Court proceedings for Bustamante—a 15-year-old who confessed to what authorities characterize as the premeditated slaughter of a 9-year-old neighbor, then led them to the hidden corpse—have so far focused on how she will be tried and where she will live. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that the options are limited:

Missouri's nationally respected juvenile justice system has no secure place to put a 15-year-old girl accused of a violent murder.

It's a system that was built for boys.

"This is real different for all of us," said Bill Heberle, deputy director of the Division of Youth Services. At Bustamante's certification hearing, Heberle testified that the state doesn't have a secure facility—meaning one with fences and locked gates—for girls.

... "We simply don't receive that many young girls that are committed to us for a heinous crime," Heberle said. "Our girls tend to be more violent toward themselves."

Bustamante certainly has exhibited violence toward herself, including a suicide attempt two years ago. While the Missouri juvenile justice system tries to puzzle out what to do with an alleged female thrill killer, the internet is busy rubbernecking at Alyssa's exuberant "Jackass stunt" videos, wherein she imitates the exuberantly male MTV series of yore. Bustamante's YouTube account has been the source of much commotion—it was there that she listed "killing people" as a "hobby," and the Associated Press described a video clip in which where Bustamante shocks herself on an electric fence, then coaxes her brothers into doing the same. At the time, the clip was thought to be lost to the black hole of disabled YouTube accounts. But, like everything unfortunate on the internet, it has miraculously found its way back to the limelight:

An internet archivist reposted several of Bustamante's videos—which range from Good Charlotte tributes to swimming pool splash-a-thons with her brothers—and Gawker commenter TheLemon posted it here, which means we just crowdsourced a murder investigation?

Jefferson City, MO police say that 15-year-old Bustamante confessed to the gruesome murder of 9-year-old Elizabeth Olten, whose throat was slashed and who endured multiple stab wounds; that Bustamante planned the crime in advance; that she hid the body; and that, as the Associated Press summarizes, she did it "without provocation because she wanted to know what it felt like." What's more, Bustamante apparently recorded some of her more disturbing thoughts and actions on social networking sites:

On a YouTube profile viewed by The Associated Press, which has since been taken down, Bustamante listed her hobbies as "killing people" and "cutting." A year ago, Bustamante posted a video to the site in which she appears to intentionally shock herself on an electric fence near her home, then goads her two younger brothers into doing the same.

Alyssa's MySpace and Facebook profiles are locked, but we managed a few glimpses of profiles under cutesy handles Alyssaheartsyou<3 and ramen_noodles_w00t on MySpace and her girly full name, Alyssa Dailene Bustamante, on Facebook:






Like most teens, Bustamante posed for profile pictures that aimed to communicate something about herself. The message is alternately run-of-the-mill and grim. Did the adults in Alyssa's life catch the red flags? Few details about Bustamante's home and school life have emerged, though Fox News reports that Bustamante had been in and out of mental health care facilities:

Juvenile officer David Cook testified that Bustamante has received mental health services since September 2007 after she attempted suicide. She had a 10-day stay in the mid-Missouri Mental Health Center after the attempt, and has received mental health services from Pathways Community Behavioral Healthcare in Jefferson City since.

Cook said Bustamante takes Prozac for depression and also received services for mood swings and self-harm. Cook said Bustamante has a history of cutting herself, but said that there were no indications she was homicidal.

Bustamante has been in police custody since she led authorities to Olten's body on Oct. 23, and was certified this week as an adult so she can be tried as one. 9-year-old victim Elizabeth Olten is remembered as a happy child who loved animals and playing dress up.

Spend even a few minutes on a politically-inclined blog that leans to the left, and you'll spot the little red-and-white "News1News" logo (above) attached to the upper-left corner a YouTube clip, usually of Glenn Beck ranting hilariously or otherwise being horrible. News1News specializes in capturing and uploading Fox bloviator's most outrageous statements for all of eternity. And each day, we bloggers—from the Huffington Post, Mediaite, Truthdig, Gawker, etc.—plucked newsworthy clips from News1News' Youtube channel, surrounded them with our words, and put them on our sites. (In fact, Mediaite's feature "Your Moment of Glenn" is all News1News clips.) From all this blog love, News1News videos had more than 20 million cumulative views by the time it was shut down. It was the simple, convenient way to stoke Liberal ire!

But today, it appears that Fox News determined it was time to close this one-stop Liberal blog fodder shop: They sent more than 150 DMCA takedown notices to YouTube regarding Fox News clips on the News1News channel, said the channel's proprietor, John. (John, a doctor living in Washington, DC, didn't want his last name used.) This put the channel well over YouTube's controversial "three-strike" copyright violation limit. News1News was shut down, and John was inundated with emails from caffeine-addled bloggers asking, frantically, "what happened!?"

Because, now, if you try to watch Hannity's infamous apology to Jon Stewart on the Huffington Post, or Michael Jackson's "ghost" on Gawker, or Glenn Beck saying dumb stuff on Truthdig, you will only see "This Video is no longer available due to copyright claim by Fox News LLC". (SPOOKY!!)

Which, granted, these clips did belong to Fox, and they were well in their rights to have them taken down, as specified by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. So how do we know this is a politically-motivated move by Fox to hinder the liberal blogosphere's ability to make fun of them? Because plenty of Fox News clips are still available on YouTube—only on conservative-leaning channels: GlennBeckDailyClips, for example has more than 630 clips of, well, the Glenn Beck Program. And ConservativeNation has 186 stomach-churning videos from the whole spectrum of quality Fox News programing. Also: Duh, Fox News would totally do something like this.

News1News is back up, at a new address—at least until Fox takes it down again. But what's surprising about this whole episode isn't that Fox will use digital copyright law to fight back against its political opponents; it's that the operators of these popular cable news-ripping YouTube channels are actually pretty important players in the blog game. Think about it: They not only get to select which cable news clips have the possibility of "going viral" and becoming news themselves, but if they're taken down, whole swaths of video-based blog posts become a lot of words surrounding a big empty space.

Fox News thought John was important enough to take down, even though he's just some guy whose hobby is clipping videos and putting them on YouTube. And John said that network bigwigs took enough notice when one of his MSNBC clips hit 500,000 views that VP of Digital Media, Mark Lukasiewicz, personally called him to say they had their eye on him. (Mark Lukasiewicz could not be reached for comment because he is important and it is 9:30pm.)

How does John do it? "I DVR things," he said. "I know what people are going to find interesting. You can watch a Bill O'Reilly show and you can pick out the things that are going to make heads explode. Literally, when my head explodes I know it's going to be a good clip."

UPDATE: Fox filed three takedown notices against the new News1News account this morning. (See below.) STEEEERRRRRIKE ONE!

UPDATE 2: It appears that both GlennbeckClipsDaily and ConservativeNation YouTube accounts are now "suspended". A commenter claiming to be the owner of ConservativeNation says: "it seems as though Fox is hell bent getting ALL their clips off You Tube..I don't think this is aimed specifically at liberals." That could certainly be true—but the fact that these accounts didn't go down until after this article went up still suggests a preference for targeting liberal channels. (ConservativeNewMedia—a popular conservate channel that wasn't mentioned originally in this article—remains active. Let's see it it goes down now!)

Or so we hear from a College Park tipster claiming to be familiar with the residences of Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg (paper wealth: $2 billion) and YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim (estimated wealth: $64 million). Public records confirm that Karim lives in the two-by-twelve-block Palo Alto neighbohood, adjacent to Stanford University; records indicate Zuckerberg has for months occupied property nearby, albeit in the form of Facebook's new headquarters, a short walk away from Karim.

But Zuckerberg is now a neighbor in a much more real sense, according to our tipster, renting a home right next door to Karim (as in side by side) on the same street. The brief commute would be one good reason for living there. Another: It looks like a leafy, laid back area, according to the ample photographs of the street on Google Maps. Based on Karim's address this is the block they share:

Why are Zuckerberg's neighbors ratting out his address? His employees are taking up the parking, and, we're told, residents complain that the fast-growing company is not providing enough spots (they're apparently not mollified by a proposal to begin requiring residential permits in some areas). You should probably get on that, Mark; these people know where you live.

In the meantime, local residents are missing the real outrage: That, in their 'hood, even insanely wealthy startup founders live in what most American suburbanites would consider modest pads.

This particular incident is imbued with racial overtones and, as such, is likely to be something of a YouTube sensation. According to a translation posted on YouTube, the Chinese woman said the fight started when she asked to sit next to the other woman, who is African American, and was rebuffed. "She has no heart, always bullying chinese people," the woman reportedly says. YouTube commenters are discussing the matter in their typical nuanced, racially sensitive manner (i.e. being flaming bigots, repeatedly).

The racial angle aside, the incident is yet another example of how you really can't freak out on mass transit or on the streets or in airports any more:

• Have a tantrum because you missed your flight? You may well be remembered as the Cathay Pacific airport lady, for the rest of your whiny life.
  
• Flash your dick on the subway? There's an app for taking a picture of that.
  
• Shove a guy off his bicycle, while he's in motion? Someone will film it, and you'll have to pay.

What does some state politico in Maryland have to say to the WaPo about all this?

"if somebody for whatever reason decides this drug is something they want to partake in, they can buy it like they're buying a comic book or chewing gum. You don't even have to be 18. . . . I just don't think you should be able to buy salvia like you'd buy a Mounds bar."

Au contraire grown-up man, because if kids could buy salvia at every single Duane Reade checkout line just like they buy those delicious coconutty Mounds bars then maybe they could be more productive, in terms of making these Youtube videos, which are America's greatest natural resource.
[Don't stop Smokin Smarties either!]

How does an obnoxiously over-the-top kid on digital helium land a feature film deal, as Fred has done, according to a casting call obtained by TubeFilter? By having the most, or now second-most, followers of anyone on Google's video site. And by playing perfectly to Hollywood's fantasy that the branded serials its traditional TV studios specialize in can be profitably replicated online: Fred, you see, earns a reported six figures off this cheaply-produced stuff.

Don't tell studio honchos that, marvels of nature like "Fred" and sharp wits like Ze Frank not withstanding, YouTube will forever be dominated by cat videos, plane crashes and other spontaneously-obtained footage. After all, we wouldn't want the "Fred"s of tomorrow to miss their big Hollywood paydays.

[via All Things D]

People have viewed more than 500,000 times Yazdani's 2007 daredevil stunt, in which he spray paints an LA freeway overpass from a narrow ledge. The viewers included sheriff's transit investigators, who nailed Yazdani for 32 felony vandalism counts out of hundreds in which they came to suspect him, according to the LA Times. He originally got off with time served, probation and graffiti removal duty, but he violated his probation this summer with more tagging, so now he's been sentenced to three years and eight months in prison, thanks to his YouTube-enabled criminal record.

YouTube has emerged as the medium of choice for our nation's most self-destructively brazen criminals and miscreants. It's an amazingly powerful way to get in trouble with the law! In addition to having a buddy upload your tagging exploits, you can...

• ...be a cop and shove a rider off his bike for no good reason, on YouTube;
  
• ...be a bigshot tech executive who snorts cocaine, on YouTube;
• ...beat a cheerleader unconscious, on YouTube;
• ...work for Domino's and do disgusting things with food, in their kitchen, on YouTube. (This one won't necessarily land you in jail, it's just a bonus item for those who prefer national infamy to prison time.)

It's important to note that these are only the most self promotional of wrongdoers, not the worst. Everyone knows that the absolute worst criminals stick to Craigslist and Facebook.

Until recently, Jim Wiatt served as Chairman of the venerable William Morris Agency, styling himself as a Bill Clinton BFF, savoir of the environment and aspirant to the throne of all Hollywood. That was until the Endeavor's Ari Emmanuel engineered a buyout of the agency, creating the new WME and promptly sent Wiatt hitting the bricks, hat in hand, and apparently, according to AllThingsD, headed to Google.

Sure, YouTube gets enough traffic every nanosecond to clog the Holland Tunnel from here until Armaggedon; but trading in private jet flown trips to inspect Megan Fox at work on the set in Tahiti or Reykjavík for the chance to oversee a collection cat videos is just a teeny bit of a comedown.

According to the report, Wiatt would work to convince Hollywood players to shoot videos for YouTube. So Brad and Angelina shouldn't be alarmed if a man in a Hugo Boss suit knocks on their door and asks, "Have you ever considered sharing with the world the adorable way your cat can open the refrigerator with his paws?" That man is not a salesman. He's somebody's ex-agent.

The history of Hollywood execs taking their magic online of course is a sad trail of tears. Michael Eisner parlayed his Disney chairmanship into the Executive Producers slot for web-serial Prom Queen. And Yahoo is still digging out from the damage wrought when Warner Bros. chair Terry Semel deigned to grace the portal with his star power.

But who knows, perhaps Wiatt has timed it brilliantly and for Hollywood, the web is a concept who's time has come at last.

[via Adrants]

In a one minute statement posted to the "Houstoncriminallaw" YouTube page, Murray said the following:

I want to thank all of my patients and friends who have sent such kind emails, letters and messages to let me know of your support and prayers for me and my family. Because of all that is going on, I am afraid to return phone calls or use my email. Therefore, I recorded this video to let all of you know that I have been receiving your messages. I have not been able to thank you personally, which as you know, is not normal for me. Your messages give me strength and courage and keep me going. They mean the world to me. Please don't worry — as long as I keep God in my heart and you in my life, I will be fine. I have done all I can do. I told the truth and I have faith that the truth will prevail. God bless you and thank you.

Per the Post, the guy who was supposed to be on watch from Teterboro was on his cell with a contractor, talking about a dead cat who was removed from the airport when the crash happened.

The phone call, to an airport contractor, was a "silly conversation" concerning a dead cat that had been removed from the airport, a retired union official said, in an account supported by transportation officials also familiar with the contents of the call. The controller and his supervisor at Teterboro have been placed on administrative leave pending an investigation by the Federal Aviation Administration. "He was on the phone, and we have made no determination about what role this may have played in the accident," said NTSB spokesman Peter Knudson. "It was a lot of things happening in just a few minutes."

To say both of them have probably had the worst week of their lives would be an understatement. If this is, in fact true, one guy's small mistake, not made, could've possibly prevented a collision where everyone in it ended up dead.

And now, footage taken by a tourist on a boat below the crash is circulating around the internet; it's been around for the last week, but a New York news station did a frame-by-frame of the crash; one wing goes spinning off of the body of the plane the moment it comes in contact with the helicopter. The FAA's using the footage for their investigation.

Surely, there's something trite to be said for representing yet another step in the progress of eyewitness accounts becoming even more readily available following tragic accidents, so we can learn from them and use them to prevent future instances as technology progresses forward. Sadly, this is the last thing that'd occur to some people, as it mostly just presents another opportunity for a dumbass to make another dumb joke on YouTube:

And he thinks it's a plane crash that'd make us look ridiculous to aliens. Go figure.

Earlier today several competing social networks banded together to fight the DDOS attacks on their respective properties. Google and Facebook were able to keep the effects minimal while Twitter and others suffered periodic outages and severe slowness through out the day.

Max Kelly, chief security officer at Facebook, explained that the attack specifically targeted Cyxym, and was directed toward websites which he frequented or on which he held accounts, including his LiveJournal, where we find the first suggestion that there was a big target painted on his virtual back:

Cyxymu's LiveJournal page wasn't accessible, but a cached version showed that it was updated on Thursday with a message about the denial of service (DOS) attacks on his accounts on the US-based sites. "Now it's obvious it's a special attack against me and Georgians," the message in Russian said.

There is no word on exactly who was behind this attack and Kelly declined to speculate. But we wonder: Did Cyxym have a Gizmodo commenter account too or was the DDOS attack on Gawker Media an entirely unrelated coincidence? [CNET]

Now, anyone who's paying a lick of attention knows that the tech-savvy Obama administration is one of most skilled in the art of communication than any presidency from any era in U.S. history. We all know about the president's love for his Blackberry, his captivating skills as an orator, the White House's Flickr, Twitter and YouTube accounts, the Obama campaign's use of the web to raise ungodly amounts of money to vaporize well-established opponents, galvanize volunteers and disseminate it's message, but is all of that really working for them right now? Jennifer Senior seems to think so.

With the exception of George W. Bush, all of Obama's predecessors had a limited number of news outlets in which to make their cases, limited space in which to do it, and a time-bound moment to make their mark-if voters didn't catch their press conferences or read the morning paper, they were pretty much out of luck. Now, as all of us are aware, the web provides infinite space for both its own native forms (blogs, news aggregators, original YouTube posts) and old media (newspapers, TV clips), making it possible for us to watch a speech or read a story whenever we want, unconstrained by space and time. The resulting landscape is vast, diffuse, and multiplatform. And Obama is a multiplatform natural: He's done books and audiobooks; he commands audiences on both YouTube and from the podium; he BlackBerrys; he makes a nice photo. He recognizes that, in the same way a blog can't survive on just one post a day, a presidency can no longer survive on one message per day or one press conference per year. Instead, you have to turn on a fire hose.

The above paragraph sums up the tone of the entire piece pretty well. The whole thing basically reads like another big piece of rhetorical fellatio from the Obama-loving press, the type of stuff that right-wing talking heads will use as evidence that the press is in bed with the current president. As for the doubters, those who say that the president is cheapening himself and his message through media over-saturation, Senior says this:

The president has taken a fair amount of heat for this full-saturation approach. Friends and critics alike have complained it cheapens his words, erodes his mystique, and, worst of all, smacks of desperation. "You don't have to be on television every minute of every day," cracked Bill Maher recently. "You're the president, not a rerun of Law & Order." Yet it's also clear that the public has a near-insatiable appetite for Obama-related content, from the trivial to the serious. Dreams From My Father is now in its 156th week on the New York Times' best-seller list. Bill Burton, a White House deputy press secretary, tells me that he fields almost as many phone calls from the celebrity press as from the Washington Post, as if the president were George Clooney.

That's it, pretty much the entirety of the other side of this story—the president's book is still a bestseller and the tabloid press is ringing the White House phone, thus everything is dandy and Barack Obama is the smartest president ever!

At one point in the article, Senior praises Obama for having a 58% approval rating at the time of publication, a rating that is mediocre at best historically. Further, his numbers have dropped even more in past couple of days, with the latest Gallup poll putting his approval rating at 55%, putting him in tenth place among other presidents since the inception of approval ranking polls in the 1940s. His present ratings are lower than those of Jimmy Carter and George H. W. Bush, two men who were not re-elected to second terms, at the same point in their presidencies.

And of course, there is the administration's continued failure to produce anything resembling a coherent message regarding health care reform. Despite facing an opposition that hasn't produced anything resembling an alternative, preferring instead to use tired scare tactics to derail any reform legislation, the president's poll numbers on health care continue to circle the drain.

The vaunted Obama message machine, the one so glowingly profiled in this week's New York Magazine, is failing miserably right now, despite the fact that the economy seems to be rebounding. There's really no two ways about it.

The Message is the Message [New York]

Ben Konop's a jaunty young fella running for mayor of Toledo. He went to tape some photo-op and was relentlessly heckled to distraction by some dude just sitting on a porch, saying "boo" for no apparent reason, as you'll see in the video clip above, which is well worth watching. According to ABClocal:

[Heckler Maxwell] Austin says he mispronounced Konop's last name on purpose. He also says before the cameras were rolling, someone with Konop's campaign trampled his flowerbed, and that's what initially set him off.

Today the two held their own Beer Summit and quashed their differences or whatever. Thanks, Obama.

[Via Agency Spy] Other ideas:

Learn to dance.

Do whatever Ronn [sic] Torossian says. Communicate gooder!