The News of the World / News International phone hacking scandal — like any good scandal, really — has been bolstered by the inclusion of celebrities like the Royal Family, former tabloid editor Piers Morgan, and actor Hugh Grant. Now, Grant (who had previously sued UK police over their handling of the hacking and told the Today show that politicians in the UK are “terrified” of News International head Rupert Murdoch) is speaking out about the scandal yet again, telling The Independent that the ongoing investigation into various instances of phone-hacking has “only just scratched surface.”

As the Murdoch Empire corruption scandal continues to unfold, the Wall Street Journal, one of its biggest entities, received plenty of mockery for a defensive editorial published today defending its leader and accusing rival organizations of excessive schadenfreude. It pales in comparison, however, to what some Murdoch entities overseas have penned– take, for instance, this blistering editorial in Murdoch’s The Australian, which throws the kitchen sink at Murdoch’s enemies.

Last week Fox News’ media criticism show barely mentioned the media scandal involving the news network’s parent company, News Corp. This week Fox News Watch more than made up for it, devoting two segments to the controversy, with Alan Colmes in particular pulling no punches in discussing the details of the story and the potential involvement of his boss, Rupert Murdoch.

As News Corp. executives continue to drop like flies all around Rupert Murdoch, one of the key players in the widespread phone hacking scandal is taking legal action against the Metropolitan police. Actor Hugh Grant, who secretly recorded a tabloid reporter admitting to phone hacking several months ago, is suing the Metropolitan police over their potential involvement in the hacking cases.

He’s the guy many Americans know as the sweet and adorable British prime minister from romantic comedies, and now he’s the face of the U.K.’s outrage over the phone hacking scandal engulfing Rupert Murdoch‘s News Corp–Hugh Grant, who this morning told NBC’s Matt Lauer that one of the reasons the hacking of celebrities, politicians and others went on for years is that the government lived in fear of Murdoch’s power. “He had the power through his papers to get them elected, and his paper knew dirty details about individual MPs and so they were unwilling ever to take him on.”

Jon Stewart came back refreshed from a week-long vacation to find America seemingly in shambles, with budget talks going nowhere and Casey Anthony taking up a great chunk of the news. Luckily, Stewart had a happy British person on hand to cheer him up! John Oliver appeared from the sky (via magic umbrella, of course) to deliver news of how much worse England is than America, beginning with its press.

One of the strangest twists in the ongoing saga of News of the World‘s phone hacking saga was the revelation a few months ago that actor Hugh Grant had not only been a victim, he’d bugged the hackers back. In case you don’t recall, Grant met Paul McMullen, a former NoW editor who’d spoken about the phone hacking before in the press, in a pub and secretly recorded the conversation for a piece he wrote in the New Statesman. Today, Grant got in quite a debate with McMullen on BBC News Channel that was as entertaining as any of his movies.

Hackneyed double entendres will always be funny to huge amounts of the population so, despite Two and a Half Men having lost 40% of its titular men, CBS is still bringing the money machine/show back next year. With time running out, it is expected that executive producer Chuck Lorre will soon have Charlie Sheen’s replacement set. The Hollywood Reporter is reporting that one actor who won’t be filling Sheen’s tacky bowling shirts and hilarious sense of sarcastic bemusement is Hugh Grant who reportedly turned down an offer that would have netted him $600 thousand an episode.

This potential segment would theoretically be titled “When Celebrities Fight Back!” The New Statesman is reporting an interesting new twist to the News of the World phone hacking scandal: it appears that actor Hugh Grant secretly recorded the former News of the World journalists who were involved in phone-hacking scandal. Wearing a concealed microphone, Grant reportedly recorded conversations with a reporter that allege that the editors of the Rupert Murdoch owned tabloid “absolutely” knew about illegal phone-hacking.

Chris Matthews isn’t happy with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, but that doesn’t mean he can’t have fun explaining why. He started by likening him to a character “only Charles Dickens would have fully created” (presumably because McConnell has been wearing a wedding dress ever since he was jilted at the altar years ago). He then said the Senator was competing with Dick Cheney for the “troll under the bridge” position.

Criticism of cultural immaturity is all the rage lately, with Slate’s Jacob Weisberg and Newsweek’s Evan Thomas both trying their hand at it recently. But another immaturity critique in this week’s Newsweek, this one by George Will, stands out – unfortunately, it does so for the wrong reasons.

David Letterman’s public apology Monday night for bad behavior is merely the latest in a long list of famous public apologies. Letterman joins a group of mea culpa-ers that includes a whole lot of politicians — Clinton, McGreevey, Sanford, Spitzer — and one or two jackass entertainers. After the jump, Mediaite’s top ten list of public apologies.