Congressional Republicans are falling under the spell of an unorthodox group of financial experts who dispute the views of their peers and say that the U.S. could default briefly on debt payments without major, lasting consequences to the U.S. economy and international markets.

After making the rounds on the morning show circuit with stops at The Today Show and GMA, Charlie Sheen sat down for a live poolside chat with TMZ where he continued to rant and rave about simultaneously winning and destroying everything in his path.

Silvio Berlusconi phoned into a late night talk show that is critical of him and called it a "television whorehouse."

CNN anchor John King got so frustrated with his "magic" computerized touch-screen wall before the elections that he had a "meltdown" and told crew "I wish I brought a gun to work." To shoot the wall, one hopes.

Teaching high school math for 17 years finally caught up with Donald Wood. Yesterday, the Tennessee teacher lost his mind during class and started throwing chairs and desks across the room. Wood was cuffed and removed from school grounds.

The final wisps of Spencer Pratt's sanity seemed to slip away from him tonight on the Hills when during a neighbor's 7 year-old birthday party, he blasted Heidi's mom for "emotionally raping" her daughter, calling her "just a vagina." Classy!

Is "salty old sailor" Eric Massa being railroaded by Democratic leaders for voting against health care, or is he actually a creep who harasses his staff? No one knows. But he had awesome things to say about Rahm Emanuel, today.

Besides his Patrick Bateman hair, obviously. The San Francisco mayor and obvious prick went into hiding after mysteriously quitting the governor's race, and his silence-breaking TV interview was a mess.

Meghan McCain says she plans to "get the fuck off Twitter" since so many users of the microblogging service are hating on a maverick picture she posted of her maverick cleavage. Oh, please. She's a fameball. She's going nowhere.

Courtney Love did not authorize that Hellish Guitar Hero version of her dead husband that she authorized, for money—it's all Dave Grohl's fault and she's going to sue and she wants a British journalist to rape him.

Sarah Lacy is famous for bombing an interview at a huge geek conference, and for being "smoking" hot. That's not all her fault; Silicon Valley is notoriously sexist. But the tech reporter's latest tantrum only plays to the diva stereotype.

Remember when Mischa Barton was involuntarily committed this past July? Well, we finally found out why. It's because her teeth hurt. That's probably the worst rehab excuse we've ever heard. Why not just go with "exhaustion?"

Sporting some kind of hideous quarter-goatee, Kneale, then at Forbes, allowed the Today show to confiscate his BlackBerry, back in 2007. He surely though it would be a glorious publicity stunt on a national stage; that Kneale only lasted 40 hours out of a week indicates he lost control of the situation, and that his on-camera tears were real.

When Mischa Barton got on the train to Cuckootown we thought she joined the ranks of Britney Spears and Mariah Carey. Not really, because people seemed to actually care about their public descent into madness. Is the celeb meltdown passe?

Martha MacCallum may look like just another cutesy blonde anchor on Fox News. But it seems she has a darker side, too. A tipster tells us MacCallum threw quite the tantrum yesterday at a parking garage around the corner from the studios of Fox News when she turned up with her daughter in tow and her BMW wasn't waiting for her with the keys in the ignition. The outrage!

Did you hear about how Alaska's greatest source of shame and humiliation announced that she was going to strike down anyone who takes her name in vain with great vengeance and furious anger, just like God? Oh yes she did!

RNC chairman Michael Steele is giving a big speech right now insisting the Republican Party's principal problem is that it apologizes too much, which is basically what a walked-all-over girlfriend (or boyfriend!) says, right?

Morgenstern runs Valor Equity Partners, which led a $40 million investment in Tesla in February 2008 and controls a seat on the board. The badly mismanaged electric-car startup quickly blew through Valor's money; by October, it was down to $9 million in cash. Despite raising more money from investors, Tesla is running on fumes, and collecting deposits for its Model S electric sedan, a car which exists only as a barely drivable quasi-prototype. Tesla requires hundreds of millions of dollars more than it has to make the Model S a reality — which is why Morgenstern's talk of new money is so interesting.

Clever libertarians don't just rail against government spending: They do something about it. Facebook investor Peter Thiel took $8 million from New York's pension fund — while setting himself up to avoid millions in taxes.

Make it official: Google's not immune from the bad economy and plummeting ad market. We've been hearing for weeks that Google would have layoffs. Google is cutting 200 employees today, the company now confirms.