RELATED: Dan Abrams On Rape Allegation Against Greg Kelly: DA Knows Very Well That ‘The World Is Watching’

Kelly was off-the-air Thursday morning, and a spokeswoman for Fox 5 said he “requested some time off.”

ABC News Legal Analyst And Mediaite founder Dan Abrams noted on Good Morning America that Kelly has yet to be formally charged by authorities, and that woman’s allegations constitute a formal complaint, not a charge.
(h/t NY1)

RELATED: Current TV Source: Keith Olbermann Has Not Responded To Request To Cover New Hampshire

Gore spoke to the AP in a report published last night, explaining that Olbermann was a pivotal member of the team and that he considered the beauty of Current TV to be its strict point of view:

Former Vice President Al Gore on Friday described Current TV as the “consistent” liberal TV network compared with MSNBC, and said it will keep Keith Olbermann in the fold.

“He’s fine,” said Gore, chairman of the network in 63 million U.S. homes, dismissing rumors that Olbermann was seeking to leave. “He has been the key to our ability to pivot and develop our whole network as a progressive news and commentary network.” [...]

“They’ve got a few progressive shows on MSNBC in prime time,” Gore said, “but they’ll start the day with a conservative show in the mornings, and then they’ll get the prison channel on the weekends. They’ll be all over the lot in the middle of the day. We’re consistent.”

Current TV officials have said that Olbermann’s absence at programming meetings is due to his being on vacation, and the network brass seems to publicly be on his side. Current CEO Joel Hyatt attributed MSNBC’s liberal tendencies to Olbermann’s work, and blasted the network as lacking “authenticity” to the AP. MSNBC and Olbermann did not respond to Current’s remarks, but it sounds like a very different tune from the lawyer-laden reports of the past week, and appears to confirm that the network and the anchor are committed to staying together.

RELATED: Of Course! Vladimir Putin’s Campaign Ad Features Sex, Techno Music

While United Russia’s loss of its longtime majority in the legislature was seen as a blow to the party of current president Dmitry Medvedev, their victory, the AP reports, was still seen as fraudulent by many, as many cited reports of widespread violations in electoral law. The AP report notes that the Moscow protest hosted anywhere between 25,000 to 40,000 people, many of whom were both upset about the elections as much as the state of the nation. Authorities permitted a protest as large as 30,000 people, and arrest numbers were low.

The AP report notes that Moscow was not the only places in Russia seeing large protests, but 15 other cities, including ones on the Pacific coast, hosted protests. The government, the report explains, is not only permitting protests (though made Saturday a “mandatory extra school day,” preventing many students from attending) but admitting that there might be something to protest about:

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev conceded this week that election law may have been violated and Putin suggested “dialogue with the opposition-minded” – breaking from his usual authoritarian image. The Kremlin has come under strong international pressure, with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton calling the vote unfair and urging an investigation into fraud. Putin in turn criticized Clinton and the United States for allegedly instigating protests and trying to undermine Russia.

RELATED: Russian Women Urged To ‘Strip’ To Show Support For Vladimir Putin: ‘I Will Tear My Clothes Off For Putin’

The Telegraph live-blogged the protests from Moscow overnight as well, and captured some stirring images. Also notable in this protest movement is the voice of former leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who has expressed concern about the legitimacy of the election results and called for annulling these elections and redoing the endeavor, to restore public trust. Whether these protests will continue to gain momentum remains to be seen, but their widespread nature suggests potential longevity.

According to the BBC, Libyan Prime Minister Abdurrahim al-Keib announced that he “trusted militia in the town to take care of [Gaddafi]” in anticipation of interrogations to begin on Sunday (Gaddafi would be interrogated in either Zintan or Misrata). Meanwhile, the International Criminal Court, which seeks Gaddafi for crimes against humanity, is sending a prosecutor to the country to aid in the trial, and concerns rise that the rebels responsible for his capture will attempt to negotiate for higher-ranking positions in the new government in exchange for Gaddafi. Keib is expected to announce his new cabinet on Monday.

RELATED: Report: Saif Gaddafi Captured By Rebel Fighters In Libya

After a photo surfaced yesterday to confirm his capture, video of Gaddafi being transferred by airplane was also released to confirm his identity. That footage, via the UK Telegraph, below:

RELATED: Star Of Herman Cain’s ‘Smoking Ad’: No Subliminal Message Was Intended

The article paints a portrait of Block — the Merlin to Cain’s King Arthur if the stone were America and the sword a cornucopia of ice cream analogies, apples, oranges and a tax plan with a catchy name — as something of a renegade, as well as a man finely attuned to changes within a certain segment of the Republican party and an awareness that campaign practices must change accordingly. But with that renegade status comes a few shady spots in his past:

But Block’s reputation was marred when he was accused of illegally coordinating state Supreme Court Justice Jon Wilcox’s 1997 re-election campaign with a special interest group that favored school vouchers. In 2001, he agreed to pay $15,000 and was banned from running Wisconsin political campaigns for three years to settle the case. Block made no admission of wrongdoing in the settlement. Block told the AP that he had not coordinated with the group and called the charges “ridiculous.”

Unable to make a living in politics, Block paid the bills stocking shelves at a Target. He has the “Mark” nametag mounted on his desk at Cain headquarters.

Block said it was during those tough times that his home went into foreclosure and his personal life unraveled, resulting in two arrests for drinking and driving.

“That’s why I don’t drink anymore,” he said.

Block, however, was able to bounce back, eventually securing a role as the Wisconsin director of the Koch brothers’ Americans and Prosperity in 2005, in addition to helping to organize Wisconsin’s branch of the Tea Party. But Block found his work called into question yet again. In 2007, a prosecutor looked into robo-calls made by Americans for Prosperity concerning a local school referendum, eventually concluding that, while the calls were misleading, the case was not strong enough to bring charges against Block. Three years later, left-leaning group One Wisconsin Now claimed it had a recording of a Tea Party meeting, alleging it included evidence of Block’s involvement in an effort to “prevent legal voters from casting ballots in Democratic-leaning neighborhoods.” Law enforcement did not investigate the allegations, and Block has insisted he did not have a role in any wrongdoing.

Whatever happens to Herman Cain, it’s probable that we’ve yet to see the last of Block. The man is too savvy, too tenacious and much too entertaining to disappear completely once his role as campaign manager comes to its end.

h/t Huffington Post

RELATED: War Is Over: Obama Will Have U.S. Troops Home From Iraq By Year’s End

Capital NY reports that The New York Times, for instance, is aware that, simply because our troops will no longer be fighting, working and training in Iraq, this particular story arc is far from done and over with. In fact, the months to come will prove to be a crucial time in assessing what impact the U.S. and years of conflict have had on Iraq, its government and its people:

When you take America out of the equation, what kind of country does it become?” asked The New York Times‘ foreign editor Joe Kahn. “We’re not going to stop covering the country because the American military has pulled out. We’ll continue to watch the story.”

As such, the paper will keep three full-time correspondents in that country in addition to its network of local stringers. The NYT‘s Tim Arango will remain as its bureau chief in Baghdad.

In addition, The Wall Street Journal and Reuters also have plans to maintain a presence in Iraq in the near future, as do CNN, NBC News and ABC News. The AP, meanwhile, which has lost three staffers in Iraq since 2003, is “still assessing the situation.”

h/t Capital NY

Huh.

Here’s the quote in question:

“From the start, Ailes has steadfastly denied any such political bias or agenda on the part of his network. Politics, schmolitics: ‘I hired Sarah Palin because she was hot and got ratings,’ he declares.

From the get-go, he meant for his network to counteract the sins he saw others committing: “I really believed there was no fairness or balance” elsewhere on the journalism landscape.

And they struck back.”

Already some are questioning the comment. Over on the Huffington Post they’ve headlined their reprint of the AP article as “Fox News Chief Reveals Crude Reason He Hired Sarah Palin” and the story is beginning to go viral, especially on left-leaning websites. And this isn’t the first time Ailes had discussed his fondness for hiring good looking ladies. In the lengthy profile Esquire did last January, a big portion was dedicated to Ailes’ criteria for anchor women including quotes where he critiqued the fashion sense of the women on HLN.

It also isn’t the first questionable thing involving Ailes and Palin in an interview. In a profile last May, an allegation was raised that Ailes thought the former Governor was “an idiot.” This caused a bit of an uproar and was quickly and vehemently denied by those at Fox News. However, we can imagine that critics of either Ailes and Palin will be quick to see this latest quote as proof the earlier was true.

Of course, it should be noted that it’s quite possible Ailes merely meant “hot” in TV terms. Like, “Hey, Two and a Half Men is hot.” That’s not a referendum on the physical attractiveness of Jon Cryer but rather a reference to the fact that about a billion people decided they needed to see how that show would work without Charlie Sheen. Entertainment Weekly‘s “Hot List” was never just a list of attractive and good-looking people.

The media interpretation of the word “hot” seems to also gel well with the context and his reference to “good ratings.” It’s TV talk.

But, seriously. Lets be honest. Even if Ailes really meant “hot” as in physically attractive, is it really groundbreaking news that a television president sees a benefit in putting pretty women in front of the camera?

The Gaurdian notes, however, that his departure is “a sudden and dramatic move at a time of unprecedented turmoil across the Middle East.” While Al Jazeera’s official statement makes clear that Khanfar’s resignation has been planned since the beginning of the summer, but there might be something more to timing. As the Associated Press points out, Khanfar’s resignation follows the release of a Wikileaks cable depicting close ties between the director and the U.S. government. The cables, dating back to October 2010, indicate that Khanfar was in frequent contact with the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, and that on at least one occasion he submitted to their requests to remove content. The AP reports:

The cable, written on Aug. 30 by the U.S. embassy in Doha, said the a website piece, “Live Testimony Concerning Tal Afar,” showed 10 witnesses giving their accounts of U.S. military operations in Iraq.

Khanfar, according to the cable, “had taken a look at the piece and had two images removed (two injured children in hospital beds and a women with serious facial injury).”

Khanfar also referred to “a non-paper” agreement between the station and U.S. government, in his criticism of another August report by DIA pointing to a “violation to the station’s agreement.” Khanfar responded by saying “as a news organization, we can’t sign agreements of this nature, and to have it here like this in writing is of concern to us.”

This sort of censorship comes down poorly on both parties. It suggests that Al Jazeera, which has been praised for breaking the “the mould of Arabic media organisations that were bankrolled by and subservient to governments or cowed by censors,” might be waffling to the strong-arming of U.S. It also suggests that meddling a part of the U.S.’s defense program involves meddling in foreign media. As the AP points out, although praised for its recent coverage of the Arab Spring, Al Jazeera has not yet found a real place in the American media landscape.

(AP Photo)

Showed above in a photo from the AP, the thing weighed 2,370 pounds and was thought to be at least 50 years old. Bunawan, a township in the Philippines more remote south, has been haunted by the creature in recent years: a child was killed two years ago, a fisherman went missing earlier in the summer, and a water buffalo was killed just last month.

“Nuisance crocodile” hunter Ronni Sumiller was brought in a few weeks ago, and with the help of five locals trained to help and 20 steel cable traps, he was able to bait and capture the beast. Sumiller says he pans to make the crocodile, kept alive because of its endangered status, “the biggest star” in his ecotourism park.

Before that, though, there is the issue of what to do with the second and larger croc. ”The villagers were saying 10 percent of their fear was gone because of the first capture,” Sumiller said. “But there is still the other 90 percent to take care of.”

This sort of story raises a lot of questions, the most obvious being: has the picture photoshopped? Bunawan is 515 miles south east of Manila, where the story was reported from following a phone call with Sumiller. This wouldn’t be the first time a doctored animal slipped into the news, hogzilla and the Puerto Rican street shark being just two recent examples. Saltwater crocodiles have been known to live to 100 years and to grow to 23 feet, though, so it’s not implausible that Sumiller caught himself a real monster. As we’ve said before, nature just tends to look scarier in photographs. Either way, we welcome any naysayers to make their way to his ecotourism park for the creature’s debut and report back on their findings. We’ll be waiting, safety, right here.

Last run in 2007, this latest survey comes in approach of the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, and at a time when homegrown terrorism is of increased concern following recent attacks in Fort Hood, Norway and Tucson. According to the Pew Survey, the Muslim American community does appear to be an increased risk.

According to the survey, 52 percent of Muslim Americans polled feel that Muslims are singled out by anti-terrorism policies, and that 43 percent have experienced harassment personally — a number that is up from 40 percent in 2007. Most report being treated with suspicion, at the air port or by law enforcement agents in particular, and less say they have been physically threatened or attacked.

Pew finds, however, that the Muslim American community does not pose particular threat:

A significant minority (21%) of Muslim Americans say there is a great deal (6%) or a fair amount (15%) of support for extremism in the Muslim American community. That is far below the proportion of the general public that sees at least a fair amount of support for extremism among U.S. Muslims (40%). And while about a quarter of the public (24%) thinks that Muslim support for extremism is increasing, just 4% of Muslims agree.

The disparity in these numbers might help explain what Hope Yen, in writing for the AP, calls continued “U.S. struggles to talk about religion in the context of terrorism.” She points to the tension surrounding plans to build a mosque near the Ground Zero site and in recent moves by the NYPD and CIA to further surveil Muslim communities as signs of “stirred emotions.”

Regardless, Muslim American’s maintain a notably upbeat sentiment. The survey finds that they are more likely than not to view U.S. anti-terrorism policies as sincere, and a very high percentage — 79 percent — rate their communities as “good” or “excellent,” “even among many who reported an act of vandalism against a mosque or a controversy over the building of an Islamic center in their neighborhoods.”

Of the results, Pew President Andrew Kohut said that, “I was concerned about a bigger sense of alienation, but there was not. You don’t see any indication of brewing negativity. When you look at their attitudes, these are still middle-class, mainstream people who want to be loyal to America.”

Of course a incredibly common refrain among GOP presidential candidates has been the belief that the U.S.’s presently increased debt is correlative with an increase in government spending, especially under the Obama administration. But this rather significant political point has gone mostly unchecked, and has been repeated so often that its completely believed to be fact, in the same way that our ancestors were dead certain that the earth was flat. In fact, it’s not an unreasonable concept, and has reasonably shape congress’s debt debates this past summer. But the AP now reports that “the math isn’t so simple,” and that what the Republican’s assumption fails (or maybe neglects) to account for is recession.

“The number at the heart of the battle cry of the Republicans and their tea party allies — that federal spending has risen to an alarming 25 percent of the economy — is skewed by recession dynamics,” they contest. Worried only that the government is spending too much without making enough back, Republicans are not accounting for a country’s increased needs during recession periods. And so, governments hoping to maintain the basic needs of their citizens must brace for an increase in spending, and accordingly, debt.

They report:

This disparity between what comes in and what goes out plays into the Republican argument about runaway spending.

But it also reflects the mathematical reality that during recessions, tax revenues go down sharply because people and companies make less money and so pay less in taxes. Federal spending goes up, even before stimulus programs, with an increasing demand for government help from food stamps and unemployment compensation and other safety-net programs.

At the same time, the negative economic growth associated with recessions lowers the GDP number on the bottom of the equation, further boosting the ratio of spending to GDP.

Which all goes to show that, contrary to common political rallying cries, the increase is not the result of poor political decisions, but the poor economic climate. When there is a recession, these things happen; and the increased levels of spending are put in place to help ease the nation into recovery.

And so, if this particular report is to believed at face value, then the GOP rhetoric on runaway government spending is likely off target, though it has certainly been a politically expedient talking point. But it’s not like anybody else comes out looking much better, having allowed this bit of GOP propaganda be spun into fact. As economist Bruce Bartlett, quoted in the AP’s story, says: “what sometimes makes me cringe more is the silence from their competitors.”

Read the rest of the report here.

The NASCAR Nationwide Federated Auto Parts 300 began with his invocation, in which he went through nearly every brand name in the sport– GM, Sunoco, and a number of individual car brands– employed some racing slang and even took from racing pop culture. In the tenderest and possibly most hilarious part of the prayer, Nelms thanked God for “my smokin’ hot wife” and his children, and prayed for a “performance worthy of this great track.” “In Jesus’ name, Boogity Boogity Boogity, amen,” he concludes.

The AP caught up with Nelms for an explanation as to how he got the urge to give such a fun blessing:

“I tried to spice it up a little,” Nelms said Monday.

Nelms, 35, pastor at “a small country church,” said he believed it was appropriate to have a little fun with the invocation.

“I put in some driver lingo,” he said from Destin, Fla., where he was on vacation. “The Bible says laughter is like a medicine, and I wanted people to see that side of religion.”

He drew from the stock car-themed movie “Talladega Nights,” which he has seen a couple of times.

Proof that all roads really do lead back to Will Ferrell. Watch Nelms’ amazing racing invocation via WGN news below:

It seems like a cumbersome way to make an extra $500, but there you have it– American By Products Co. of Lynn, Massachusetts, reported the theft to police last month, from three different restaurants. The AP reports that general manager Phil Bruno was “not surprised:

The theft of the frying oil stored in 250 gallon drums was reported by Phil Bruno, general manager of American By Products Co. of Lynn, whose drivers pick up the used oil on a regular basis and sell it to companies that process it for other uses, including as biofuel.

Bruno told The Newburyport Daily News that the oil stolen last month was worth up to $500.

He said he’s not surprised the grease was taken with gas near $4 per gallon. It can also be used in fertilizers and cosmetics.

Newburyport police Inspector Michael Sugrue said he can’t remember the department ever investigating the theft of used oil.

Gallons of frying oil don’t sound particularly easy to hide away, but the police still merit well-wishing on their mission to find it.

The suspect, Anders Behring Breivik, has not been identified publicly by police despite Norwegian media widely reporting it he was behind the attacks, according to CNN. The 32-year-old, however, is not suspected to have been acting alone. CNN reports:

Official sources and social media indicate that Breivik might be a right-wing Christian fundamentalist who may have had an issue with Norway’s multi-cultural society. The attack may have been politically motivated, one official said. Indeed, a second person was arrested Saturday in a hotel where the prime minister was due to meet families of the victims of the attack, police said. He was carrying a knife, state-run broadcaster NRK reported.

Breivik had purchased a large amount of a type of fertilizer used to make bombs, and was found to be a member of what was described as a “Nazi web forum.” Officials are still unable to confirm whether he worked alone, nor have they, according to Fox News, been able to account for all the missing on Utoya Island. They have, however, said there is “no concrete evidence” of a second shooter on the island.

Meanwhile, after initially reacting to the attack with suspicions of Islamic terror, European police operating out of The Hague have announced they will be putting together a task force to deal with right-wing terror in the continent’s northern regions. A spokesman for the group noted that while “the threat from Islamic terrorism is still valid,” “there have actually been warnings that  (right-wing groups) are getting more profesisonal, more aggressive in the way they attract others to their cause.” This has prompted them to pay attention to these sorts of terror threats as well in a more narrowly tailored way.

Time magazine also has a riveting timeline of the attacks as they are suspected to have transpired, with the Oslo bomb set up as a diversion from the attacks on Utoya Island, suspected to have lasted an hour and a half:

The apparent attempt on the life of Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, at first thought to be the work of Islamist extremists, kept Norway’s crack anti-terror squad pinned down in Oslo while Breivik drove to Utoeya. He flashed his ID — fake, but good enough to fool the security guards at the lake. And they wave him in. “He gets out of the car and shows ID, says he’s sent there to check security, that that is purely routine in connection with the terror attack (in Oslo),” Simen Braenden Mortensen, one of the camp guards, told the daily Verdens Gang. “It all looks fine, and a boat is called and it carries him over to Utoeya. A few minutes passed, and then we heard shots,” he said.

Below updates from Norwegian authorities via Fox News:



[Photo via NYT]

According to the Daily Mail, Stephenson resigned during a press conference this evening in London, in light of reports that he had been bribed by some affiliated with News of the World (the Mail suggests the bribes came in form of “spa breaks,” but this has been denied). His resignation offered no real clues as to what it was, precisely, that led him to resignation, though he denied any wrongdoing or involvement in the current scandal. According to CNN, he is said to have been involved in the police bribery part of the scandal but not exactly with the phone hacking, which reporter Atika Shubert described as a different facet of the scandal.

The CNN report of Stephenson’s resignation below:

Danon, deputy speaker of the committee and member of the Likud Party, thanked Beck greatly for his work for Israel, saying that if Israel had no Glenn Beck, “We would have invented a Glenn Beck, because we need more people like you.” He also explained the invitation in the first place, which came to some as a surprise:

“We invited Glenn Beck to our committee because he has done such a wonderful job of explaining the basic truth on his programs,” said Danon, the Knesset’s deputy speaker. “Israel has always been and always will be the homeland of the Jewish People, and any attempts to delegitimize this right should not be accepted by fair and free people around the world.”

Beck, for his part, began by apologizing to the committee for not wearing a tie, and then proceeding with his presentation, arguing that “politics as we know it is over” and that America had much to learn from Israel. “The media is skewed [in America],” he joked, “I thought you could only cook your food over a burning bus.” He went on to explain the American reaction to 9/11 and the “normalcy bias” that made Americans more vulnerable to ignore attacks, and quoted the Book of Ruth to express his solidarity with the Israeli people: “Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people are my people; your God is my God; where you die, I will die.”



[h/t Atlantic Wire]

Those that follow George Michael on Twitter know that his is among the most serene feeds on the site– plenty of friendly greetings, sage advice, and videos of his adorable dogs. His only angry tweets before this appeared to be in reaction to a comparison to Irish musical creation Jedward, with the exception of another directed as “Murdoch rags” calling him “poof” and “pervert,” and a series against the Daily Mail. But in none of them did Michael accuse anyone of corruption– only some in the media of printing false stories– as he has now done with News of the World editor Rebekah Brooks.

“Rebekah Brooks sat two feet from me in my own home and told me that it was never the public that came to them with information,” he wrote in a swiftly delivered series of tweets this evening UK time, “or celebrities, and that the Police always got there first.” He went on to say that Brooks had not been invited into his home (“don’t ask me how she got there“), that his accusations were “in no way an excuse for any of my behavior,” but that his statements on “the NOTW’s corruption of the British justice system was by way of public warning.” He concluded the Twitter monologue with an appeal to karma and hope that Minny Dowler‘s family got the justice they deserved (Dowler was a missing teenager whose phone News of the World allegedly hacked into while she was already dead, giving her family false hope that she was still alive).

Michael already had plenty of reason to celebrate the paper’s demise– a quick review of almost any article on the paper’s site about him proves why. The AP reported additionally that what could have set Michael off was that among the stories News of the World got a lead on through phone hacks was the singer’s recent car crash, though did not specify whose phone had been hacked to retrieve the information. Whatever the backstory, Michael has added some significant accusations to the laundry list that plagues News International (the Murdoch parent company that serves to his UK publications the way News Corporation works here)– perhaps the most damning, even more than the breaking and entering implication, that Brooks had significantly corrupted the police department.

No word on whether investigators will be looking into Michael’s claims. His full Twitter statements (read down to up) below:

The photo was discovered by the group Cryptome, who used a hint in the AP article to find the man. According to the article, the CIA analyst was “hidden from view, standing just outside the frame of that now-infamous photograph” of the President and his Cabinet watching the raid unfold. Looking through other photos in that album, they found an individual present in several places the article claims he was, and conclude that this must be the man. As the AP explains, they gained access of his story only with the caveat that his identity would be protected:

The CIA will not permit him to speak with reporters. But interviews with former and current U.S. intelligence officials reveal a story of quiet persistence and continuity that led to the greatest counterterrorism success in the history of the CIA. Nearly all the officials insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to reporters or because they did not want their names linked to the bin Laden operation.

The photos were then reproduced by Gawker (they are on the official White House Flickr account, but Gawker made sure to point out the man in question) with further speculation on whether Cryptome found the right man. Cryptome is a competitor to Wikileaks that has, on occasion, directly challenged the protection that organization didn’t give Bradley Manning for leaking secret military files to Julian Assange and company. Any organization that lives on the premise that there is no such thing as necessarily secret information will have no problem trying to out this man, and their intent to put the person’s identity in the public sphere is rather clear. When a group blindly vows to disclose information, there is no possible moral opposition to disclosing information.

But Gawker is not a website that traffics in such philosophies the way Cryptome does– or, for that matter, Wikileaks. It is difficult to come up with a legitimate reason to out someone who, as far as anyone knows, has done nothing wrong, and may have been the mastermind that caught this century’s most hated mass murderer. Other than pure human curiosity, no benefit arises from knowing who this man is, if it even is him. If the person in the photo isn’t “John the CIA agent,” then an entire new set of complications arise. Not to mention the title of the post: “Is This The Guy Who Killed Bin Laden?” The assumption from the headline is that this man was responsible for physically taking the Bin Laden’s life, though the text of the article clearly states that is not the case. Nevertheless, a web-surfing extremist with a minimal grasp of English could easily get confused and rally allies around the falsehood that the man from the AP article deserves to die for tracking down the martyred hero of many extremists.

Putting a face to the man who was instrumental in bringing down the idol of hundreds of potentially suicidal psychopaths bent on killing as many Americans as possible only serves to give Al-Qaeda members a target to shoot at. It provides a graphic for their cave-made YouTube videos that their colleagues can print out and burn in effigy, or try to hunt down. Revealing the identity of this man– whether the man in the photo is him or not– does nothing but endanger a potential hero (or even some “random staffer” as Cook points out) and stir the embers of hatred in an organization stripped to the bone by people like him.

Or, as one Gawker commenter so succinctly put it: “If this is the guy who tracked down Bin Laden, I can think of no better way to thank him for his outstanding civil service than by outing him on a highly trafficked web site and putting his career, his life, the lives of his loved ones in danger.”

According to the AP, the two staffers resigned today “partly because of what people familiar with the campaign spending described as a dire financial situation,” putting the debt figure somewhere close to $1 million. The staffers did not give reasons for quitting nor did any speculation, as was the case during the last round of departures, about the personal situation in the campaign come to the surface– only reports that money was simply not entering to fuel the account.

Instead, the AP reports that the official finance figures must be out by mid-July, but that Gingrich has been seen taking commercial instead of private flights and that, save his luxury cruise in the Greek Isles a bit ago, the frugality as per the money dedicated to the actual campaign is palpable. That said, a statement from a Gingrich campaign spokesman confirmed that Gingrich had no interest in calling it a campaign, instead noting that he is “as committed as ever” to the bid. He is scheduled to return to Iowa this week to do a bit more campaigning, though with significant manpower now missing from a campaign rumored to be perilously in debt, it is becoming increasingly likely Gingrich will soon run out of gas.

Gov. Christie’s spokeswoman announced today that the luxury ride from Iowa to New Jersey would no longer be on the people’s tab, according to the AP:

A spokeswoman for New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie says the governor and State Republican Committee are reimbursing the state for all personal use of a state police helicopter, which includes two trips to watch his oldest son’s baseball games.

Spokeswoman Maria Comella says Christie has paid $2,251 to the state to cover the cost of all trips.

Comella also says the state GOP has paid $919 to cover the cost of Christie’s trip Tuesday when used the helicopter to fly 75 miles from a game in Montvale to Princeton to take meeting with a group of top GOP campaign contributors from Iowa.

This comes as a change in attitude from the Christie administration, which had initially refused to refund the state for the travel expenses. New Jersey’s state debt topped $32 billion at the end of the past year and was a major campaign issue partially contributing to the success of Gov. Christie’s campaign. Now if only Christie could reimburse New Jersey taxpayers for the extra $440,000 a year his cabinet’s salaries amount to over the Corzine administration, he may actually do something to improve his approval ratings.

Watch the press conference via CNN:

The Associated Press has named Liz Sidoti its new political editor with the immediate task of leading the wire service’s coverage of the 2012 elections. Sidoti, who has been the AP’s chief political writer, led coverage of the 2008 campaign and has covered national politics for the AP since 2003. “Liz’s career is steeped in AP’s rich tradition of being first with political news; she’s a ferocious competitor. Even more remarkable is her ability to push and improve the work of those around her,” said Sally Buzbee, the AP’s Washington bureau chief. “She is a model for how journalists can cut through the political noise and fit the pieces together to explain what is happening in politics and why it matters to people beyond the nation’s capital.”

The AP says in her new role, Sidoti will lead a team of political reporters in Washington, in state capitals, and through the presidential campaign in battleground states across the country. “The American presidential election is one of our most important franchises,” said Mike Oreskes, the AP’s senior managing editor for U.S. news. “From the early days of Iowa to the results on election night AP is there, and Liz’s passion and experience will be an important part of driving us to absolutely top-flight performance all the way through.”

Before the AP, Sidoti reported at The Columbus Dispatch.

Following an earlier FOIA request to see the footage in question, AP senior managing editor Michael Oreskes told The Atlantic Wire that they’d like to be the judge of what constitutes as worthy of sharing with the public:

We’re asking to see it. It’s about us saying we would like to make our own news judgments about newsworthy material.

That said, we’re not sure the argument has ever been, at least not on the President or White House’s parts, that these materials aren’t newsworthy but, rather, that sharing these may pose a threat to national security, essentially tempting fate where vengeful, would-be terrorists are concerned.

Adds Oreskes:

We’re not deciding in advance to publish this material. We would like our journalists, who are working very hard, to see this material and then we’ll decide what’s publishable and what’s not publishable based on the possibility that it’s inflammatory.

The AP’s quest brings up various intriguing questions about the relationship between safety and information, and whether transparency is always a positive and, furthermore, whether journalists have “a place” to shape or dictate the actions of a presidential administration, particularly where matters of security are concerned. Earlier, Daily Show host Jon Stewart offered a similar solution for ensuring that the public in general is informed and “kept in the loop,” so to speak, where this material is concerned, without necessarily compromising national security: Show the footage and photographs to journalists, and have them describe these materials to their respective audiences.

h/t The Atlantic Wire

The AP ran with the story, and was then forced to retract it about half an hour later. An AP story on its own mistake said “the fake release, which was emailed to the AP, included a GE logo and a link to a website designed to look like GE’s website. The AP published a 90-word story based on the release. Thirty-five minutes later, AP withdrew the story and advised its customers that the story was a hoax.” Associated Press business editor Hal Ritter explained “the AP did not follow its own standards in this case for verifying the authenticity of a news release.”

Poynter has posted the full text of the AP’s retraction:

Date: 4/13/2011 10:21 AM
Kill – BC-US–GE Tax Refund,KILL/46
Eds: BULLETIN KILL. Do NOT use BC-US–GE Tax Refund. A kill is mandatory. The story was based on a press release that GE says was a hoax.
STORY REMOVED: BC-US–GE Tax Refund
The Associated Press has withdrawn its story about General Electric repaying its entire $3.2 billion tax refund to the US Treasury on April 18. The story was based on a press release that GE says was a hoax.
The AP

The AP article opens:

Katie Couric is leaving her anchor post at “CBS Evening News” less than five years after becoming the first woman to solely helm a network TV evening newscast.

A network executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity because Couric has not officially announced her plans, reported the move to The Associated Press on Sunday night. The 54-year-old anchor is expected to launch a syndicated talk show in 2012 and several companies are vying for her services.

Couric’s move from NBC’s “Today” show was big news in 2006, and she began in the anchor chair with a flourish that September. She tried to incorporate her strengths as an interviewer into a standard evening news format and millions of people who normally didn’t watch the news at night checked it out. But they drifted away and the evening newscast reverted to a more traditional broadcast.

Read the entire article here.

Couric’s future as the Evening News anchor has appeared to be coming to an end based on a number of thinly veiled statements and positions taken both by the network and Couric that have appeared to indicate to many that both parties have amicably agreed that it is time to part ways. Perhaps most notably, a somewhat sentimental Couric appeared on the program of fellow CBS cohort David Letterman and appeared somewhat sentimental in describing her next move to a sincere Letterman who implored her to stay on (a video of which is embedded below.)

While the AP did not see any of the President’s statements as being flat out incorrect, it did determine that they didn’t quite present a full, fleshed-out picture of the various factors at play in our country’s decision to enter the scuffle in Libya.

For one: The U.S. is taking on a more dominant role in the conflict than the President’s speech would have listeners believe. The U.S. supplies 22 percent of NATO’s budget in addition to various military aircraft and vehicles suitable for battle in Libya.

Additionally, while Obama emphasized that the U.S. is “narrowly focused on saving lives,” but our airstrikes on Gaddafi’s forces have also been instrumental in helping Libyan rebel advance.

The AP’s findings also take on the President’s decision not to go through Congress before allowing military involvement in Libya – despite his comments, years ago, that the Commander in Chief should seek congressional approval before involving the U.S. in war. Watch the AP’s video highlighting their various “fact checks:”

h/t The Blaze

According to the New York Times, the ceasefire has been anything but, with reports of “heavy bombardment and fighting” in Benghazi that defy Gaddafi’s statements. At least some of the weaponry seen, however, appears to be from international sources. French President Nicolas Sarkozy has announced that French jets are already enforcing a no-fly zone over Libya. Gaddafi, however, continued to insist in a letter to nations agreeing to enter Libya that he was “confronting Al Qaeda” and “nothing more.” To President Barack Obama specifically, Gaddafi wrote that even in the event that American military forces enter Libya, “you will always remain my son and I have all the love for you as a son.”

AP reports that the neighboring city of Misrata is in turmoil as well:

Misrata, Libya’s third-largest city and the last held by rebels in the west, came under sustained assault well after the cease-fire announcement, according to rebels and a doctor there. The doctor, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared reprisals, said Gadhafi’s snipers were on rooftops and his forces were searching homes for rebels.

As for the plane crash, reports cite rebels celebrating it, and the footage makes it appear as if it was shot down from below. More pictures of the crash from the UK Sun, and the footage of the plane being shot down via Al Jazeera below:

That employee’s identity will come as no surprise to those that have been following the high-octane drama that is the Wikileaks: Daniel Domscheit-Berg, formerly known as Daniel Schmitt, one of Wikileaks’ top workers before his very public falling out with Assange. Domscheit-Berg, who has also launched a competing site called Open Leaks, is now releasing a book about his time and disagreements with Assange. According to the Associate Foreign Press, excerpts from Domscheit-Berg’s book, Inside WikiLeaks: My Time with Julian Assange at the World’s Most Dangerous Website, accuse Assange of abusing not only him, but his cat:

“Julian was constantly battling for dominance, even with my tomcat Herr Schmitt,” Domscheit-Berg says in his book “Inside WikiLeaks: My Time with Julian Assange at the World’s Most Dangerous Website.”

“Ever since Julian lived with me in Wiesbaden he (the cat) has suffered from psychosis. Julian would constantly attack the animal. He would spread out his fingers like a fork and grab the cat’s throat.” The “mad Australian” did not always come off best during his stay in 2009, however, with Herr Schmitt sometimes managing to “dispatch Julian with a quick swipe of the paw.” “It must have been a nightmare for the tomcat,” he said in the German-language version of the book, due to be published in more than a dozen countries from Friday.

As crazy as the claims on Assange that rendered him under house arrest may be, tearing apart a poor cat’s fingers may be the most outrageous thing he has been accused of since the time he was arrested for potentially hacking into NASA’s computer database. And this is only a teaser for Domscheit-Berg’s upcoming tome– who knows what other juicy, insane tidbits of Assange’s life may be leaked in the body of the texted. Those dying to hear the latest on Assange must hope that Wikileaks will release an “advanced copy” of the text before release.

NPR, for instance, noted that “The president’s struggle to quit has been a source of fascination to some since before he was elected.” To some? To everyone!

The Observer, meanwhile, issued a gentle wink, nudge to its readers by writing “This is breaking news.”

This, then, is the very essence of blogging about pop culture / politics / the media: Presenting news people don’t admit they want to read while pretending not to want to write about it. But, look at you: Not only do you now know that Obama hasn’t smoked in a year (ALLEGEDLY), but you also know how people in the media feel about having to write about it.

Don’t smoke, kids.

Both Mark and Andrew Madoff were under investigation, but had not faced any charges related to the elder Madoff’s massive Ponzi scheme that landed him a 150-year jail sentence. The law enforcement official speaking to the AP (who opted to remain anonymous, as the case is so new) told the news agency that the death appeared to be a suicide. The attorney for both Madoff brothers– Mark and Andrew– also gave the AP a statement:

“Mark Madoff took his own life today. This is a terrible and unnecessary tragedy,” Martin Flumenbaum, an attorney representing Mark and his brother Andrew, said. “Mark was an innocent victim of his father’s monstrous crime who succumbed to two years of unrelenting pressure from false accusations and innuendo. We are all deeply saddened by this shocking turn of events.”

Nearly a month after the Republicans captured the House and made significant inroads in the Senate, resistance to Steele has snowballed rather than diminished, even though Steele himself has not decided whether he will run for reelection:

A significant bloc of Republican National Committee members wants embattled chairman Michael Steele to step aside, but the rank and file have failed to settle on a clear alternative, according to Associated Press interviews with committee members.

More than four dozen interviews with members of the 168-member central committee found fear that a badly damaged Steele could emerge from the wreckage of a knockdown, drag-out fight to head the party as it challenges President Barack Obama in 2012. While most agree that Steele’s time has been rough — and costly — the members also recognize that a leadership fight could overshadow gains that Republicans made in the midterm elections.

The biggest complaint against Steele is the amount of money his RNC has spent in comparison the amount he has raised, especially in private circles. The AP quotes one committee member as expressing concern about “spending the kind of money they’re spending every month just to operate the RNC.” Another major concern is toppling President Obama in 2012, something many doubt Steele has the capacity of doing– despite similar concerns of his incompetence having little negative effect on the November elections.

Steele isn’t receiving much support from pundits, either. The conjecture piqued debate on CNN yesterday, where Republican strategist Alex Castellanos argued that, despite Republicans enjoying their biggest congressional gains in centuries, Steele doesn’t get to reap the rewards of the effort that got the Republicans there. That segment from yesterday’s Situation Room below: