Finding himself with time on his hands post-CBS — despite that bitchin' new job at HDNet — Dan Rather will ... co-host? co-anchor? something ... with Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert tonight on Comedy Central. The trio will analyze election results live starting at 11 p.m. ET, though unfortunately Rather says he will clamp down on his trademark insane folksy witticisms. We'll be heading out shortly to get our hands dirty with some participatory democracy here in New York, where we're already hearing rumbles of poll chaos around the city due to lost voter rolls and technical foul-ups. If you've run into inadvertent disenfranchisement today in NYC through agencies human or otherwise, let us know your tales of voter angst.

If you read Radar this morning - and hopefully you read it this morning, since the site has been intermittent all afternoon - you'd have learned that Mary Mapes, disgraced producer to former CBS anchor Dan Rather, would be joining her old boss at HDNet, Mark Cuban's new high-def news channel. Just one problem, according to the New York Observer:

• Just like Britney Spears told Matt Lauer she wants to start her own magazine, houseboy Kevin Federline says he'd like to start a publication that "comes out after all the tabloids." He'd call it The Real, and we're already vying associate editor position. [R&M (last item)]
• Are Heath Ledger and Michelle Williams leaving Brooklyn? Fucking Ratner, driving away all the good celebs. [Daily Telegraph]
• Kirsten Dunst manages to not get wasted at a recent Chanel function. When free clothes are on the line, the girl knows to keep her shit together. [Page Six]
• Jessica Simpson isn't helping OK! magazine's circulation: her most recent cover sold less than Vaughniston and Britney issues. [Lowdown (2nd item)]
• The National Enquirer EIC David Perel thinks there's a conspiracy theory against the magazine, run by an evil multi-celeb terror cell and led by Britney Spears and Kate Hudson. [TMZ]
• Steely Dan emerges from obscurity to accuse the makers of You, Me and Dupree of stealing from their Cousin Dupree song. [Fox411]
• CBS quickly goes about the business of erasing Dan Rather from its history books. [Page Six]

Either Katrina Vanden Heuvel is fucking with Dan Rather or she's got a deep-seated personal desire to see him come to harm. Her advice for the disgraced former CBS anchor?

Marc Cuban's poolboy Dan Rather appeared on Larry King last night to discuss his hasty departure from CBS and his forthcoming work on HDNet. As you can imagine, the interview was nothing but fireworks:

• Though the financial details have yet to be settled, Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson are a very short stone's throw from becoming legally divorced, freeing Jessica to marry her father. [TMZ]
• A British literary magazine has published a poem written by Kate Moss for her then-beau, crackhead Pete Doherty: You love them more than you love me/So that's why I could cry all day long/that's why I can't breathe. Watch out, Donald Hall. [Page Six]
• A fight breaks out after someone tries to photograph the Black Eyed Peas at a club in Berlin. Gee, that was worth it. [R&M]
• Dan Rather won't touch Walter Cronkite with a ten-foot-pole. Maybe if the pole were longer than the tongue of a black Alabama rattler. [Page Six]
• MSNBC HATES TRANNIES: Rita Cosby's show will be cancelled in July. [Lowdown]
• When he was a wee lad, Mekhi Pfieffer was best known as the kid who went and pissed on his classmates' coats. [disco-not-disco]

• The GOP apologists at National Review want the White House to revoke the Times's press credentials. [NR]
• The White House, thankfully, doesn't think so highly of the idea. [E&P]
• Knight Ridder is officially no more. [SJMN]
• Dan Rather had to die so that CBS News could live. [NYSun]
• People style spinoff TK? Perhaps. [WWD]
• There are no mags for teenage boys, and, for some reason, the Eat the Pressers are upset about this. [HuffPost]

• Anderson's Angelina interview is "a watershed moment in the history of CNN." Huh. And we thought it was just kind of boring. [LAT]
• Connie Chung has no regrets — well, at least too few to mention — about her "Thanks for the Memories" farewell. Probably because she's the only person who hasn't had to watch it repeatedly. [TV Guide]
• Dan Rather still eats lunch. [Media Mob/NYO]
• NYP business reporter Tim Arango wants to be on TV. Oh, honey, don't we all? [Jossip]

• Try and follow: At an impromptu Prince performance at Butter, Lindsay Lohan follows her mortal enemy Paris Hilton into the bathroom. They have a big fight, because bathroom activities make you edgy and angry. Lohan returns to the main room to find Diddy sitting at her table, and jokingly asks what he's doing there. Diddy doesn't see the humor and yells at her to get out. There's a scuffle with his bodyguards, and Lohan is removed from the table. Later, at Bungalow 8, Lohan and Hilton sit at separate tables and compete to see who can stay at the club the longest. This item has been brought to you by D.A.R.E. [R&M]
• After having Cristal removed from his 40/40 clubs, Jay-Z continues his revenge on the champagne company, whose executives don't exactly love the hip-hop community's loyalty to the brand. At his performance on Sunday, Jigga will change the lyrics in his many songs that mention Cristal. Keep an eye out for creative pronunciations of "pistol." [Page Six]
• Incoming Today show host Meredith Vieira deems Dan Rather's ill-executed exit from CBS as "tacky." She's talking to you, Katie. [Lowdown]
• 75-year-old Robert Evans tallies up his seventh divorce. If he can stay alive long enough, maybe the eight marriage will be the charm. [MSNBC]
• Nicole Kidman may move to Keith Urban's rural Tennessee home, where she'll be free to get pregnant without fear of divorce. [Fox411]
• Because in the end, gay means quality, Superman gets decent reviews. [IMDb]

• Dan Rather says farewell and that he'll see us all soon. [Romenesko]
• Charlie Gibson doesn't care about ratings. Ya-huh. [WP]
• Michael Wolff doesn't like Slate because it's "by and for smart boys trying strenuously to be ever smarter than anyone they perceive as threatening their smartest status." Ironic, eh? [Slate]

OK, so Dan Rather is leaving CBS, and word is he'll most likely be joining Mark Cuban's HDNet — a cable network available only to people with HDTVs. Rather told the Times' Jacques Steinberg over the weekend that he also had two offers from "major broadcast or cable networks." As there's no obvious reason he'd go to a network with no existing news division and distribution to only 3 million homes, we've got to assume it's just because Rather really, really wants to appear in high definition. But why?

OK, so our mole was almost right. This morning, both CBS and Dan Rather's agent issued statements that the wacky newsman, a CBS News vet for 44 years and anchor of the CBS Evening News for 24 years, will be leaving the network. Because, hey, after you've given your entire career to one company, you'd expect them to throw you over when you screw up once and the wingnuts demand your scalp.

This just in:

• The ever-reliable News of the World reports that Britney Spears has signed "preliminary divorce papers." If she and K-Fed get divorced, perhaps it will pave the way for her true soul mate: the Manny. [NotW]
• Brad Pitt's parents have arrived in Africa to get a glimpse of Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt and, if we're lucky, sell any pictures they take to the highest bidder. [IMDb]
• Tommy Hilfiger gives his first on-record comment about his brawl with Axl Rose; the wee designer claims he was merely protecting himself from the inevitable sting of Axl's swinging cornrows. [Lowdown (2nd item)]
• Professional beard Penelope Cruz and Matthew McConaughey end their incomprehensible relationship. Remarkably, the world continues to turn. [People]
• The Phoenix Suns' resident Breck girl Steve Nash denies that he's having an affair with Nelly Furtado. [Page Six]
• Paris Hilton gets just stoned enough to navigate her way through the paparazzi and into da club. [TMZ]
• Tina Brown and Harry Evans continue to vigilantly defend their 6-inch garden wall from evil developers, who threaten to forever destroy their spring party-planning. [R&M (2nd item)]
• Dan Rather once said his 60 Minutes colleague Morley Safer should be "shot dead" over a crackling hickory fire that's hotter than the devil's anvil. [Page Six]

• The Onion Diet: Move to New York, eat sushi, slim down. [NYT]
• Sez Dumenco: Magazines will soon start to die, too, and Anna Wintour will lose her Town Car, and it's all Lucky's fault. Of course, he says it with words like "transactionality." [Ad Age]
• WSJ discovers people. [WSJ]
• Jack Shafer says newspapers better give him what he wants, or else they're just gonna wither and die. [Slate]
• Joel Stein, says Jon Friedman, is just like Oprah Winfrey. But, you know, poorer and whiter and Jewier. [MW]
• Journo types who drink tab: David Edelstein, Steve Brill, David Bradley, and Danny Goldberg. Now you know. [New Yorker]
• Layoffs at Blender. [WWD (second item)]
• Journalism needs to more money and time from owners, more facts, more international coverage, and more tough questions, says Dan Rather. Also, it would very much like a pony for its birthday. [LAT]
• If CW — the WB-UPN amalgam — works, a CNN-CBS News merger could finally happen. [Mediaweek]

• Gays get confused about plan to take over all media and instead simply take over other gay media, which doesn't really help the cause. [SFC]
• Whatever Bush's goons on the CPB say, Americans trust news on public broadcasting the most. [B&C]
• St. Martin's Press to re-release Scooter Libby's novel. We can't wait. [AP via USAT]
• TV indecency complaints on the rise again, presumably coming from people we'd all find horribly indecent in the first place. [B&C]
• 60 Minutes correspondent Dan Rather might have a segment on 60 Minutes this weekend. Wow. [NYT]
• New Yorker on DVD is tough to navigate because God forbid Conde Nast should pay freelancers for reproducing their work. [WSJ]
• Even in New Orleans, nobody eats quite like NYT's Johnny Apple. [New Orleans T-P]
• So apparently Maureen Dowd wrote a book. [Newsweek]

• In new VF, producer Mary Mapes tells her side of Memogate. We can't bring ourselves to read it; perhaps you can. [VF (pdf)]
• In war over unauthorized Donald Trump bio, author calls subject a cartoon character; Trump replies by proving the point. [NYP]
• CBS News White House reporter John Roberts didn't really mean any sexual innuendo when he called Judge Sam Alito "sloppy seconds." We never would have figured that out if Public Eye didn't get to the bottom of it for us. [Public Eye]
• Reader's Digest chairman and CEO retires, looks forward to actually being old enough to read the magazine. [Folio:]
• Steve Case finally leaves TWX board; even so, stock still trading in upper teens. [AP via NYT]
• "Jeff Gannon" reappears, now as a columnist in the gay press. Shockingly, some gays react bitchily. [E&P]

• Confessions of a (granted, emergency-landing-surviving) media whore. [NYO]
• Bossman Denton cruises the Jersey Turnpike on a bathwater-powered scooter, apparently. Also, he has a large head. [NYO]
• Nonfamous writer Matt Haber's past was pillaged by adorable and now-famous writer Benjamin Kunkel, and Haber'll be damned if you don't know about it. [NYO]
• Dan Rather wants to revisit Bush National Guard story; CBS brass won't let him. We await Public Eye's take, presumably that spirited debate is a good thing. [NYP]
• A day in the life of Us editor Janice Min — in which no one cares about Britney's baby. [asap/AP]
• Geraldo won't sue Times, but his feelings are still hurt. [NYP]
• Washington Blade launches a "gay Romenesko" site. We always thought that was us. [E&P]
• Turns out, SCOTUS nominee Roberts might not hate the press as much as the Times thought. Which still doesn't mean he likes it. [NYT]
• Sly gets up off the mat. [WWD]

New York is one of the lucky few markets to receive Q Television Network, the seven-year-old cable network with programming specific to its mostly gay and lesbian audience. QTN's new news anchor Josh Fountain will continue to keep that flame burning:

• "I used to be Dan Rather," says the CBSer. "I used to cover hurricanes." He then burst into tears and burned an effigy of Anderson Cooper. [LAT]
• The rumors were all true: Newsday continues to whither away, as 45 newsroom jobs are cut and the city edition is decimated. [Newsday]
• Bryan Curtis hits F1 on his Slate keyboard to produce today's expectedly unexpected lead — verbatim, "TK has been dusted with so much glory lately that it's high time [his/her/its] reputation got a good sullying" — and decides to insert "Ray Bradbury." [Slate]
• Paper mag launches new website, featuring — you'll never guess! — blogs. [Papermag.com]
• Coming soon: MadKids. For those who find old-school Mad magazine too old-skewing and highbrow. [Baltimore Sun]