Now that the question of what to do about Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat is no longer an academic one, folks in Boston seem to be giving the issue a little re-think. Remember Kennedy wrote to the governor recently asking him if he couldn’t perhaps do something about that terrible law Democrats passed in 2004, the one that called for a special election in the event of a Senate vacancy FIVE MONTHS after the seat first opened? That got everybody so steamed … MORE »

Riddle us this, finance experts: why would you go to all the trouble of (allegedly) forging a bunch of documents in order to get a $74 million loan and then repay the loan all quick-like once it became clear that Johnny Law was onto you? So much effort for a bunch of money you apparently didn’t need so badly anyway! MORE »

• A man with a giant restaurant sign for a head shook hands with President Obama in Oak Bluffs yesterday. What a lucky man! [New York Daily News]
• Our ten-year projected deficit is so large that the human mind cannot grasp it, any more than it can grasp the concept of “God.” [New York Times]
• The Afghan election looks like it’s going to be a squeaker, with the incumbent coming out just barely ahead of his challenger amid widespread allegations of vote fraud. They’ve learned so much about Western-style democracy in so little time! [Al Jazeera]
• If only Toyota made cars that people wanted to drive, then it would not be in this dire financial situation. [Bloomberg]
• Ted Kennedy Ted Kennedy Ted Kennedy. [Washington Post]
• Michael Jackson’s significantly less famous brothers will harness the excitement surrounding the late pop singer’s untimely demise and try to ride it into basic cable fame, an attempt that will undoubtedly fail, but hey POINTS FOR CRASSNESS. [BBC News]

So long, old fella. [NYT]

ADD PORTUGAL TO LIST OF ‘MOST REPREHENSIBLE EUROPEAN NATIONS’: Belgium may be a buzzing den of felons in helicopters, and sure, it’s responsible for the Congo, but check out how miserably Portugal’s former colonies have fared in the modern era. Everything the Portuguese touch turns to absolute dung, which is why President Obama should be very careful around that dog of his. [MP Nunan on True/Slant]

As any student of politics will tell you, it matters not one whit when an elected official gets caught having sex with a non-spouse person (provided that person is not a hooker or a member of the same sex or both). However, a single incident of sexual indiscretion gives that person’s enemies carte blanche to investigate the crap out of other possible malfeasances, such as abuse of state funds, that may ultimately land that official out of office. In sum: the sex scandals don’t kill you — it’s the money ones. MORE »

Poor Rhode Island is a wee state with a huge unemployment problem, horrible taxes, and an abysmally high cost of living. Fortunately, it’s also got a governor with a can-do attitude who sees one very obvious way to dig the state out of its current budget mess: just get state workers to take two and a half weeks off, unpaid, over the next year or so. MORE »

Spike Lee is, according to Bill O’Reilly, a tiny tiny little man who set up O’Reilly with the porniest line ever — “You find any weapons of mass destruction in here?” — and instead of whipping out his massive loofah and saying “Yeah … IN MY PANTS,” O’Reilly just laughed. Lame. [YouTube]

• A presidential panel estimates that as many as 90,000 people in the US could be killed by the (mild and relatively harmless, they hope!) swine flu this winter. [Washington Post]
• The reality TV guy who may have killed his ex-wife before killing himself was “corrupted by fame,” alleges his grieving father, which is a nice sentiment but had anybody outside of a small sliver of VH1 viewers even heard of this man before his ex-wife’s body turned up in a suitcase? [Telegraph]
• Perpetual staker-out-of-presidential-vacation-spots Cindy Sheehan has decamped for Martha’s Vineyard, which should be approx. 1,000 times nicer to stay at than crappy old Crawford. [Christian Science Monitor]
• Maybe the drag queen and sometime politician Rudy Giuliani will run for governor of New York. [New York Times]
• The GOP goes hard after seniors in its efforts to quash health care reform. [Wall Street Journal]
• Maybe all the backing and forthing over healthcare is moot anyhow, if President Obama’s ambitious plans for change are stymied by a lack of any realistic ability to pay for these things. [Reuters]

AND YOU THOUGHT WE WERE KIDDING ABOUT BELGIUM: No seriously they are a nation of treacherous villains, as evidenced by their “prison break problem.” Apparently dudes are constantly hijacking helicopters and using them to whisk criminals away from Belgian prisons, to the point where authorities have ordered “anti-helicopter wire netting” to put over prison yards. So the next time you get down on America, just remember that WE are not the people who have to put wire bonnets over our prisons to keep the criminals in. [GlobalPost]

Neocon porn pamphlet The Washington Post has a fancy new cybersolution that will aid closeted Obamatards in getting their daily fix of presidential “activities.” The sexy POTUS Tracker lets you see what President Obama’s schedule is, every day, and for a small subscription fee they will send you his dirty briefs once a month and grant you access to an exclusive web cam in the Lincoln Bedroom. “Use our interactive database to track how Obama is spending his time, what issues are getting the most attention and who is influencing the debate,” they say. This is all well and good, but why is there no mention of potty breaks in any of their fancy charts? [POTUS Tracker]