LOS ANGELES (AP) — A Texas woman who said she was forced to remove a nipple ring with pliers in order to board an airplane called Thursday for an apology by federal security agents and a civil rights investigation. “I wouldn’t wish this experience upon anyone,” Mandi Hamlin said at a news conference. “My experience with TSA was a nightmare I had to endure. No one deserves to be treated

At the HuffPo, Hollywood scribe John Eskow decries the “coverage” Barack Obama has gotten from the National Enquirer.  Yes, really.  The “story” that really gets Eskow’s goat is about Larry Sinclair: Now, Larry Sinclair — for those of you who shop in upscale markets and have been fortunate enough not to be exposed to him yet — is a junkie career criminal who claims to have gotten high and had sex

If.

flying suppository monkeys.

News 4 spoke with Dick Tips, the owner of the cemetery, but he said he was too busy to meet with us. Stop sniggering, man.  Totally uncool. 

The Politico had Gallup aggregate their daily polls between March 7 and 22 to assess the cross-party appeal of each candidate, with results similar to that of prior polling showing that McCain gets more support from Democrats than Obama gets from Republicans. The actual news in the Politico project is that the aggregated Gallup data shows McCain winning independents against either Democrat — 48 to 23 percent against Clinton, and 40 to

Slate has posted an excerpt from New York Times reporter Eric Lichtblau’s upcoming book, descriping how the NYT came to publish the story disclosing the Terrorist Surveillance Program.  There are only two truly new revelations in the excerpt.  First, Lichtblau admits that people at the paper would likely have been more inclined to print the story had Vice-President Cheney showed up to defend it because he is so disliked by the paper. 

Disgraced former Gov. Eliot Spitzer has been identified as a long-standing client of a second high-priced call-girl ring, according to the New York Post. Too bad he could not get the media to jump on the “everybody does it” bandwagon before the state jumped from the frying pan into another frying pan. I am shocked.

Presumptive nominee John McCain’s speech Wednesday to the World Affairs Council in Los Angeles focused on his supposed emphasis on a more multi-lateral foreign policy. Much of the news coverage suggested this represents an attempt by McCain to forge a different path from the Cowboy-ism of the Bush administration. Rather than point out that — contrary to the conventional wisdom — the Bush administration generally has pursued the multi-lateral approach,

At RCP, Jay Cost notes that the current media estimates of Hillary Clinton’s odds of winning the Democratic nomination are as imprecise as predicting who will win the World Series: First, there are many reasonable ways to count the popular vote. None is obviously superior to the rest. Of course, it does not matter which we think is most appropriate. What matters is what the superdelegates think, as they will