Everyone remembers the excitement and hoopla surrounding last year's First Annual Golden Duke Awards, given out for excellence in corrupt acts, betrayals of the public trust and generalized shameful behavior. (See last year's winners here.) Here are the details for nominations...

The categories in which we'll award prizes:

Sleaziest Campaign Ad

Best Election Season Fib

Outstanding Achievement in Corruption-based Chutzpah

Best Scandal -- Sex and Generalized Carnality

Best Scandal -- Local Venue

Best Scandal -- General Interest

The deadline for nominations is December 17th. And we'll be handing out exciting prizes to the readers whose nominations we choose as finalists, with special emphasis on the cleverness of the nomination itself. Now, to be clear: It's not a matter of who gets in first. Obviously some evil-doers are so evil they'll be nominated many times. It's a matter of who has the most persuasive, original and/ or humorous argument for why they should win. So the nominations come in to us by the 17th, TPM staffers comb through them for two days, and then send the five best nominations from each category to the judges. If we chose a nomination you submitted then you, TPM reader, will get a prize.

If you want to nominate some evil-doer for one of our awards, send us a nomination identifying the person you're nominating and a description/argument of no more than 250 words explaining their achievements, bad acts or generally scandalous behavior that you believe entitles them to the award. All awards are to individual mucksters and evil-doers -- parties, concepts, groups, etc. are not eligible-- with the exception of the Sleaziest Campaign Ad category. A quick note on submissions: we reserve the right, if necessary, to shift entries into different categories after submission as we see fit.

On December 19th we'll announce the nominees, which then then go to our panel of distinguished judges. The awards will be announced on the last day of the year, December 31st.

Submit your nominations to talk@talkingpointsmemo.com NOW!