On AC 360 Thursday night, Anderson Cooper spotlighted the “jailbait” section of the social link-sharing website Reddit.com, which features photographs of under-age teenagers. “Somebody somewhere is looking at sexually suggestive photos of your teenaged child and you might be just as surprised to learn where these pervy grownups find the images. They’re posted on a site that’s part of one of the most respected publishing empires on Earth. We’re talking about a site called Reddit.”

When the Dominique Strauss-Kahn scandal broke in May, many reporters tried to bring the story home for Americans by comparing it to Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s revelation that he’d fathered a love child. With DSK back in the news this week after new reports that he may be innocent after all, pundits are again drawing parallels to another case being discussed, that of Casey Anthony. “Combined with the seeming collapse of the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case, the shock showed a press quick to jump to conclusions, if not about actual guilt, then at least about guilty verdicts,” TIME‘s James Poniewozik said, upon the conclusion of the Anthony trial this week. What do these two stories really have in common with each other?

Most Americans who casually follow news may just be catching up on the summer’s first tragicomic mystery, the story of how a lewd photo ended up being sent to a 21-year-old college student from the Twitter account of Rep. Anthony Weiner. While concrete facts in this story are few and far between, and the Congressman certainly hasn’t been helping, those who first heard of the story on The Last Word tonight may have missed the little information there is out there, and in lieu got an update on Andrew Breitbart and Shirley Sherrod. Wait a minute, wasn’t that last summer?

CNN’s legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin appeared on the air, right after Andrew Breitbart, to discuss the ongoing “Weinergate” story. Yet Toobin was much more agitated by what just happened on CNN than by anything related to Democratic Congressman Anthony Weiner’s Twitter ordeal. According to Toobin, the Twitter picture controversy is just a “mild prank,” but Breitbart’s comments about Weiner were truly what was “outrageous.”

Potential Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has dominated the airwaves as of late, as he grants interviews to anyone with a camera for him to appear in front of or a telephone for him to call. Much like the four stages of grief, it seems like Trump’s various interviewers are each at various stages along the path of the “Four Stages of a Trump Interview.”

While other potential presidential candidates are doing their best to ingratiate themselves with the general American public, Donald Trump has adopted the bizarre and profoundly entertaining strategy of calling up his detractors in the media individually and making them explain themselves. Yesterday’s victim was Eliot Spitzer, who had mocked Trump’s financial hyperbole, and was now presented with the task of doing so to Trump on national television.

The Donald Trump 2012 pseudo-campaign is deeply rooted in two main points: “Barack Obama wasn’t born in America,” and “I’m really, really rich.” The first point has been loud and preposterous enough to take up most of the media’s time since Trump parachuted onto the political scene; tonight, Eliot Spitzer took a shot at his other campaign issue, finding millions of dollars in discrepancies between the size of Trump’s wallet and what’s actually in it.

Who: Alec Baldwin, Jeffrey Toobin, Judy Gold, moderated by Andy Borowitz
What: “The Borowitz Report: Midterm Madness!”
Where: 92nd St. Y
When: October 20, 2010
Thumbs: Up

On the cusp of the first major national elections since the Supreme Court ruled corporations have the First Amendment right to speech in politics, the echo chamber of public political discourse sounds all the louder with all those extra voices. While on legal grounds it’s unclear what it is about Citizens United that seems to evoke hysteria in many talking heads, they have good reason to want to lower the volume: to better hear themselves talk.

This past weekend, Mediaite contributor Jasmine Moy took in the New Yorker Festival, one of the city’s hottest cultural tickets every fall, usually featuring very smart people sitting in chairs on stage, talking thoughtfully about smart things, for longer than five minutes and without interruption. Why is there so little of that on the telly? It even had its share of naughtiness: “They were small breasts, in keeping with the understated nature of the magazine.” If you want to find out the context for that remark, you’ll have to read on.

Portland Oregon law enforcement authorities announced tonight that they are reopening the investigation into claims that former Vice President Al Gore sexually harassed a massage therapist in 2006. The decision comes in light of new discoveries by the National Enquirer including the discovery of stained pants.

Woo-hoo! Elena Kagan is everywhere! It’s Kaganfest 2010! She’s totally debatable as a Supreme Court nominee! She knows Eliot Spitzer! She’s better for a headline than Taylor Momsen! Everybody loves the Supreme Court! That is…now. But in 2008 during the campaign, no one cared.

Outside of his almost universally acclaimed reporting from disaster areas and war zones, recently Anderson Cooper has found another niche for his typically non-partisan but still confrontational style: dismantling the birther movement. Last night, he admitted he’s starting to pay the price for repeatedly attacking the birthers in the currency of “vitriolic emails,” which have increased since his coverage intensified.

Bad news for Republicans should they be counting on using the Supreme Court as a last resort to block the Senate health care reform bill. Jeffrey Toobin visited Rick Sanchez today to talk about the chances of success Republicans will have if they try to legally oppose a “deem and pass” vote that would indirectly put the bill on the President’s desk, and he didn’t waste any time in telling the GOP that, quite simply, it’s not going to happen.

Who: Jeffrey Toobin, Calvin Trillin, Janeane Garofalo and Jonathan Alter, moderated by Andy Borowitz What: The Andy Borowitz Report: Obama’s First Year Where: 92nd St. Y When: January 27, 2010 Thumbs: Up Host/moderator Andy Borowitz set the tone for the evening with ten minutes of stand-up comedy at the top of the event. It sent [...]

Lights! Camera! SCOTUS! All eyes this week are turned toward the confirmation hearing of Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

Mediaite asked some of our favorite legal eagles to share their thoughts on the Sotomayor hearings: The New Yorker/CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin, Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick, CBS’s Andrew Cohen and SCOTUSblog’s Tom Goldstein weigh in on today’s events.