Legendary SciFi author Larry Niven is apparently a far-right-wing crank. A far-right-wing crank who advises the Department of Homeland Security! Niven, famous for his richly detailed stories of precisely defined aliens coexisting with humans, is now famous for trying to explain to a room full of government officials that "a good way to help hospitals stem financial losses is to spread rumors in Spanish within the Latino community that emergency rooms are killing patients in order to harvest their organs for transplants." Also: "The problem [of hospitals going broke] is hugely exaggerated by illegal aliens who aren't going to pay for anything anyway." The man wrote the Ringworld series and invented the Flash Mob so he's beloved by nerds and obviously qualified to advise important government agencies on how best to deal with the Latino menace. [Guanabee]

Richard Martin, the crazy old super in Bay Ridge who enjoys posting abusive signs about his tenants and filling his lobby with garbage to teach them all a lesson, is now aiming his strongly worded sign-based commentary at the free press. The newly minted media critic has taken aim at Daily News reporter Matthew Hysiak, whom Martin accuses of being "shit" for misquoting him in an article. Already, Martin has achieved a more insightful level of press criticism than Howard Kurtz. In further news, somebody has stolen Martin's umbrella! Did he post a sign about it? You bet! Photos of his news critique and his arch rejoinder to the umbrella thief [via BeehiveHairdresser], after the jump.

Shelley Ross, the crazed, "hard charging", possibly tequlia guzzling CBS producer may be leaving the network. Employees of The Early Show, some sort of morning talk show that Ross worked on, are saying that she hasn't been to work since Monday and that some boxes were hauled out of her office. A meeting had taken place where timid, probably bandaged and scarred workers were asked to air their grievances aloud and in public, under promise of protection from any bloody, horrific attack. A few brave, stupid sons of bitches spoke up, but of course it took the "famous" people to affect a lasting change. Reportedly Julie "Chenbot" Chen and some dude named Harry Smith, who anchor this probably mythical morning show, said it was either Ross's ass or they were out. It looks like the famous people won. As they always do. [NYP]

Mike Huckabee, who is still going around pretending to run for President, who also used to be fat, got skinny, and is now getting fat again, and who is also a crazy religious nut who hides his paleolithic views behind a delightful sense of self-deprecating humor and convincing charm, was on Tyra today. Because Tyra is America's Official Ambassador To the Gays, and because she's not afraid of the tough questions, she asked him to explain his position on the Homosexual Agenda. Huckabee responded with impressive candor while saying absolutely nothing (except that homosexuality is a choice and a sin). Maybe this is why Tim Gunn was sad! (Also we kind of want Tyra to moderate the next presidential debate! She's... more reasonable and serious than Tim Russert, and asks more pertinent questions. What a country!) Video below. Also: most important photograph ever, attached.

Larry Sinclair, Barack Obama's alleged former gay sex partner, was paid $10,000 by WhiteHouse.com to take a polygraph test, which he failed. Turns out the weird ugly rambling toothless gentleman from YouTube might not be telling the whole truth when he claims he gave Obama a blowjob in 1999! We've been getting odd emails from internet crazy types with AOL email addresses touting Sinclair's claims since we first ran his video last month. The crazies were very excited for his polygraph test, and if he'd passed it, WhiteHouse.com promised him $100k. Related: Dear WhiteHouse.com, we had a kinky three-way with Hillary Clinton and Ron Paul at the Limelight in 1985. (Ron was gentle, Hillary selfish.) Bonus nutty email attached.

The New York Daily News went totally, utterly insane today with their "editorial" on the upcoming trials of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other alleged 9/11 conspirators. Headlined "Death is too good," the fourth paragraph reads, in its entirety, "Burn in hell!" Then it just sorta keeps going in that fashion for a while.

Did you know that seemingly harmless job listings site and blog network MediaBistro is a tool of the FBI? It's all true. FishbowlLA editor Kate Coe wrote an item about the Clintons' secret CIA plot to destory former POW John McCain. Which led one intrepid blogger to uncover the secrets behind the CIA control of the entirety of MediaBistro and Kate Coe's connection to the political assassinations of artists Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake.

As Super Tuesday drags to a middle, it's worthwhile to look at the rising and occasionally falling fortunes of New York Senator Hillary Clinton, our next, cryingest president, among our nation's most unfortunately influential lunatic opinion-makers.

Orange-headed TV scumbag Lou Dobbs will not run for President. Because the Harvard-educated man of the people doesn't really want to spend too much time with those people. "I'm too impatient with the blathering fools who make up the crowd that attends the political process," he tells TVNewser. Also personally offensive to the only guy looking out for the working man: "standing there at chicken dinners, talking about all the things that really don't matter." Let Lou Dobbs eat his chicken dinner in peace, people! The man is hungry. Hungry for change! (And chicken.) [TVNewser]

British novelist Joan Brady says that toxic fumes from the shoe factory next door made her crazy-so crazy that she wrote a crime thriller! She's won a settlement of £115,000, the Times of London reports. (God, that's such a good idea-especially for those of us living in Greenpoint). The solvent fumes numbed her hands and legs, and she couldn't concentrate on writing literary fiction. (In her defense, the health department registered an off-the-charts reading for toxins). Click for the oddly prescient excerpt.

Lou Dobbs took over two hours of prime CNN time last night (while they were supposed to be reporting the results from the Michigan primaries, no less!) to plug his book about how only he has the answer to what ails America. What ails America, by the way, is Mexicans taking our jobs here and Chinese people taking our jobs elsewhere (then sending us back POISON TOYS). The entire spectacle exposed the uneasy position Dobbs has at The Most Trusted Name in News. The first hour, as usual, was given over, mostly, to "real" news about politics and Michigan. The second was mostly free-wheeling opinionated shouty interviews with a panel made up of Bill Bennett some folks Dobbs ignored entirely. As other networks broadcast early returns from Michigan, Dobbs appeared aggravated when he had to jump to Wolf Blitzer with actual "news" on the close Romney/McCain race. Wolf looked uncomfortable when his fellow Election Night coverage marquee anchor star referred to the Democratic Party's "screwing over" of the voters of Michigan. "That's one way to look at it," Wolf charitably mumbled through his beard.

Flackers, a word? You will almost certainly be fired should you use the slug "LOONY-BIN-RALLY" on a press release about a march for mental illness. Yesterday, Philadelphia Daily News columnist Dan Gross reported that a PR Newswire employee had done just that, prompting her dismissal and a pleading correction from the company, which distributes press releases to over 4,000 news aggregators. How did the company stumble across the faux pas? Why, News man Gross called in the tip himself! Filling a regular column is hard. "PR Newswire deeply regrets an error that occurred yesterday in a news release, re-sent below," the correction reads. "PR Newswire understands that such terminology feeds the prejudice and discrimination associated with mental illnesses and will take steps to ensure that nothing like this occurs in the future." Thing is? The original wasn't wrong, per se. After all, it was a rally for a loony-bin. Full-blown insensitivity, on the other hand, typically warrants something a tad weightier. Like a press release. Release after the jump.

Subject: TOM CRUISE?
To: tips@gawker.com
I'm the wife of a united states soldier. I have watched T. Cruise for some time now .I'm no Dr. so someone should tell Katie,run,run as fast as you can.T.Crui se needs to be in Afghanistan under my husband.He would either come down to this earth or Ft.levenwort.hI thank you so much for putting this out.

The crazy one's back on The View! Elisabeth Hasselbeck returned from her brief maternity leave, dragging her little half-quarterback baby onto the show with her. The ladies did an entire hour of "HOT TOPICS," also known as the "wait for Sherri and Liz to say something jaw-droppingly stupid" segment, just so that Hasselbeck would have an opportunity to say something stupid about Iraq. The baby, like most View guest hosts, just looked terrified.

What's this? Manhattan's private schools are dispensing with the legacy advantage? No longer will younger siblings be assured admission into Dalton, Spence or Collegiate by surfing the coattails of their older (smarter!) enrolled brothers and sisters? Cripes! At Columbia Grammar, so many siblings of current students have applied this year, that few—wait for it—"outside" boys will be accepted. "I'm not going to say a number, because I don't want to set off any more panic out there than there already is," the admissions director there told the New York Sun. "It's not a joke anymore," a private admissions advisor told the paper. "If you have a sibling, you'd be crazy not to apply to a number of schools. You'd be nuts not to do that." Other ways to know you're out of your tree? You find yourself using terms generally used to describe plagues, disasters and other mass calamities during an interview with a reporter about kindergarten.

When last we heard from Neil "Style" Strauss, rock critic turned shiny headed Game author/pickup artist, he was excitedly announcing that he'd gotten the film rights to his book back. This weekend, he emailed friends again to inform them of... well, the meaning of life. Yes. It involves the Bible and Wii Tennis and also The Game, natch. Just read the email!

So everybody's cracking up these days, streaking through Times Square and being carted off to Bellevue! Heck, we know. Some days it's all we can do not to rip off our clothes and run screaming through The Deuce. But what's the famous hospital like, especially for the uninsured loon? I went on a visit to their urgent care unit, accompanied only by persistent anxiety problems and creative-underclass rage.

In an otherwise charming story about a stolen painting recovered in a trash pile 20 years later, it's kinda hard to escape the mounting evidence that the 'hero' is utterly insane. To wit: Elizabeth Gibson, age unmentioned (though looking like a well-preserved 50?), "self-professed Dumpster diver," found a 38-by-51-inch painting in a pile of trash on the Upper West Side. So she took it home (it had a "strange power") and hung it up. Three years later, she realized it was a FAMOUS STOLEN MASTERPIECE. So, naturally, she built a false wall in her "crammed" apartment and wrapped the painting in old shower curtains.

New York Post nutcase Andrea Peyser is titillated by the sight of a humbled Foxy Brown arriving at a Brooklyn court (from prison) to plead not guilty to her third phone-related assault. Brown's drab jacket and plaid pants (H&M!!) and "matted" hair excite Peyser to a degree that few cut-down-to-size "divas" could hope to match. Also, this is maybe the single horrifying sentence written in any newspaper in America today: "She also carried no BlackBerry, no $1,500 Louis Vuitton satchel—and revealed nothing of the precious nipple we've come to know and love."

The tinfoil-hat crazies who think that George W. Bush planned 9/11 as a way to enact his monomaniacal plans to appoint himself Emperor For Life of a religious theocracy in which women's uteri are property of the state are gathering in Chicago for the Yearly Kos convention, where they will smoke dope, burn bras, wear beards, and compare the president to Hitler. The New Yorker's Hendrik Hertzberg is there blogging the whole thing. No, it's not just you, the world has gone crazy. [WWD]