• Scientists say anorexia may be related to autism. Sufferers of both disorders struggle with rigidity and obsession, and people with anorexia can develop the motor tics and difficulty reading emotions that are considered characteristic of autism. • Caylee Anthony's autopsy report has been released — it shows that her body had been in the woods for about three months, and that someone put duct tape on her head before or just after she died. • Research shows that kids learn emotional control from roughhousing with their dads. Close father-child bonds also help children form strong relationships later in life, and even delay menstruation in girls. • OJ's ex-girlfriend is writing a tell-all in which she accuses him of trying to separate her from her friends and family, constantly comparing her with Nicole, and threatening a friend of hers with a gun. • Hillary Clinton has had surgery to repair a broken elbow, and doctors expect her to make a full recovery. • Glamour editor Sheila Weller is into three-ways: she wrote Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon and the Journey of a Generation, and now she's writing a book about Katie Couric, Diane Sawyer and Christiane Amanpour. • A British school is considering asking all girls to wear pants because their skirts have gotten "ridiculously short" and "too revealing especially on staircases." Headteacher Jane Holland says she might consider relenting if girls promise to keep their frocks knee-length, because "girls look smart in skirts." • Two people with swine flu got married in Chicago. No word on whether Pat Robertson thinks this will destroy the institution of marriage. • The inventor of the Magic Fingers vibrating bed has died at the age of 92. • Both houses of Congress — but not Ron Paul — voted to condemn Iran's crackdown on protesters. • Some residents of Pasco, Washington don't want a Planned Parenthood opening in their town, because they're worried about how antiabortion protests might affect local schools — even though the clinic won't actually provide abortions. • Watch Barack Obama order General Odierno to shave Stephen Colbert's head here. • Obama wants the 2010 census to include data on same-sex marriages and partnerships. Previous censuses tried to include same-sex unions by "altering the gender of one member of a same-sex couple" — we're not sure how that worked. • Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe refused to meet with Sonia Sotomayor, saying that his voting against her was "a foregone conclusion." • Roland Burris will not be charged with perjury for statements he made about his appointment to Obama's Senate seat. • A man claiming to be an aide to Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud says Mehsud planned the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. He also claims Mehsud was acting on behalf of the United States. • Economist Ian Ayres suggests that people use "commitment contracts" to pledge to forego meat one day a week — and pay a bounty if they don't. •

• 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]

Barack Obama gave his Don't-Call-It-A-State-Of-The-Union State of the Union speech last night, which you can read here but I will summarize as follows: economy bad, America strong, gonna get better with your help and money from Congress, inspiration, Hope, Change, hey Michelle! and fin. You know, typical Obama speech. It was followed up by a bedtime story from Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal as read to a class of 2nd graders. Even though the post-SOTU speeches are generally universally terrible and anyone who wants a permanent place on the national stage ought to know better than to agree to give one, even Republicans agree that Jindal's was worse than normal and it didn't help that he referenced the federal government response to Katrina as a positive thing and then gave props to a racist sheriff. Eric Holder, who was watching in an undisclosed location in case of catastrophe, was probably pissed that he was in an undisclosed location watching it since the rest of the Cabinet probably wasn't even home yet and didn't have to suffer like him.

But wait! There was other news! Like the fact that the White House let it slip just before Obama's speech that the Administration is going to do a 19 instead of a 16 month pull-out from Iraq and it is going to leave about 50,000 troops there even when they're done pulling out (which does, unfortunately, tend to be how the Withdrawal Method works, after all). Illinois Senator Dick Durbin announced that he'd suggested Roland Burris resign and Burris refused because he really likes being Senator and hasn't been charged with anything... which is just like how David Vitter likes being Senator and didn't want to resign over getting caught banging hookers, only David Vitter doesn't think the scandals are the same because Roland Burris isn't getting laid.

In the meantime, the Senate finally coughed up a confirmation for Hilda Solis to be Labor Secretary and a bunch of Republicans remained grumpy about it. Janet Napolitano isn't going to play with your fear of terrorism by saying the word "terrorism" constantly, which Republican Congressman Peter King of Long Island thinks is a terrible thing because, how else is he supposed to get re-elected if not by beating the 9/11 drum that Rudy so helpfully left for him?

Lastly, People is reporting that the White House puppy is coming in April, following spring break. Michelle's leaning toward a Portuguese water dog, but they haven't picked out a name yet, so start your suggestions below.

Just like Roland Burris wasn't going to quit until the Senate agreed to seat him, he's now not going to quit sitting in the Senate until the Capitol Police pull his chair out from under him and haul him off, ethics scandal or not. He doesn't care who isn't supporting him any longer or how many people he has to meet with in order to find a few who think he shouldn't resign; that Senate seat is his, dammit, because he needs to finish up the list of accomplishments on his mausoleum before he pops off.

People who are backing down, however, include Washington lobbyist Vicki Iseman, who is dropping her suit against the New York Times for implying that she was boning John McCain in exchange for some space to reiterate that she was not, in fact, boning John McCain. Screw the money: she just really, really wants people to know that she was not boning John McCain. Don't blame her.

Hillary Clinton is getting tough and telling the North Koreans to stop being such assholes, which they're totally being assholes about. So Clinton has named yet another special envoy, Stephen Bosworth, to deal with their crap while she heads to China and deals with problems that are larger than even Kim Jong Il's inflated sense of self-worth, which is to say, pretty big.

No longer big and strong is the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which slipped to a 6-year low yesterday and that noise you heard was the last pennies of my 401(k) rattling around in the bottom of the piggy bank my brokerage is now keeping it in. To celebrate our already-shitty economy, Barack Obama has decided to stop fucking around with budget numbers the way that Bush did to make the deficit look smaller, since, really, adjusting our budget deficit upwards by $2.7 trillion over 10 years by an elimination of book-cooking would normally cause the markets to tank, but they're already tanked, so fuck it! His approval rating is still at 60 percent. Congress's approval rating, though, is slightly lower (as in, half as much) which I'm certain has nothing to do with the fact that people just watched Republicans fall all over themselves to defeat Obama's stimulus plan and are now watching the same motherfuckers line up at the trough for some delicious porky goodness they can take credit for bringing home to their districts.

In the rest of the world, it turns out that the Iranians promised to stop attacking troops in Iraq if we'd just let them have their nukes; Obama might stop building a nuclear weapons shield around Europe that Bush wanted; Argentina is expelling the Holocaust-denying bishop guy that Pope Benedict un-excommunicated; Benjamin Netanyahu is going to be the new Israeli prime minister; and Obama got some beaver tail in Canada. (That's a pastry, you sick fucks.)

Hillary Clinton just finished making rounds in Indonesia, being serenaded by school children, waxing eloquent about how she wants to change the world and possibly signaling a shift on U.S. policy toward Burma which resembles our policy on Cuba in effectiveness but is broader and deeper in scope. Oh, and she appeared on television and says that she likes the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.
Meanwhile, Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius' name keeps cropping up in discussions about who will replace Tom Daschle as the nominee to helm the Department of Health and Human Services and, reportedly, shepherd Obama's health care reforms through Congress. Of course, her named cropped up half a dozen times after the election as a potential nominee and she never actually became one, so I'm not holding my breath.

The boys, on the other hand, aren't having as good a day of it. Illinois Senator and crazyperson Roland Burris gave a press conference yesterday asking for his constituents' forbearance and bizarrely claiming that former governor Rod Blagojevich had never considered nominating him for the Senate seat to which Blago appointed Burris. Basically, dude's going nowhere, but he also doesn't exactly remember how he got there. Oh, and all the Dems who once supported him won't touch him with a ten foot pole in the hopes that the taint he swore he didn't have won't appear on them, either. Americans for a taintless Washington!

In other news, Norm Coleman has a snowball's chance in hell of retaining his Senate seat in Minnesota, though he'll keep arguing that he ought to despite what the legal votes say. Rich people (probably mostly dudes) are about to be exposed as tax cheats by Swiss bank UBS since they've been, you know, cheating on their taxes like half of Washington. And all those Republicans who pissed and moaned about the stimulus and how bad it is now want their piece of the pork-y delicious pie, and are being called hypocrites since, after all, they are.

Obama's got some mortgage bailout plan thing going that they'll probably eventually oppose, too, since it will cost $75 billion or something or because it doesn't help people with mortgages over $400,000 since they're obviously middle class families who need a break.

Barack Obama's poll numbers are still sky-high, despite his potential nominees' tax issues, Commerce withdrawals and Republican carping about the stimulus plan, which, by the way, passed on Friday night. In the end, the Senate got a little tougher on executive pay packages than even Obama wanted, limiting bonuses to one-third of their capped salaries and requiring that the bonuses be given in stock that can't be sold until the government's investment has been repaid. Obama's planning on signing the thing tomorrow, so lots of people are readying their shovels even on a holiday when most people get the day off, even as David Axelrod is saying that the administration going to look for ways around the caps the Senate stuck in, despite the fact that most people think they sound pretty reasonable. Might as well test the firmness of those poll numbers, eh, David?

Axelrod was also dispatched to defend Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, whose unveiling of the new bank bailout plan caused stock markets worldwide to tumble, traders to hurl themselves from their multi-million dollar penthouse apartments and bankers to speculate about Geithner's parentage. Axelrod said: "They would have preferred that Secretary Geithner wheel a wheelbarrow down the center of that room with cash in it and say, ‘We're going to take care of all your problems.' That wasn't a practical answer." The worldwide financial community agreed that it had visions of restriction-less cash, but had pictured Geithner at the wheel of a cash-filled Hummer, not pushing a wheelbarrow like one of their lesser household staff. So they're basically going to lobby the fuck out of the Administration, raise the interest rates on your credit cards, and hope to dear God that whatever they do, no one lets Lindsey Graham nationalize them.

And while Obama was back in Chicago for Valentine's Day and looking forward to chilling with Stevie Wonder this week, his replacement, Roland Burris, was quite busy noisily digging himself a new hole to climb out of. Despite his earlier testimony, Governor Rod Blagojevich's people totally did hit him up for cash in exchange for the appointment but he totally didn't give them any, so it's supposed to be cool but it's not. Mostly because his defense is that his first answers were answers to questions he thought he was being asked, so if the questions had been what he thought they were, his answers were, like, totally honest.

In the meantime, Hugo Chavez has set the stage handily for his own re-election in Venezuela, we're not getting a freaking Car Czar because y'all wouldn't stop calling the position a Czar despite repeated entreaties, Axelrod thinks Dick Cheney can go fuck himself, and Hillary Clinton's off to do a series of official state visits in Asia and will be pressing China on human rights more than the valuation of their currency. That's some change we can believe in.

New York is apparently awash in rumors that Vogue editrix Anna Wintour is in the running to be named the U.S. Ambassador to France which were all sparked by a terse "No comment" by the Obama team to an out-of-the-blue inquiry by Page Six Magazine. Of course, with relations with Iran high on the agenda and a 225+ year relationship to repair (they backed us in the Revolutionary War, remember?), the natural choice for the brainiac Obama Administration would be a fashion magazine editor all but pilloried in the book and movie The Devil Wears Prada. Also, naturally, Hillary Clinton — who rather famously backed out of appearing in Vogue last year and then was herself pilloried by La Wintour — would have nothing to say about it either. Either way, it's slightly more believable that the new Spider-Man storyline featuring Obama, his imposter and Spidey at the Inauguration (though such an occurrence might make that worth attending). And it's way more plausible that Levi Johnston's addict mother Sheri's story that she got addicted to oxy after her hysterectomy and that's why she was selling it. Honey, we've all watched Intervention, and we're not buying.

Sheri's co-grandparent is back in the news (one might say she never left), having made a video for a right-wing nutjob about how the media — as opposed to millions of unReal Americans — elected Obama. Sadly, I have to agree that it is probably legitimately upsetting as a parent to be accused of not giving birth to your own child and to have it suggested that you are forcing your daughter to marry. I'm also a little concerned that I find myself agreeing that Caroline Kennedy, despite having been potentially deemed unqualified, isn't facing that same level and kind of criticism and when Sarah Palin said "there is a class issue here," I went, yeah, actually, there's kind of is and maybe that is part of the crap she took. But maybe I just need coffee.

David Paterson isn't as concerned about Caroline Kennedy's money as he is about her "pluses and minuses", which he identifies as her relationship with Obama and her lack of legislative experience, respectively. He thinks he's got "10 to 15 good candidates" to look at appointing, including the ones who turned in their mega-disclosure forms (which Andrew "Shucking And Jiving Is Not A Racist Term" Cuomo isn't saying whether he did or not but he so did).

Obama is already in trouble with the legislative branch, having only just barely left it and not yet joined the executive, over his stimulus package because that thing where Republicans say that Democrats hate tax cuts? Yeah, it turns out that's kind of true. Whoops. Obama's the only one that's got that change you said you wanted to believe in, but Tim Geithner is planning on changing the bail-out's focus from giving money to Henry Paulson's personal friends to giving it to people that are fucked by Henry Paulson's personal friends, so there's that anyway.

Other people fucked by this economy are Norm Coleman, who's about to be unemployed and has been locked out of his damn office, and noted torture advocate Alberto Gonzales, who for some strange reason can't find a job! It must be the economy. I mean, at least he's not saying that white people are more racist than they think they are and help perpetuate racism by not confronting it in other white people, though that's totally true. Bobby Rush would probably use that to try to get Roland Burris seated, but, then, actually, unsurprisingly it turns out that Roland Burris was all up in the shit with one of Blago's pet lobbyists/bribers named in his indictment like I've pretty much been saying for the last week. Whoops.

Also up in the shit are the Israelis, who are now accused of bombing people they successfully evacuated first, killing relief workers and continuing to fight despite the supposed cease-fire. But there's only 11 days until Obama is inaugurated and they have to finish their important work by then or they might be credibly asked to stop doing bad things by an American president! Who, in fact, has already said he might talk to Hamas and mended fences with Anne Hathaway.

Ms. Hathaway, whose strong public support during the campaign for President-elect Obama totally pushed him over the edge with voters, would really like him to explain the selection of Rick Warren to give that prayer at the Inauguration and is speaking up now because there's no downside. The fundies, however, have unearthed a video of Rick Warren saying that denying marriage rights to the LGBT community is a "humanitarian" issue because that's a good idea right now and unlikely to piss off Obama's base again, and, Rick Warren, I don't think that word means what you think it means.

Larry Flynt is up to his old tricks and, no, I'm not talking about making porn or pissing off Republicans, I'm talking about engaging in a little political stunt for media attention. This year's entry is his push for a piece of the stimulus pie to save some all-American porn jobs, a stunt he's wanking away at with Girls Gone Wild founder and tax evader Joe Francis because Joe Francis figures that if the banks can pull the wool over Treasury's eyes, so can he. They are right about American job losses, though, as the new unemployment numbers are out and things are not only bad but Macroeconomic Advisers Chairman Joel Prakken calls them about to be "gruesome," which is how I describe Joe Francis most of the time.

In the meantime, there's plenty of hue and cry at the Hay Adams Hotel, where Obama is staying, because he really, really, really wants to keep his Crackberry after he becomes President and no one else wants to let him. He, Michelle and the girls are staying there, you'll recall, because the place that President-elects generally stay before the Inauguration — Blair House — was "previously booked" according to President Bush's people. It was booked, apparently, for former Australian Prime Minister John Howard so he can accept the Presidential Medal of Freedom from his good friend Bush — but lest you think that Howard had to stay there, former British PM Tony Blair and current Colombian President Alvaro Uribe are getting the same award on the same day but managed to find somewhere else to stay.

Speaking on snubs, China is now snubbing American debt in favor of keeping its money at home in China during the world financial crisis and the Inauguration planners have decided to close every single bridge from Virginia into (and out of) D.C. for the Inauguration — but not most of the Maryland crossings, so that's apparently what Virginia gets for going blue. But no one got snubbed yesterday at the confab between the former Presidents, the about-to-be-former President and the about-to-be President which made headlines but no real news.

Roland Burris is still sort of being snubbed by the Senate but they'll probably stop doing so next week when enough of the TV lights turn towards the Inauguration and Harry Reid figures he won't look as much like a wimp for doing so. Burris himself, though, seems determined to prove true what people in Illinois said about anyone who would accept an appointment to the seat by Blagojevich — that he much be crazy. He's not quite as crazy as Bobby Rush yet, but he's only been in D.C. for a couple of days.

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.