The White House press corps, our proud enforcers of public accountability, regularly demand more transparency from the White House. But if you ask them whether they attended an off-the-record lunch with President Obama, it's Top Secret. Got it?

The release of those comical pictures of White House reporters having Super Soaker fights with White House employees at Joe Biden's mansion this past weekend has launched a raging ethical debate.

George Leonard, former journalist, author, civil rights activist, fitness buff, and an honorary founder of the countercultural/ new-age mecca Esalen Institute, has died at 86. He generally lived as an uncompromised intellectual hippie superstar, so good for him. [NYT, Esalen]

[A group of journalists catch some z's waiting for the end of negotiations on the twelfth day of the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. Image via Getty]

Because David Gergen, Jon Meacham, Howard Fineman, Mike Allen, Josh Marshall, David Brooks, and Gail Collins did! Also: Mara Liasson, who works for NPR and the Fox News Channel that Obama wants to destroy.

Let's not forget that the hero Iraqi Shoe Hurler was a journalist before he became a footwear projectilist. A certain portion of his colleagues think he disgraced his profession. They're wrong. Let's go to Muntader's brand new explanatory op-ed!

Ululate your huzzahs, counterimperialist warriors: Shoe-hurling Iraqi journalist Muntader al-Zaidi is free from prison. Where he was tortured. So, Muntader, tell us, are you going to Disney World or what?

219West has struck again. It's always been bizarre how someone so prominent would be so public on his Manhunt profile. Now he's indiscreetly responding to Craigslist m4m ads at 5am looking for "ski" partners. (Psst, that's code for "snort coke.")

Remember that shoe-throwing Iraqi journalist who tossed one at Dubya in December? Muntadhar al-Zeidi's being released from prison early, for good behavior. Meanwhile, don't know about newspaper economics in Iraq, but the Baghdad Expos: still need a good splitter. [MSNBC]

Dominick Dunne, chronicler of crime, celebrity, and the intersection of the two, has died at 83. Dunne had been suffering from bladder cancer.

Conservative political journalist and long-time syndicated columnist Robert Novak died early this morning after battling brain cancer for more than a year.

Poor Griff Jenkins. He got all decked out in a tuxedo to harass whatever sort of Godless Americans attend ACORN conventions, only to get into a scuffle with one of those dang liberal bloggers, and we're all better for it!

Times executive editor Bill Keller is still in Iran, reporting today that Goggling "hooker" leads to an "access denied" message and that the Iranian government is pissed at muckraking Western journalists like himself for disrupting their regime. [New York Times]

This is how you do press relations: journalists who attend right-wing nut Randall Terry's upcoming "George Tiller's murder is great news for the pro-life movement" press conference will get free beer and wings!

ABC News' Jake Tapper, seemingly bored silly on a flight to Riyadh, or maybe just experimenting to see how many links he could get from wingnut websites, published perhaps the most imbecilic article in the history of journalism on ABC.com.

Iraqi courts have cut the prison sentence for the hero shoe-hurling-at-Bush journalist from three years down to one. Huzzah! And on the same day Obama visited Iraq. Coincidence??? Open your eyes, sheeple! [WSJ]

Hah, one guy got fooled by a lame April Fools' Joke: ABC's senior smugness correspondent Jake Tapper. He even forwarded a hoax story to his colleagues before he caught himself.

Huffpo-er Jeremy Abelson interviewed famous American Julia Allison about how her "brand" will "make money." Not to get too technical, but it involves having people pay her for...stuff, that she does.

As we all know, John McCain lost the election because the media was biased against him. So his former staffers got wasted with journalists this weekend because they all missed each other so much!

There's no news in Denver. At least, no news that couldn't be reported by watching it on C-Span from the comfort of home. So what to do? Report on what all your fellow journalists are doing! So far, the single greatest example of this is HuffPo's constant reportage from their own "HuffPost Oasis" in Denver. At left, an unretouched screengrab from their front page today. The Oasis is remarkably popular with journalists, considering that we have no idea what goes on there but we don't think it involves free booze. Wait, maybe we do know what's going on there! "'I feel relaxed!' said a particularly refreshed Eric Alterman as he stepped away from a complimentary facial for a minute. 'I'll tell you this—everyone should add facials to their lives.'" Oh, wow. That quote is from John Koblin's piece in today's Observer. It's got more gems: Adam Nagourney couldn't find a seat at his own paper's workspace, then bitched about having to cover the convention with so many other, lesser reporters. Fox's Greta Van Susteren, though, was more than happy to be there.