• Last week, Us Weekly declined to publish a photograph picturing Jesse James doing a "Heil Hitler" gesture. But this week, guess who's running the picture?

• A picture of Zach Braff smoking weed has surfaced. He's the next Michael Phelps! (Except for like, all the medals.) [Perez Hilton]

[Washington, D.C.; January 7. Image via Getty]

• The Bidens plan to add to their household by getting another puppy from the pound. Double puppy snuggles! [Huffington Post]

• Clinton told her supporters to stop talking smack about Caroline Kennedy unless they're going to endorse someone else. She doesn't want people to believe it's coming from her. [Politico]

• Oprah Winfrey is talking her show on the road to D.C. during the Inauguration. Let the speculation begin about which members of the new Administration will be appearing. [Access Hollywood]
• Congress is going to pass a law to reduce the salary of the Secretary of State to block Republican efforts to keep Hillary Clinton from serving on Constitutional grounds. So much for pay equity in an Obama Administration. [Talking Points Memo]
• Al Franken says he's pulled ahead of Norm Coleman in the Minnesota Senate race. [Politico]

• Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid has decided that the entire Democratic caucus will vote next week whether Independent Senator Joe Lieberman will keep his seat as chairman of the Homeland Security Committee after having back John McCain and gone negative against Obama. [TPM Election Central]
• How negative did Lieberman really go? There's a video to count the ways. [Politico]
• And both the Clintons swear that — despite leaked reports that rather obviously came from Lieberman's camp — they aren't pushing to keep Lieberman at Homeland Security or in the caucus. [Politico]
• Racist Georgia Senator Saxby Chambliss, who, according to the Constitution represents all the citizens of Georgia regardless of their race, knows the reason he didn't avoid a run-off election because not enough of "his" people turned out. You know, white people. That always vote for the white guy. Because they're white. [Think Progress]

• Sarah Palin feels the press should be forced to report about her in a certain way to avoid abridging her First Amendment rights. Add the actual First Amendment to Article I, Section 3 of the Constitution on the list of Constitutional amendments Sarah Palin is planning when she is Empress of America. [Huffington Post, U.S. Constitution]
• If you needed any other reasons to vote against McCain-Palin, Politico's list of Cabinet officials should help. It's got Dick Armitage for Secretary of State, Lindsay Graham for Secretary of Defense, Rudy Giuliani for Attorney General (!) and Randy "Biggest Asshole In the Universe" Scheunemann as National Security Advisor. And you thoughT Palin was a bad pick. [Politico]
• By contrast, their list of potential Administration officials for Obama reads like a liberal's wet dream. [Politico]
• Hey, while you weren't looking, Bush has been sneaking around trying to push controversial deregulation to "ease" consumer and environmental protections. Fuck. [Washington Post]

• Sarah Palin is, like, so annoyed that Katie Couric, like, insisted on asking questions and talking about what she wanted to talk about instead of just letting Sarah bash Obama. Because that's how an "interview" works. To be fair, though, Palin had been on Fox News with Hannity first. [Huffington Post]
• She was also really sad when she read the papers this morning and found out that the campaign was pulling out of Michigan. They didn't tell her in advance that they were pulling out or that they don't care what she thinks about the Big Boy campaign stuff. [Politico]
• The United Steelworkers think he might be forced out of Pennsylvania, too. [Huffington Post]
• In the mean time, though, they've got an ad featuring a quote from a Famous Person. It turns out that person is Peggy Noonan, but it does make her look completely in the tank for McCain, not that anyone cares about anyone being in the tank for anyone other than Obama. [Washington Post]

• Good news first: Obama is up in the polls in Pennsylvania and Iowa and tied in Minnesota and Nevada. Also, most people blame Republicans for the current economy crisis. Unfortunately, he's pulling staff from North Dakota, Georgia, Idaho and Alaska. That can't be good. [CNN, CNN, CNN]
• A new poll shows that, since putting Palin on the ticket, McCain now polls evenly with Obama on the question of who understands women and what's important to us. Obama used to have a 34 point lead. [Politico]
• Obama's got a new ad in which he (rightly) accused McCain's health care plan of being a massive program of deregulation, sort of like how McCain used to love the deregulation of financial markets, too. That the kind of change even an NRA member might fear more than an ammo tax these days. [Huffington Post]

• A group calling itself "Blacks Against Obama" interrupted Obama's speech today in Coral Gables, Florida. Their main beefs appear to be his support for child support, reproductive rights and marriage equity, though they're also not fans of, well, all African-American women, so we're guessing it's really "Black Men Against Obama". [Stereohyped, Over The Rockies, For Obama]
• Time's Karen Tumulty points out that McCain's new ad about Obama's economic advisers' ties to Fannie Mae don't feature white former Obama adviser Jim Johnson but do feature African-American non-adviser Frank Raines — and one very sad looking little old white lady. No race-baiting here, folks, they swear it was just an "honest" mistake. [Time]
• In yet another advertising fuck-up for the McCain camp, they've received a cease-and-desist letter for Fox News for using Major Garrett's voice over in an ad. Seriously, when Fox News doesn't want their guys associated with your Republican campaign for the Presidency, you got problems. [Politico]

• John McCain told Marie Claire that he's like Jack Bauer except for the torture thing. That he doesn't like except for when it's directed at "enemy combatants" and conducted outside of American soil without judicial review and Jack does it all the time. There's totally a difference. [Huffington Post]
• You know how everyone was a-flutter at the news that Sarah Palin might've had an affair with Todd's friend? Well, it turns out that her legislative director had an affair with Todd's friend's wife and, like everyone else she's ever met, she fired him. [Andrew Sullivan, Huffington Post]
• Another off-limit topic for Sarah Palin? Any connection between her policy position on stem cell research (hints: she's against) and disabled children. That's a "new low," supposedly. [CNN]