Hot Off the (Virtual) Presses.

Pentagon OKs media photos of war dead

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has decided to allow photos of flag-draped caskets at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, if the families of casualties agree.

BusinessWeek

What we are seeing, however, is American refiners cutting back on their utilization capacity, producing less gasoline in order to reduce the retail supply so they can raise prices. Amazingly, Americans get hot under the collar when OPEC cuts production to intentionally raise oil prices on the market, but when refiners cut production to raise the prices of finished fuels that we buy every day, we ignore it.

Did you see the not-quite State of the Union Speech tonight?

Were you satisfied? Reassured? Alarmed?

Unload in the comments…

Senate confirms Hilda Solis

The White House has unveiled an excerpt of Obama’s don’t-call-it State of the Union Address tonight, which makes it sound like a much needed national pep-talk:

But while our economy may be weakened and our confidence shaken; though we are living through difficult and uncertain times, tonight I want every American to know this: We will rebuild, we will recover, and the United States of America will emerge stronger than before.

The weight of this crisis will not determine the destiny of this nation. The answers to our problems don’t lie beyond our reach. They exist in our laboratories and universities; in our fields and our factories; in the imaginations of our entrepreneurs and the pride of the hardest-working people on Earth. Those qualities that have made America the greatest force of progress and prosperity in human history we still possess in ample measure. What is required now is for this country to pull together, confront boldly the challenges we face, and take responsibility for our future once more.

NASA quarter-billion-dollar global warming satellite crashes after launch.

Photo: Buckner/Getty

After teeing off on George W. Bush (a man Bill Maher calls “a thundering doofus”) for the past eight years, the host of Real Time With Bill Maher needs a new comic foil. He tells us in our new issue that he’ll manage to mine comedy from Barack Obama (”He’s not some infallible chocolate Jesus… that’s Kanye West,” Maher says), but he’s also taking aim at the Republican party (”the Republican base has been purified, the same way that crack can be purified out of cocaine… or at least that’s how Amy Winehouse explained it to me”) and Rush Limbaugh (”I give Rush a wide latitude because he’s a drug addict”). And, of course, there’s the economy (because frankly, you gotta laugh to keep from crying). So here then, straight from the Real Time host, Bill Maher’s New Rules on How to Deal with the Economic Meltdown: (more…)