Former Bush Interior Secretary and Jack Abramoff pal Gale Norton, who earned that position after a successful career corporo-raping the United States environment, is in trouble for doing the thing that every Bush administration official did, but she did so very much! “The Justice Department is investigating whether former Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton illegally used her position to benefit Royal Dutch Shell PLC, the company that later hired her, according to officials in federal law enforcement and the Interior Department.” HMM WHO KNOWS? [LA Times]

John McCain’s sexytime lobbyist friend, Vicki Iseman, has dropped her $27 million suit against the New York Times over a story last year which implied-but-not-really that she and WALNUTS! used to fuck all the time. Times Washington bureau chief Dean Baquet e-mailed the news to his staff in a rather pissy memo: “Vicki Iseman has dropped her lawsuit against The Times, just weeks after it was filed. We paid no money. We did not apologize. We did not retract one word of the story, which was a compelling chapter in the tale of Senator John McCain and his political rise.” If that clown lady has a problem, she can go suck an egg. [Michael Calderone]