There we go again. Cartoonists love to represent the present through presidents pasts. Chip Bok, breaking with the liberal AFL-CIA (Amalgamated Federation of Lithographers, Cartoonists, Illustrators and Animators) quotes FDR against AFSCME. Tony Auth harks back to a Union icon (stovepipe-hat-fitters?), linking Lincoln to civil unions. Finally, I penned a more recent threesome of executive members of the Order of Blame Avoidance Managers of America.

-- Joel Pett

Editorial cartoon by Chip Bok / creators.com

Editorial cartoon by Tony Auth / Philadelphia Inquirer

Editorial cartoon by Joel Pett / Lexington Herald-Leader

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Joel Pett is the Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist at the Lexington Herald-Leader in Kentucky. His work also appears in USA Today.

Ted Rall / For the Times

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Illustration by Steve Brodner / For The Times

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The envelopes, please -- or at least the quick sketches on the back of them. Hard to beat Ted Rall's unemployably unemployed for best animated shortchange. And though the Hollywood guilded might disagree, Nate Beeler's beleaguered taxpayer surely deserves a shiny statue for his best financial-support role. I'd give Moshik Lin's brilliantly simple domino concept a best picture award, while worst foreign actor goes to the bullet-spraying Kadafi for his murderous role in the tragedy playing out in the Mideast theater.

-- Joel Pett

Editorial cartoon by Ted Rall / Universal Uclick

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Joel Pett is the Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist at the Lexington Herald-Leader in Kentucky. His work also appears in USA Today.

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Cartoonists have no taste for accounting, but we budget plenty of time to analyze the numbers racket in Washington. Mike Luckovich pictured a pack of pachyderms while smelling a rodent in the rotunda. Tom Toles, sensing we're not being given a fair shot, took aim at budgetary blind spots. And Dan Wasserman looked past the short-term shortfalls to the bigger picture. Not fiscal, of course, but political, just a couple of short falls from now. That's our bottom line, right there in black ink.

-- Joel Pett

Editorial cartoon by Mike Luckovich / Atlanta Journal-Constitution

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Joel Pett is the Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist for the Lexington Herald-Leader in Kentucky. His cartoons also appear in USA Today.

Contributing cartoonist Ted Rall strikes again with his "Disposable" animated editorial cartoon series, an acerbic look at the downward mobility of the average American. Last time we caught up with "Disposable Dan" and his wife Sarah, they'd both been laid off from their jobs while their employers continued their usual routine of golfing, buying islands and laughing all the way to the bank. In Monday's episode, we catch up with the married couple as they eat cat food and figure out how to keep their home. Happy Valentine's Day, folks. 

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--Alexandra Le Tellier

With the blogosphere and the tweetosphere all atwitter about e-revolution, some old-school ink-stained wretches weigh in. Bruce Beattie reminds us that brutality's twisted logic is as ancient as the stoic Sphinx. Matt Bors savagely concurs, and beats up on the fired-up, wired-up, smugly self-congratulatory. Matt Davies aims closer to home, tweaking a new-media doyenne for making bank, even as her e-minions toil for nothing more than the chance to have a voice.

-- Joel Pett

Editorial cartoon by Bruce Beattie / Creators Syndicate

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Joel Pett is the Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist at the Lexington Herald-Leader in Kentucky. His work also appears in USA Today.

Ted Rall / For the Times

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The buzz for Feb. 7, 2011:

Most viewed | Most commented | Shared on Facebook: Constitutional showdown

Nothing gets the conservative crowd going lately quite like "Obamacare." Judging from the comments, they didn’t take too kindly to Akhil Reed Amar’s Op-Ed. Starting with his intro…

Earlier this week, after grading student papers from my Yale Law School class on constitutional law, I began reading federal District Judge Roger Vinson's recent opinion declaring "Obamacare" unconstitutional. One thing was immediately clear: My students understand the Constitution better than the judge.

Trending on Twitter: Arab cartoonists weigh in from Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt

Meanwhile, Joel Pett’s roundup of cartoons out of the Middle East struck a chord on Twitter.

--Alexandra Le Tellier

No views on North African strife are more sobering and compelling than those of Arab cartoonists. Lebanon's Hassan Bleibel portrayed the enormously heavy burden of repression. Jordan's Emad Hajjaj ominously rendered authoritarianism's boiling point. But Egypt's Amr Okasha -- struggling in the eye of the revolutionary storm, when order broke down and chaos broke out -- exhibited a special defiant courage. He took time from defending his property from thugs to dispatch a President Hosni Mubarak sphinx, its stone face slowly deteriorating into rebellion's rubble.

-- Joel Pett

Editorial cartoon by Hassan Bleibel / Al-Mustaqbal (Beirut, Lebanon)

Editorial cartoon by Emad Hajjaj / Al-Ghad (Amman, Jordan)

Editorial cartoon by Amr Okasha / Al Wafd Opposition Newspaper (Cairo, Egypt)

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Joel Pett is the Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist for the Lexington Herald-Leader in Kentucky. His work also appears in USA Today.

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