WHY DOES JOE BIDEN HATE IDAHO SO MUCH? “Vice President Biden hosted officials from every state but Idaho for a conference today designed to serve as a workshop and warning on how they should use their billions of dollars from the stimulus package.” Is Idaho not receiving any stimulus money, or are they boycotting Pork President Biden’s Porkulous Guide to Porkery? Suspicious. [Washington Post]

• Tina Brown start-up “Whitehouse.gov” has a new look and a new face and it is that of Barack Obama! Also a new blog called “the Briefing Room.” [Whitehouse.gov/Andrew Sullivan]
• Jessica Alba, our nation’s greatest Latina President since Lincoln, told Team Fox News that Bill O’Reilly is an asshole. [Crooks and Liars]
• Famous irrelevant persons Sarah Palin and Bills Richardson and Ayers were not invited to Washington today. The Daily Beast has tracked down what sad alternative activities they will be doing in crushing anonymity instead. [Daily Beast]
• Here are some closure-y long-distance action shots of Bush’s farewell helicopter (note UFO in second photo). [AMERICAblog]
• The Greatest Generation: Sasha Obama of course hated Sheryl Crow and will.i.am’s cover of “One Love.” [Slate]

IF ONE WISHES TO BECOME KING in America, there is one thing and one thing only that he must do, and that is to talk to America’s “paper of record,” the New York Times, for an hour or so before inauguration. Otherwise the inauguration is illegitimate and the would-be king little more than a fraud. And while our mutt-king Barack Obama has sat down with the likes of Maureen Dowd and Frank Rich this week, he has not talked to the news side of the liberal newspaper’s operations, which he must do. And now the reporters are getting maaaaaad! MORE »

Second only to Mark Penn in Hillary Clinton’s Annals of Campaign Staff Odiousness, former Clinton communications director Howard Wolfson is known for precisely two things: wearing a hideous Cosby sweater stolen off a murdered bum “for good luck,” and being a terrible asshole. Julia Reed, who tried to interview Hillary Clinton for Vogue, called him “the most charmless human being on the planet.” And that is only the beginning of the horrors she suffered trying to land an interview with the Inevitable Nominee. MORE »

• Names & Faces: Art Buchwald takes a break … Dallas Austin pardoned in Dubai. [WP]
• Page Six: Rudy Giuliani shares campaign ambitions with some party-goers, snubs others. [NYP]
• Daily Dish: Andrew Cuomo gets campaign support from the guy who allegedly ruined his marriage. [NYDN]
• Under the Dome: Presumed Bill Frist replacement works for the NASCAR vote. [The Hill]