testimony about domestic surveillance programs.

President Bush said he had accepted the resignation reluctantly. Gonzales, he said, had been “dragged through the mud for political reasons.”

Mitt Romney made a fortune at Bain Capital relying on business analytics.

Now he’s applying similar tactics to his presidential campaign, hiring Alex Gage, the expert used by Karl Rove in George W. Bush’s re-election.

Gage uses data-mining techniques to predict the behavior of voters, clustering them into groups such as “Flag and Family Republicans.” The approach is similar to that used by demographic marketing companies such as Claritas.

I. Lewis Libby Jr., convicted of perjury in the CIA leak case, appreciates better than most the importance of muckety.

His 30-month prison sentence was commuted yesterday by President Bush, who said he believed the term was excessive. Bush’s action was hailed by conservatives, who had organized a defense fund called the Libby Legal Defense Trust. Likely presidential candidate Fred Thompson was among the fundraisers.

Relationship map of the Bush dynasty.