Legendary cross-dressing Jamaican drug lord Christopher "Dudus" Coke, who was extradited to New York after setting off a bloody neighborhood drug war in Jamaica, yesterday pleaded guilty to racketeering charges and now faces just 23 years in jail instead of a possible life sentence for a lifetime's worth of scumbaggery. We'll probably never know more about the pink wig.
In a gratuitously and joyously dickish move today, the White House announced that it would address a joint session of Congress next Wednesday at 8 p.m., right when the long-planned NBC/Politico debate for Republican presidential candidates is scheduled to take place. And this afternoon, Speaker John Boehner issued the President his formal invitation to visit Capitol Hill — only for the next night.
Buried in the rubble of Muammar Qaddafi's Tripoli compound is a sheaf of documents indicating that David Welch, the assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs under the Bush Administration who now works for infrastructure giant Bechtel, was providing urgent and detailed advice to the Qaddafi regime as the NATO bombs fell.
One of President Michele Bachmann's plans for beefing up American energy independence would be to drill the Everglades. Again, that's "drill the Everglades," as a supposed means of extracting mass quantities of fossil fuels. This idea may be just terrible enough to disgust some of her fellow Tea Partiers.
Sarah Palin has long planned to attend an Iowa rally organized by the Tea Party of America on September 3. The Tea Party folks invited popular author Christine O'Donnell to speak there, too! A fine catch, to be sure. But when you lump so many historically unreliable people and groups together, things tend to fall apart in comical fashion.
Some big news in the telecom world today, as the Justice Department has sued to block AT&T's $39 billion purchase of T-Mobile on antitrust grounds. This is just like in the old days, when antitrust laws were enforced.
We well-meaning men have been trying to tell you this for years, ladies: your fancy hairdo is dumb. And it sucks up time that could be better spent on other things like, I don't know, just to pick an example out of thin air... doing some exercise to get yourself in shape, for once.
The Mangyongbong, a ferry that was previously used to shuttle passengers between North Korea and Japan, is now North Korea's hot new tourist vessel. Yesterday was the Mangyongbong's maiden voyage as a pleasure craft, embarking on a tour of the country's eastern coastline, and North Korea's official KCNA has the details:
Why did Rick Perry completely change his mind about entering the presidential race, thereby stripping Mitt Romney of his inevitable frontrunner status? Perhaps he's too flippant about the whole deal. Or he just wants to exact revenge on Romney for dishonoring his beloved Boy Scouts, nine years ago.
The Obama administration picked a quiet late-summer day to finally remove acting ATF director Kenneth Melson over the botched "Fast and Furious" operation that ultimately put assault rifles into the hands of criminals along the border. Melson wasn't fired though — merely relocated to a new Justice Department job. This is a great "win" for the NRA!
Former Delaware Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell has tried everything to bring attention to her book release and tour, mostly by walking out of interviews and claiming that Piers Morgan was making inappropriate sexytalk with her. How long can she milk these brief flare-ups to extend the last second of her 15 minutes? Trick question; she can't.
Look: The Obama administration doesn't want to screw up the 10th anniversary of 9/11, okay? There's going to be quite a bit of focus around the world on the United States and its allies that day, and no one wants important government people going out and screwing something up or saying something stupid. So let's pre-forgive the administration for its nitpicky "9/11 instructions" (more like "guidelines") being sent out to bureaucrats both here and around the world.
Last summer, Fox News anchor Bill O'Reilly came to believe that his wife was romantically involved with another man. Not just any man, but a police detective in the Long Island community they call home. So O'Reilly did what any concerned husband would do: He pulled strings to get the police department's internal affairs unit to investigate one of their own for messing with the wrong man's lady.
The insufferable Bernard-Henri Lévy has a new piece of self-congratulatory garbage up on the Daily Beast, in which he pats himself on the back for personally liberating Libya from the clutches of Col. Muammar Qaddafi, because in BHL's world, the Other can't do shit without the white man. Okay, first let's give credit where credit is due: BHL keeps Nicolas Sarkozy's testicles in a glass jar on his desk, and he pushed the French president to act militarily on behalf of the rebels in Libya. But the headline for BHL's ode to himself says it all — 'Victorious Return to Libya'. Here, he arrives in Tripoli's Green Square to the delight of 6.5 million Libyans and feigns respect in his victory speech to the masses:
The moose of Canada are stalking and haunting Connie Evirett and Yvonne Studley, two car-driving sisters from British Columbia. Last month Studley, 49, had a car accident involving one of the beasts; the melee left her in a coma, and the moose in a moose coffin. Then, while on the way to the hospital to visit her younger sister, 51-year-old Evirett had a moose/car accident of her own.
Polygamist leader and chronically masturbating child rapist Warren Jeffs is "in a coma and may not survive" after a hunger strike, ABC News reports. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice said the leader is in "critical but stable condition." Jeffs is serving a life sentence for with no chance of parole for 45 years for the repeated rape of two teenage wives. [ABCNews, image via AP]
In your resplendent Monday media column: an NYT ombud feud, News Corp loses its education contract, NY1 rules, government spending can't save print media, and the world's oldest grudge against Romenesko.
Jolly radio idiot Rush Limbaugh was in shock after Hurricane Irene didn't end up killing everyone on the eastern seaboard, and that the damage it did cause has been mostly well-managed by federal, state and local authorities. What's a Limbaugh to say about these generally positive developments? How about... Obama probably wanted the hurricane to be worse! Sure, say that.
