The attack on International Islamic University in Islamabad is the latest in a series of militant attacks around the country in recent weeks. Many schools in the area had closed this week because authorities warned that insurgents may be planning attacks. Half of the school's 18,000 students are female and most study secular subjects. • A French man accused of kidnapping and raping a boy after serving 18 years in prison for raping two other children has written to President Nicolas Sarkozy and asked to be castrated. France is currently debating forcing some sex offenders to be chemically castrated, but the man wants his testicles removed. • An Australian primary school has banned hugging and other "inappropriate behavior" between its students because administrators are worried the older students, who are 11 to 13, are setting a bad example for the younger ones. Principal Julie Gale says hugging between friends is not banned "but we do discourage displays of affection in the school yard among students ... who have a boyfriend or girlfriend at the school." • In March, the United Nations will consider 40 proposals to curb the trade of endangered animals including tuna used in sushi, corals that are made into jewelry, and sharks whose fins make soup. If passed, the animal trade would probably be regulated with a government permit system. • Female cat burglar Celeste Ricciardi allegedly looted four New York apartment buildings including her own by crawling into windows from the fire escape. The New York Post calls her "catwoman" and notes that she "has two cats." • Married British doctor Edward Erin has been found guilty of attempting to spike his girlfriend's drinks to induce abortion. Bella Prowse took several suspicious beverages he'd prepared to the police and they determined they were laced with drugs used to cause a miscarriage. Prowse gave birth to a son in September 2008 and Erin is awaiting sentencing. • Adrian Searle writes in The Guardian that with the death of Nancy Spero on Sunday "the art world loses its conscience." He says, "Her art could also be riotously funny and sexy as well as macabre, and she made many works which dealt with female jouissance and eroticism, pleasure and pain. Spero was a spearhead of feminist art in the 1960s, calling for greater recognition of women artists and women in the New York art world." • Prosecutors say they're worried Rod Blagojevich's appearance on The Celebrity Apprentice may prejudice potential jurors for his trial on corruption charges. A judge has ruled that he can appear on the show but prosecutors have asked that the judge limit what he can say on television. • A lock of hair believed to be Amelia Earhart's is actually just thread. A group looking for DNA evidence of Earhart on a Pacific island asked to examine the sample at the International Women's Air and Space Museum in Cleveland, Ohio, but found it was a fake. •

• Radar Online reports that Heidi Klum gave birth to her fourth child, a daughter named Lou Samuel, early this morning. Us however, insists it isn't true, but labor is imminent. This shouldn't be so complicated, people. [Radar Online, Us]

• Last night on Models of the Runway, while the models were lined up and waiting to be eliminated, one of them farted. Tara Egan said, "The tension got broken a little bit on the runway because, I'm not gonna name names, but I think someone had a couple of, uh, gastrointestinal problems while we were on the runway." Heidi Klum said, "What happened? Someone farted? It wasn't me. Who's not laughing over there?" Celine Chua took responsibility explaining, "I'm a great farter." [E!]
• VIDEO: Mickey Rourke explains that when he uses the word f-word it has "nothing to do with gay," by making a weird football analogy and repeating the word about a dozen times. [TMZ]
• The president of GLAAD has issued a statement saying: "This is a slur that, regardless of what Mickey Rourke has convinced himself that it means, is often the last word that gay people and gay youth in particular, hear before they're bullied, harassed or assaulted. Rourke is showing himself to be painfully ignorant of how this vulgar, abusive slur feeds a climate of anti-gay hatred, intolerance and violence." [TMZ]
• John Legend says while other stars have come out in support of Roman Polanski, "I'm in support of justice. I don't get why everyone's defending his actions." And shook his head in disgust. Previously Legend Tweeted: "A man in his 30's cannot have 'consensual' sex with a 13-year-old. It is legally impossible for a child to give consent. It's rape." [Radar Online]
• A source says the Gosselin kids are, "confused and distraught and are acting out all the time in an effort to get attention from their parents." [Us]
• Kate Gosselin has filed for alimony from Jon Gosselin. [The Insider]
• BREAKING: Jon Gosselin bought his girlfriend Hailey Glassman a few drinks at a New York pub. [TMZ]
• David Hasselhoff was drinking at Simon Cowell's birthday party this past weekend. [TMZ]
• Hasselhoff was hospitalized for two days in London after a drunken bender that ended with him allegedly punching a doctor. [TMZ]
• A day after Miley Cyrus deleted her Twitter account, her dad Billy Ray Cyrus Tweeted: "I understand 'it is true one bad apple spoils the bunch.' But listen to the words of your songs 'Stand… for what ya believe in'…Remember? ... Miley. You are a light in a world of darkness. You were born"Destiny Hope Cyrus" for a reason.You can't leave everyone now.We r countin on u." [Perez Hilton]
• Rod Blagojevich will appear on The Celebrity Apprentice. [USA Today]
• A police officer testified in the John Travolta extortion trial that Pleasant Bridgewater destroyed the form with his signature when she "noticed the situation was about to explode." [The Mirror]
• Tori Spelling Tweeted about the Star magazine cover that claims she's wasting away at 95 lbs, "LIES! ... Literally not 1 factual thing in entire article. And, come 2 my house & weigh me Star! I'm 107 lbs." [People]
• Solja Boy was arrested in Georgia on Wednesday night after allegedly running from a police officer. Police say he was among a group of about 40 people hanging out in the yard of an abandoned house. [TMZ]
• Method Man was arrested for allegedly failing to pay taxes for four years but he says, "everything will be resolved. Trust me, it's a misunderstanding." [TMZ]
• The Duggar's first grandchild, Mackynzie Renée Duggar, was born at the home of her parents Joshua and Anna. They say they haven't committed to all of their children having "M" names, like Mackynzie's 18 aunts and uncles (and one on the way) who all have "J" names. [People]
• Usher recently called the cops on his soon-to-be-ex wife Tameka Raymond because he claims she snuck onto his property and stole one of his cars. Police determined there was no evidence to substantiate his claim. [TMZ]
• Audrina Patridge broke up with BMX racer Corey Bohan and was spotted on a date with Derek White, Justin Bobby's BFF. [Star]
• Paris Hilton has ordered a $4,500 miniature pig from a breeder. She will be delivered in about a month and named "Princess Pigelette." [TMZ]
• Marlon Jackson addressed the Australian TV blackface controversy on behalf of his family, saying, "Man, if they turned up looking like that in the United States ... They probably weren't trying to be offensive or anything of that nature with the family. We thank Harry Connick Jr. for speaking out, but we also understand that they weren't trying to be disrespectful to us." [News.com.au]
• Robin Givens, who was abused by Mike Tyson, says she can relate to what Rihanna's going through now. "You do need time to figure your life out," she says. "I do feel that if she speaks out about it people will listen to her. But she is young and I can imagine the pain and the confusion she is going through." [People]
• On an episode of Oprah that airs Monday, Mike Tyson says he's still unclear on the details about the death of his 4-year-old daughter Exodus in May, "Because if I know, then there might be a blame for it... And if there's somebody to blame for it, there will be a problem." She was found by her 7-year-old brother tangled in a cord dangling from a treadmill. [People]
• Cherry Jones and her longtime girlfriend Sarah Paulson have split up. Jones said she and Paulson are "great. It's the happiest break up that's ever been. We grew so much together and now we can send each other off with a kiss and great love." [Us]
• Daniel Radcliffe has been cast in a reading of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying in New York. [Variety]
• Check out Hilary Swank on the cover of Town & Country: [ONTD]
• Sean Connery's doctors told him to give up alcohol after diagnosing him with a heart condition but he says, "I do drink red wine because of my friend David Murray, who owns two French wine estates. He showed me the evidence that it was good for the health. I favour Merlots from Chile for their value and I keep a good deal of California wine in my cellar. I have one that cost me $2,000 for two cases, which I think is rather steep." [Daily Express]
• Eight TV variety specials Ann-Margret did decades ago are being edited into a new one-hour documentary. [The Village Voice]
• In her new book Finding It, Valerie Bertinelli says that she used to be a binge eater but she's learned to satisfy herself with hiking, spending time with her family and boyfriend, and exploring her new relationship with God. "I was still hungry - as hungry as I had ever been," Bertinelli writes. "It was a different kind of hunger, though: one that I couldn't satisfy with food, and had no desire to." [AP]
• Matt Damon wrote an article in Parade about the importance of ensuring children have clean water around the world. He says: "I co-founded Water.org, which focuses on water and sanitation. I was in Ethiopia earlier this year, and I watched children taking filthy water out of a hand-dug well and putting it in bottles to take to school. The water was so dirty, it looked like chocolate milk. I wanted to knock it out of their hands and say, "Don't drink that-it could kill you." The dilemma is that drinking nothing at all will kill them even faster. Parents in these impoverished areas lose children every year to diseases that could be completely prevented if they had access to clean water." [Parade]
• Vince Vaughn says he proposed to Kyla Weber earlier this year on a certain romantic day because, "Valentine's Day rolled around and I figured this is not a ship to be missed ... [It] worked out great because it would have been kind of weird to have talked about [getting engaged] and then skipped Valentine's Day as if who knows when this thing is coming." [People]
• Vaughn says of the character he plays in Couples Retreat not being tempted to cheat, "It was kind of nice to make a movie where it was like 'We made a commitment. We're in this 'cause we said we wanted to be, and we have people counting on us. You know what? We believe in this and it's worth it to us, and I love you.'" [CNN]
• Harmony Korine explains how he got the idea for his new film Trash Humpers: "I would walk my dog at night back behind the alleyways in the neighborhood where I live in Nashville. And sometimes I would see these trash bins propped up against garages or lying on the ground. These overhead lights would be shining on them, giving them a real dramatic effect. The trash bins began to resemble human forms to me - almost like a war zone where the trash bins had been molested and beaten up and stuff. Sometimes, the way they were propped, they looked very humpable. Then I remembered that in my neighborhood growing up, there were these elderly peeping toms who would stare into my neighbor's window. They lived in an old person's home down the road, and they would come out at night. And I just put these ideas together." [N.Y. Magazine]
• Terry Gilliam, who worked with Heath Ledger on The Brothers Grimm and the upcoming Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus says, "I loved working with Heath on Brothers Grimm, he was fantastic. He went through an interesting time after Brokeback Mountain because he was so inundated with the big time. I would ask him about certain roles and he would say yes, and then no, so I learnt not to put any pressure on him because everyone else was. I didn't actually ask him about this one, I waited until he asked me." [The Telegraph]
• Pete Yorn says he asked Scarlett Johansson to record a duets album even though he didn't know if she could sing. "I figured, you know, most actors are multitalented. They've got to be able to do a lot of things and they probably have some ability to sing," he said. [CBS News]

• Barack Obama, after his meeting with Angela Merkel, will visit the ruins of the Buchenwald concentration camp. He will likely not compare our re-purposing of Abu Ghraib to the Russian's post-war re-purposing of Buchenwald for political prisoners. [UPI, Huffington Post]

• Obama is heading to France after that, where he's meeting Michelle and the girls. [MSNBC]
• Perhaps he's going in order to help him forget about the crazy guy from Utah trying to assassinate him. [Huffington Post]
• Or the fact that his Attorney General is having to release a bunch more Alaska Republicans convicted of corruption because the prosecution by Bush's Justice Department was even more corrupt than the politicians. [NY Times]
• One of the other corrupt Republicans prosecuted by Alberto Gonzales' Justice Department, Bob Ney, now has a radio show and wants to see Alberto Gonzales waterboarded...to prove it's not really torture, of course. [ThinkProgress]
• During a week when corrupt former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich has his wife eating spiders in Costa Rica with Speidi to pay the bills he once fulfilled through bribery, waterboarding Alberto Gonzales doesn't seem that extreme. [Politico]
• My definition of "extreme" may have been altered by reading this recap and review of Glenn Beck's "comedy" tour. [NY Times]
• Judge Sonia Sotomayor's supporting documentation has been delivered to the Senate early, which won't stop Republicans from claiming they don't have enough time to read it before their summer vacations. [MSNBC]
• Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter, having locked up the support of most senior Democrats and killed most primary challenges, now says he doesn't know if he'll vote for Sotomayor. Seriously, dude's starting to seem a little crazy, right? [Politico]
• But, with unemployment in America at nearly 10 percent, the one thing Arlen Specter won't do is quit his job. [NY Times]

• Rush Limbaugh has his big-boy britches in a wad over the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court because she and President Obama are racists for thinking themselves not only equal to white people but superior to some...like Rush Limbaugh. By that standard, we are all racist! [Time]

• We're also superior to Larry Summers, who fell asleep during a motherfucking meeting again. [NY Post]
• Current Illinois Senator Roland Burris (surprise!) bought his sinecure from former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich just like everyone suspected he did. [Wall Street Journal]
• Burris is now departing on a tour of - wait for it - Central Illinois. [Associated Press]
• Obama, however, is headed to Sin City to help out Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, despite the fact that Reid will continue to fuck shit up. [LA Times]
• Apparently, the United States is considering a value added tax (VAT). Don't think that means we'll get to stop paying income taxes, though — the point is not to change the system, but raise more revenues. [Washington Post]
• Economists predict the recession will be over by the end of the year. [MSNBC]
• By then, North Korea might actually have re-ignited the Korean War, which actually never technically ended. What else does Kim Jong Il have to do these days? [NY Times]

• The D.C. Council has approved a bill that recognizes same-sex marriages performed in states where it is legal. The legislation is considered the first step toward allowing gay marriages to be performed in Washington, but it's unclear how the bill will fare in Congress, which has final say over D.C.'s laws. • The Maine House of Representatives has approved a bill that would allow same sex couples to marry in the state. Now the bill will go back to the Senate, which voted last week to support the bill. Gov. John Baldacci has not said whether he will veto the bill or allow it to become law. • The body of a man believed to be homosexual has been dug up twice in Senegal because people don't want him buried in the Muslim cemetery. The second time his body was exhumed it was left outside the family home, and it is believed that he is now buried on the property. Homosexual acts are illegal in Senegal, a majority Muslim country, and anti-gay sentiment has been on the rise since a court overturned the conviction of nine people for committing homosexual acts last month. • Greece's only two same-sex marriages, one male and one female, have been annulled by a court. The couples used a loophole in the law that did not specify gender in civil weddings to marry. • A judge ruled that 20-year-old University of Colorado student Abby Toll will be allowed to stay at her mother's house this summer with her dog, even though she is accused of taping her boyfriend's dog to a refrigerator. Police say Toll bound the 2-year-old shiba inu's legs, snout, and tail with packing tape, then stuck him upside down to the side of the refrigerator. Toll is charged with felony aggravated cruelty to animals and drug possession. The dog is at the local Humane Society, and will be put up for adoption. • Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and his wife Veronica Lario have chosen their divorce lawyers. She has chosen Maria Christina Morelli, who is famous for winning the right for a woman who had been in a coma for 17 years to be removed from life support. Following the verdict, Berlusconi launched an unsuccessful effort to change the law and keep the woman alive. • Berlusconi went on state-run television today to deny that he had an affair with an 18-year-old and repeat that his wife should publicly apologize for embarrassing him and admit that she was wrong. • A front-page editorial in the official newspaper of the Italian Catholic Bishops Conference said Berlusconi's behavior is "worrying" and said Italy deserved a Prime Minister who was a "mirror of the country's soul" and called on him to be more "sober and sombre". • In a study of 6,437 children from the age of 7 to 12, British researchers found that pre-teens who were bullied as children have twice the risk of having delusions, hallucinations, and other psychotic symptoms. The scientists said bullying may even trigger people who are genetically predisposed to schizophrenia. • Mia Metzgers of New York is suing a woman who outed her as a dominatrix in a sexual harassment lawsuit against Metzger's boyfriend. Metzger says the revelation ruined her nursing career. • Dozens of women are suing the company that manufactures ObTape, a vaginal sling that is surgically inserted under the urethra to prevent urine leaks. In one case, several months after the surgery, a patient developed a painful, bloody, vaginal discharge, and pieces of the tape started working through her vaginal wall. The product had been cleared for sale by the FDA. • Disney has eliminated the "image screening positions" at its parks. The employees used to check photos taken during certain rides to censor photos in which women purposely flashed their breasts, in hopes that they would be put on the photo preview for everyone to see. Disney says anyone who exposes him or herself on a ride will still be ejected from the park. • 44 people were killed at a wedding in Turkey, including the bride and groom, by masked men armed with assault rifles and grenades. The men are believed to be from a family feuding with the bride's family. They were angry that a relative had been rejected as the groom. • A survey of 400 men who attend church by a UK men's magazine found that 60 percent don't like flowers and embroidered banners in church. Nearly 60 percent said they enjoyed singing, but preferred "proclamational hymns" to emotional love longs. 72 percent said their favorite part of the service is the sermon. • A Kansas State University researcher Kay Ann Taylor says that poverty is rooted in the U.S. education system because, "Far too many schools continue to endorse a curriculum of the absurd that encompasses 'heroification' of primarily white males, while the contributions of women and people of color appear in pop-out format in textbooks," and laws like the No Child Left Behind Act and military recruitment in low-achieving schools leave poor students at a disadvantage. • Denis Hof, the owner of the Moonlite Bunny Ranch brothel featured on Cathouse, may offer Drew Peterson an apprenticeship after Rod Blagojevich turned him down. Hof said, "He doesn't have an old lady now; at least they can't find her. He might as well be on my show and have some fun with the girls." • A fight broke out in an Oregon bar after a man slapped a woman's butt while she was singing karaoke. Her husband confronted the man, which led to a 12 person fight involving beer bottles and chairs being used as weapons. • The towns of Newton and Wellesley in Massachusetts have released a list of their most popular names for dogs. Bailey is most popular in Wellesley and Lucy is most popular in Newton. Several dogs in each town are named for Patriots quarterback Tom Brady. • The European Parliament has voted overwhelmingly to ban the trade of seal products across Europe. • The hand-cranked device in this video reenacts the "Don't Tase Me Bro" incident with mechanical figures. •

• This week's New York Times Magazine cover story on Obama's first hundred days doesn't look exceptionally celebratory. It looks more like, "This is what 100 days as President will do to you." [NY Times]

• Washington continues to buzz about Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter's party-switch, which even the White House didn't learn about until yesterday morning despite Joe Biden's efforts to get him to do it. [Washington Post]
• But in 2001, Specter blasted then-Senator Jim Jeffords for his party-switching; he even tried to make it illegal. [LA Times]
• Michael Steele's pissed off about the Specter switch because he was going to back Specter in the primary...which is probably partly what Specter was worried about. [Politico]
• Rush Limbuagh wants John and Meghan McCain to switch parties now, too. [Huffington Post]
• Republican Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine thinks assholes like Limbaugh are part of why the party is losing voters in droves and Senators in dribs and drabs. [NY Times]
• Specter's desertion means that Norm Coleman shall never surrender his fight to have the courts declare him the winner of the Minnesota Senate Race. [Politico]
• Speaking of Minnesota, Republican Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann thinks that the outbreak of swine flu is either a Democratic conspiracy, the result of God hating Democratic Presidents or poor management by Democrats. [ThinkProgress]
• Less insanity regarding American health: The Senate finally approved the nomination of Kathleen Sebelius to be Secretary of Health and Human Services, despite Republican opposition to the fact that a pro-choice President picked a pro-choice nominee for the gig. [Reuters]
• Keith Olbermann, like much of America, would really, really like to see Sean Hannity waterboarded. [USA Today]
• However, no one wants to see former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich take Moonlight Bunny Ranch owner Dennis Hof's offer of an apprenticeship. [PR Newswire]
• And, apparently, Pat Buchanan likened a Nazi war criminal to Jesus; in Pat's world, killing 29,000 of his fellow Jews is What Jesus Would Do. [Huffington Post]

• Congratulations to MSNBC's David Schuster for the best tea-bagging pun ever: "if you are planning simultaneous tea bagging all around the country, you're going to need a Dick Armey." Yes, yes, you do. [Huffington Post]

• In case you missed it, today marks the day we become a nation of conservative-thinking tea-baggers protesting government spending. [The Hill]
• Some veterans aren't happy about Republicans tea-bagging one another at memorial sites, but Republicans don't give a shit. Or a tea bag. [ThinkProgress]
• President Barack Obama is feeling pretty mellow about it all after meeting yesterday with the Grateful Dead. [Washington Post]
• He's not even sweating the new DHS report warning of growing right wing extremism, because he's not the one about to start tea-bagging. [Politico]
• And he's cool with the apology he got from Arizona State University about their fuck-up in not awarding him an honorary degree. [Politico]
• Less mellow is Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who just found out that Republican House candidate Jim Tedisco is trying to get her absentee ballot thrown out because he doesn't care about cheating as long as he wins. [The Hill]
• He's borrowing that attitude from former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich who — I'm not even fucking kidding, this is not an Onion story — has signed to appear on the reality TV show I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here if the judge will let him travel. [Variety]
• Yes, yes, another pirate attack. [Huffington Post]
• Reports aside, former First Daughter Barbara Bush is not getting married. [People]

The House yesterday voted on Obama's stimulus package — you know, the one he so badly wanted to have bipartisan support for that he stripped contraception funding from it? Well, despite pissing off everyone from Planned Parenthood to NOW to NARAL (on a day when the latter is laying people off), not a single Republican voted for the thing. White House aides like spokesman Robert Gibbs are trying to spin this as anything but a repudiation of Obama, his charm offensive, his policies or his plans for a post-partisan Washington and are claiming that it's the vote on the inevitable conference report — since the Senate bill is already different and about to get different-er with the addition of government-guaranteed mortgages to it in the Senate — but it's all kind of bullshit because they even lost 11 Democratic votes yesterday. And when you lose so bad that Republican Congressman Eric Cantor can say shit like "Keynesian economics doesn't hold a candle to the entrepreneurship that made this economy so prosperous up until the last six months" — even though he knows and I know his econ guys know that the government says the recession started in December 2007 — and no one calls him on it or thinks that's a completely false statement, you're losing ground fast. But, hey, the Senate will pass SCHIP fucking finally today and Obama will get his Ledbetter photo op and more people will say, "It's only been a week! Give him time!" in the face of criticism while the Republican National Committee holes up and tries to figure out a strategy to use all this and more to win back seats in the House and Senate in 2010, so everything will be ok. We can just rely on them continuing to campaign with their heads up their asses in order to keep Democratic majorities. That's a great strategy.

It's sort of almost as good as current Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich's strategy to appear on every talk show known to man on Monday to claim his impeachment trial is a way to raise taxes on ordinary people in Illinois and then turn around and demand to give a closing statement and the impeachment trial that he's been skipping in order to disprove his obvious guilt to some perhaps gullible jurors. Or as good as Pepsi accusing the Obama camp of appropriating their imagery rather than the other way around. Or as good a strategy as being former McCain blogger Michael Goldfarb, who's gone back to "journalism" and is telling everyone that you'd have had to have been "a lunatic" to think McCain would win and that he was hired to do no less than attack his own supposed profession. Or, um, sending Obama to Canada on February 19th when everyone knows it will be fucking cold, but, hey, he's not a wimp like us D.C. folk when it comes to winter weather so it will be fine/appropriate karmic retribution. It's a day of great strategery all around, the likes of which we haven't seen for more than a week since GWB didn't let the door hit him on the ass on the way out.

Roland Burris, Blagojevich Hold Nuttiest Press Conference Of 2008 [Huffington Post]

A special thanks to Gawker intern Stacey Fitzgerald, who did a yeomans work editing this into something slight more comprehensible than the actual show was.

(Only, you know, with fewer guests, and, since I don't manicure as regularly as Barbra Streisand, with way worse cuticles.)

The thing about politics, like the news in general, is that it's subject to the butterfly effect and, no, I'm not talking about that shitty movie with Ashton Kutcher. Some minor news story one day takes down a politician the next which, of course, brings us to the death of Bill Richardson's cabinet appointment. Not even a month ago, there was a little-noticed story about how a federal grand jury was investigating possible pay-for-play with contracts in New Mexico and just about everyone yawned and figured Richardson and Obama's vetters weren't that stupid and went back to Christmas shopping. Everyone was just focusing on Blago and the smoking-hot Patrick Fitzgerald and how no one could possibly be stupid enough to accept a Blagojevich appointment to the Senate until, of course, Roland Burris, who now considers himself the junior Senator from Illinois, did.

And, let's stop and talk for just a second about Roland Burris, whose zeal for higher office has never once been thwarted by a desire to do what was, you know, right. Just ask Rolando Cruz, who sacrificed more than a decade of his own life at the altar of Burris' political ambitions — let alone two of Burris' own prosecutors who quit rather than do something they knew was wrong. Harry Reid might faux-fight that shit all he wants (which, given that it's Harry Reid, isn't much — the man would rather watch a few boxing matches on the industry's dime than get all pugilistic up in the Senate). Burris knows he played by the rules and bought that seat fair and square just like he bought those contracts from the Blago administration and he's going to take his rightful place by hook, crook, lawsuit or race card, because that's how "vetting" is done in Chicago.

But back to Chicago, which Obama left yesterday with a tear in his eye, leaving his staff claiming that Richardson stonewalled them on the pay-for-play case — which begs the question: why did you then let him have the job, idiots? Even letting loose the info that Virginia Governor Tim Kaine, once thought a potential VP candidate, is only getting the DNC Chairmanship as his consolation prize (note to others: don't talk about Axelrod's combover) isnt' going to stop the Richardson trainwreck, especially as he's withdrawing from the Obama Administration and returning to run his own.

His state, like most of 'em, is probably deep in the hole and they'd like a trillion dollars from the federal government or else they've got these mutated, ill-tempered sea bass with fricking laser beams on their foreheads, see? And the overseer of the financial crisis might want to steer clear of state capitals once he loses that Secret Service Protection in 10 years because sea bass and governors tend to live for a while (everywhere but in Virginia, where Tim Kaine is about to be term-limited out anyway).

But there are some people that will be coming to Washington, including Al Franken, who will supposedly be declared the winner of the Minnesota Senate race today and Denver school superintendent Michael Bennet, who is reportedly Colorado Governor Bill Ritter's choice to replace Ken Salazar in the Senate. New York Governor David Paterson is still denying that Caroline Kennedy is the front-runner to replace Hillary Clinton in the Senate despite Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver flip-flopping on Kennedy last week for just that reason, so either her people have plants in the governor's office leaking this or it's all just a big show on Paterson's part to make him look so pressured that he doesn't have another choice. She might be able to make nice with either Harvard law dean Elena Kagan or Stanford law dean Kathleen Sullivan, both of whom are tops on the short list for Solicitor General and either of whom would be the first woman to hold the position.

In the meantime, troopers are alleging that the investigation into Levi Johnston's Oxy-Mom was delayed for political reasons, a bunch of anti-Bush activists are forced to cope with the fact that one of their own was an FBI plant, which makes me wonder after last spring's Elle story of another FBI plant how many anarchists we really have who aren't working for the federal government. There's also another sketchy Bill Clinton donor story out there which should make for 3 minutes of questioning during Hillary Clinton's confirmation hearings next month, assassinated Pakistani politician Benazir Bhutto's daughter has a new rap song out which is probably more ripe for parody than Rachel Maddow but SNL's Michaela Watkins of the terrible Arianna impression will try one anyway.

Oh, and not to be trumped by the damn Bidens, the Obamas will be getting their girls two puppies, too, and someone will be having a very stern talk with Joe about upstaging the boss.

MEGAN: It is very rare that the news is so full of crap as today, which is why I guess they call Fridays "news dumps." That said, I believe Obama's dump of his advisers' Blago contacts is best represented by this doll which portrays him taking a physical dump. I love this doll. I want one so bad that I actually mentally scrolled through everyone I had ever met — including in Spain in 1995 — to think if there was anyone I could get to buy me one.

SPENCER: Can you summarize the Blago stuff for me? I don't want to read it. Like I really don't care.

MEGAN: Rahm Emanuel called him twice pro forma and everyone is as clean as a whistle. The end. Duh.

SPENCER: I see that even this Weekly Standard writer says, "Yep, not raising any flags for me, either. Now, everybody go on vacation." So is this actually the end or will it go on endlessly like Whitewater?

MEGAN: It will go on endlessly like Whitewater, no doubt. I'm just waiting for someone's cats to disappear or Michelle Obama to be accused of faking someone's suicide. I cannot believe you are ignoring the pooping Obama doll. In other crap, Karl Rove thinks Joe Biden is trying to consolidate power too much. I mean, I just mention it because it seemed like you might need a good laugh. We can stop laughing when Joe Biden gets a man safe, a secret bunker from which he can practice his necromancy and begins to age in reverse, but until then...

SPENCER: Maybe it's because it's Christmas but I can't bring myself to care about a pooping Obama doll. Also can we stop using the word "pooping." What happened to respectable slang terms like "shitting"? "Poop" sounds like something you coo to a baby. It's not like you can't curse on this blog

MEGAN: Shit smells. This is plastic. Ergo, in my mind, it is poop. These things are very strictly delineated in my mind. Also, my parents are walking in and out of the room, so I am apparently unconsciously self-censoring like I did in high school.

SPENCER: What's beautiful about that Rove quote, aside from the hypocrisy — which is pro forma at this point — is his bald assertion that he knows what Biden and Obama talk about. Hilarious. I can't wait for this asshole's book.

MEGAN: I believe we can say "Until he shits out his book," because, man, that's going to reek.

SPENCER: Also, did you catch Jason Linkins' Twitter-meltdown last night? WTF

MEGAN: I will admit something right now that likely makes me a bad friend to Jason. I follow him online but no longer get updates to my phone since he started Twittering football.

SPENCER: Oh I took him off my phone long ago. I have a zero-tolerance policy for over-twitterers.

MEGAN: To make up for that embarrassing admission, I will post what he would have said last Friday had circumstances preventing us from doing Crappy Hour:

Since circumstance robbed us of our Friday Crappy Houring, I wasn't able to say something that I wanted, which was what a highlight of the year it was for me to participate in Crappy Hour, and to thank the jezebel community for their many kindnesses. It was a real honor and a privilege.

SPENCER: And in fairness, I think I might have been live-tweeting that particular Redskins game with him and Greg Greene and Amanda Mattos. AWWWWWW I would say the same thing, but I'm not gay. :)

MEGAN: Aw, you guys.

SPENCER: OK so now to discuss Chris Cox?

MEGAN: Oh, fuck yeah.

SPENCER:

Christopher Cox, the embattled chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, is defending his restrained approach to the financial crisis, saying he has provided steady leadership as Wall Street's main regulator at a time when other federal regulators have responded precipitously to upheaval in the markets.

This is a great quote:

"What we have done in this current turmoil is stay calm, which has been our greatest contribution — not being impulsive, not changing the rules willy-nilly, but going through a very professional and orderly process that takes into account unintended consequences and gives ample notice to market participants."

Like watching every investment bank it oversees self-destruct?

MEGAN: But that's not his job!!

"The public might not understand that that wasn't the SEC's job," he said, adding that the agency was not responsible for preventing investment banks from collapsing but rather for sheltering their securities trading units from problems in the broader corporation. "The SEC is not a safety and soundness regulator," he said.

I also like this part:

Cox said the biggest mistake of his tenure was agreeing in September to an extraordinary three-week ban on short selling of financial company stocks. But in publicly acknowledging for the first time that this ban was not productive, Cox said he had been under intense pressure from Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. and Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke to take this action and did so reluctantly. They "were of the view that if we did not act and act at that instant, these financial institutions could fail as a result and there would be nothing left to save," Cox said.

Um, hey, asshole? There's a reason why you got a 5-year term instead of a political appointment: so you wouldn't cave to political pressure to do stuff you know if bad.

SPENCER: No one can resist Hank Paulson. That's how you got those hickeys. What would Dennis Prager say?

MEGAN: Dennis Prager would say that Chrissy Cox should just lie down and spread her legs even if she's not in the mood! Which is apparently what Cox did!

It became the agency's responsibility to monitor them for financial and operational weaknesses under a program set up before Cox's tenure, but under his watch they got into such trouble that today they no longer exist as investment banks. Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers failed, Merrill Lynch had to be taken over, and Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley converted themselves into bank holding companies.

The March collapse of Bear Stearns illustrated an array of agency shortcomings, according to a review by the SEC's inspector general. He concluded that agency officials had been aware of "numerous potential red flags" at Bear Stearns "but did not take actions to limit these risk factors."

"It is undisputable," the inspector general concluded, that the "program failed to carry out its mission in its oversight of Bear Stearns."

SPENCER: That's how Cox thought the country needed to show the markets it loved them

MEGAN: I mean, the problem is that Cox was kind of a slut, he'd just spread 'em for anyone.

Treasury and Fed officials viewed Cox and his staff as nonplayers who had failed to foresee the brewing problems, according to people who were involved in those efforts but spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. They said Cox was often brought in for consultation only after major decisions had been made by Treasury and Fed officials.

Let's just say it: Bush nominated a random conservative Congressman from New Jersey to head the SEC because he didn't want anyone there who was particularly smart, engaged, knowledgeable or into regulating jackshit, and Cox fit the bill because he was a reflexive deregulator. And would get confirmed easily because Congress rarely fails to confirm its own.

SPENCER: Since I am not qualified to talk about what actually happened in the financial crisis I want to remind everyone that Chris Cox has been a conservative darling forever. Here's the American Spectator on who should be McCain's running mate:

Chris Cox: The best choice, bar none. This thoughtful and reform-minded chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission made his name for 16 years as the brainiest and perhaps most principled Reaganite conservative in Congress, as well as one of the best on TV.

MEGAN: I needed a good laugh, thanks. "Reform-minded," meaning, "let's get government out of the way of the markets so they can run the universe and make everything sunshine and rainbows!!"

SPENCER: Here's another such column. And here's Lisa Schiffren of NRO who needs no Prageresque advice when it comes to Cox:

Chris Cox is fabulous. He should be president. The only negative — alas, a big one — is that he has never managed to generate real excitement, even when running what should have been sexy hearings on big issues. He is obviously very smart, and a true policy wonk — the sort of guy who usually runs big, serious, difficult government institutions or departments. Is he a vote getter?

So at least that's fairminded!

MEGAN: "Sexy hearings on big issues?" Because the American public loves a wonk, and particularly the Republican American public. The last eight years have completely proved that. Speaking of, the red states are about to get more Congress members in 2011. California, New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Florida and Pennsylvania are gonna lose. Which means: vote in your state elections next year and in 2010!!

SPENCER: Oh beautiful. This will bolster the arguments of all conservatives who don't see themselves leading the GOP into regional-party marginality to push the party rightward. And here I was thinking Afghanistan will doom the Obama administration.

MEGAN: And I was all excited that a judge ordered the release of 4 Gitmo detainees and The Europeans might be willing to accept some Gitmo detainees in resettlements deals. But we should end on a high note. Of the people Bush pardoned for Christmas, one was Charlie Winters, posthumously.

Mr. Winters was among a group of several hundred Americans and Canadians referred to by the Israelis by the Hebrew acronym of “machal,” or “volunteers from outside Israel.” They secretly helped in Israel’s war of independence in 1948, a year after its creation as a Jewish state.

He was an Irish-Catholic from Boston, and never said a word about it to his son. He was also the only one who did any prison time for it.

SPENCER: Yeah I have to give Bush credit for that. Dayenu. What a merry Jewish Christmas.

A very heartfelt thanks to Esquire's James Folta for the news (and picture) of the squatting Obama doll

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

• Rod Blagojevich says he's, like, totally innocent and is definitely not going to resign so that he has something to offer prosecutors in his eventual plea deal [Politico]
• Hillary's pay cut is final. [CNN]
• In better news, she might create a post at the State Department for Iran outreach, without even insisting that Iran accede to all our demands first [Washington Independent]
• Plenty of people seem to be ticked about Ron Kirk's appointment to USTR because he's not anti-trade enough. [The Hill]
• James Carville is trying to get more donations for Media Matters, since it's difficult to raise money in this economic climate, and is using the conservatives linking Obama and Blagojevich to do it. [The Hill]
• Al Sharpton is defending the selection of Rick Warren to say a prayer at the inauguration, since he hasn't gotten enough media attention by meeting with Caroline Kennedy this week. [Huffington Post]
• Al Franken is up in the Minnesota Senate recount, though, which might end by 2010. [Think Progress]
• Bush unveiled his auto bailout, but Ford's not opting in [BBC]
• The National Portrait Gallery unveiled the portraits of George and Laura Bush. Laura's got some sort of soft focus thing going on that Barbara Walters hopes to patent in film-format soon. [National Portrait Gallery]

• Enough states' electors have cast ballots for Obama by now that, today, he was officially elected President of the United States. [MSNBC]

• He then celebrated by announcing his intention to make Nobel-winner Steven Chu the Secretary of Energy, Lisa Jackson the EPA Administration and Carol Browner to lead a White House council on climate change. [MSNBC]
• He might also make Arne Duncan, the superintendent of the Chicago school system, his secretary of education. [NY Times]
• He was going to release the results of an internal report that showed that no one had anything inappropriate to do with corrupt Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, but U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald asked him not to. [Huffington Post, Time]
• Joe Biden tapped Time's Washington bureau chief, Jay Carney, for his communications director. [Politico]
• Caroline Kennedy has decided she does really want to be the next Senator from New York, and even called Al Sharpton for his blessing or whatever it is you get from Al Sharpton. [Huffington Post, Politico]
• Meanwhile, Lori Drew is still trying to get the charges against her dismissed. [Wired]
• And a 4-year-old broke into a toy store to play with some toys. [Breitbart]

ANA MARIE: Good morning!

MEGAN: Hey there! How are you?

ANA MARIE: A little tie-tie and already tired of the fucking shoe story.

MEGAN: I am actually really impressed with Bush's reflexes. Like, for all those politicians that took cream pies to the faces, Bush was like, nuh-uh. In slow-mo, it's very Matrix-y.

ANA MARIE: I think this should put to rest the rumors that he's drinking again. You know what's really going to suck about this, right?

MEGAN: Other than everything?

ANA MARIE: Journalists no longer be allowed to wear shoes. We're living in a post 12/14 world. And in that world, shoes just aren't worth the risk.

MEGAN: Dude, no one is taking my shoes. I stop with the pedicures in, like, November. I can't afford otherwise.

ANA MARIE: I doubt if you're alone. Lynn Sweet does not seem like a regular pedicure girl.

MEGAN: Plus, not to be mean to the White House press corps, but I'm betting some of those dudes have some gnarly, smelly feet. I really think a room full of unshod reporters' stank feet is probably more of a risk to the President than a shoe.

ANA MARIE: (And I just want to note that I had to cycle through a few names before I got to a WH correspondent that might not get regular pedicures. But I suspect Jake Tapper does!) Yeah, see that is where we disagree! I think many WH correspondents take VERY good care of their tootsies. It's not like they're out there pounding the pavement. Very little reporting involved in covering the White House.

MEGAN: I don't know, it's not like Maureen Dowd is there and can go all Elvira, Mistress of the Dark on him. [Ed: For those with better taste in movies than me, Elvira dispatches the villain at the end with a stiletto to the forehead, killing him. ]

ANA MARIE: I had forgotten that Elvira had her own movie. Thanks. You will not be shocked to know that right now on Morning Joe Pat Buchanan is showing a rather... uhm... exhaustive knowledge of Nazi history. Seriously, though: Pat Buchanan showing up to out-Nazi-trivia Bryan Singer about his own Nazi movie.

MEGAN: Yeah, completely NOT surprised. At least I can blame my Hitler trivia knowledge on the fact that I was a German history minor.

ANA MARIE: FWIW, I sense that Pat, like the heroes of Valkyrie, thinks that Hitler totally ruined Nazism.

MEGAN: Is is strange that I'm surprised that Bryan Singer is kind of hot?

ANA MARIE: I'm a little surprised at how young he seems, but not that he's hot. Usual Suspects was, fuck, over a decade ago?

MEGAN: Directors are so rarely attractive, though.

ANA MARIE: I have not made enough of a study of that. But speaking of studying: Trying to make sense of this Kristol op-ed. Have you read?

MEGAN: I find it hard to read while his grinning pumpkin head stares at me. It's already hard enough to decipher.

ANA MARIE: He and Jim Webb should hire themselves out for Halloween.

MEGAN: Is there enough orange paint in the world for that?

ANA MARIE: I think he wants a bail out? Or he's knocking the GOP for something?

MEGAN: Actually, I am a little horrified that I'm agreeing with some of the things he's saying about Republicans. He's still a reflexive idiot about liberals.

ANA MARIE: He has been kind of an idiot about Republicans!

MEGAN:

But despite the fact that the government is partly responsible for the Big Three’s problems, the right hasn’t really been stirred to enthusiastically promote a deregulatory agenda to help the auto companies. What excites it is mobilizing to oppose bailouts for unionized workers.

Last week, Senate Republicans picked a fight with the U.A.W. on union pay scales — despite the fact that it’s the legacy benefits for retirees, not pay for current workers, that’s really hurting Detroit, and despite the additional fact that, in any case, labor amounts to only about 10 percent of the cost of a car. But the Republicans were fighting Big Labor! They were standing firm against bailouts!

ANA MARIE: I'm not convinced he's always writing this column himself. Not that he's farming it out, but just engaging in automatic writing or something. Letting the spirits speak through him. And this spirit happens to be different than the "I HEART SARAH" one.

MEGAN: It's definitely written through his "all liberals are hypocritical" filter, though.

ANA MARIE: I think he's saying that they should do MORE to deregulate unions besides take on labor. Like, the problems of regulation go beyond unions. By saying that GOP shouldn't have gone after labor, he's NOT saying unions are good. And even though he likes the idea of the "car czar," isn't the car czar idea inherently anti-anti-regulation? My head hurts now. Let's move on

MEGAN: Well, I think he main point actually comes through at the end.

The bill would have allowed President Bush to name a car czar, who could have begun to force concessions from all sides. It also would have averted for now a collapse of the auto industry, and shifted difficult decisions to the Obama administration.

It's all about trying to make his Republican compatriots understand their role is to make Obama look bad.

ANA MARIE: AH! Ain't unity grand?

MEGAN: But let's talk cute: an Obama daughter-Chris Rock daughter playdate. That's a unity of cuteness.

ANA MARIE: But not BIDEN PUPPY CUTE!

MEGAN: Okay, the puppy is very cute, but: he used a breeder. Pound puppies, people, the nation is crying out for change.

ANA MARIE: And, seriously, who DOESN'T want a play date with Sasha and Malia. I mean, I want a playdate with them. I know, I would feel better about a rescue pup. BUT LOOK AT HIS EYES. The puppy's, not Biden's. Though I think that the national had a similar reaction when Obama picked Biden: "We would have preferred HRC BUT LOOK AT HIS EYES."

MEGAN: It is an extremely cute puppy, and the Biden granddaughters will, naturally, get to name him.

Originally, Brown said she was to bring two puppies to Biden, but Biden called and said he wanted to see all the dogs.

"He was very gracious," Brown said. "He hugged and kissed all of the shepherds."

There are also totally women in the world today wishing they were puppies.

ANA MARIE: I LOVE that detail.

MEGAN: Well, how do you not let puppies lick your face?

ANA MARIE: "He hugged and kissed all of the shepherds." Of course he did. That's the only part of the Vice President's job that Biden's not planning on eliminating.

MEGAN: I'm sure that's in the Constitution.

ANA MARIE: I am so glad I'm not in Chicago, btw. You can hear the chattering of teeth in the voices of reporters covering Blago/PEBO (PEBO = "President-Elect Barack Obama" I learned that very recently! Like, journo slang.)

MEGAN: I sort of love how more and more people are like, dude was craaaazzeee when he's obviously just sort of always been an asshole.

ANA MARIE: But you can't "plead asshole" in court.

MEGAN: Actually, I think that should be a legitimate defense. "But, Your Honor, I'm an asshole." I want to hear defendants say that, give 'em 30 days off their sentence or something.

ANA MARIE: I think that was Scooter Libby's first try.

MEGAN: Scooter left out the "stupid" part. Everyone already knows lawyers are assholes. That's the real meaning of "Esquire." Speaking of, I found Shep Smith's interview in Esquire kind of endearing but difficult to read in the absence of questions. Even writing that made me feel like I'd bought into something very bougie about writing.

ANA MARIE: Well it was like hearing one side of a phone conversation. A fascinating conversation! But still, a little disjointed. Maybe they're saving money by not printing the reporter's questions! Something that maybe places like the Tribune Co. and Newsweek should look into!

MEGAN: Less ink, less layoffs? Maybe they should look into this Internet thingie, where there's no ink and no layo... Oh, wait, never mind.

ANA MARIE: I was thinking more, like, how they don't have to pay extras in movies if they don't have lines. If you don't print the reporters' questions, you don't have to pay them.

MEGAN: Maybe we could just let all the people in the news write in the first person about what they're doing and just call it a day. The press is just like this unnecessary middleman in this day and age.

ANA MARIE: EXCEPT THEY'RE NOT, right? I was a conference last week and this guy from Google was all, "we hate it that the MSM is going under, because without them we're not going have quality information to index for people to search." So I was like, "You'll need to start hiring journalists then."

MEGAN: Oh, God, stop. I'm laughing so hard I'm crying. Or crying so hard I'm laughing, I can't really tell.

• For those of you expecting a week-long party to start off the Obama Administration, prepare to be disappointed. There will be one public event welcoming you to D.C. on Sunday afternoon. Monday will be a day of community service, and the Inauguration will occur on Tuesday out in the cold, followed by formal balls you're unlikely to get into without connections. But if you want to rent an apartment anyway, I have really nice towels. [Politico]
• Barack Obama plans to announce the appointment of Clinton-era EPA Administrator Carol Browner to be the White House Energy Coordinator (they hate the word "Czar" as much as we do) and Nancy Sutley, a deputy mayor of Los Angeles, to be a chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Sutley will be Obama's first openly gay Cabinet appointment. [Politico]
• In the meantime, if you need some cheap electronics or office furniture, the McCain campaign has some they'll sell you cheap. [Washington Post]

• As rumored yesterday, law enforcement sources have confirmed that Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr. is Senate Candidate 5 from the Blagojevich indictment. [CNN]
• He says he's done nothing wrong. [Politico]
• Congressman Don Young, who is being investigated on corruption charges, is resigning the leadership role on the House Natural Resources Committee "for the good of the party." See, Chairman Rangel? It's actually kind of easy. [The Hill]
• That auto bailout is finally done, but it still might not pass the Senate. [Fox News]
• The Pentagon flew several of the family members of people who died in the September 11th attacks down to Gitmo to watch the tribunals and make Obama feel too guilty to shut it down and try the detainees in civilian and military courts on American soil with, like, rights and stuff. The families "marveled" at the rights the detainees do actually get in the tribunals (unlike in their holding pens). [Reuters]

JASON: All right! Day three of my whole Rear Window act begins. You know, my neighbors just aren't as helpfully murderous as I'd suspected. Everyone's feeling better, though.

MEGAN: I can't see into anyone's windows across 4 lanes of traffic and a tree-filled median, but it's never anything good. At least in college, it was a 50-50 shot of catching people fucking on Buswell Street.

JASON: You have told me, once, where you went to college, but I forget. There's a company that's making fragrances of colleges: UVA would be gingkoberries and extreme sexual frustration.

MEGAN: I went to Boston University, which I can only assume is the smell of cigarettes in winter with a slight tinge of Storrow Drive Exhaust and that mildew-y smell of wet subway car. Any of it, though, smells better than the stink around Rod Blagojevich, whose name after his years in Congress and then in Springfield I have finally learned how to spell without looking.

JASON: Yep. My, oh my. Someone dialed up a shitstorm for us, right on time! And people wondered what journalists would do after the election! I don't even know where to begin with this fucking guy, except to point out the fucking Mametian quality of his fucking dialogue.

MEGAN: Did you see the re-enactment on Maddow last night?

JASON: HA! This is pretty great.

MEGAN: The only thing it lacked was puppets. I listened to the first part of it from my kitchen while baking cookies, and I imagined it with puppets.

JASON: The Chicago accent tends to bleed into Sarah Palin's accent. But that's probably appropriate.

MEGAN: My favorite part, so far, is this:

Mike Jacobs, a Democratic state senator and former friend of the governor, suggested that Mr. Blagojevich may have lost his grip on reality.

“I’m not sure he’s playing with a full deck anymore,” Mr. Jacobs said.

Someone on MSNBC yesterday literally said that this shit was so crazy that it sounded like Blago was going for an insanity defense. Now that would be epic. Not even Traficant went "But I'm craaaaaazy" and if ever a corrupt motherfucker was actually crazy, it was Jim Traficant.

JASON: Blago is just a Palin with more toys to play with. More avenues to get in trouble.

MEGAN: (Please excuse me while I go bleach my brain for momentarily pondering Palin playing with her "toys." Let alone Blago wanking it.)

JASON: Ha. Well, take the Trib stuff. You know, we joke about print dying, but man, here we have a guy in a two-newspaper town, more or less trying to manipulate the owners of one paper to cap a critical editor. You can imagine the dreams of corrupt shitheels in, say, Newark, New Jersey, which will likely be a NO NEWSPAPER TOWN. It puts the whole local-press-as-bulwark-to-corruption angle into a little bit of perspective. And on top of that, there's a structural imbalance in the way information gets spread when newspapers fold. People on the low rung of society don't always have laptops and Kindles, but they can get a newspaper. The End Of Print means the start of many people getting rolled.

MEGAN: Man, do you know anyone with a Kindle? I know only one person, and he is really, really, really into that Kindle. But, yeah, the dearth of substantive content in local newspapers bugs me every time I go home. I should take me longer than a cup of coffee to read the A section, let alone the whole paper. And it's not like people are stupid, you know? You can get people interested in the world around them, or you can package up 10 AP stories, a shitty OpEd columnist, 3 columns off the wire services and shovel it at them like it doesn't really matter.

JASON: My sister is always running into people with Kindles. Well, people with ONE Kindle. No word yet on a person with multiple Kindles.

MEGAN: Wait. Your sister... the one in New Jersey? Because the person I know with a kindle originally hails from New Jersey. Are Kindles the new iRocs?

JASON: No. That's my sister in law. My actual sister lives in Northern Virginia.

MEGAN: Oh, never mind. That was an awesome theory for a second.

JASON: Ha! I think Kindles have some potential, actually. They just haven't realized it yet.

MEGAN: Sort of like this Blago scandal! Which I think we should get back to if only to discuss other fother avorite part, which is just how insanely stupid Blago and his team are, between thinking that $250-300,000 is big money to run a major foundation to thinking Barack Obama could just appoint him to the boards of things. Never mind the whole part where they're like, "Energy Secretary pays more because it's, like, about oil!!" Um no, you stupid fuck.

JASON: Blago's just one a dem good ol' boys who just wanted ALL THE DOLLARS. "Your dollars, GIVE THEM TO ME. Appoint me to some stuff. Appoint my wife to some stuff. Why can't I take this Senate seat to the dog track, and wager it? I could come back with, like, a bunch of Senate seats."

MEGAN: But, like, the sheer stupidity astounds me. Like, dude was a motherfucking Congressman and thinks that the Secretary of Energy makes more than the other Cabinet members? He thinks he can avoid indictment by becoming a Senator (Ted Stevens would beg to differ)? He thinks that he could appoint one of his Deputy Governors to the Senate seat and she would just totally resign it for him in 2 years — as though he's never met another politician in his life?

JASON: Yeah, the guy truly has got shit sniffs for brains. You know, it wasn't until very late in life that I actually saw the movie SCARFACE? And when I saw it, I was like, HOLY SHIT! You gangsta rappers have built your personas on this fucking greasestain? This guy is a cold fucking dumbass with a cratered out nasal cavity. A walking fucking joke. Blago sort of strikes me the same way - not an ounce of grey matter upstairs. You have to feel bad for whoever becomes the next Illinois governor. Between Blago and Ryan, corruptions on a white-hot streak. They're gonna put the next guy on a wire at his or her swearing in. The next governor of that state's gonna have more metal up their ass than a Salvadoran style grilled chicken.

MEGAN: I personally prefer Peruvian chicken. Mmm, Hungry now. Anyway, even worse, surrounded by people who don't have any! Because, let's face it, there are plenty of successful-but-stupid politicians. Generally speaking, they are helmed by smart-but-not-charming people. He, somehow, was not. I am now somewhat obligated somehow to draw a parallel between Blago and former Kentucky Governor Ernie Fletcher who, similarly, did not have a reputation of being a complete dumbass while in Congress, went to helm a state at about the same time as Blago and ended up corrupt, venal, mired in scandal.

JASON: An apt comparison. Now, of course, what' s left is how all of this plays out against the presidential transition.

MEGAN: I think, reading the indictment, that Rahm Emanuel can deny all he wants, but he's the Presidential Adviser in the indictment that Blago was trying to hold up to get his profitable non-profit off the ground, his 501c(4). And Rahm is nobody's fool. And if SEIU's Andy Stern really is the union guy that Blago hit up for money for Valerie Jarrett's nomination, Stern's no fool either. Jarrett dropped out once that got back to her, Blago hit up Stern again, then Rahm... Yeah, they snitched. Of course they snitched. You don't keep it from prosecutors — that you already know are investigating the guy and possibly wire-tapping him — that he's trying to auction off the Senate seat, you say, fuck that guy, burn him up like newspaper and you protect your own man from even a whiff of that guy's farts.

JASON: If that's true, that's a smart move. Not that I think PFitz is the sort of prosecutor who can be pushed into making arrests before he really wants to, but why not do what you can timing-wise, to free yourself of this before Inauguration.

MEGAN: And if Jarrett can be like, I dropped out once I heard he was trying to use me to extort the new Administration, she's the only one that comes out smelling like roses.

JASON: Of the [Candidate X]'s you mean?

MEGAN: Yes, totally. Candidates 5 and 6 are fucked.

JASON: Well and truly fucked!

MEGAN: Oh, shit, you know what does suck? Illinois redistricting in 2011 under what one assumes will be the new Republican governor. Illinois was fucking crazy gerrymandered in 2001.

JASON: Yeah. Illinois is going to be interesting for a good long while, now.Obviously, the best thing Obama has going for him is Blago's own recorded statement, that the only thing he'd give, quid pro quo, is his "appreciation." That makes Obama look good. At the same time, I don't think it's any occasion to start up the ticker tape parade: "WOO, THE PRESIDENT MANAGES TO FULFILL THE BASELINE DUTY OF DOING THE RIGHT THING! BRING ME MY NIPPLE CLAMPS!"

MEGAN: Well, I mean, after 8 years of George Bush that was immediately preceded by a bunch of shady Clinton pardons, I mean, can you blame people? Having a President-elect that hasn't managed to fuck major shit up yet is practically an accomplishment in and of itself. It's totally the bigotry of lowered expectations.

JASON: The soft, pillowy bigotry of low expectations. Maybe Alan Keyes finally has a shot in Illinois!

MEGAN: He'd probably definitely have to move out of Maryland to be governor, though.

• Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich is free tonight on $4,500 bail and has absolutely no intention of resigning after being indicted on massive corruption and extortion charges. [CNN, Politico, Chicago Tribune]
• Barack Obama said he'd had no contact with Blagojevich over the Senatorial appointment Blagojevich apparently was attempting to sell. [Huffington Post]
• Blagojevich did, apparently, attempt to trade with SIEU President Andy Stern the appointment of Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett in exchange for a golden parachute into an SEIU-funded non-profit. Jarrett dropped out of the running shortly thereafter. [Marc Ambinder, Politico]
• Contrary to early reports, Rahm Emanuel didn't tip off the U.S. Attorneys. [Talking Points Memo]

• Other names that have been flushed out of the indictment by bloggers and reporters: Senate Candidate 2, who Blagojevich was reportedly using to fuck with Obama's team over Jarrett, was probably Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan; and Senate Candidate 5, with whom Blagojevich might have had the most serious quid-pro-quo conversation, might well have been Jesse Jackson, Jr. [Marc Ambinder, Marc Ambinder]
• Obama might have said that he'd had no contact with Blagojevich over the seat, but Axelrod said otherwise a month ago. He's now saying he was mistaken. [ABC News]
• The Illinois legislature is likely to move to impeach Blagojevich, obviously, and they may just change the law and hold a special election to fill Obama's seat. [Politico, The Hill]

• Bill Clinton's going to disclose the names of the 200,000 donors to the Clinton Global Initiative by the end of the year. [Washington Post]
• The Minnesota Court of Appeals is definitely, totally not going to let toe-tapping Senator Larry Craig withdraw his guilty plea. He'll continue claiming he is 100%, totally, utterly, without-a-doubt heterosexual and voting against LGBT rights. [CNN]
• New York Governor David Paterson has agreed to consider United Federation of Teachers Randi Weingarten for Hillary Clinton's Senate seat after she contacted him and asked him to do so. If he did appoint her, she's be the first openly gay United States Senator. [New York Magazine]
• Meanwhile, John McCain's going to appear on Letterman Thursday. [ABC News]