The New York Times is reporting that the District Attorney will not pursue rape charges against Fox anchorman and NYPD commissioner’s son Greg Kelly.

Is Mitt Romney running out the clock on the Republican nomination? According to Washington Post reporter Philip Rucker, Republican frontrunner has stopped taking questions from voters on the campaign trail. In fact, he hasn’t answered a question from a voter in three weeks.

In a wide-ranging interview with MultiChannel News’ Mike Reynolds, Fox News host Bill O’Reilly accused MSNBC of not dealing in facts, compared himself to Howard Cosell, and explained how he single-handedly saved Inside Edition.

Washington Post writer David Ignatius is reporting Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s biggest fears are the growing possibilities “that Israel will attack Iran over the next few months.”

According to a report from the UK-based Daily Mail’s Rachel Quigley, the Manhattan District Attorney’s office said they have “serious doubts” over a woman’s allegations she was sexually assaulted by TV anchor and son of New York police commissioner Ray Kelly, “and will likely not file criminal charges against the TV anchor.”

Want to sell a book? Get into a heated discussion with the President. It worked for Arizona governor Jan Brewer. Sales of her book Scorpions for Breakfast have gone up a whopping 150,398 percent on Amazon.com over the past 24 hours.

CBS’ Lara Logan granted an exclusive interview to the NY Daily News, opening up about the aftermath of the brutal attack she sustained in Egypt nearly one year ago, including her struggle with posttraumatic stress disorder.

Today, The Chicago Sun-Times published an editorial by publisher John Barron and editorial page editor Tom McNamee explaining that the paper will no longer be endorsing candidates in any future elections. The paper has been making endorsements since its founding 71 years ago. However, as the editorial explains, readers have made it clear that “[they] can make up [their] own mind, thank you very much.”

Last night, Newt Gingrich scored a crucial victory in South Carolina following his second surge in the Republican race for the presidency. But what about the candidates who aren’t running? Herman Cain, who was one of the first candidates to drop out of the race, garnered over 6000 votes thanks to a campaign by comedian Stephen Colbert to get his supporters to vote for the former businessman. Colbert tried to launch his own run in South Carolina, but because the state doesn’t allow write-ins, he instructed his supporters to vote for Cain instead.

Whenever a horrible tragedy like 9/11 occurs, there’s always countless people who are forced to reflect on how mere twists of fate saved them from oblivion. In the years since, we’ve heard stories from celebrities like Rob Lowe and Seth MacFarlane who have recounted just how close they were to those terrorists and their terrible deeds. It turns out that Mark Wahlberg is one of those people as he was originally scheduled on one of the ill-fated planes. However, instead of viewing the situation as his brush with death, Wahlberg considers it his brush with kicking terrorist ass! Whoo!

Who: Josh Levin, Mike Pesca and Stefan Fatsis, with guest- Nate Silver What: Slate’s Hang Up and Listen, Live! Where: City Winery When: January 17, 2012 Thumbs: Up “I don’t want it to sound like a tautology” isn’t the kind of concern audibly shared at most sports panels, but while explaining how bad defenses play [...]

Tina Brown and Newsweek‘s decision to put Andrew Sullivan’s provocative essay (and an even more provocative headline) on the cover was purely about getting people to talk about Newsweek. That was the theory put forth by a Fox News panel during a segment dedicated to…talking about Newsweek. But, as Megyn Kelly proposed at the start, has Newsweek and the mainstream media “crossed a line in trying to get the President reelected?”

There is perhaps no other subject more sensitive right now than the place of women in comedy. And it’s not like comediennes don’t have good reason to be touchy. We are, after all, only a few months past a news cycle in which people were writing serious articles asking if a new movie could finally prove that women were funny…in the year 2011! Think about that.

Presidential hopeful Rick Santorum‘s campaign has been marked in no small part by his adherence to a socially conservative platform, one tenet of which has been his denunciation of abortion. And Santorum’s wife, Karen Santorum, has been right by his side throughout, helping him to spread his message. But, as Newsweek and the Daily Beast report, a look at Mrs. Santorum’s past indicates she didn’t always adhere so strictly to an anti-abortion platform.

Former Penn State football coach Joe Paterno, 85, has been relatively mum since his dismissal — by phone call — as head coach of the football team. But after undergoing chemotherapy for lung cancer, and forced to a wheelchair because of a broken pelvis suffered in December, Paterno decided to open up to the Washington Post‘s Sally Jenkins in a story that ran on Saturday.

The SuperPAC-produced film “King of Bain: When Mitt Romney Came To Town” is coming under fire for being somewhat inaccurate, receiving cries to be removed from the airwaves and edited for accuracy should it have to return. The twist in this story is that the one calling for the extended documentary ad to be removed is its intended beneficiary, Newt Gingrich, who demanded that “every single mistake” be edited out yesterday.

Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and Jon Huntsman will not appear on the Virginia ballot in their March 6 primary, after their legal teams bungled their ballot challenge after waiting too long. “They knew the rules in Virginia many months ago; the limitations on circulators affected them as soon as they began to circulate petitions,” U.S. District Judge John Gibney wrote.

Last week, Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler did a great job of disproving Mitt Romney’s claim that he created 100,000 jobs through Bain Capital, but made the bewildering judgment that the claim merited but a single “Pinocchio.”

After watching Romney at Saturday’s ABC News debate, Kessler came back with a new ruling: the claim now merits three “Pinocchios,” while the rationale doesn’t appear to have changed.

Bill O’Reilly is having his Abraham Lincoln biography, Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination That Changed America Forever, adapted as a documentary for the small screen. According to The Wrap, “the documentary will air on the National Geographic Channel, which is a joint venture between National Geographic and Fox Cable Networks.” The men behind the biography? Ridley and Tony Scott, who have directed Alien, Blade Runner, Top Gun, and Thelma and Louise, among others.

With an already messy primary season underway, many reporters have been bombarded with statements and messages that accuse other public figures of half-truths and outright lies. Politicians, in particular, are constantly bringing up things the other one said or did in the past, some which hold no truth at all. If you’ve heard Newt Gingrich throw around the number of Pinocchios other candidates have been given, you likely understand that these quasi-fibs are everywhere.

As the election heats up, the attacks and/or vetting of each candidate have reached a boiling point. The latest narrative concerns former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, and comes courtesy of a new book — The Real Romney — that purports to offer an in-depth look into his past, both as a businessman and as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Among allegations contained in the book is the claim that, back in 1983 Romney, then a Mormon bishop, urged a single mother to give her baby up for adoption.

Noting that its readership “ranges from the White House to the Big House,” The Atlantic today published a letter from the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla, informing the magazine that its December 2011 issue would not be delivered to the subscriber incarcerated within the facility.

One of the worst jobs here at Mediaite is the constant combing of comments for personal attacks, trolling, and unsavory missives. It’s a waste of time that can be alternately disheartening and disgusting. In the past, we had taken a somewhat soft, gardening-centric approach to the comments. As of today, we’re getting a little tougher.

Many digital media entities (including this one) appreciate writers inserting personal anecdotes, thoughts or, gulp, opinions into their writing. It’s a practice that would have been considered journalistic heresy years ago but these days is often encouraged because it can make stories more interesting and, well, personal (some might even call it “masturbatory“). But yesterday’s confession from New York Observer writer Drew Grant (who briefly covered weekends for Mediaite well before I started) may have established a new line in the journalistic sand. She casually gloated about getting high off illegal “mushrooms” with her colleagues before attending the premiere party for the IFC program Portlandia at the Museum of Natural History, an event to which she was invited in her role as a reporter.

Who would’ve thought it was going to be Peggy Noonan who would coin the single most hilarious, funny-because-it’s-true nickname for what candidate Newt Gingrich has become in the sunset of the complimentary Republican primary surge every candidate (except Jon Huntsman) appears to be entitled to? Noonan’s campaign roundup in today’s Wall Street Journal takes a brutal look at all the candidates’ flaws– Mitt Romney‘s bland inevitability, Gingrich’s muffinness, Rick Perry‘s assumed privilege– and goes, somewhat surprisingly, softest on Rick Santorum.