• Best chance in years to revive Fox’s “Celebrity Boxing” franchise, but Murdoch says no? “Clooney said that he will debate O’Reilly on any venue other than his own, but Bill told him that Rupert won’t allow him to go.” [C & L] MORE »

Around here, we rely on John Bolton, not newspapers, for our news, but maybe you have lower standards. If you do, then take a look at this: some Swedish newspaper says that “a watchlist of possible terror suspects distributed by the US government to airlines for pre-flight checks is now 80,000 names long

Kathleen Parker shows off the chops it takes to be a star columnist at the Orlando Sentinel:

And the media wonder why newspaper circulations are dropping and why Fox News dominates television ratings over the networks and other cable programs.

For the week of November 28th through December 4th, NBC Nightly News averaged 10.5 milliion nightly viewers, ABC World News Tonight averaged 9.1 million, and CBS Evening News averaged nearly 8 million. MORE »

Yes, there were the bogus real-estate transactions and fancy toilets. But what really brought down Randy “Duke” Cunningham? Gay prostitutes. At least that’s what Marcus Stern says. And he ought to know. Seven months ago, the D.C.-based journalist’s story in the San Diego Union-Tribune inspired the federal probe that led to Cunningham’s downfall. Stern started looking into Cunningham because of a pair of $10,000 Saudia Arabia junkets the California congressman went on to allegedly “promote discourse and better relations.” Having seen Cunningham in heated bipartisan action, however, Stern had never thought of the antique-loving flyboy as particularly diplomatic:

Stern remembers an incident he witnessed in 1996 between Duke and Congressman Barney Frank, the gay congressman from Massachusetts, embroiled at the time in his own scandal involving a former male companion who had been caught running a prostitution ring from the congressman

Last month, federal officials killed a 90-year-old Engelman spruce and uprooted it from a New Mexico forest; today, it gets its moment to shine. We’re not sure what the protocol is as far publishing photos of War on Christmas casualties, but the Senate’s got a treecam, so we’re guessing it’s okay. In mere hours, Denny Hastert will be flipping a switch that illuminates the tree’s 10,000 lights — kind of makes the President’s menorah look a little skimpy in comparison, doesn’t it? Along with all that candlepower, the tree’s got its original name back. “Holiday Tree” was annoyingly PC, “People’s Tree” was downright communistic — it’s a Christmas tree, for Christ’s sake, why can’t we just call it what it is? So spoke Denny Hastert, and so it shall be. The tree comes from the Santa Fe National Forest. Despite Hastert’s best efforts (we’re guessing), federal officials have yet to rename it the Santa Claus National Forest. Maybe next year. — GREG BEATO MORE »

There are 12 days of Christmas. There are 12 different tshirts in the Gawker t-shirt shop. What are you waiting for, heathen? For only $240 (plus shipping, handling, and possibly some other fees), you can clothe your favorite hipster for a year, or maybe even two — these things are 100% something and they stay fresh. Order early, and our sweatshop workers may not have to work on Christmas eve… MORE »

Who do you get when you can’t get Tom Arnold to star in your yuletide heartwarmer? Judging by “A Very Beazley Christmas,” the White House’s new 10-minute holiday epic, Department of Treasury Secretary John Snow and Department of Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns. Yeah, we never heard of them either — this thing is going straight to video. (Johanns does deliver a surprisingly intense and earnest performance, though.) Also: MORE »

True, it’s already old news that the 9/11 Public Discourse Project gave the Bush Administration and Congress a lousy report card for their efforts to ensure our homeland against future terrorist attacks. But while we know the Project handed out plenty of D’s and F’s in esoteric, post-graduate subjects like “Improve airline passenger pre-screening” and “Maximum Effort By U.S. Government To Secure WMD,” we decided to tally up all the grades and determine an overall GPA. MORE »

Hey, we’re as sad as anybody to learn about Santa’s untimely demise — we were hoping to finally get an iPod this year. But if O’Reilly’s not gonna ask it, then we’re gonna ask it: When it comes to the War on Christmas, how come the media — especially Fox News — only focuses on the negative stories? Where are the positive stories? Sure, suicide reindeer have turned the North Pole into a scary hell-hole of sleigh bombings and barely functioning infrastructure, and elvish forces are still not able to defend the country on their own. But what about all the new Christian schools that are being built here in the U.S. — schools where our kids can sing Silent Night all day long without worrying about whether or not they’re undermining the unsaveds’ self-esteem? Where all the stories about Chasing Christmas, a great new ABC Family Channel movie starring Tom Arnold as a modern-day Scrooge? We usually wait until our third or fourth guest-post to start dishing out the conspiracy theories, but honestly, this constant drumbeat of stories that make it sound like we’re losing the War on Christmas — is Rupert Murdoch Jewish or something? — GREG BEATO MORE »

“I love to engage in repartee with people who are stupider than I am,” Ann Coulter said onstage at the University of Connecticut. No, she wasn’t explaining why she appears on The O’Reilly Factor so much. Instead, she was mocking UConn students for making her job even easier than it usually is. The UConn Undergraduate Student Government paid the controversial pundit $16,000 to speak — and DC’s own Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute kicked in untold thousands as well — but Coulter lasted only fifteen minutes before using chants of “You suck, you suck” as an excuse to cut her speech short and go straight to the Q & A section of the evening. MORE »

Was Harry Reid’s decision to close the Senate yesterday a “pure stunt,” as Bill Frist accuses, or an “extraordinary move,” as some Democrats are calling it? Is there even any difference between such characterizations? One anonymous Republican gadfly, going for more specificity in Hotline, insists that “Harry Reid’s word is as good as toe jam.” That definitely sounds like an insult. Unless, of course, Dick Morris is saying it. — GREG BEATO MORE »