• The suspects range in age from 15 to 21 and included a 17-year-old boy who turned himself in and a former Richmond High School student. Richmond, California Police Lt. Mark Gagan said, "These suspects are monsters. And, I don't understand how this many people capable of such atrocious behavior could be in one place at one time." • A lawyer for Susan Finkelstein, the Phillies fan accused of offering sex for World Series tickets, said her post on Craigslist saying she'd get "creative" with payment, "was a variation of 'will work for food.' It doesn't mean she was a prostitute.'" Attorney William Brennan denied an undercover police officer's claim that she offered him sex for tickets and added, "You're talking about a 43-year-old woman who was overcome by Phillies fever. All she was looking to do was take her husband to a World Series game. You know that Madonna movie Desperately Seeking Susan? This was Susan Desperately Seeking.'" • Edward Ates of Florida testified in court today that he couldn't have killed his son-in-law because he is too fat to commit the crime. Paul Duncsak, who was in a child custody dispute with Ates daughter, was shot in his home in 2006. Ates says he weighed 285 lbs at the time and wouldn't have had the energy needed to climb and descend the staircase where prosecutors say the killer was perched when he shot Duncsak. • A Utah judge has sentenced 21-year-old Leo Harrison to prison for accepting $150 from a pregnant girl to help her kill her fetus. Harrison was facing 21 years in prison for pleading guilty to second-degree felony attempted murder, but the judge sentenced him on a charge of third-degree "attempted killing of an unborn child" under Utah's anti-abortion statute, which means he could serve up to 20 years in prison.The woman, who gave birth to a healthy baby, pleaded no contest to second-degree felony criminal solicitation to commit murder for paying Harrison to assault her. • Using forceps if a woman is having difficulty during the "pushing" stage of labor has fallen out of favor, but a new study found that trying forceps instead of immediately performing a C-section does not raise the risks to the baby in most cases. A study of 3,200 women who had an unplanned C-section found that when cases in which there was already a problem with the fetal heart rate were excluded, the rate of complications were the same whether forceps were tried before a C-section or not. • While many Indian women are acting as surrogate mothers, more than half a million Indian women die every year due to pregnancy complications, despite government programs guaranteeing free obstetric care. According to Human Rights Watch, India is doing a poor job of monitoring how maternal health programs are implemented. UNICEF estimates that for every maternal death, there are 20 to 30 cases of other complications including obstetric fistulae, uterine prolapse, infertility, vaginal scarring, and sepsis. • A Spanish study of contraceptive use by 11,000 women from 14 European countries found that after condoms, the pill is the most popular contraceptive method. IUDs are the most popular long-acting contraceptive, but only 10% of women surveyed use them and most are over 30 years old. • Scientists at the Institute of Neuroscience in Alicante, Spain say they've figured out the secret behind Mona Lisa's smile. They say the smile depends on what cells in the retina pick up the image. Sometimes the image is transmitted to the brain on one channel and you see the smile and sometimes another channel takes over and you won't see it. • In a session on grieving during The Women's Conference in California, Maria Shriver said she's been telling people she's OK since her mother's death two months ago but, "the real truth is that I'm not fine... The real truth is that my mother's death has brought me to my knees. I had feared this my entire life... She was my hero, my role model, my very best friend. I spoke to her every single day of my life. I tried really hard when I grew up to make her proud of me." • According to a UC Irvine study, 30 percent of Americans have a gene variant that is linked to performing 20 percent worse on a driving test than people without it. Previous studies have found that in people with a BDNF gene variant, which supports communication among brain cells, a smaller portion of the brain is stimulated when doing a task than in people with a normal BDNF gene. • Check out Live Science's guide to everything you always wanted to know about constipation but were afraid to ask here. (Paging Tracie Egan.) • Accused murderer Drew Peterson is suing JP Morgan Chase because he says the company violated truth-in-lending laws by cutting off his home-equity credit line in May. He says he is now unable to post bond and pay his lawyers, and said if his accounts remain frozen he'll ask the court to approve taxpayer money to fund his defense. • Germany's Lutheran Church Margot Kaessman is one of only two women to serve as bishop in Germany's Protestant church. • Indiana University researchers studied workplace politics at an urban elementary school and found that people who are targets of gossip are negatively evaluated during formal work meetings, but gossip can be derailed by changing the subject, targeting someone else for criticism, or by pre-emptive comments that are positive. "When you're sitting in that business meeting, be attentive to when the talk drifts away from the official task at hand to people who aren't present," said sociologist Tim Hallett. "Be aware that what is going on is a form of politics... that can be a weapon to undermine people who aren't present. But it also can be a gift. If people are talking positively it can be a way to enhance someone's reputation." • Sasha and Malia Obama were given the H1N1 vaccine last week after it was made available for D.C. schoolchildren. The President and First Lady still haven't been vaccinated. • Sarah Palin has responded to Levi Johnston's claim on CBS' Early Show that she repeatedly referred to her son Trig as "retarded" saying, "Trig is our 'blessed little angel' who knows it and is lovingly called that every day of his life. Even the thought that anyone would refer to Trig by any disparaging name is sickening and sad... Consider the source of the most recent attention-getting lies — those who would sell their body for money reflect a desperate need for attention and are likely to say and do anything for even more attention." • Rep. Alan Grayson, a Florida Democrat, says it was inappropriate for him to call Federal Reserve advisor Linda Robertson a "K Street whore." "I offer my sincere apology," Grayson said in a statement. "I did not intend to use a term that is often, and correctly, seen as disrespectful of women." • The Australian Sex Party has nominated Marianna Leishman (a.k.a. Zahra Stardust), for a December election to fill a vacant seat in the Australian House of Representatives. Leishman is a feminist writer/pole dance instructor who has worked at the United Nations and has a law degree. She said in a statement, "In an area that claims 50 years of conservative representation from white, heterosexual, able-bodied, suited, male protagonists, the Australian Sex Party is excited to provide a modern, outward looking female candidate." On her agenda is legalizing gay marriage and abortion, examining child sex abuse in religious institutions, and pushing for more sex education in schools. •

MOE: Hey we can sort of start now if you want, though I'm still mostly reading through stuff. I just bought some beer because I think I'm the soberest person in Philadelphia right now. (The Eagles won a REALLY CLOSE game with the Rams today.) But here's something fun:

Mr. Rove said Mr. Schmidt’s increased authority — which came about after what amounted to a coup by Mr. Schmidt and other McCain aides with ties to the 2004 campaign, that gave him equal status with the campaign manager, Rick Davis — has been the best thing to have happened to Mr. McCain.

Oh God, Karl Rove. How do you do it, Karl Rove? You secure the election of a president so incompetent and widely loathed he decimates your party, then you leave the business for the media. Once in the media you commence bashing the media. You bash the media for asking questions about — not reporting, just asking around about — a rumor.

MEGAN: I am well on my way to non-Eagles-related drunkenness and I still cannot believe Steve Schmidt. Or Karl Rove. Like, seriously, did we watch the same speech? Only I thought it totally bombed and I talked to a shit load of Republicans at the wake today and people thought it fucking killed.

MOE: The sordid details of which are clearly, creepily reminiscent of the (much more easily refutable) rumor you disseminated to nastily defeat your boss's rival in the 2000 Republican primaries. And eight years later, said rival's distance from your old boss being the single-most compelling trait for Republicans to safely rally around, your old cronies take over his campaign, choosing a running mate whose most salient characteristic besides her nice bod is that she was the only member of the shortlist with a dearth of accomplishments deeper than that of your old boss in 2000, and then exploit the scurrilousness of said (much less obviously mendacious) rumor about said running mate's "personal" life to smear the "media"… (And who is paying for this? The media. "I'm not in the media, I'm around the media" is I believe how Rove put it…)

MEGAN: I wonder, honestly, if Rove even takes himself seriously at this point. I mean, the Palin Blake Slate is one of the reasons she was chosen.

MOE: Nah, he can't possibly. I actually find him more amusing than offensive at this point. Although maybe that's just because I read Safire today.

MEGAN: I did not read Safire today. I honestly feel like reading columnists is like a job that I don't get paid enough to do.

MOE: Don't let it hurt your teeth too much.

MEGAN: Honestly, at the point at which he says that Broder was the only fair pundit in attendance that night, it's hard to gag while I'm laughing so fucking hard.

MOE: And in shades of Friday's "Wow, I can't believe I'm going to calm myself down by talking about Bill O'Reilly," I entreat you to calm yourself down, after taking a gander over there, with the soothing relative sanity being preached by Chuck Krauthammer.

MEGAN: Oh, wait, he said something true:

The McCain acceptance speech reads better than it was read.

Oh, wait, here he's back to teabagging McCain:

That called for McCain to set aside his longtime reluctance to recount publicly his wartime suffering.

Ummmm, you know, except for his FUCKING MEMOIRS.

MOE: Oh shit, I am starting to find Palin so relatable though! Back in Wasilla they used to call her base of support the Liquor Cabinet.

MEGAN: Man, I would totally vote for the Liquor Cabinet.

MOE: Oh dear, and here her ex-brother in law admits he used a Taser on his 10-year-old son.

MEGAN: Ugh, that is super lame. Also, did you notice that after her announcement, she took her bouffant-y twist out? One of my reporter friends was like, she wears it like that to seem taller, she's gonna have to take it out for the campaign, McCain isn't tall enough.

MOE: Oh God Janice Min Janice Minnnn I'm boycotting you now:

“She out Obama’ed Obama with her speech,” said Janice Min, the editor of Us Weekly, who said the criticism of its coverage would pass soon enough. “She came on like a supermom who is not going to take a lot of guff from anyone. The way media works now, it is impossible to separate the personal from the political, and I think her role as a celebrity — how she does on that level — could have a significant effect on the election.”

Yeah I noticed it; I believe they decreed it to be Hepburn-esque in the New York Post. Here, exhibit five.

MEGAN: I didn't tell you! David Carr interviewed me for that piece at the Vanity Fair-Google party... and didn't use my quote. But it might be because I was drinking enough that Ana Marie Cox was like... um, what are you drinking? Because I was sort of lapping her on her alcohol acquisition. That's not the best sign, probably. Ok, I've found my first reason to be actively and yet completely unreasonably against Sarah Palin, other than the whole anti-choice thing: the use of multiple exclamation points:

"New administration finally allows new input, fresh ideas and ENERGY to work with the public to shape this city!!!"

MOE: Ok and I've found my first reason to reconsider my general assertion that the media hasn't been overstepping:

And yet, you get the feeling that at the end of the day, she could shake out that lustrous mane (longer than any other major female U.S. political figure's) and get it on with her man. She wears skirts that are quite form-fitting and often goes without stockings. As ZZ Top might say, she's got legs, and she knows how to use 'em. When Sen. John McCain introduced her at an Aug. 29 campaign rally in Dayton, Ohio, she was wearing open-toed red patent leather shoes.

That is the resident fashion critic at the LA Times.

MEGAN: Um, fucking gross. Also, I have peep toed pumps, that obviously means I'm a fucking whore.

MOE: Well you're obviously a fucking whore. But so am I and I have three pairs of shoes, everyone knows that.

But, oh my God and she is totally the Britney Spears of MILFs.

Palin held her baby in her arms as the warden drove a short distance around the facility, said corrections director Joe Schmidt, who sat next to Palin. A few days later, the governor got a warning from her public safety commissioner that someone had complained that she did not strap Trig into a car seat for the ride.

Palin dismissed the complaint as petty, and the commissioner, whom she appointed, took no formal action. But the incident shows the degree to which family and politics are bound together in Palin's career.

MEGAN: Yes, I mean, shoes do not equal whore, like, wtf is the LA Times fashion critic talking about?

MOE: Um, is that really what "the incident shows" Washington Post?? Or does the incident show that SARAH PALIN IS A TERRIBLE MOTHER WHO NOT FOR NO REASON AT ALL LEAKED AMNIOTIC FLUID ALL OVER THAT PLANE (or whatever.)

MEGAN: Ok, well, that doesn't say back seat or front seat, plus it doesn't mention whether she was breast feeding or not. I dunno, I got kicked out of a bar for being there with a pregnant friend who was like I JUST WANTED ONE GLASS OF WINE. Also, my vagina leaks a lot, particularly when I'm ovulating. I'm like sloppy, annoyingly wet.

MOE: Ugh that is so annoying. Didn't they read the story about how you can actually binge drink during pregnancy so long as you only do it a few times a month or so?

MEGAN: I don't know, they were complete assholic assholes about it.

MOE: OOOOOOH maybe you are just female ejaculating all the time like those women in those other stories who have orgasms all the time and have to strap miniature vibrators to their underwear just to get through the day????

MEGAN: Nah, when I was a teenager, I went to my doctor and she said it was normal. Like, it's my body being like IMPREGNATE ME!! But, fuck that bitch, I have an IUD.
Anyway, so if she got 600 votes in her first election and 900 in her second, then despite what Mitt Romney said, she didn't get as many votes in two elections as Joe Biden got in Iowa.

MOE: Hahaha oh Mitt Romney, please watch him now in this clip I made of that speech — well actually I had Nick McGlynn make it, thank you Nick — but I sat through the speech for the purpose of conveying in 42 seconds how insane it was. And I was pretty sure that crap about Biden getting fewer votes was, in Noonan parlance, "bullshit" but thanks for that.

MEGAN: I heard that and I was like... yeah, there's no way that's true. I used up 90 percent of my internet connection Wednesday night proving it.

MOE: Yeah, the thing that sucks about these Republicans is that they don't care if you fact-check them. I really wish Plouffe or whoever could just get up and say something equally outrageous and blasphemous like…hold on…like how about, "Sarah Palin ran a town that is smaller than many high schools!" Oh wait, that's true, hm, or like, what about "Sarah Palin's fiscally conservative policies managed to sink that tiny little town into enough debt to buy a brand-new Prius for every household in it TOO BAD HER HUSBAND IS THE TOOL OF ALL THOSE STUPID OIL COMPANIES." Ughhhhhh but that would also be true I think!

MEGAN: Oh, shit, another convention story I meant to mention: I met David Gregory in a Starbucks. He's replacing Matthews and Olbermann as anchors. Only, back at Wonkette (now erased in this server migration), I posted this video of him dancing to Mary J. and my friend Eric Brewer tracked him to a video of Obama dancing on Ellen and he had a poll about who was better and Gregory won. So, I was like, hey, so, like, I did this video of you and Obama dancing and he was like, oh, I totally saw that. And then I blushed and got totally awkies.

MOE: Well in lieu of lending credence to the scurrilous rumor I heard about Palin's heroic son in the Army I am going to ask you if you read today's Filkins piece in the Times Magazine about how Pakistan has turned into the Minneapolis of the Terrorist Convention and part of that is flaky Benazir Bhutto's fault for thinking it was a good idea to arm the mujahadeen back when we also thought that was a good idea, oh and did we mention history and that repeating itself thing, as comforting as it is to know that people make the same stupid mistakes and repeat all the same fuckups even in places where the average citizen doesn't consume a metric tonne of alcohol every month, it is not very comforting at all actually. Here it is. Obama was good on this issue the other night with O'Reilly, incidentally, not that O'Reilly had any idea.

MEGAN: I keep meaning to watch the O'Reilly shit, but my parents don't have cable. Anyways, anyone who elects Zadari deserves what they get, sort of like how I feel the overwhelming majority of people who either voted in GWB for a second term or — more likely — didn't fucking bother to vote better not now be bitching about their adjustable rate mortgage, I tell you what. Even people in Pakistan know he's a Thaksin-level corrupt asshat — and they probably have some idea who the fuck Thaksin is, too. Also, I object to the assertion that I consume a metric tonne of alcohol a month. That's why I mostly drink wine and hard liquor, to keep the tonnage down.

MOE: Oh god yeah Thailand, we could discuss that too, and Freddie and Fannie, THE NIGHT COULD LAST FOREVER. But what's hot right now? I thought the Times magazine story by Frum on Republicans and income inequality was interesting, if namely for its incongruity following a week during which the proverbial Bullshit, as Janice Min so eloquently pointed out, triumphed so decisively over Shit That Actually Matters.

MEGAN: Wait, income inequality? Get yourself some fucking bootstraps, yo. Does anyone even fucking know what bootstraps are?

MOE: Whoa, the origins of all the Palin kid names! Turns out that taken together they all come together to mean "CANNY ATTEMPTS TO DEFLECT OBVIOUS CORPORATE BEHOLDENNESS BY INGRATIATING SELVES TO NATURE FETISHIZING IDIOCRACY" or just "FLAGRANT POLITICKING RIGHT FROM THE START." Fuck I somehow didn't realize Sarah Palin married Todd because she was knocked up. That is so rouge cou.

MEGAN: I mean, it's like a month, tops that they knew. Chances are, like other super-Catholic friends of mine, they boned a little early and found out a couple weeks after the wedding regardless.

MOE: Nah nah Track was born eight months after they eloped "to save money." I dunno, it's funny. God, who gets pregnant the first time they have sex? Well, I have a friend whose parents did, but how crazy. Oh man it's getting late though I guess. And there's still so much! Damn the weekend for being over.

MEGAN: Well, luckily, I opened a magnum of wine! I got plenty of time!

MOE: Ok i'm getting another beer. Dogfish 90 minute IPA, not that they're sponsoring me. Not that i would LET THEM.

MEGAN: I've got a Yellowtail Cabernet. I am not going to pretend if a winery wanted to sponsor my blogging I would deny them the opportunity, but I would rather it be something non-corporate like Guglielmo or Hecker Pass, two of my favorite family wineries.

MOE: Ugh are we too far-gone — and too far down on the moral authority pay grade — to weigh in on Biden's belief that life begins at conception? Because personally I am inclined to say "well sure it does, so what" but you all know how paranoid I am about seeming "flip."

MEGAN: I mean, Biden's a Catholic, that's the party line, right? I just don't buy that. I don't believe it in the slightest. I'm not sure I believe in a soul. Potential life? Ok, maybe, but all evidence is that plenty of potential lives are ejected regularly from women's bodies. I just... I just don't buy that a zygote is A Life.

MOE: Right, well the "soul" is a different matter. As I think we might have discussed before, there's a genuine debate within the believers in souls as to how a soul could be formed at conception, then split into two separate souls two weeks later. Anyway "Life" …bacteria is life. Now human life is more important than animal life, but ughhhh if embryo life or fetus life was as precious as regular fully formed human life you would think there would be a huge public health campaign to finally put an end to the mysterious plague that silently kills as many as one in four humans before they even have the chance to get heartbeats! But there is not. And now I am tired.

MEGAN: My sister's fiancé was just asking when I was going to bed. I could stop drinking and try that out.

MOE: Yeah this is the longest Crappy Hour ever already I think. I've been drinking really slow and am still tired and I think that is a sign.

MEGAN: Ok, so, I'll check you at an abortion-esque ungodly hour on Tuesday.

MOE: Oh, but that David Gregory story was awesome.

MEGAN: There's nothing like embarrassing oneself in a Starbucks full of Republicans to make embarrassing oneself on the Internet seem totes minor.

I got my first Pill at 17 — my doctor took one look at me about to head off to college, and told me I was going on The Pill. She extolled its skin-clearing, cramp-reducing, cycle-regulating virtues (and the fact that she wouldn't see me back pregnant at Thanksgiving), wrote a prescription for Tri-norinyl and sent me on my way. I was back at Thanksgiving, anyway — my boobs went from their long-accustomed B-cup to a C-cup between August and Columbus Day, my cramps weren't gone, and my skin hadn't cleared up. We went with Demulen, but my tits never did regain their original size/shape.

Cramps drove me back for a new Pill just before my senior year started — I don't even remember which one — but it made me constantly 4 days late and still didn't kill the damn cramps. The doctor, probably tired of my whining, switched me to Levlen just after graduation. In July, I had my first ever panic attack — an unintended side effect of the high dose pill. Oops! It was onto Ortho tri-cyclen, that great unifier of women, just before I moved to D.C. in August. During my boyfriend's first visit down here, he remarked that I tasted a little off, and I welcomed my first simultaneous yeast and bacterial infections later that September! Luckily, I'd swiped a bunch of sample packs of Mircette from the doctor's office I'd worked at all summer (23 days of hormones instead of 21!), and my doctor eventually concurred with my choice. A year and a change of insurance plans later, it was onto Low-ogestrel, which, after another change in insurance, became Loestrin-FE. At this point, in addition to the cramps, and the bad skin, and the complete inability to predict with pinpoint accuracy when Aunt Flo would arrive, my doctors all agreed that it was exacerbating my migraines (like a screaming brat wouldn't!) and I was switched to Microgestin.

Desperate to keep having child- (and thus relatively consequence-) free sex and to stop having blinding, nauseating migraines twice a week, I took to the web. Diaphragms and cervical caps required training and weren't nearly effective enough to keep me from freaking out if I was 2 days late, people who practice the rhythm method are called "parents," and sponges weren't yet back on the market. IUDs, however, were as effective as any Pill (99%), even if they did have that silly little potential for infertility/ectopic pregnancy. I was in. My insurance was not.

When I finally had my $300 put aside to buy the device, my gyno made me sign a waiver that I wouldn't sue her for installing it if I ever couldn't get pregnant (which, by the way, is why they're "recommended" for women who already have rugrats — so you can't sue them for causing infertility if you were already infertile and just didn't yet know), and it was off to the stirrups.

I'm not going to beat around the bush here — having it installed was not pleasant. Your doctor puts it in when you're on the rag because your cervix is already dilated, which is messy, and s/he "clamps" your cervix to hold it still, which I think was actually more uncomfortable than a colposcopy. Since I got one of the non-hormone varieties (the ones that release hormones last up to 5 years), I don't have to have it taken out for 10 years — and I really don't plan to have that clamp thing inside me again until completely necessary. I was supposed to be able to go back to work afterwards (and maybe I could have, if my doctor had been of the variety that uses local anesthesia), but I went home to a hot pack, some Advil and a bottle of wine.

For the next year, it was back to the debilitating cramps of my childhood, but, hey, my headaches were gone, and my mediocre skin was of my own doing. But my period was no more or less timely, except when put into an environment with a bunch of new women. And, then, suddenly, the cramps just tapered off, too. I get them occasionally (like, if I'm a couple days late), but they're deal-able. On the other hand, no more headaches, no more unexplained weight gains, no more panic attacks, no more morning nausea, no more trying to remember to take it, and to take it at the same time of day, no more carrying it if I think I won't be sleeping at home (i.e., hooray for unplanned promiscuity!), no more remembering to get the 'scrip filled, no more worrying if the doctor puts me on antibiotics, or if I vomit shortly after taking it, and no more morning-after pills. If I want to check to make sure I'm still not going to get pregnant, I get the guy I'm seeing to finger me, check for the twine coming out of my cervix and get (at least) one free orgasm while he's in there! I definitely never got that from the Pill.