When Pope Benedict XVI resigned earlier this week due to his advanced age, Catholics across the world seemed sure about one thing: The next guy has got to be younger. Along with that, he (or she?! no, no, definitely not she) should probably be able to confront the Church's history of child-molestation as well as appeal to growing Catholic demographics in poor countries. After the Pope steps down on February 28th, expect a quick deliberation between the cardinals, eager to have a new Pope by the Easter holiday. In that spirit, here's a quick rundown of the men-or-women-no-no-not-women-who-would-be-Pope:

The People's Choice
Luis Antonio Tagle, hailing from the Philippines, is among the youngest and newest Cardinals, having been made one just this past November. His quiet reserve and respectfulness is very Pope-like, and while it would be nice to see a Pope who wasn't an old white man, bookmakers have him at 16-1.

Please, God, No
The boisterous Timothy M. Dolan doesn't stand much of a chance of being Pope, with America being a superpower and all, but his handling of the sexual abuse allegations (paying off priests to leave the priesthood instead of reporting them to the police), should disqualify him enough. Bookies have him at 50-1.

The Relunctant Canuck
The Quebecois Marc Ouellet described the possibility of becoming Pope "a nightmare" in a 2011 interview, but he is a theological conservative who is about the right age for Pope (a spry 68). Sometimes self-effacing in a progressive country with a declining amount of Catholics, the Cardinal is running at 4-1.

Home Cookin'
Italy's Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi is giving what amounts to the keynote address of the weeklong papal Lenten retreat, but his low-profile is overshadowed by his fellow countryman, Angelo Scola. He's running at 16-1.

The Charismatic Favorite
Angelo Scola, the archbishop of Milan, is very similar to the outgoing Pope, except younger (at an unripe 71) and a little more progressive. He has focused on immigrants rights and outreach to the Muslim world. He's running at 7-2, so get used to this guy — he might just be the next Pope!

The Black Pope
Peter Turkson, Ghana's first Cardinal, has promoted abstinence as a solution to stopping the spread of AIDS in Africa. He's not going to be Pope. Strangely enough, the bookmakers I'm using for odds have him at 5-2. I would love to see all the living room walls of Boston with a picture of a black Pope on it. Oh god, I would love that.

All odds from PaddyPower.com.

After a three-decade residency at Vogue, contributing editor André Leon Talley is leaving the magazine. Beyond the masthead, you might recognize ALT from his Louis Vuitton-clad tennis practice in The September Issue, or simply for his glorious collection of capes.

Talley recently signed on with former NBC co-chair Ben Silverman's production company to create a late-night talk show. Rumor has it that Vogue's distaste for the squawking, hideously gauche machine that is the—what do you call it?—television box played a role in his departure.

André is no stranger to TV, having already made the rounds on America's Next Top Model and Entertainment Tonight. And if his conversation with Beasts of the Southern Wild's adorable Quvenzhané Wallis is any indication, he has potential as a chat show host. (I, for one, would also support a switch from late night's standard desk-and-couch setup to ALT's conducting all interviews while hiding behind an armchair.)

Vogue chief Anna Wintour's distaste for television is well documented, as when she turned down a partnership with Project Runway. Although Citizen Wintour bristled at "cheapening" her magazine's brand, the show proved a cash cow for Elle.

Regardless, this is said to be an amicable split, with more Talley-Vogue collaborations on the horizon.

[Image via Getty]

Ratings-starved CNN is changing its focus, and that's cool. They hadn't been committed to straight news reporting for some time, but really hadn't fully made the leap into baseless sensationalism until just a few weeks ago when "flesh egg" Jeff Zucker took the reins. Their 24-hour coverage of the "shit cruise" was exemplary sensationalism, even going so far as to compare a group of inconvenienced vacation-ers to victims of Katrina.

But the headline which has been on their front page all day, "11 meteor tweets we wish we'd thought of," is useless and stupid in a heartbreaking way. Because they don't actually wish they'd thought of those tweets. Those tweets aren't funny and they know it. It's like listening to a comedian tell a painfully unfunny joke, and then being like, damn, I wish I had told that joke to a bunch of people instead of that guy. At least that guy made a snarky comment about something. Ooooo, I wish I was that guy! But you cannot be that guy. You are a news organization. And that guy sucks, anyway.

Three weeks ago, another guy made a Twitter account, a parody account, of the dolphin trapped in the Gowanus Canal. He was shocked when people harassed him for a Twitter parody account, thinking the problem people had with him was that he was speaking in the voice of a dying creature. It wasn't because of that. It was because parody accounts of current events are just so goddamn unfunny, they are intolerable even in a world of noise.

Yesterday, Jake Fogelnest claimed the @RussianMeteor Twitter account and discouraged anyone from creating another parody account. These happened anyway, and obviously the war against parody accounts is un-winnable. But at the end of the day, who cares? It's just some more noise, and that is what the Internet mostly is.

Which is what bums me out about that CNN article. Because they don't wish they thought of those tweets. They can't think of those tweets, because they are a news organization. But I guess they're not really much of that anymore, either. So instead of saying, "we wish we'd thought of" these tweets, just write your own. Here are some "funny" tweets. Here is even more noise.

Just when you thought the Boy Scouts of America had a monopoly on organizational misbehavior, CBS Los Angeles discovered a video showing more than 13,000 boxes of unsold, unexpired Girl Scout cookies knowingly trashed last May. How many innocent Thin Mints have to die to satisfy your corporate greed?

In the footage, a bulldozer destroys a mountain of cookie cases as a worker excitedly yells, "Goodbye, Girl Scout cookies!" CBS LA's sources claim that the practice of dumping leftover Girl Scout cookies in this way is far from uncommon.

Reporter David Goldstein determined that the cookies in question were originally ordered by the San Gorgonio Girl Scout Council in Redlands, CA. In an interview, a council representative blames this waste on ABC Bakery, their supplier. If cookies are over-ordered, 1% can be returned to ABC Bakery for a refund—these 13,200 boxes represent that 1%.

It would be naïve to think that large-scale waste isn't a reality on the assembly lines and in the warehouses of major food conglomerates, but this is the gee-dee Girl Scouts, a service organization in which charity is supposed to be a priority.

Girl Scouts of the USA expressed regret over this incident, but explained that they had "no national policy" on what becomes of unsold cookies. Maybe it's time they enact one—especially considering that ABC is one of only two commercial producers of Girl Scout cookies in the United States.

Lest we forget, the Girl Scout Promise and Law resolve to "help people at all times" and "use resources wisely." My fourth-grade Girl Scout troop's tyrannical leader forced us to rake her (able-bodied) mother's lawn for our "community service"—this is a true story—but I have much higher expectations (and esteem) for the organization as a whole.

[Image via spirit of america / Shutterstock]

Writing in the winter issue of Emory Magazine, President James Wagner rhapsodizes about the need for compromise in a politically turbulent society. He points out that the constitution was in itself a compromise. Another example he cites, is the Three-Fifths Compromise, which legally represented slaves as less than a person. He writes:

One instance of constitutional compromise was the agreement to count three-fifths of the slave population for purposes of state representation in Congress. Southern delegates wanted to count the whole slave population, which would have given the South greater influence over national policy. Northern delegates argued that slaves should not be counted at all, because they had no vote. As the price for achieving the ultimate aim of the Constitution-"to form a more perfect union"-the two sides compromised on this immediate issue of how to count slaves in the new nation. Pragmatic half-victories kept in view the higher aspiration of drawing the country more closely together.

He then goes on to explain that compromises, like the Three-Fifths Compromise, keep our country great. Let's think of a bunch of other compromises that he could have used instead of the one that is horrible and forever a stain on our nation:

- The Affordable Care Act

- Voting Rights Act

- Bicameral Legislature

- Do all homework, you get to watch The Simpsons

That took me two minutes.

Also, the whole piece is pretty much about why he's cutting back on the humanities:

At Emory of late we have had many discussions about the ideal-and the reality-of the liberal arts within a research university. All of us who love Emory share a determination that the university will continue trailblazing the best way for research universities to contribute to human well-being and stewardship of the earth in the twenty-first century. This is a high and worthy aspiration. It is tempered by the hard reality that the resources to achieve this aspiration are not boundless; our university cannot do everything we might wish to do, or everything that other universities do. Different visions of what we should be doing inevitably will compete. But in the end, we must set our sights on that higher goal-the flourishing liberal arts research university in service to our twenty-first-century society.

Foot goes where? In mouth. In mouth, sir.

(h/t Alex Shephard)

A study published yesterday in The New Zealand Medical Journal suggests that you—yes, you—should fart on airplanes. Congratulations.

Though I wanted very badly to believe that flatulence might have aerodynamic benefits—does it generate lift?—the real issue is that you shouldn't not pass gas: high altitudes increase the gas content in the digestive system (potentially resulting in discomfort and bloating), so disregard the risk of embarrassment and go for it.

Nowadays everything is cancer this, cancer that, so why don't we divert all our NSF funding to the burgeoning research field of "in-flight flatulence?" Then again, such choice quotes as this one would sound 90% less improbably charming and sophisticated if spoken by an American:

"On the one hand, if the pilot restrains a fart, all the drawbacks previously mentioned, including impaired concentration, may affect his abilities to control the plane," they said. "On the other hand, if he lets go of the fart, his co-pilot may be affected by its odour, which again reduces safety onboard the flight."

I have many questions, not least of which is what is being served for dinner on this hypothetical flight.

The authors also recommend that seat cushions should contain charcoal, which can neutralize unpleasant smells—adding that it could be included in "trousers" as well. But then, according to the New York Daily News, their argument takes a slightly sinister turn:

The scientists also brought up the approach of restricting airplane access from flatus-prone individuals but acknowledged it was politically incorrect and less practical.

The TSA's No-Fly List just got a lot longer.

[Image via Shutterstock]

During the year it went public, Facebook made $1.1 billion in profits. But thanks to some nifty accounting, the company won't be paying any federal or state taxes on it — instead, it will actually be receiving a federal tax refund of about $429 million.

Citizens for Tax Justice, a research group, predicted this would happen back when Facebook went public last year, and just released a breakdown of what Facebook pulled off in its 2012 annual report.

Essentially, because of a tax deductibility on executive stock options, options which Facebook gave out plenty over the past year, the deductible ended up actually equaling more than Facebook owed in taxes to the state and federal governments. So instead of paying anything to the government, the government will instead be paying Facebook a refund of almost half a billion dollars. The refund comes on taxes they had paid in 2010 and 2011.

Not only that, but Facebook is actually carrying "forward another $2.17 billion in additional tax-option tax breaks for use in future years." Basically, they would like to do this every year.

One of our most successful new companies is not paying a dime in taxes.

Yes, let's please cut Medicare. That's the thing that's broken.

Oscar winner Forest Whitaker was wrongly accused of shoplifting and subjected to a humiliating pat down at a Morningside Heights deli on Friday morning.

If West Side Story were written today, "Officer Krupke" would contain at least a verse and a half about stop-and-frisk, the NYPD's favorite pastime. But in this case, no cops were called—Whitaker was publicly frisked by a Milano Deli employee, in what seems to be an instance of blatant discrimination.

Is it possible that the man had just Netflixed The Last King of Scotland and thought the brilliant actor was, in fact, the reprehensible Idi Amin himself? On second thought—nope, just blatant discrimination. Gothamist spoke with a regular deli patron who was present for the incident with Whitaker. She claims to have witnessed previous negative treatment of black customers by the store's employees, as well having heard staff spout "racist crap."

Classy as always, Whitaker (who came into the store to buy a yogurt—any forensic scientist worth his weight in old-timey fingerprint powder knows that yogurt and crime do not mix) agreed to the employee's request not to involve the authorities out of fear of losing his job. Good luck with that one, buddy.

[Image via Getty]

Last night, two space aliens sat down on a couch and drooled at each other in a pantomime of human interaction on Oprah's Next Chapter. For an unilluminating hour Oprah Winfrey surrendered her usual alpha role probably because that was part of Beyoncé's intergalactic rider. With the big, timely but ultimately fluffy interviews, Oprah tends to endlessly ass kiss, but this was over the top even for her. She referred to Beyoncé as the "preeminent mistress of the universe"" praised Bey's small number of cell phones and unleashed a string of adjectives to praise Beyoncé's anti-exposé of an HBO documentary, Life Is But a Dream, which ran immediately after. In Oprah's estimation, the film is "familiar, unfamiliar, exciting, exhilarating, riveting and personal and intimate and empowering."

Oprah made only one vague reference to the backing-track/lip-synching Inauguration scandal, when really what we could have used was someone looking Beyoncé in the face and discussing whether it matters at all that she was singing if it wasn't what most of America (i.e. virtually everyone except for Beyoncé) heard. Whatever. Pop culture moves on, asses need kissing.

Tuition-free arts school Cooper Union, whose new academic building peeks out of Cooper Square like a beautiful, serene spaceship, will most likely start charging students tuition to make up for a shortfall of about $12 million each year. The school began charging tuition for graduate students last year, a decision that was met with student protests, including a group of students who barricaded themselves inside of the iconic original Cooper Union building.

Students and alumni knew for a while that school president Jamshed Bharucha would explore tuition options — last August he asked the school's different division to come up with budget options that would most likely include tuition revenue. The art school refused, and in response, the "the trustees decided not to send out early acceptance letters to this year's art school applicants." Ouch.

Faculty, alumni, and students have been trying to find alternative ways to make up the budget shortfall, including trying to land a big donor, like its founder Peter Cooper, and some have floated the name Michael Bloomberg (they must be truly desperate to consider him, champion of austerity).

But by even requiring some students to pay tuition, the egalitarian roots of Cooper Union will be cut, a steady upward rise of tuition, though promised against, will be almost certain (which is what happened with CUNY during NYC's last financial crisis), and one of the last true meritocracies in the American academy will be lost.

[Image by David Shankbone]

Early Saturday morning, a trio of thieves made off with $2 million in jewelry from a Jacob & Co. case in the lobby of Manhattan's Four Seasons Hotel. Although the New York Post insists on identifying the robbers as "slick," this wasn't exactly Ocean's Three.

With a getaway car in wait, two men approached a jewelry case in the lobby, broke the glass, and voilà: free fancy stuff.

This could be the best slash worst heist movie ever made. "We're going to need an expert: an expert at smashing glass. Then, get me a guy who can grab jewelry. I want the best in the business! And did I mention that both need to be very good at running away very fast? Finally, we'll need a third man—someone with a valid New York driver's license."

Says the Post:

They struck up a conversation with a hotel staffer about the Jacob & Co. case while concealing a sledgehammer, sources said.

"No—I'm just really, really, really, extremely happy to see you" is roughly how one imagines that exchange went.

Their task was made even simpler by what the Post calls a "shocking amount of faulty surveillance cameras" in the lobby. Though the Four Seasons may be one of the finest hotels in New York City, this is approximately what would happen if somebody robbed Fawlty Towers.

The supporting cast is equally fascinating. Jacob Arabo, owner of Jacob & Co., has designed jewelry for Madonna, Diddy, and other superstar clients—though his career was briefly interrupted in 2008 by a two-year imprisonment for his ties to a cocaine-smuggling and money-laundering ring. Arabo also goes by "Jacob the Jeweler," and—in "rap circles"—the "King of Bling."

And then there's Neil.

"I can't tell you nothing about nothing," said a man named Neil, who identified himself as hotel security.

I'll take that development deal in cash, Hollywood.

[Image via Getty]

Despite this winter actually acting wintry and cold, NYC homeless shelters have been turning away homeless families on freezing nights if they cannot prove they have nowhere else to go, the Daily News is reporting. Turning homeless individuals and families away has long been a practice of New York City's Department of Homeless Services, which relentlessly insists that you must stay with a relative or at some prior living arrangement if it is still available to you, leaving many homeless no choice but to sleep on the street rather than return to a bad living situation.

But what makes this shift in policy different is that these families are still being turned away during a "code blue" — when the city declares temperatures dangerously cold and has tried in the past to get as many people indoors and safe as possible. The Daily News describes a family's ordeal:

Take Junior Clarke, 23, and his family. The dad said city workers told him to leave the Bronx PATH Center - an intake hub for families - during a cold snap last month.

"They tried to send us outside into the cold," said Clarke, 23, who was with his his wife, Kaneesha, 23, and 4-year-old daughter, Janiah. "They threatened to have us thrown out by police."

The city historically invoked "code blue" status when the temperature dipped below freezing, easing shelter restrictions to get people indoors.

It's not clear when, exactly, the city altered its policy and started enforcing rules requiring some shelter residents to prove they have nowhere else to go - even on cold winter nights.

The Clarke's story is pretty boilerplate for many families left out in the cold by DHS. They were told to go back to a relative's house that was on file from a 2008 stay in the shelter system, a house they were no longer welcomed at. Luckily the Clarke's refused to leave the shelter, instead contacting The Legal Aid Society which "convinced intake workers to give the family a place to stay for the night." Despite the happy ending for the Clarke family, a good amount of homeless individuals and families end up sleeping outdoors in freezing weather.

The city recently admitted to changing their "code blue" policy last winter.

Record homelessness, especially among children, will be one of the main legacies of the outgoing Bloomberg administration, which has consistently failed to provide affordable housing.

[Image by Getty]

Last week, Maker's Mark faced a public backlash after announcing they would lower the alcohol content of their whiskey to meet increased demand with a limited supply (read: they think you can't handle your liquor and it's starting to get really embarrassing for all of us). They changed their minds in a Facebook post this afternoon:

...effective immediately, we are reversing our decision to lower the ABV of Maker's Mark, and resuming production at 45% alcohol by volume (90 proof). Just like we've made it since the very beginning.

Our cousins at Gizmodo wisely summed up why the planned dilution wouldn't matter much anyway. Nevertheless, I can think of at least one way to celebrate.

[Image via AP]

"Local Voice" Kathleen O'Brien Wilhelm, writing in the Avon Lake, Ohio Patch, thinks it's just downright wasteful to put up "Deer Crossing" signs. Why? Because they can't read, silly!

Signs that read "Deer Crossing" and the like are going to continue to pop up throughout our country including Avon Lake, but who are these signs for? Deer cannot read, do not obey the law and probably will cross where they wish. Although adorable companions, it is hard to remember the last time that the news reported an animal talking, thinking or providing significant input for the benefit of society. Yet, these signs cost taxpayers like so much of government.

Perhaps she has not seen our intrepid coverage of goats yelling like humans. But still, O'Brien Wilhelm has got a point: enough waste on animals, already! She continues,

Dogs, cats, whales, seals and deer are animals that might enhance a human's life, but all cannot read, write or think. They are animals. Yes, people dress them, buy them extravagant blinge and do other strange things with them; however, animals are not human. They are on this earth like trees to make humans' lives better. As humans we must be kind to them, eat them when hungry, feed them when they are, but remember they are here to enhance our lives. Besides, it appears that this gesture of kindness to animals does not extend human to human. This President's Obamacare appears to welcome abortion of innocent babies. It is painful to think that there are those who cry for seals while Obamacare never blinks an eye at abortion.

Shame on the unblinking eye of Obamacare! She concludes,

Yes, signs are important— to humans; "Stop" signs, and others are more than just costly decorations scattered along the roadways. However, depending on the school district, most humans can read them, but animals not so much.

Either we set up better school districts for animals, or we just cut out all this government waste on highway signs for non-humans. One way or another, this can't go on for much longer.

Turns out "gun raffle" isn't just a folksy term for Russian roulette. The New Hampshire Association of Chiefs of Police will give away a gun a day in May, with the proceeds from ticket sales to defray the cost of police cadet training. In North Dakota, a youth hockey league will raffle off 200 guns as a fundraiser next month.

The Associated Press reports that these events (and others like them) have attracted a storm of criticism from gun control advocates across the country.

Both were organized long before the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown last December, but for many, they're nevertheless far from timely. Three of the New Hampshire raffle's guns would be banned under legislation recently introduced in the Senate.

John Rosenthal, director of Stop Gun Violence, claims that gun raffles are "insane" and "criminally irresponsible." He spoke to the AP:

"In 33 states - including Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont - the winner of this AR-15 can turn around the same day and sell it to anyone without an ID or background check," Rosenthal said. "They should cancel their raffle and give away a nice mountain bike or snowmobile."

In fairness, it's not like these fundraisers plan to load guns into a T-shirt cannon and head to the nearest major sporting event. According to the rules of the New Hampshire drawing, any winner must be legally eligible to own such a gun and submit to any required background checks. (That Police Chiefs' raffle, by the way, is already sold out—all 1000 tickets have been purchased.)

But aside from issues of pure legality, Jonathan Lowy of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence argues that these events "trivialize the seriousness of firearms." After all, aren't raffle prizes usually more along the lines of a bucket of gourmet popcorn or free movie tickets?

[Image via Shutterstock]

When the banks got bailed out, people were reasonably upset — why should huge corporate banks be given public money to recover from the disaster of their own greed and incompetence? Others argued that letting those banks fail would send the economy into a further tailspin. Either way, it happened, and that was that. The banks weren't going to get even more public money, right? Not exactly.

In today's New York Times Gretchen Morgenson outlines how the New York Fed has shielded Bank of America from liability while giving away billions of dollars in potential claims,

That the New York Fed would shower favors on a big financial institution may not surprise. It has long shielded large banks from assertive regulation and increased capital requirements.

Still, last week's details of the undisclosed settlement between the New York Fed and Bank of America are remarkable. Not only do the filings show the New York Fed helping to thwart another institution's fraud case against the bank, they also reveal that the New York Fed agreed to give away what may be billions of dollars in potential legal claims.

Morgenson goes on to explain how the New York Fed released Bank of America from some substantial legal claims brought against it from cases involving toxic mortgage holdings from the 2008 financial crisis. The New York Fed, which oversaw a company called Maiden Lane II, which had the right to sue Bank of America over those holdings, could have reaped billions of dollars for taxpayers in claims. Instead they let them off the hook for almost nothing.

Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown told the Times that the Fed's action "underscores that the more we learn about these bailouts, gifts and advantages that Wall Street gets, the clearer it becomes that one set of rules applies to the largest megabanks and another set of rules to the smaller financial institutions and the rest of the country."

The bank bailouts are still happening. They're just not voted on anymore.

Iceland could (but probably won't) become the first Western democracy to censor Internet porn. Halla Gunnarsdóttir, an adviser to the interior minister, explains the country's anti-smut rationale to The Guardian:

"We are a progressive, liberal society when it comes to nudity, to sexual relations, so our approach is not anti-sex but anti-violence. This is about children and gender equality, not about limiting free speech..."

This is Iceland, after all. Prime Minister Jóhanna Sigurdardóttir is the first openly lesbian government head in the world. It's already illegal to print and distribute porn within the country, and since 2010, strip clubs have been prohibited as well.

Research indicates that, on average, Icelanders first see online porn at age 11, including sexual content of an "increasingly violent" nature. In the U.S.—where the online porn industry makes nearly $3 billion annually—children can now enjoy access to RedTube from within the womb.

According to interior minister Ögmundur Jónasson and his supporters, the ban would specifically censor "violent" and "hateful" pornography—an admirable idea in the abstract. But as Justice Potter Stewart famously said of hardcore porn in a Supreme Court obscenity case, "I know it when I see it." We're not in waters any less murky here. There's certainly some disturbing shit out there (graphic images of children are another would-be target of the Icelandic ban), but would this mean... no spanking? No biting? No consensual BDSM? Would Iceland's porn consumption be limited to lovey-dovey candlelit cunnilingus?

Logistically, the only reason this idea is remotely feasible is because Iceland is adorably pocket-sized: 322,000 residents share a Kentucky-sized island more than a thousand miles off the coast of Europe. It's both small and removed enough that it could be possible (to a certain extent) to jam traffic to offending websites—essentially stretching a cyber-condom over the country. Icelandic credit cards could also be blocked from use on porn sites, which seems worthwhile, because I've never seen a e-boob that I didn't pay for.

Unsurprisingly, concerns about censorship and restricted access have largely dominated this debate. Parliament member Birgitta Jonsdottir sets the odds of a porn ban passing at "near zero."

[Image via Shutterstock]

While clubbing in London last night, Rihanna was injured when a man "enraged" by her reunion with King Scumbag Chris Brown threw a bottle of Lucozade (think British Gatorade) at her. She fell to the ground and cut her leg, but was otherwise unhurt.

The assailant wasn't identified. Rihanna's choice to get back together with her dickwad ex may be difficult to swallow, but (duh) that doesn't make this guy any less of an asshole.

Angry that a survivor of domestic violence is returning to her abuser? How 'bout we just throw a little more violence her way, see how that goes?

[Image via Getty]

In case you're not up to date on this story, on February 8 Joe Rickey Hundley allegedly slapped a crying two-year-old during a flight from Minneapolis to Atlanta. Pretty atrocious, right? But it gets worse. Before assaulting the toddler, Hundley reportedly called the boy a nigger.

[The boy's mother Jessica] Bennett, 33, told authorities her son was crying as the Delta Air Lines flight prepared for landing. Hundley, 60, was sitting next to her and slapped the boy in his face, causing a scratch under his right eye, she said.

Hundley "told her to shut that (N-word) baby up," FBI special agent Daron Cheney said in a sworn statement. "Ms. Bennett received assistance from several people on the plane."

The child began crying after he was hit because, well, he'd just been slapped in the face by a racist stranger. According to Bennett, the boy is "now apprehensive to strangers." She also said Hundley "reeked of alcohol" and was "stumbling around wasted."

Last week, Hundley was charged with assault and, according to his attorney, will plead not guilty, which, good luck with that. He won't have to wait until trial for at least one punishment, though; as of Sunday night, Hundley was out of a job.

Joe Rickey Hundley, of Hayden, Idaho, is no longer an employee of AGC Aerospace and Defense, Composites Group, Daniel Keeney of DPK Public Relations confirmed Sunday night.

Al Haase, president and CEO of AGC, released a statement Sunday that didn't refer to the 60-year-old Hundley by name but called reports of an executive's behavior "offensive and disturbing" and said he "is no longer employed with the company."

If convicted, Hundly faces up to a year in jail.

With country star Mindy McCready's Sunday-afternoon suicide, the total number of Celebrity Rehab deaths has reached five. Sixth months ago, The Daily Beast wondered if the VH1 reality show was a "death trap"; last year, the show dropped the celebrity angle and became just Rehab with Dr. Drew, because if anyone's better-equipped than celebrities to deal with treatment in public, it's regular-Joe addicts. Self-promoting host Dr. Drew Pinsky, revealed by a 2012 Justice Department settlement to be a shill for big pharma, told Buzzfeed he was "deeply saddened by this news." (Last night he was deeply saddened all over CNN.) [Gawker | The Daily Beast | WaPo | BuzzFeed | CNN]