Politico’s Darren Goode reports that President Obama will formally reject the Keystone XL pipeline. Deputy Secretary of State William Burns is expected to make the announcement at a 3pm briefing. Goode notes that White House and State Department officials “have not commented publicly Wednesday, but Tuesday, White House spokesman Jay Carney indicated the administration was concerned about the lack of an alternative route in Nebraska.”

Earlier today, Mother Jones‘ Kevin Drum posted this “Photo of the Day” of an unidentified man whose job it is to stabilize GOP candidate Mitt Romney‘s chair while he speaks to a crowd on the campaign trail. At first, I thought he might’ve been a network camera crewman steadying Mitt for a TV stand-up, but NY Mag‘s Daily Intel blog has identified him as Garrett Jackson, Romney’s “body man” for the past year.

Did you know GOP presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann made a movie? It’s true! Back in 2002, when she was making a name for herself as an education activist with the Maple River Education Coalition, Bachmann collaborated with a man named Michael Chapman to make a film called (rather delightfully) Guinea Pig Kids II. At the time, Chapman, described in this document as a “historian and education researcher,” had warned that state and federal education reforms were putting the United States on the path toward its very own Holocaust, turning impressionable school children into “global citizens.” Together, Bachmann and Chapman traveled throughout Minnesota with their warning, their efforts eventually culminating in Guinea Pig Kids II (not to be confused with this Guinea Pig Kids), which, besides informing mostly church-going Minnesotans that their children were at risk of becoming cogs in the government’s terrible machine, hoped to raise funds for the MREC.

As this campaign finance cycle comes to a close, presidential candidates are required by FEC rules to disclose their budgets and spending, and nearly every candidate’s expensive will generate their own headline. Yesterday, it was the unexpected closing of Newt Gingrich‘s Tiffany’s credit line. Today, it’s something that, with traction, could do harm to a campaign of legitimate viability: Rep. Michele Bachmann‘s, as the disclosures show a surge in hair and makeup spending unprecedented in her career.

While the thousands of pages of email correspondence released this week from the years Sarah Palin was governor of Alaska have yet to provide any smoking guns, they certainly have their amusing moments, as Rachel Maddow explored last night. Among them, messages about controversial religious figures, some notes about rumors surrounding her family, and invitations to concerts that suggesting bringing “beef, tequila, and condoms.”

The Alabama state senate recently passed a bill aimed at blocking employers from hiring illegal immigrants, a bill known as the “Alabama Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act.” Among the key provisions of the bill: giving law enforcement more authority to check immigration status, requiring voters to bring proof of citizenship with them to the polls—and prohibiting “participation in any extracurricular activity outside of the basic course of study” for K-12 students who aren’t legal residents. So Alabama undocumented teens? You can pretty much forget the prom.

If we weren’t already gainfully employed, we’d be all over this one. I mean, it’s not every day a job listing promises a working environment complete with “hurricanes, wildfires, tar balls, bedbugs, diseased citrus trees and an entire town overrun by giant roaches.” And the kind of news you’d be covering if you land the job? “We have all kinds of corruption, violence and scumbaggery.”

These are the amazing words of Matthew Doig, who’s hiring for the investigative team at the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. And Doig’s very clearly written the best job listing in the history of humankind. Take, for instance, Doig’s absolutely dead on (I know, I lived and worked there) description of living and working in Florida:

The U.S. press systematically refer to Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi as a crazy, narcissistic despot whose people are suffering and whose country is in turmoil. But, for a brief slice of time in 2007, people reading through certain U.S. and British publications may have found themselves reading about a new or “changed” Gaddafi, a Gaddafi committed to paving the way for democracy in Libya.

There’s a reason for that.

Over at Mother Jones they had a tough decision for their January/February issue. They had two big stories inside, one on the still slow-to-arrive relief in Haiti, the other on the marijuana business and the push for legalization. They liked both articles, but which one to put on the cover; the depression one or the fun one? In the end, they chose both (kind of) and have written an interesting article detailing why.

Earlier today, chief Wikileaks spokesman (and suspected founder) Julian Assange told the AP that the Pentagon had communicated to his organization. It took about an hour for the Pentagon to deny any dialogue. Now, after a letter from the Department of Defense to a Wikileaks legal representative has surfaced, the Pentagon is standing by their “no direct contact” claim but backed down on their earlier, more absolute claim. Oh, and they don’t want to cooperate.

For an organization that advertises itself as a defender and disciple of the truth, Wikileaks sure has a hard time keeping the truth about itself straight. Little more than an hour after AP published an interview with alleged Wikileaks spokesman “Daniel Schmitt,” the organization’s Twitter feed, suspected to be run by editor-in-chief Julian Assange, condemned it as “untrue and misleading” and emphasized that it was “not endorsed.”

Rep. Bob Inglis has served nearly 12 years in Congress, and yet, despite a 93% lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union, he lost his most recent primary because, as he explains it in an interview with Mother Jones, he wasn’t conservative enough to appeal to an increasingly extreme Republican base. As Mother Jones paints him, Inglis is a victim of conservative ideology gone awry.

An AFP story Tuesday ran with the headline, “Gulf focus shifts, but where is all the oil?” The story essentially states that while clean-up efforts are in full swing after the well was finally capped, the crews are not finding very much oil in the Gulf; they’re actually wondering where it has gone. Well, Mother Jones has a response: it hasn’t gone anywhere. In fact, MoJo is criticizing the media for its reporting on the situation.

Though President Barack Obama has promised to close Guantanamo Bay’s detention center, the issue has largely been overshadowed by other stories in the news lately. Today, Mother Jones‘ Nick Baumann writes that a group of news organizations may be close to suing the Obama administration over press restrictions surrounding Gitmo.

In honor of Earth Day’s upcoming 40th anniversary, we’ve collected 20 of the greatest Earth Day and environmental action magazine covers, from 1970-present. Check out more after the jump. More info on Earth Day can be found here. This story was co-produced by Linda Rubes.

Mother Jones Washington Bureau Chief David Corn, who also writes a column for Politics Daily, is a well-known author and journalist who broke early news on the Valerie Plame affair, and provided memorable coverage of the 2008 presidential campaign. In the most action-packed Inside the White House Press Corps ever, Corn talks about covering the White House, his Twitter dominance, and tells us what he misses about the Bush White House, all while fending off chaotic distractions.

Just after 4pm yesterday Gawker published an enormously disturbing slide show of photos depicting the “animal house” antics. When I saw the post an hour or so later it had already clocked over 12, 000 views. As of this morning 95,000 plus people have seen it. Yesterday evening a State Dept. spokesperson announced an investigation had been ordered. Was the quick response due to Gawker’s involvement?