The WSJ wins "What The Hey! Story of the Day" today for its rundown of Watanabe's gambling odyssey: He ran his dad's import business for decades till he was good and bored and rich, then went on an incredible degenerate gambling run that culminated in him (a clear gambling addict and probably alcoholic) blowing up to $5 million a day at Caesar's and bankrolling a good part of Harrah's Vegas revenue for the year. But oh, the tips!

According to court documents, Mr. Watanabe says he regularly handed out to Caesars employees bundles of $100 bills that could total as much as $20,000.

Al Deleon and Kristian Kunder, two of Mr. Watanabe's personal handlers at Caesars, say he had thousands of Tiffany gift boxes filled with $50 gift cards or $100 gift coins that he would hand out to bartenders, nightclub operators, security guards and others. They say he once told a security guard to go to a supermarket and buy every cut of steak, and then proceeded to hand them out to employees.

[Read it all at the WSJ. Pic: AP]

Well, not quite. But the Transportation Security Administration has placed its standard operating procedure manual for screening supervisors online—the document is marked "Sensitive Security Information" and is supposed to be distributed on a "need to know" basis, but what the hell, right? Transparency!

The TSA did have the good sense to redact all the stuff they though terrorists might use to game the screening system and get through with weapons, but because they are stupid federal bureaucrats they simply drew little boxes over the secret stuff in the pdf files. So "hackers," by which we mean "people with Acrobat Professional," simply removed the boxes and looked at what was underneath. (The stuff the TSA tried to redact is outlined in red below.)

You can read the whole thing at Cryptome. But we've distilled the unredacted manual with an eye toward whatever tricks we could find to avoid getting pulled aside for special screening and missing your flight. With that in mind, here are Gawker's rules to infiltrating our nation's airports on your way home this Christmas:

1. Don't Be From Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Libya, Syria, Sudan, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Somalia, Iraq, Yemen, or Algeria

If your passport has any of those countries' names on it, you'll get pulled aside as a "selectee" for special one-on-one screening. So if you are from Pakistan, move right on ahead!

2. Pack Your Ammo Carefully

If it's in your checked luggage, feel free to bring along any ammunition up to .50 caliber, as long as it's inside a box.

3. If the Airline Ticket Agent Wrote "SSSS" on Your Ticket, Just Turn Around and Go Home

The industry lingo for people who get pulled aside and questioned at airport security checkpoints is "SSSS," for "Secondary Security Screening Selection." We figured that airlines would use some sort of secret code to communicate to the TSA that a given ticketholder was due for the third degree, but nope—it looks like they literally just write four S's on your ticket. So now you know.

4. Be a Minor, Member of Congress, Uniformed Military Member, or All Three

If you're unlucky enough to have been tagged with the dreaded "SSSS" code, all is not lost: Members of Congress, children under 12, and uniformed military servicemembers are exempted from special screening even if they're marked for it. Which is great, because we know that, say, Army officers can't present a special security threat that might merit scrutiny. The manual also helpfully shows TSA supervisors what a congressional ID looks like, so you might want to forge one before you head to the airport, just in case.

5. Better Yet, Be a Foreign Dignitary in CIA Custody

One of the best bits that the TSA tried, and failed, to redact from the manual reveals the existence of the CIA's Worldwide Operational Meet and Assist Program (WOMAP), whereby the Agency will apparently dispatch a CIA agent to ferry foreign assets to the U.S. When they do, the subjects are fully exempt from screening—no magnetometer, no bag search, no nothing. So if you know anyone at Langley, they may be able to hook you up. Again, the TSA has helpfully presented an example of a CIA ID card—doesn't carrying one of these defeat the purpose of being a CIA agent?—so you should set yourself up with a fake before you try the WOMAP route.

Oh, and if you get caught, just run: TSA officers are instructed not to "detain or delay" anybody they suspect has presented them a fraudulent ID if they've already gotten past security.
But if you travel at peak times, the chances they'll spot the fake will go down to 25%, because regulations permit the TSA to examine IDs with a black light or loupe on only one in four passengers if traffic backs up.

6. Make Yourself a Diplomatic Pouch

Diplomatic pouches are exempt from security screening. You'll still have to go through the checkpoint, but you won't be slowed down by the x-ray machine. The manual helpfully explains how to make one, with a description of where the seal could be. Don't worry about getting caught with this one—have you ever seen a diplomatic pouch before? Neither has the 19-year-old TSA officer you'll be presenting it to.

7. Be Disabled

The explosive trace detection (ETD) process, when a TSA officer swabs your bag and runs a sample through a machine to look for trace amounts of explosives, can be cumbersome and time-consuming. Wheelchairs, orthopedic shoes, and prosthetic devices are exempt.

8. If You've Got Explosives In Your Checked Luggage, There's Only a 20% Chance They're Going to Actually Open It to Conduct a Test On It

So there's that.

9. Just Skip the Checkpoint and Go In through the Exit Door—They're Not Monitored by Trained TSA Officers

It looks like they let just anybody monitor the exits. You could probably sneak by them.

10. Print Out the Supervisor's Standard Operating Procedures Manual and Show it to the TSA Officers

They'll get distracted because that stuff's supposed to be supersecret, and while they're busy e-mailing their supervisor to report a breach, you can just walk right through.

Here are the notable names that have reportedly decided to take the buyout. Business reporters, from Silicon Alley Insider:

• Louis Uchitelle, who covers economics.
• Geraldine Fabrikant, veteran business reporter.
• Alex Berenson, who used to cover pharma for the business section but who has lately been focused more on writing novels.
• Jonathan Glater, a California-based reporter.

• Stephen Labaton, who's been covering financial regulation and reform.
• Neil A. Lewis, DC reporter.
• David Johnston, a veteran most recently covering the Ft. Hood shootings.
• David Stout, another NYT veteran.
• Edmund Andrews, a business reporter in the DC bureau, is also taking the buyout, according to Calderone and Business Insider.

• Ralph Blumenthal, a Metro reporter, is likely to take the buyout, according to Keith Kelly.

• Claiborne Ray — Deputy editor of the Obituaries desk and Q&A columnist in Science Times
• Nancy Sharkey - Editor; see this link.
• Andy Revkin - Science Reporter/Dot Earth. (Described as "possible," not confirmed).
• George Kaplan — veteran national desk copy editor
• Juliet Gorman — a top web producer
• Mary Hardiman - Photo desk
• G. Paul Burnett — veteran staff photographer
• Jim Simpson - Photo editor
• Nicole Collins — A metro editor
• Barton Silverman - Veteran Photographer. He's still a "Possible," not confirmed.
• Additionally, eight more copy editors from various sections, three "Admin" personnel, and a foreign desk clerk are taking buyouts, according to our source.

• Lonnie Schlein, veteran photo editor and photographer, current photo editor of the Travel section
• Jack Curry, sports writer. (The word is out on Twitter here, here, and elsewhere).
• Leslie Wayne, veteran business reporter. [Leslie emailed us: "I saw my name in your post on Gawker and wanted to let you know that I am taking the buyout. Your description is correct, I am a veteran business reporter (having been here for 29 years) and was also a campaign finance reporter during nearly every Presidential election since 1996. After leaving, I'll be the Reynolds Visiting Professor at the Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University in Phoenix."]
• From a NYT tipster: "Katherine Bouton, currently the theater and books editor in the Culture Department, previously (during 22 years with the NYT) deputy editor of the Magazine, deputy editor of the Book Review, deputy editor of Science Times, and possibly other positions that I've forgotten."
• Carla Baranauckas, who announced her decision on Twitter.
• Saul Hansell, a tech journalist. [Business Insider]
• Joe Lapointe, a sports reporter who covers the New York Giants, will be leaving the paper after the Super Bowl, according to a tipster.
• Tina Kelley, Metro reporter.
• William S. Niederkorn, copy editor and TimesTraveler blogger.

UPDATE: In a brief statement, a Chicago Police Department official confirmed that eight computers and a safe were stolen from Blagojevich's lawyer's office. "The content of the computers we have no knowledge of, nor do we care about," he said, which makes absolutely no sense to us.

From the Trib:

Chicago police are investigating a burglary at the law offices of the attorneys for former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, sources said, and are trying to recover computers containing discovery evidence in the sweeping corruption case.

Someone broke into the offices of laywers Sam Adam and his son, Sam Adam Jr., in the 6100 block of South Ellis Avenue, sources said, and stole computer equipment. At least one of those computers carried copies of secretly made tape recordings in the case, sources said.

How very Nixonian! Blagojevich has called himself "the anti-Nixon"; we can't really figure out at this early stage whether this break-in cements or undermines that characterization. Since the material stolen is reportedly discovery evidence, and therefore just copies of what the prosecution has, our completely uninformed gut is telling us that this was staged in order to give Blagojevich cover to start leaking extended portions of the incriminating wiretaps—something he has repeatedly said he looks forward to doing. Either that or he dumped all his mob-related files on his lawyer for safekeeping. Of course, it could just be a random break-in, just like everyone thought Watergate was at first. But for some reason, we're disinclined to give Blagojevich the benefit of the doubt.

As we mentioned earlier this week, the WHCA has invited Salon, Politico the Huffington Post and Talking Points Memo into the White House pool rotation—the system whereby the White House press corps joins together and appoints one outlet to follow the president during his waking hours and file reports that everyone can use. According to the most recent rotation schedule, there are 34 outlets in the "print" pool. (Click the image at left to see a bigger version of this month's schedule.) The order of the shifts are assigned alphabetically, though if you are, for example, the poor sap at the New York Daily News who drew Christmas, you can try to talk someone else into swapping shifts with you. Partly this is done so that every news organization doesn't have to dedicate a full-time reporter to gathering the most basic of facts about the President's activities. But it also helps the White House to not have to herd 34 reporters onto a bus whenever Obama leaves 1600 Pennsylvania.

It's a time-honored and mostly harmonious tradition. Now Politico's Michael Calderone reports that the old guard doesn't like the idea of ideological upstarts being let into the club:

"This is really troubling," said New York Times reporter Peter Baker in an email to POLITICO. "We're blurring the line between news and punditry even further and opening ourselves to legitimate questions among readers about where the White House press corps gets its information."

Baker said he has no problem with outlets like Huffington Post, which he described "an important part of the marketplace of ideas." But the site, he said, has a mission "to produce pieces with strongly argued points of view" and that puts the Times-or other non-partisan news organizations-"in a position of relying on overtly ideological or opinionated organizations as our surrogate news gatherers."

Though we wouldn't quite call it "troubling," we actually understand where Baker's coming from. But there's a rather glaring irony here: The main reason for putting the new kids into the pool is there's fewer people in the print world left to do it. When newspapers close or consolidate their Washington bureaus to save what little money they have left, the pool loses bodies. If Baker doesn't want to rely on pool reports from some leftist blogger, the Times will have to either a) exit the pool and assign someone to cover Obama's comings and goings full-time with the paper's own resources, which it doesn't have, because blogs are slowly killing it, or b) offer to pick up the shifts that Salon, Huffington Post, and TPM reporters are taking over.

It's a rather concise little vignette about the plight of newspapers: Online outlets that the old newspapers regard as insufficiently reverent to the ideals of journalism are able to attract readers by not being stodgy and hidebound; newspapers are laying off so many reporters that they don't have the manpower to do the boring work they consider as their core mission; when the online (i.e. reckless) outlets step up to fill the gap, they sniff at them for being insufficiently stodgy and hidebound.

Not to mention that, as Matthew Yglesias puts it, the pool is little more than a "mutually agreed upon plagiarism pact"—members of the pool simply fold the reporting into their stories as though they were actually there. So Baker isn't being forced to rely on "overtly ideological" outlets for his reporting. He is free to quote from the reports and cite their authors, thereby insulating his paper from any partisan influence. But that would require abandoning the fiction of the pool reports altogether and alert the Times readers to the fact that its reporters are not everywhere, all the time.

In defending the idea of letting folks like TPM participate in the pool, WHCA president Ed Chen claimed that ideological leanings don't matter, because the pool reports themselves are "transparent" and available for everybody to inspect:

"So whether it's [the Huffington Post's] Sam Stein or [TPM's] Christina Bellantoni or Peter Baker, all of our work is out in the public," Chen said. "It's transparent, can be judged, and when there are violations, we'll come down on them."

We think that's a magnificent idea, so we've decided to make Chen's claim a reality. Gawker was recently added to the White House Press Office's email list, which along with official press releases, speech transcripts and advisories, includes the presidential pool reports. The fact that the White House is in charge of distributing the raw reporting of people covering the White House is, as we've noted before, deeply strange. Since the pool reports are by their very definition "on the record," and are distributed by the White House to the entire press list (not just the pool participants), it seems to us they should be considered public records. In fact, it's never made sense to us why the White House Correspondents' Association doesn't just post them to a web site of their own.

So, we're stepping up to fill the gap. We have posted all the reports we've gotten in the past week to the tag page #publicpool, and will post each new report to that page as we receive them. We recommend having a look. You can find some interesting things, like the time when Politico reporter Nia-Malika Henderson, in covering the Obama state dinner as a pooler, threw a plug for Politico into her report—"shameless promotion for POLITICO...see this link for more details on the bookstore arrivals..."—and actually appeared live on CNN while she was on pool duty, which kind of defeats the purpose of pool duty. There's all kinds of great stuff in there. Enjoy. We'll update it early and often.

Oh, and before you accuse us of just freeloading off the work of real journalists, Gawker is volunteering for pool duty if the WHCA will have us. Gabriel says the travel budget can cover a once-a-month Amtrak ticket to DC.

Sure, everyone's an expert after the fact. It's reallllllll easy to look back now and say, "Captain Richard Phillips was warned at least seven times in the week prior to his trip to stay at least 600 miles off the dangerous Somali coast, but he ignored these warnings, and got his ship and crew hijacked." Real easy. So a lot of the crew is saying that, now.

Four of the 20 crew members told the AP that they blame Phillips for the hijacking.

"He caused this, and we all know it," said chief engineer Mike Perry of Riverview, Fla. "All the Alabama crew knows about it."

Look at the bright side, guys. You have a great adventure story to tell your kids one day. You didn't have to hack anyone to pieces. And, most importantly, you'll go down in history as an anonymous crew member who served with Hero Captain Richard Phillips. He got to meet The Rock!
[Pics: AP]

And, even better, she is forcing her staff to make the hellish trek on the bus, as she flies in comfort.

Palingates broke the terribly surprising news: Palin has been emerging from the bus at tour stops, and giving interviews from the bus, and pretending to post to Facebook from the bus, but that is all a lie, because she physically cannot stop lying, ever.

As McGinniss writes in the Daily Beast:

The bottom line is that the plane's goings and comings track Palin's tour perfectly: from Grand Rapids to Washington, Pa. and then to Rochester, N.Y., Roanoke, Va., Fayetteville, N.C., Birmingham, Ala., and Jacksonville and Orlando.

On November 25, the plane carried Palin, her parents, her two youngest children and her Aunt Katie to Pasco, Washington, for Thanksgiving. And there it sat, at Tri-Cities Airport in Pasco, for four full days, which is a lot of inactivity for a plane that rents for more than $4,000 an hour. But it was Thanksgiving weekend and the Pasco-Richland area was where Palin wanted to be.

This is another wonderful example of Sarah Palin creating her own fucking mess for herself through her incredible contempt for her followers, her own stupidity, and her staff's astounding ineptitude. Because using a plane to conduct a book tour is a standard practice. But pretending that you are taking a bus and driving all night—because you want to appear salt-of-the-earth—while you are actually flying and staying in hotels is insane. Sarah Palin is just baiting Andrew Sullivan, now.

[Pic: AP]

Update: Harper Collins is taking the fall! And also denying that the whole bus thing is a fraud! They confirmed to Greg Sargent that Sarah Palin has taken a plane, but her publisher booked and paid for the flights. Also they say she only took the plane three times, even though the plane has been following their itinerary this whole time. (Palingates finds this hard to believe!)

"The plane stops were minimal" and were only done for "logistical reasons," Andreadis argued. "The majority of it was done by bus, but there were some stops we couldn't do by bus."

Andreadis allowed that the trip had been billed as a bus tour, but insisted: "We never hid the fact that there would be some planes."

It is a good thing that Sarah Palin is probably going to make Harper Collins a lot of money, because doing her damage control is a lot of thankless work.

The admitted child rapist is scheduled to arrive today at his mountain home in Gstaad, one of the most expensive ski resort towns in the world and home to annual tennis and polo tournaments. Old-school glitterati including Liz Taylor, Roger Moore, and David Niven used to frequent it. Martha Stewart, eat your house arrest heart out.

Polanski used the $1.6 million manse as collateral for bail. At the chalet, he'll be sporting a fetching electronic ankle bracelet, and will not have his passport.

Known as the "Milky Way," the chalet's walls will be the bounds of Polanski's physical universe—but he'll have complete freedom within it.

Polanski will be able to go outside to check the mail or entertain guests in the garden and will be able to telephone and send e-mails, work on his films and have parties. Phone conversations will not be monitored.

"He will have no prison regime," said Justice Ministry spokesman Falco Galli. "He is completely free to determine his daily schedule. It's also up to him to get in food and other supplies."

[AP]

This picture is so picturesque it makes me want to vomit. Roman Polanski's new prison literally has rainbows.

A juxtaposition more appropriate than a rainbow is this dog's rear end.

Naturally, journalists and paparazzi have flooded the town.

No special police protection will be provided, either to make sure Polanski remains or to keep spectators and others away, Galli said. He said Polanski could call the local police or a security firm if he feels threatened.

[AP]

Look how cute and Swiss these shutters are! Quaint prison bars, really.

Lest you think Australia's dromedary holocaust is inhumane, the Associated Press explains that the situation is "critical," and it's mankind's fault for bringing the hump-backed menaces to the Outback in the first place:

"The community of Docker River is under siege by 6,000 marauding, wild camels," local government minister Rob Knight said in Alice Springs, 310 miles (500 kilometers) northeast of Docker. "This is a very critical situation out there, it's very unusual and it needs urgent action."

The camels, which are not native to Australia but were introduced in the 1840s, have smashed water tanks, approached houses to try to take water from air conditioning units, and knocked down fencing at the small airport runway, Knight said. ... Camels were first brought to Australia to help explorers travel through the desert, and now an estimated 1 million roam wild across the country.

Here's how the camelpocalypse is going down:

The government plans to use helicopters to herd the camels about nine miles (15 kilometers) outside of town next week, where they will be shot and their carcasses left to decay in the desert. The state government will give a 49,000 Australian dollar ($45,000) grant for the cull and to repair damaged infrastructure in the town.

That is going to smell so bad. A vocal opposition calls the plan "barbaric," citing "terrible distress" and "terrible suffering." On the other hand, grown man-camels weigh 2000 lbs. and are 7 feet tall, which means up to 12,000,000 lbs. of enraged, thirsty camel could be laying siege to Alice Springs, Australia as we speak.* Consequently, the people of Alice Springs are probably not thinking rationally, having long ago entered "fight or flight" mode (prompting them to use flight to fight), much like the terrifying middle scenes of Jurassic Park, when the dinosaurs take over and everyone runs around screaming and getting crazy violent.

It should also be noted that whoever gets stuck flying the helicopters and aiming the guns is going to be seriously traumatized. Now here's a picture of a strapping gentleman traversing the Outback on camel in the 1920's. This fiasco is his fault.

* Sure, they aren't all fully grown man-camels, but when a small, drought-ridden town is under attack from 6000 camels, I feel it is best to give them the benefit of doubt. Also, I once rode a camel at the zoo, and it was large, bulky, and painful.

[Associated Press]

The Atlantic's James Fallows quotes a "U.S. government official who was on the trip" characterizing Obama's reaction to the criticism he received for the bow. He was just being polite, as opposed to terrified that America's status as a superpower will disappear down the toilet if its president stops being a dick all the time:

Obama's attitude was, this is an elderly gentleman in a country where this kind of greeting is customary. It does not seem extraordinary to show this kind of gesture to him. The Fox news poll said that 67% of Americans thought it was a good thing for him to have done. When the president heard that some people had complained, I'd characterize his reaction as: The notion that the United States is somehow humbling or humiliating itself by showing respect for a local custom, when it is transparently the most powerful country in the world, leaves me speechless.

Rule No. 1 of being an unnamed White House adviser is Don't Put Words Directly in the President's Mouth Unless You Know What You're doing, so this was either a deliberate presidential pushback or a rogue element telling the truth. If it were the former, though, we'd imagine the White House would choose a more mainstream outlet to get the word out through than an Atlantic blog. Either way: If you have a problem with the president bowing to old Japanese men, Barack Obama personally thinks you're an idiot.

Now that The Daily Mail is giving Obama the "Lindsay Lohan in 2005" treatment, Barack Obama has landed among the privileged few—along with Oprah and Kirstie Alley—whose weight fluctuations are cause for international headlines. How did the American president's girlish figure become a topic of international fascination, you ask? Five easy steps:

1. We See Obama with His Shirt Off Surprisingly defined pecs and debatable nipples lead everyone to recategorize the Illinois senator from "sexless political entity" to "objectified hunk of burning flesh" in their minds. Barry's body is now kitchen table conversation, and we see the glimmer of too-skinny judgment in The Wall Street Journal: "Too Fit to Be President?"

2. His Peers Express Concern Did you know that, after models and actresses and famous singers and high school cheerleaders and sorority sisters, politicians are basically the second most at-risk group in America for eating disorders? In the pressure-cooker world of ruling the nation, the line between intervention and bullying can become blurry:

He was even teased by Republican California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger almost exactly one year ago for having such skinny legs.

I'm going to make him do some squats"' the former Terminator star told a campaign rally for Mr Obama's presidential rival John McCain.

He also teased the president about his "scrawny little arms."

3. Matt Drudge Starts Using Him for Thinspiration The right-wing rabble-rouser leads November 4 with photos of a slender-looking post-workout president, with the headline BARACK N BONES. Steps 1 and 2 have already primed us to see this story and evaluate it on it merit, instead of reacting with the appropriate "I don't care if he eats nothing but birch bark and mildew, as long as North Korea doesn't nuke Hawaii, let's roll with it." Besides, obsessing about weight is fun. Which leads us to...

4. Lindsay Is Healthy and Nicole Had a Baby. Who Else We Got? The noise over skinny models and starving starlets has died down a bit, leaving a hole in the tabloid press' A-list skinny-watch. Thus, the growing concern over Obama's waistline hits its peak at the most opportune moment possible, media-wise.

5. Michelle Is Obsessed with Health, Too. Could this be one of those cases of collective body dysmorphia, like how groups of teenage girls all go on obsessive diets together, like how all the female cast members of 90210 got super skinny all at the same time? We return to The Daily Mail:

Mr Obama is often pictured playing basketball or returning from the gym with aides, while Mrs Obama's infamous vegetable garden in the grounds of the White House promotes healthy eating on top of exercise.

The First Lady's gym-toned arms have also been the topic of much discussion.

And there you have it: From political powerhouse to pro-ana teen clique.

Wallace—a Bush-era attack dog whose career highs include helping orchestrate the John Kerry flip-flop smear—was the staffer the McCain camp charged with keeping track of Palin. As predicted, she bears much of Palin's Going Rogue wrath, second only to openly hostile McCain adviser Steve Schmidt. Though Sen. McCain personally asked staffers to keep media exposure to a minimum during Palin's media blitz, Wallace gave an on-the-record interview to The Rachel Maddow Show (though declined to go on the air). It's the middle portion of this clip, and it's a doozy:

First, Wallace deconstructs Palin's claim that Wallace pushed her into the Katie Couric interview as a favor to boost Couric's "low self-esteem":

The whole notion there was a conversation where I tried to cajole her into a conversation with Katie [Couric] is fiction. ... I am not someone who throws around the word 'self-esteem.' It is a fictional description. Katie Couric was selected because we did evening anchors.

Regarding Palin's claim on The Oprah Winfrey Show that no one prepped her for the interview because it was supposed to be a "lighthearted, fun, working mom speaking with working mom" thing:

We set up this interview on the day of the U.N. General Assembly, with a walk-and-talk in front of the U.N. It was never made as two 'working gals.' It's either rationalization or justification or fiction. That was supposed to highlight her foreign policy savvy [in the context of] the U.N. General Assembly. The picture is in front of the U.N. to highlight her expertise and readiness to be vice president—it wasn't about two 'working gals.'

Note that Palin didn't actually use the phrase "working gals." Rather, Wallace combines Palin's words with even dumber ones, heightening the sense that the Thrilla from Wasilla is totally off her rocker. This is a patented right-wing rhetorical tactic (think "death panels") and we should all use it more often. But back to the matter at hand:

What she gets wrong is this personalization that [Steve] Schmidt and I were these lone villains—and that took place entirely in her imagination. ... I think she fixated on me from very early on. She hated me from the beginning. I try not to take it personally, the fact that she wrote a book based on fabrications. She gave a brilliant convention speech—other interviews that inspired support. But this book is a bizarre fixation on things that everyone else has moved on from.

And that is the story of how neocon PR warlord Nicolle Wallace won the begrudging respect of MSNBC liberals. Looks like the real uniter was Sarah Palin, after all. That, and the fact that no one gives a shit about Katie Couric's feelings.

According to a statement issued by the couple's attorney, Richard will plead to attempting to influence a public servant—a felony—and Mayumi will plead to a misdemeanor charge of filing a false police report. Prosecutors, the statement said, have agreed to recommend a sentence of probation, meaning no jail time. According to CNN, prosecutors couldn't be reached to confirm the deal.

The deal was precipitated, the Heene's attorney said, by prosecutors' threat to deport Mayumi, who is a Japanese national. From the statement:

It is supremely ironic that law enforcement has expressed such grave concern over the welfare of the children, but it was ultimately the threat of taking the children's mother from the family and deporting her to Japan which fueled this deal.

It's even more supremely ironic that the attorney for a woman who deliberately threw her child into the middle of a self-generated media shitstorm and commanded him to lie and watched him throw up on TV so she could be on TV more is calling prosecutors' legitimate concern for that child's welfare under her care "ironic."

We can only hope that the district attorney bars any reality TV deals as a condition of probation.

When the attack first happened in October of 2008, there was speculation that Pressly's role as an Ann Coulter-like figure in W might have had something to do with it. Turns out, no:

In various confessions made to the police, Mr. Vance said he went to Ms. Pressly's neighborhood looking to steal laptop computers. After entering her home through a Dutch door she left open for her dogs, Mr. Johnson said, Mr. Vance found the computer he sought - and Ms. Pressly.

Curtis Vance, the 29 year-old killer (pictured), is now facing the death penalty.
[Pic via]

On March 10, 2008, the New York Times broke the story of former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer's hooker habit, and cable news went insane. One of the gratifying things we found in the 1,300 pages of e-mail correspondence between Spitzer's flacks and reporters (which we obtained under New York's public records law) was that some reporters who were booked as talking heads actually made an effort to know what they were talking about before they went on TV. Of course, it's hard to get too much information at the last minute — which is one reason no one on cable television knows what they are talking about — and often the natural impulse of reporters is to check in with a flack for guidance.

The day after the Spitzer news broke, as speculation over his future was at a fever pitch, Financial Times reporter Brooke Masters, who wrote a book in 2006 about Spitzer's rise to power, was booked to appear on CNN. She sent a frantic e-mail to Spitzer's communications director Christine Anderson ten minutes before she was scheduled to go on, asking, "what tone should I take when asked if he will resign?" She signed off with, "Help."

Anderson responded that no announcement would be coming that day, but that Masters' "tone should probably be that the options aren't good." On CNN that night, in a taped segment for Anderson Cooper 360, Masters said, "Unless he can completely reinvent himself, his old method of dealing with the world and his old attraction as a politician is gone."

When we let Masters know that we were publishing the exchange, she wrote in an e-mail that "I knew I was going to be asked what Mr Spitzer would do, and I am a reporter not a pundit so I was trying to gather the facts." Which we commend her for. Still, it's worth remembering the next time you see a reporter analyzing a story on cable somewhere, that — at least for the ones who did their homework — the facts, and the tone, sometimes come unattributed and off the record from people who are paid to manage reporters.

Another reporter who checked in with Anderson before going on TV was them-Time magazine deputy managing editor Adi Ignatius, who now edits the Harvard Business Review. Oddly, Ignatius — who had covered and profiled Spitzer for Time — was booked on ABC News and NBC News as a supporter of Spitzer's, to balance out the detractors offering gleeful quotes on his self-immolation.

On March 10, a few hours after the story broke, Ignatius e-mailed Spitzer's chief of staff Marlene Turner asking if he could speak to Spitzer or anyone else in his office about the governor's state of mind before going on ABC News's World News Tonight. Turner referred him to Anderson. World News didn't use any of Ignatius' tape, but the next day, NBC Nightly News invited him to speak as "someone who knows and likes Eliot," and he asked Anderson for access to Spitzer or anybody else who might know his thinking. Anderson responded that she'd be happy to talk to him.

That night, Ignatius was identified on a Nightly News segment as a Spitzer "supporter," and he told correspondent Mike Taibbi that "it's going to be very, very, very difficult for him to stay in office."

Ignatius and Masters were right to find out as much as they could before being presented to television audiences as informed analysts (or in Ignatius' case, a partisan). But it's interesting, to us at least, to see laid bare the role that flacks can play behind the scenes in managing the tone and direction of talking-head coverage during a PR disaster.

It all began with a mysterious note from the editors of The Daltonian, The New York Times explains:

"We are not able to cover the recent visit by a Supreme Court justice due to numerous publication constraints," the note said. It promised "an explanation of the regrettable delay" in the next issue.

Apparently Justice Kennedy spoke at a Dalton assembly, and his office insisted that school give Kennedy final approval on any article the little rugrats put together on him—then sent back a revision with "a couple of minor tweaks" and "tidied up" quotations. Enraged, Dalton's student civil liberties union took to the streets, smashing the windows of nearby Bentleys and littering the streets of the Upper East Side with Molotov cocktails, until their sassy schoolgirl uniforms were rended from their sweaty, heaving chests and their ranks swelled into a wildly fevered, anarchic orgy!

Just kidding. They're college-obsessed teenagers with parents who would totally ground them if they screwed up their chance at Harvard over some silly SCOTUS spat. (Besides! Maybe your censor from Justice Kennedy's office can give you some pointers about summer internships.) They're doing whatever their school's PR department tells them to do, which is apparently to go with "no comment" when NYT comes calling, and to let the responsible adults in the room issue gracious statements about the pedagogical value of factchecking. Besides, the ability to keep your publication friendly with the powers that be is a skill that comes in handy in journalism these days!

Plouffe was the author of the founding statement of anti-Politico-ism, as reported in a December New York Times Magazine story:

"If Politico and Halperin say we're winning, we're losing," Obama's campaign manager, David Plouffe, would repeat mantralike around headquarters. He said his least favorite words in the English language were, "I saw someone on cable say this. . . ."

Oh how that lifted our hearts and gave us solace! We've often returned to it late at night when our thoughts are troubled by Tea Parties and death panels, and we fall asleep with the sounds of Plouffe's soothing, measured voice whispering in our ear that it's all going to be OK—that the shouting and the cynical, empty-headed analysis and the superficial horse race obsession and the bullshit stories all amount to little more than sound and fury. He proved that you can win by ignoring it.

But it's still a useful sound, and a pliant fury! Because Plouffe dropped one of the biggest "I saw someone on cable say this..." Drudge-bait stories of the primary into Politico's lap—he was responsible for saddling John Edwards with the $400 haircut story via a tip to Ben Smith:

Obama's campaign had a particularly capable opposition research shop, a source of tips to many reporters, not all of them on policy. And Plouffe, in passing, outs the campaign as the source of a brief item I did in April 2007 off an Edwards campaign expenditure — probably driving as much traffic, chatter and grief as anything that short I've ever written.

"We did much less of this [opposition research] than other campaigns did," Plouffe writes a bit self-servingly, "but there were times we indulged — it was our researchers who found John Edwards's infamous $400 hair cut expenditures."

So you can't win by ignoring Politico. You have to pretend to ignore them while you service them with material that makes your opponents look like the shallow self-obsessed divas that they are. There are no heroes.

A new study says Americans spend almost five hours a day in front of the TV. What a bunch of of mindless zombie slobs. Now, continue staring into your computer and DON'T STOP.


Some of America's most prestigious traditional watchdogs of journalistic ethics and independence are now surprisingly amenable to take a check from the government, to support journalism that serves as a check on the government. There's a simple reason for this apparent logical discrepancy: Money talks and bullshit walks, and don't ever let a journalism school tell you different.


And speaking of journalistic independence! The US Justice Department reportedly asked IndyMedia.us to give them information on all visits to their site on a certain day, and to not disclose that they had been asked to do so. It totally didn't work, not even one bit. Everyone can keep on expressing dangerous anti-American sentiments at Indymedia.us.


At Letterman extorter Joe Halderman's court hearing today, one reporter "shouted how does it feel to be on other side of mic?" Haha. Reporters are assholes! We'll all be in court on sex-related extortion charges sooner or later, fellas. Empathy.

Fanaticism makes strange bedfellows, and the push to link up Hasan to a wider terrorist plot has united Sen. Joe Leiberman and radical Yemeni cleric Sheikh Anwar Al-Awlaki in common cause. Wingnuts and neocons want Hasan to be a Muslim terrorist because it confirms their worldview that Muslim terrorists lurk in every shadow and helps them scare the shit out people. Muslim terrorists want Hasan to be a Muslim terrorist because it satisfies their desire to claim credit for the murders of Americans and helps them scare the shit out of people. Everybody wins.

The question of whether Hasan qualifies as a bona fide Muslim terrorist seems to be academic, and can serve as handy ideological litmus test. He clearly was motivated in part by extremist religious views, and clearly killed a lot of people. For the New Republic's Jason Zengerle, that alone is enough to call him a terrorist. But "Islamic terrorism" has a political and cultural meaning that extends beyond merely acts of violence by people who believe a certain subset of crazy religious teachings—it means jihad, Al Qaeda, spectacular violence, and a global network of people who are acting in concert to kill us all and establish an emirate. Dick Cheney is not worried about American civilization being destroyed 13 soldiers at a time by single men armed with pistols, and "the largest single terror act in America since 9/11"—which is how Fox News contributor Walid Phares describes the Ft. Hood shootings—is a label that's tailored to call up something in our lizard brains that goes far beyond lone wolves. It's about the "existential threat" we are under. No matter how extremist his views or how despicable the man, no one can argue that Maj. Hasan is an existential threat to the republic.

So the question is: How do we turn him into one, so that this horror will not pass without being taken advantage of politically? That requires making him part of, and representative of, a larger and well-known enemy for which there exists more than sufficient reserves of justified hatred and fear—Al Qaeda. Enter ABC News' Brian Ross, the notoriously unreliable investigative reporter who came out with a blockbuster this morning: Unnamed intelligence officials tell Ross that unnamed American intelligence agencies learned months ago that Hasan had attempted to make contact with "people associated with Al Qaeda" who were under U.S. surveillance. The report is a grab-bag of red flags. Ross mentions that officials are trying to find out if Hasan ever communicated with Anwar Al-Awlaki, the former imam of a mosque that Hasan attended on Falls Church, Va., who later fled to Yemen and supports violent jihad. But it's unclear from Ross' report whether Al-Awlaki is one of the "people associated with Al Qaeda" that Hasan is said to have attempted to contact, or if there are others. Within the story itself, what begins as an attempt to contact "people associated with Al Qaida"—with no explanation as to why he was allegedly trying to contact these people—rapidly becomes "Hasan's attempt to reach out to al Qaeda." These are vastly different things, and Ross' casual conflation of them, with no evidence, is an indicator that something is cooked in the story.

It wouldn't be the first time: Ross famously, and breathlessly, reported in the wake of the 2001 anthrax attacks that U.S. intelligence sources had specific and detailed evidence linking Iraq to the type of anthrax used. It was complete and utter bullshit, and it served to heighten the atmosphere of panic and fear in the days immediately following the attacks and to link them to a convenient enemy. So we take his latest entry in the post-massacre-blockbuster-terrorism-story sweepstakes with a grain of salt.

Even before Ross' report, the attempts to render Hasan's killings more politically effective for the purposes of changing U.S. policy toward Islamic radicalism had begun. Sen. Joe Lieberman called on Sunday for a congressional investigation into Hasan's background—which we think is a great idea—and mimed Phares' bumper sticker, calling it it "the most-destructive terrorist act to be committed on American soil since 9/11." The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg charitably wrote today, under the headline, "When Muslims Commit Violence," that not all Muslims are "violently unhappy with America." Whew! Good to know. Unfortunately, Goldberg continues, "elite makers of opinion in this country try very hard to ignore the larger meaning of violent acts when they happen to be perpetrated by Muslims." The "larger meaning" here being what? That "when Muslims commit violence" we should have a different reaction, and different policy reforms designed to prevent a recurrence, than when Christians or Jews or anarchist nutjobs or right-wing nutjobs commit violence? The problem, Goldberg writes, is that since "elite opinion makers do not, as a rule, try to protect Christians and Christian belief from investigation and criticism," they should apply the same standard to Muslim beliefs. Because clearly, Islamic theology has gotten a pass from journalistic and cultural establishment over the last eight years, and it's about time somebody blew the lid off the whole thing. Did you know that some of them agree with suicide bombing?

Goldberg and Zengerle both make the point that the left referred to Scott Roeder as a terrorist after he murdered Dr. George Tiller. Parity, one imagines, dictates that the same term apply to Hasan. One noteworthy distinction, though, is that Roeder fits precisely into what most people generally think of when they talk about right-wing terrorists. He worked closely with other people who sought the deaths of abortion providers. He talked about it all the time. He was an active member of an organized movement. Hasan's case is noteworthy because of the extent to which it is not like the Al Qaeda threat we've come to know. That doesn't mean there's nothing to be learned from it, or even that we shouldn't try to change the way we do things to try to prevent it from happening again. What it does mean is that it's not like the Al Qaeda threat that we've come to know, and is substantively different from the Muslim terrorism, and fear thereof, that has hijacked our national psyche for nearly a decade. As Zengerle quite reasonably acknowledges, magnetometers at airports won't prevent it from happening again, nor will invading Iran, nor will another PATRIOT Act.

What Goldberg, Ross (or his sources), Lieberman, et. al. are trying to do is establish an equivalence between "Muslim person who kills people" and "global conspiracy of Muslims who kill people," so that they can advance a political agenda that involves deploying U.S. resources in a particular way to defeat a particular threat.

The funny thing is, the terrorists agree with them. Hasan's radical former imam, Anwar al Awlaki, wrote on his web site that "Nidal Hasan is a hero" who performed "an Islamic duty." It's precisely the same ideological jump: Hasan didn't act alone, he is part of a broader struggle by religious fanatics. And it's made for the same reason: to advance a political agenda. The neocons want to keep pressure on the idea that there is a vast army of scary Muslims always on the verge of killing us. And so do the terrorists.

Time Warner's jets have been on the market since at least December 2008, nearly a year ago. That was just after Time Warner's Time Inc. announced the layoff of 600 staff. In February, we called on the media conglomerate to sell its four Gulfstreams, which we estimated were worth a combined $124 million, roughly, based on used jet listings at the time.

But all those jets are still registered in the company's name, according to FAA records; CityFile is reporting that the company still owns at least three of them, and has now echoed our suggestion that they be sold. Sure, it's a buyer's market for corporate jets, but Time Warner can't cut prices enough to move one of these? We wonder if the company isn't keeping prices high on purpose, a trick described by the Economist:

According to analysts at JPMorgan, asking prices for used jets actually rose by 3.4% in the year to November [2008]. Jonathan Breeze, chief executive of Jet Republic, a private-jet operator, suggests that some announcements that firms are selling their jets are "elaborate window dressing". By putting jets up for sale at a high price that ensures nobody will buy, companies can appear frugal-even as their bosses continue to fly as usual.

But we are having a hard time imagining media moguls putting their own personal status-symbol luxuries ahead of the welfare of their workers. Ha ha, kidding!