It's not clear what they were trying to gain or who they were trying to serve by the stunt. Even at Fox — which repeatedly used the horror anyone felt that day as an excuse to push all sorts of ill-fated policies — they spent the morning airing live pictures from the memorial service at the Pentagon. So did CNN.

MSNBC did this last year, too. Even posting a news quiz on their site to see how much info you were absorbing. All we learned — before we quickly turned the channel — is that this is a dumb tradition that MSNBC ought to stop.

Carrie California's Still Standing (oh what a strong and courageous title!), about the whirlwind of unfairness that erupted after she told a bunch of beauty pageant people that they shouldn't be able to get married, will drop in November of this year. Which means this little lady has a lot of thinkin' and typin' to do in just four short months. (Good thing she won't actually write it.)

Regnery is home to a whole host of notable, non-loonybird authors. Authors like Newt Gingrich, Laura Ingraham, teen sex scaremonger Meg Meeker (not a big fan of the gays herself), and Ollie North.

So, good news for everyone, really! But mostly a victory for Miss Prejean, whose First Amendment rights were violated because she said something distasteful and then she was criticized for it. Poor thing deserves this success, really.

They started building it five years ago, see, so back then it seemed like the thing to do! Now it seems like maybe the worst-timed, bad PR-accruing move by any newspaper company this year, which is saying a lot. The fact that it is terrible in every single way makes you almost, but not quite, feel sorry for the company.

Also Features An Expensive New Printing Press:"The Naples Daily News is about to move into a new multimillion-dollar headquarters with a state-of-the-art printing press that will be one of the fastest running in the newspaper industry in the U.S. today." Oh no.

This Man Is Not Particularly Wise:""It's probably unusual," [Philip Meyer, a former Knight Chairman in Journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill] said of the new building. "But I don't think it's unwise."

This Man Is In A Rather Unenviable Position:"We do get questions from investors from time to time about it," said Mark Contreras, head of the newspaper division at E.W. Scripps. "We plowed ahead with the best information we had. I don't think anybody could have foreseen the enormity of the real estate bubble affecting Florida."

They Called Galileo Crazy, Too:"Clearly it's bad timing," Contreras said. "But that is if you look at a very short snippet of time."

Don't Worry; Other Failing Papers Are Doing the Same Catastrophic Thing:"The San Francisco Chronicle is about to open a new $200 million, 338,000-square-foot plant in cooperation with Transcontinental Inc., a Canadian company, that will do the printing for it."

Here Is Scripps Stock, From When This Project Was Conceived Up to Today:The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.

[Naples News via Romenesko]

Curious about what people are watching online? I mean, you know it happens. You've seen it happen. You never thought it would happen to you, but then one day you find yourself in a fitful late-night stupor, devouring episode after bootlegged episode of Supernatural until you barely even recognize yourself anymore, and... Um. They're watching Lost, and Grey's Anatomy, and Gossip Girl mostly. Completely legally too! Lost, for example, accounts for a whopping 36 million video streams on ABC's website. That's a lotta nerdy grad students without regular TV catching up at the library. A lot. [Variety]

Terminator Salvation may have nuked the fridge (and, um, the rest of the world) in the US, but it's playing strongly—number onely!—over there in those countries where everyone's weird and isn't us. It made $46.1 million over the weekend, bringing its total international cume to a healthy $165.5 million. So fear, not McG fans! If you really, really want to see his next feature, all you have to do is go to China. Or, like, Finland or something. Those are basically the same, right? [THR]

Oh, good. CBS has ordered more episodes of I Get That a Lot, the hidden camera show in which smug celebrities pretend to be regular people who just look like they're Jessica Simpson and then in the end, oops! hahaha!, yes it is me oh golly no I'm not a regular like you, no I'm rich. So, bye! [Variety]

A young girl named Skyler Samuels has just been cast in the film Furry Vengeance. No, not the Furry Vengeance you're filming in your basement with your creepy neighbor Ruth and that Chuck E. Cheese costume you found out back behind the foreclosed mall on Route 11. I should hope that you don't have plans to cast a young girl in that kind of film. No, this is with Brendan Fraser and involves angry CGI animals or something. Oh, and, while I've got you: Tell Ruth that Dr. Mendev called and her 'treatment' is scheduled for Thursday at 11. He said she needs to wear 'loose pants.' [THR]

Christine Jeffs, who directed Little Miss Dead People, has signed on to steer the movie Wonderful Tonight. It is a film about a lothario and the young girl he meets, knocks up, and falls in love with. Basically it's about your friend Scott, except it takes place somewhere indie and cutesy rather than Tampa. Oh, and in this one he falls in love with her, instead of fleeing madly in the middle of the night. [Variety]

Canadian TV now has a show called Conviction Kitchen, about a fancy Toronto restaurant (they have tablecloths and American Ketchup!) that hires ex-cons with no food experience to cook behind the line. The series will end after an unfortunate incident involving an ex-con named Bricks, a horrified old dowager, and the restaurant owner screaming "No, Bricks! No! It's Broccoli raBe, raBe! With a B!!" [THR]

So Pedro Espada Jr, a State Senator from the Bronx, and Hiram Monseratte, the Queens Senator who is on trial for glassing his lady friend, organized a coup. Remember? They handed the State Senate back to the Republicans. And the Democrats sued. But a judge told them to just deal with it themselves without getting the courts involved. (He will still maybe take up the case on Monday, though!) And Espada has promised that there will be no resolving this thing over the weekend, at all. And then his "home" in Mamaroneck (because he does not actually live in his district) got "broken into," he claimed. He also said the Governor called him to congratulate him, which the Governor denied.

So here's where we are, today:

• Espada is trying to lure Democrats into his "coalition" by promising, now, to actually try to get bills progressives like to the floor, for a vote. Like the gay marriage, and rent control! And so Espada tried to drive a wedge between Tom Duane, who would like there to be a vote on the Gay Marriage, and Majority Leader Malcolm Smith, who, some claim, promised not to bring the Gay Marriage to a vote in exchange for the support of Ruben Diaz Sr., who, along with Monseratte, threatened to caucus with Republicans a couple months ago. This does not seem to be working.
• Meanwhile: the Democrats are most likely going to throw Smith under the bus and strip Smith of his leadership as part of their attempt to bribe Monseratte back into their caucus. What this would mean is a deadlocked, evenly divided Senate. And no Lt. Governor, because Paterson is not authorized to appoint one, and therefore no tie-breaking votes. Also: the scumbag asshole who slashed his girlfriend's face would be welcomed back to the party fold with open arms and money.

So basically we can have a Republican-led Senate partially led by a corrupt liar that would gerrymander redistricting next year but maybe actually vote for thing people would like voted on, or we can have a deadlocked Senate that includes the violent asshole as a prominent Democratic leader.

But at least we don't have California's state government! They're really screwed!

[Photo: AP]

Dr. Joseph Booker, ladies and gentlemen, and the good Christian men who are protesting his clinic:

Booker, 65, remembers when there were six. He worked at another Mississippi clinic from 1989 to 2003, then moved to this one. Opponents have picketed his home in a nearby town, he said, and knocked on his neighbors' doors to denounce him as a "baby killer."

One of the regular clinic protesters, C. Roy McMillan, was a signer of the Defensive Action Statement, which asserts that killing an abortion doctor is justifiable homicide because it saves the lives of the unborn. Scott Roeder, accused of killing Tiller, told friends he agreed.

Even Planned Parenthood has given up on Mississippi. And next up on the pro-life agenda (besides murdering Dr. Booker, obv) is "a law requiring clinic staff members to report the identities of the sexual partners of pregnant underage girls," because these people are actually seriously monsters.

[Photo: WAPT-TV]

Carradine's death was originally thought to be caused by suicide, and then accidental autoerotic asphyxiation as well. Carradine's attorney has already cried out that both of these theories are wrong, and now, his family's trying to get the FBI involved to determine whether his death was actually accidental or the result of foul play. Results from a private autopsy - also enlisted by the Carradine family - won't be available for a few days.

Which American gossip outlets are running the photo? Not TMZ, who won't go Faces of Death for their readers, which is somewhat surprising, given the extent to which they typically peruse original material. Not P*r*z H*lt*n, who, besides not even being able to get Carradine's name right (writing it as "Robert Carradine") would have to incur the wrath of his righteous-outrage happy fans and the celebrities he kowtows to. They're going with the family's outrage angle instead, as most news outlets will. Via Keith Carradine, David's brother:

"The family wants it understood that, per attorney Mark Geragos, any persons, publications or media outlets will be fully prosecuted for invasion of privacy and causing severe emotional distress if the photos are published."

And no, we're not running the photo either. But one American outlet is: The Post Chronicle. It's - from what I can tell - an ad-heavy, shoddy news aggregation website based out of New Jersey. They've posted a photo of the newspaper, which, while still not a perfect picture, paints it pretty clearly. And this is how information that nobody else will want to touch - but still want to see - gets out.

We've linked to the photo below. The picture, while slightly blurred and a little shaky, is still obviously graphic, disturbing, and not something you really want to look at on a Sunday afternoon.

Shocking David Carradine Hanging Photo Online [The Post Chronicle]

Funemployment: when you're unemployed, but it's fun! This is in contrast to "Unemployment," which is when you're unemployed and forced into prostitution in order to buy flour. No such worries for the funemployed!

Since being laid off as Yahoo Music's director of user experience design, Van Gorkom said he has purchased a laptop and started shopping for a new couch, "which my dad doesn't understand." As he spends money, his father is nervously asking Van Gorkom whether he needs any money.

We recommend funemployment for everyone! As long as you have a benefactor who's a steady stream of cash. If not, well, you have to use the power of positive thinking. The Gotti family did it, and they get to keep their house! A bunch of NYC hippies chose to believe in fate, and now they get to live on a self-sufficient boat-barge for the next five months, drinking rainwater and pedaling a bicycle to generate enough electricity to read by the fading light of one rusty bulb! And hey, funemployment is no barrier to buying yourself a home in Greenwich any more—they're practically giving them away! Mel Gibson's mansion, for example, is down to $29.75 million.

Ask your dad to spot you.

From around 6AM Saturday to 6AM Sunday, seven deaths. All of the shootings that took place last night spanned the city. Something like this happened last year. Most of them are being looked at as gang related, with exception to a few.

The shootings, in no particular order: A grocery store owner was found fatally shot yesterday morning in the back of his store on the North Side. A drive-by on the Near West Side that killed one. Three brothers, one fatally shot in a drive-by on the South Side. Three men shot, two fatally after a verbal spat on the West Side. A 26 year-old fatally shot in a drive-by on the Southwest Side. A 28 year-old fatally shot on the Southeast Side, sitting outside his home.

Elsewhere, Thursday night, five were shot in a drive-by on the South Side, including a 15 year-old kid, Friday evening, a guy who hijacked an empty school bus with one other employee aboard was killed at the end of the confrontation by police, and this morning, a 46 year-old man at a grocery store on the South Side was leaving with his groceries when he - as the story goes - pulled out a gun and aimed it at the store's security guard. After a struggle, the guard managed to shoot his assailant in the leg twice; the assailant's now in stable condition. "Police said the man may be homeless and credited the guard," notes the story, but there's something strange about a homeless guy being able to produce a gun. Possible, but doesn't seem likely. Finally, a 65 year-old man killed himself after a long standoff with police.

What's going on in Chicago that's causing all the violence this weekend? Totally rampant speculation: probably some unconnected extreme instances, and gang violence heating up (as it tends to do in the summer, when younger members are less likely to be in school). It can't help that their cops - like so many other large cities - have a reputation for being crooked. But Chicago's? In the last week, a Fire and Police City Council chair being brought up on corruption charges, in addition to a cop being indicted with a mob boss.

The only story on the wires about this is a small AP piece noting the number of shootings of the last night. Not to suggest some kind of vast, far-reaching, Salinger-backpocketing media conspiracy, but it's going to be interesting to see how these types of things are treated over the next few months in the Chicago and national media with the city's Olympic bid decision coming up in four months. Could just be a random string of shootings. It could be a pattern of American Violence that simply goes unnoticed until it comes up in number clusters like this. Whatever it is, it's really, really terrible for all of us. And a kick-you-when-you're-down item I had nowhere else to put: a Chicago petting zoo burned down Thursday, killing 75% of the animals in it. So maybe Chicago's just having one of those terribly unforgiving weeks. Probably not, though.

Not that people should be forced to come out of the closet, but fool keeps calling himself a role model, and then won't acknowledge the fact that he's the gayest thing since Jody Watley got lost in the Tenderloin that one time. You can't really call yourself a role model, I don't think in this post-Prop 8 bullshit era of codified homophobia, while completely playing "tee heeeeee" with the press about something as fundamental and unchangeable as who you like to put your junk into. Is it anyone's business? Of course it's not. But would it be nice, just for fucking once, for a clearly gay, currently popular (and that's fleeting, Mary. Don't think it isn't. You're gonna be whistling the national anthem at state fairs come this time next year) to step up to the plate and say "You know what? Forget my own career, I'm gay. I'm well-liked (currently) and visible and I'm a proud gay American"? Yes that would be really nice. Because it would be honest and brave and true and exactly what (in some small part) the struggling gay youth of America needs. A person who everyone loved who also just happens to be gay.

So, Mr. Lambert, I know the coy shit is fun and cutesy and oohhh hoo hoo don't you chuckle to yourself between gulps, but it's all starting to come off a bit latent and scaredy-cat and lame. And the more you're teasing and "Maybe I'll come out in Rolling Stone, maybe I won't..." the more it becomes something that should be teased about, something that should be hinted and whispered. And it's not. It's a fact like any other fact. So please, either be honest and forthcoming about yourself, or just shut the hell up, make way for the real men, and stop calling yourself a role model. Because right now the only person you're a role model to is the kids who want to be what they want to be, but also don't want anyone to know about it. And that's sad.

Update! Yes, I know he's supposedly coming out on the cover of Rolling Stone next week. So, good for him! And good for Rolling Stone! How wonderfully this whole thing has been parlayed into a money-making endeavor. The gay community is so grateful to you, Adam.

Kristol, the dumb son of a smart conservative who went crazy, is a lazy thinker, a terrible writer, and, as we mentioned, he has always been completely wrong about everything.

So because there is essentially an extensive and quite well-funded private welfare fund for hacks who get everything wrong, the Bradley Foundation is going to straight-up give him $250,000 for no fucking reason.

"Through the Bradley Prizes, we recognize individuals like William Kristol who have made outstanding contributions, in hopes that others will strive for excellence in their respective fields," said Mr. Grebe.

AHEM. The Bradley Foundation, obviously, is a conservative foundation that exists to give money to people who just really don't need or deserve it.

So, you know, how's your Wednesday going?

If it was true that gay marriage would hurt the people who made this ad, actually literally hurt them, physically, we would book the next flight to Des Moines, hire a priest, and marry the first dude who answered a Craigslist ad.

Coincidentally Craigslist must be how they found the actors willing to blatantly lie in high-profile tv ads, because if the leaked audition reels (!!!) are any indication, they didn't go the traditional route of "hiring people who can read."

(Audition 3: THE BEST.)

So yeah we were ENRAGED all morning, thinking about this, but between seeing these hilarious audition reels and then stopping to remember that the organization behind the ads is called NOM (NOM NOM) we are beginning to find it all a bit funnier.

Krohn, 14, recently spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference, to rousing applause and adulation.

"From now on I am going to be known as a political analyst and not just a kid," the author of the self-published "Define Conservatism" told Schieffer.

And that is the most :( sentence we've read this week.

One of many important differences between our modern, enlightened society and the more brutish world of generations past is that we allow (and force) children to be, well, children.

Of course it was the Victorians who invented this idyllic state and their vision of it depended on myth and privilege, but America democratized the notion and (eventually) kicked the kids out of the factories.

You know those old paintings where children are depicted as freakish, disproportionate tiny adults? There is a very good reason that looks "wrong" to modern eyes. It is why there are few things sadder and creepier to that modern eye than seeing a child act in a non-childlike fashion, be he a soldier or pageant contestant.

There can be arguments about how much agency children should be allowed, but societally it's unacceptable to say anyone pre-pubescent has the rational capability or emotional maturity to make decisions for themselves about participation in sex, war, labor, mind-altering substances, the electoral process, or even schooling. Which is why a kid who has sex or goes to war or works in a factory is acknowledged to have been forced to do this, even if, when you ask the kid, they may say it was their idea, or that they enjoy it. Childhood is a social construct, but it's one of the cornerstones of our western society.

Now Jonathan Krohn is 14, but he was 13 when he spoke at CPAC, and he's been at this shit—self-publishing books and writing political radio programs and generally hustling and speaking in freakishly complete sentences holding forth on the tenets of conservativism—for some time.

We were a precocious, precious, well-spoken and bright young liberal atheist ourself at that age, but our parents didn't put us in a monkey suit and send us to TV studios. We just wrote funny plays and stories, at school, and desperately tried to find a social group and get girls to like us, at school. No one groomed us for radio appearances or televised speeches, they just encouraged us to continue our education until we could come to an adult decision, aided by maturity and schooling, about what the hell we wanted to do with our political beliefs and readings and sense of humor (haha sorry that didn't work out too well, mom).

So young Jonathan Krohn is "creepy" in the same way this poor fucking girl is creepy, in the way it always is when fundamentalists groom young perfect embodiments of their fucked-up ideals. It was creepy when that guy got a bunch of kids to sing a hymn to Obama, too, but the Democrats didn't invite those kids to sing at the White House. Because most liberals we know were fucking creeped out by them as much as conservatives were, and we'd hope more reasonable conservatives would be calling for Jonathan to go home and read and learn and fucking play for a few years before making his next public appearance.

Why is demonstrating how well you trained a child to parrot bullshit a coherent or convincing argument for your political philosophy? What planet are you on?

Well, you know, it has gay stuff in it. Like references to committed same sex-couples, but also to AIDS and bad words. Even though there's something called a "School Edition" of the 1995 rock musical extravaganza about AIDS-riddled bohemes (gay, straight, trans, whatevs) living and dying in the East Village, which cuts out some language and the sex song "Contact," people in places as diverse as Orange County, Texas, and West Virginia are objecting. Principals have canceled productions, incorrectly citing things like "prostitution" as their reasons. (There is no prostitution in the show).

Theater teachers and supporters of the show are upset with what they feel is a bias against homosexuals. The director at Corona del Mar High School, in Newport Beach, said that he undertook the show because he'd seen a rise in homophobic language on the school's campus. But the principal shut him down and remains tight lipped about the whole gay thing.

So where should we fall down on this? Outrage over gay suppression and backwards thinking and all that ("We're a bit back in the woods here," said a West Virginia principal who stopped her school's version)? Or should we just sigh and resign ourselves to the fact that even shows as relatively tame as Rent will still rankle in big, lopsided America? Well, as I said to a friend earlier, high schools wouldn't do Buried Child or Oleanna or even Angels in America. Nor should they. It's just an age and experience thing. But, as she argued back, kids should see Rent if it'll pry open their eyes a bit. So when do they get that opportunity, if not at their school?

Ultimately I think it's a case by case basis. Some poor decisions will be made, some brave and convicted ones will be too. It's the good/bad nature of theatre that, unlike movies, everyone can tackle a piece, and make it their own issuey, bad production if they want to. While the she show's composer Jonathan Larson and his producers and cast may not have found the show scandalous fourteen long years ago, some sweater-vested principal might find his own school's version to be Last Tango in Paris: For Kids. We have to take that good and take that bad and just be glad, I guess, that the debate and controversy and silliness can exist at all. I mean, at least they're fighting over a show that was once seen as something of a polemic, right? It's not like we get arguments about really tame shows anymore!

Oh, wait.

Oddly this doesn't appear to be any sort of interrogation procedure, though drugging, forced nudity, and sexual humiliation are of course what CIA interrogators have been specializing in at various black sites these last couple years. But this guy, "a recent convert to Islam," apparently just spiked the drinks of at least two Muslim women and you can guess the rest.

The discovery of more than a dozen videotapes showing the CIA officer engaged in sex acts with other women has led the Justice Department to broaden its investigation to include at least one other Arab country, Egypt, where the CIA officer had been posted earlier in his career, according to law enforcement officials.

Videotape of him having sex with "other women" suggests he's been at this a while. The videos were "secretly recorded," seized from the officer's house in Algiers, and show one of the alleged victims "in a 'semi-conscious state.'"

The CIA obviously has a lot of important work to do in Algeria, working with local authorities to, you know, fight terror, so this will probably set things back quite a bit, for some time, because apparently no one in the CIA noticed this guy repeatedly bringing local women back to his CIA-provided home for after-hours parties where he drugged them and filmed himself having sex with them. Some good intelligence work there, guys.

(Isn't that ABC news graphic great? It was a guy in a suit!)