For well over a year, many have feverishly raced to the defense of U.S. Army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning, accused of 22 criminal charges — including aiding the enemy — for leaking hundreds of thousands of pages of classified documents (and video) to Wikileaks. Late last month, for the first time, we finally heard his side of the story during an evidentiary hearing to determine whether he should be court-martialed. Many of his supporters, often at the courthouse daily clad in t-shirts emblazoned with his picture, must have been disappointed that Manning’s own lawyer hardly portrayed him as the grand patriot those defenders have depicted.

An explosion at The Washington state home of Josh Powell, long considered a “person of interest” in his wife Susan’s disappearance, has killed Powell and his two sons. The incident occurred moments after a Child Protective Services worker brought the boys to Powell’s Washington state home for a supervised visit.

As regular readers know by now, Mediaite founder Dan Abrams is looking forward to being a first-time dad soon, something he was more than happy to talk about Monday morning as he co-hosted Live! With Kelly alongside seasoned mom Kelly Ripa. And, surprise, he’s going to have a bouncing baby boy! (Which, you know. Aw. [...]

ABC legal analyst and Mediaite founder Dan Abrams spoke to Good Morning America about the rape allegation against Greg Kelly, host of Good Day New York and son of New York police commissioner Ray Kelly.

Well that was unexpected. Today we learned that our founder, ABC News legal eagle Dan Abrams, and his live in girlfriend, Florinka Pesenti, are having a baby! We are happy for him. Really happy! Danny the daddy. Love it. But just as important in our myopic world is that we wanted to announce it here first in case it gets some media mentions and links! Hello traffic bonus. . . at papa’s expense.

On Thursday, HLN host Nancy Grace joined ABC legal analyst and Mediaite founder Dan Abrams on Good Morning America to discuss — and disagree on — the pregnancy rumors floated by Casey Anthony‘s defense. Namely, the idea that her own dad, George Anthony, had fathered Caylee Anthony.

A day after the Casey Anthony video diary clip leaked on YouTube, featuring a blonde, glasses-wearing Anthony talking about her new adopted dog, among other things, there is still a question about whether the video was actually “leaked,” or if Anthony and her team strategically released it in a cleverly orchestrated move to get some attention.

You may or may not have heard yet, but Mediaite is losing Colby Hall, the only Managing Editor it has ever known. While Hall and Mediaite founder Dan Abrams have already had their say, the well-oiled cogs in the Mediaite machine still haven’t had their turn. As the last of the Mediaite O.G.s, it falls to me to guide this exercise, and to send Mr. Hall into the after-Mediaite-life with a full understanding of what he has meant to us.

It’s with mixed emotions that I bid farewell to the thrilling role of Managing Editor at Mediaite. While I am very excited about my new opportunity on the digital side of corporate media behemoth Clear Channel (the details of which will be forthcoming in the next week or so), I am sad to walk away from this labor of love, overseeing an influential and successful site and playing the part of post-modern disc jockey to the daily political news narratives that makes up the media zeitgeist.

For well over a year, many have feverishly raced to the defense of U.S. Army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning, accused of 22 criminal charges including aiding the enemy for leaking hundreds of thousands of pages of classified documents (and video) to Wikileaks. Late in December, for the first time, we finally heard his side of the story during an evidentiary hearing to determine whether he should be court-martialed. His supporters, often at the courthouse daily clad in t-shirts emblazoned with his picture, must have been disappointed that Manning’s own lawyer hardly portrayed him as the grand patriot those defenders have depicted.

For the past three years, I have completely dedicated my life to developing, launching, and managing Mediaite.com. Please forgive the cliche, but it has truly been a labor of love — nearly every single minute has been challenging and rewarding. It is with truly mixed emotions, then, that I announce my plans to step down as Managing Editor, to embark on a very exciting new career chapter at the beginning of next year.

After the holidays, I will begin work in a senior-level position at the NY offices of Clear Channel. The details of my new role will be revealed in a few weeks, but I hope to bring some of the success we’ve enjoyed at Mediaite in terms of relevance, buzz, and creative content to a completely different, significantly broader, and more corporate platform.

Tuesday morning, Mediaite founder and ABC legal analyst Dan Abrams stopped by the set of Good Morning America to discuss the case of Florida woman Michelle Parker, who went missing after appearing on the daytime’s People’s Court television show.

Abrams shared that it’s significant that Parker’s family has decided to stand behind her ex-fiancé — with whom she had argued on the show — both where the investigation and the “court of public opinion” are concerned.

A disturbing pattern is emerging in the coverage of the Penn State alleged child rape story, in which media outlets employ varying degrees of dereliction that have the effect of softening the wrongs of its participants. The latest iteration of this is the reporting on an email from Penn State assistant Mike McQueary, to a friend, in which McQueary tries to mitigate his sickeningly inadequate reaction to witnessing Jerry Sandusky raping a child in the Penn State showers.

Early Thursday morning, Mediaite founder Dan Abrams appeared on Good Morning America, alongside Nancy Grace, to discuss the Conrad Murray verdict. At the very end of their segment, Abrams went off-topic and congratulated Grace on her Dancing With The Stars success, mentioning her now-famous cartwheel. As the show went to break, Grace told Abrams to unbutton his shirt, because he was going to do one.

Closing arguments began this week in the Conrad Murray case, and Good Morning America brought in their “legal dream team” to assess the situation. Mediaite founder Dan Abrams and HLN’s Nancy Grace butted heads in their analysis of the case. “Nobody’s on trial because it’s not a crime to be awake. It’s a crime to be dead by having propofol shot into your dead body until all of your organs are saturated with a powerful, surgical anesthetic that is not to be used outside the operating room. Those guys didn’t know what they were talking about!” exclaimed Grace. “It’s actually not a crime to be putting drugs into a dead body,” Abrams snarkily rebutted. “But if you put it in a live body, that is a crime.”

On Wednesday’s edition of Good Morning America, ABC legal correspondant and Mediaite Founder Dan Abrams discussed the clash between the family and the police in the Baby Lisa case. Abrams reported that Baby Lisa’s parents will only answer questions from authorities under unusually strict guidelines e.g. if they’re asked fairly and by people who haven’t determined guilt. He noted that this was bringing a real tension into the case as police were treating them as potential suspects. “This is their child who’s missing, and people are going to hear that and say ‘I don’t care what your lawyer is telling you, you have to help them everyway that you can.’” Abrams assessed.

Remember Court TV and the national obsession with high profile trials? For about a decade from O.J. Simpson to Scott Peterson and Natalee Holloway the country seemed to have an insatiable appetite for soap opera like details that slowly and painstakingly emerged day in and day out in courtrooms and from investigations around the country. Courthouses regularly became tent cities with media encampments at high profile trials. Some judges and lawyers (and witnesses ie. Kato Kaelin) became more recognizable than most movie stars. Sometimes, the cases addressed important issues like in the trial of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy Mcveigh or assisted suicide doctor Jack Kevorkian or most obviously, Bush v. Gore. Others were far more frivolous like Anna Nicole Smith‘s lawsuit or a random celebrity drunk driving or drug case. Multiple daily cable news shows hosted by the likes of Geraldo Rivera, Greta Van Susteren, Nancy Grace (and me) covered the minutiae with analysis and debate from lawyers and participants.

Doctor Conrad Murray‘s trial continued yesterday with the jurors hearing testimony from the first security guard to be called to Michael Jackson‘s side by Murray. Alberto Alvarez told the court that Murray told him Jackson had a bad reaction, and asked him to hide a bag of medicine vials before calling the police.

The trial of Conrad Murray continued yesterday with testimony from the Michael Jackson‘s head of security and personal assistant, recounting the scene at Neverland the day the star was found dead. The two described, in a consistent manner, according to Dan Abrams who ran down the day on Good Morning America earlier today, a frantic and suspicious scene.

Conrad Murray‘s trial kicked off to a grim start yesterday with a photo of Michael Jackson’s lifeless body stretched out on a hospital gurney, an eerie recording of Jackson, and tears all around. ”Prosecutors want to make the jurors realize that this is about Michael Jackson‘s gruesome death,” expounded legal analyst Dan Abrams, stopping by Good Morning America early this morning to run down day one.

Former counsel for Michael Jackson, Mark Geragos and Mediaite’s own Dan Abrams stopped by Good Morning America today to preview Doctor Conrad Murray‘s trail, set to start today. Murray has been charged in Jackson’s death, and faces four years in prison and the loss of his medical license if found guilty. Proceedings will be televised and broadcast online and will play out as a somber final chapter in the media spectacle that was Jackson’s life.

Mediaite founder and ABC legal analyst Dan Abrams appeared on Good Morning America this morning — in what seems to be his daily segment — to makes sense of Amanda Knox‘s most recent turn in the Italian courts, this time facing an appeals court in hopes of getting her guilty conviction dropped and returning home to Seattle. “Well, look, she’s got a decent shot here of going free, but there are a lot of other possibilities,” Abrams said, cautioning that Knox is not home-free just yet.

Mediaite founder and ABC News legal analysts Dan Abrams and HLN’s Nancy Grace went head-to-head this morning on Good Morning America, debating the Bob Ward murder trial taking place in Orlando. In a 911 call, Ward admitted to shooting his wife, but later backtracked, saying she killed herself while he tried to take the gun [...]

Isn’t it ghastly? Will we be accused us of capitalizing on the nation’s grief? Is it still too soon?

Those were just some of the questions we faced when deciding whether to replay NBC’s 9/11 coverage when I was General Manager of MSNBC back in 2006. As I watched MSNBC air that coverage for a sixth year today, many of those same questions remain.

Here at Mediaite we don’t write about, much less care too much about, fancy-pants restaurants, even those deemed to be “media” hangouts and especially those considered “hot spots.” So last year when our founder Dan Abrams and other media guy Dave Zinczenko got involved in The Lion restaurant, we yawned publicly while secretly imagining a new Mediaite clubhouse, sort of like a real-life version of Cheers only with powerful media figures playing the part of regulars.