Vice President Joe Biden privately swore in CIA Director John Brennan today in the Roosevelt Room. The White House notes that Brennan took the oath of office on the Constitution's original draft, a 1787 document that still bears George Washington's penmanship.

According to Yahoo! News, White House representative Josh Earnest emphasized this detail to reporters during today's briefing:

"There's one piece of this that I wanted to note for you," spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters gathered for their daily briefing. "Director Brennan was sworn in with his hand on an original draft of the Constitution that had George Washington's personal handwriting and annotations on it, dating from 1787."

Earnest said Brennan had asked for a document from the National Archives that would demonstrate the U.S. is a nation of laws.

"Director Brennan told the president that he made the request to the archives because he wanted to reaffirm his commitment to the rule of law as he took the oath of office as director of the CIA," Earnest said.

Except for one rather large patriotic problem. This version of the Constitution, however symbolically pure in its origins, is an extremely flawed emblem in one very important way: The canon does not include a little thing called the Bill of Rights.

As blogger Marcy Wheeler points out:

That means, when Brennan vowed to protect and defend the Constitution, he was swearing on one that did not include the First, Fourth, Fifth, or Sixth Amendments - or any of the other Amendments now included in our Constitution. The Bill of Rights did not become part of our Constitution until 1791, 4 years after the Constitution that Brennan took his oath on.

I really don't mean to be an asshole about this. But these vows always carry a great deal of symbolism. And whether he meant to invoke this symbolism or not, the moment at which Brennan took over the CIA happened to exclude (in symbolic form, though presumably not legally) the key limits on governmental power that protect American citizens.

Maybe this was a special top-secret draft that had the Bill of Rights scribbled in invisible ink?

[Empty Wheel; official White House photo by David Lienemann]

Matt Hartman's proposal to his fiancée Lis began the way most of these insufferable public displays of affections often do.

He stood atop a rock just off the shore of Laguna beach, and performed a song he had written especially for this occasion.

Then he invited his one true love to join him on his ocean-kissed pedestal, took out a ring, got down on one knee, and asked her to do him the honor of sharing her life with him for all eternity.

Just then, Neptune hurled, and the two were cast out of the waters along with their perfect moment.

Fortunately — or unfortunately depending on how deep-seated your schadenfreude is — the ring was spared the Sea God's wrath, and Lis ultimately said yes.

And now they have a proposal story that's actually worth telling, along with some pretty sweet engagement photos.

[H/T: HyperVocal, 22words]

It was a pretty polite week in the hate mail department. Mostly people just wanted to be helpful and ask how our day was, which was pretty appreciated. But here they are, below, the considerate citizens of the internet:

In general, just checking in.

SUB: HELLO bro
Body: How are you?

Wondering if we may have mistaken Boston for the New England area generally—no worries, common mistake—that time that Hamilton wrote by Boston sucks.

SUB: Obligatory Boston response
BODY: I just moved to Boston in May and have to say, yeah, there's more bad than good about living here. However, my jaw dropped when you took a shot at the schools here. Seriously? MIT and Harvard, dude. I can understand how someone whose worldview is fundamentally rooted in journalism, and not technology (meaning REAL technology — healthcare, aerospace, etc. — not "social media") would overlook those in favor of NYC schools, but come on, man.
All of the complaints leveled against Boston (both in your piece and in The Onion's) are more appropriately leveled against New Englanders as a whole. It's New Englanders who are closed-minded dicks, not Bostonians — it's just that Boston has the highest population density in New England. I actually ended up in Boston as part of my fleeing Connecticut, many of whose denizens make the "lesser Wahlbergs" look like Nobel Laureates. I wish more people would insult Connecticut.
In any case, still a little puzzled by The Onion's outburst, but less puzzled at your knee-jerk piling on.
Keep up the work.

Preemptive criticism, in which someone tells that the NYT was stupid for spending time covering a story, which we then decided to cover because it was about Nutella.

SUB: The Dumbest Article the NY Times Has Ever Published?
Body: The New York Times devoted 843 words and three reporters to what amounts to Columbia students eating a lot of Nutella.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/07/nyregion/for-columbia-students-nutella-in-a-dining-hall-may-be-too-tempting.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&smid=tw-nytimes&_r=0&pagewanted=print
Something tells me Drew could have a field day with this.

Noting that we may have published an intentional lie.

SUB: KKK at Oberlin article
Body: Specifically re: this paragraph: 
According to a person with access to the faculty mailing list, faculty members were told-"unofficially"-that "the investigation into this incident was dropped when it was discovered that the person responsible was someone within the MRC [the Multicultural Resource Center], who would be disciplined internally"; according to conversations with other members of the Oberlin community, this appears to be a widespread, and widely-believed, rumor. The same source, who asked to remain anonymous so as not to lose access to the mailing list, indicated that the MRC, whose former director, Eric Estes, is now the Dean of Students, has been criticized for the amount of student money it receives, and that its leadership has "had trouble justifying how many campus coordinators they have on staff."
I am a student at Oberlin and attending the MRC and other campus organization's programming today, which includes a rally and an all-campus convocation.  The MRC's LGBTQ Community Coordinator, Lorena Guerrero, confirmed with us that MRC staffers are not responsible and the investigation that the administration is conducting has not identified any of them as suspects. 
I am certain that the rumor you published is an intentional lie intended to spread confusion among Oberlin students. 

That's all! Have a nice weekend, everyone.

Mayor Bloomberg believes that the reason behind New York City's staggering rise in homelessness is not because of the city's high unemployment or incredible inequality, but rather people (who would be in an income bracket very much like the mayor's) who take limos and private jets on their way to the homeless shelter.

In his weekly radio address this Friday, Bloomberg said,

"You can arrive in your private jet at Kennedy Airport, take a private limousine and go straight to the shelter system and walk in the door and we've got to give you shelter."

Bloomberg is trying to prove a point in reference to the 1981 law which compels the city to provide shelter for homeless people (which he hasn't been very good at enforcing, anyway). Bloomberg is again operating under the strange assumption that someone would actually want to stay in a New York City homeless shelter when they have the means not to.

The 13th richest man in the world then went on to blame pretty much everyone but his administration for the homelessness problem, including the Coalition for the Homeless, the governor, and taxpayers themselves. Bloomberg asked New Yorkers to tell Albany to strike down the 1981 law because their tax money "just cannot go subsidize everybody's rent" and that "we ain't gonna do this anymore." C'mon, guys, we just "ain't," right?

Bloomberg himself has refused to use federal money to help move homeless families into public housing, further helping the overcrowding issue.

The Air Force has reversed a policy of reporting drone strikes in Afghanistan and has wiped the information from past reports that were on its website as well. Last October, the Air Force Central Command began publishing reports of the strikes from remote piloted aircraft as part of an effort to "provide more detailed information on RPA ops in Afghanistan." After releasing statistics for each month through January, the February report contained no information regarding drone strikes, and the older reports have each had their drone strike information removed from the website (the Air Force is apparently unfamiliar with the wonders of Archive.org).

The Air Force Times found that the information had been altered around February 22nd, just days before confirmation hearings began for incoming CIA director John Brennan. The Defense Department says that it "was not involved in the decision to remove the statistics."

A swarm of bees descended on a group of young children who were on a field trip to a "bunny park" near Johannesburg on Friday. The children were waiting to be loaded onto their school bus after visiting the park when they were attacked by the angry bees.

"They were waiting for a bus when things went drastically wrong. A swarm of bees came out of nowhere and attacked the children," a spokesman for the emergency response team told reporters. Four of the children were critically injured by the bees. The children ranged in age from 2 to 6.

The bees involved were not "killer bees" however, simply regular honey bees that had become agitated by the children. Or perhaps the bees were standing up for the bunnies of bunny park, who, according to many customer reviews, appear to be in poor shape.

Samira Ibrahim was scheduled to receive an award yesterday from First Lady Michelle Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry honoring her as one of the "International Women of Courage". But that was before the State Department became aware of a number of tweets that Ibrahim had sent out endorsing Hitler quotes and celebrating the deaths of Israeli tourists. Now her award has been "delayed" as State Department officials look into the source of the tweets (which Ibrahim had been claiming weren't hers).

Ibrahim, an activist on behalf of Palestinians, was to receive the award for her work in Egypt speaking out against gender-based violence. Her State Department biography identifies her as one of the seven women subjected to "virginity tests" during the protests in Tahrir Square that eventually lead to the ousting of President Hosni Mubarak.

Originally Ibrahim said the tweets were not hers and that her twitter had been hacked. After an attack on Israeli tourists in Bulgaria, Ibrahim tweeted, "Oh Wowwww this eases off the day today very nice very nice news." She also tweeted that the Saudi royal family was "dirtier than the Jews."

She seems to have backed off her claims that her Twitter account was hacked. In response to the delay of her honor, Ibrahim tweeted, "I refused to apologize to the Zionist lobby in America on the previous statements hostile to Zionism under pressure from the American government, so the prize was withdrawn."

Almost two years ago I walked into the Hunts Point neighborhood of the Bronx with my camera. I came because I was told not to go, that it was the poorest neighborhood in all of New York and one of the most violent in all of the United States. I was immediately drawn in by a humanity that transcended the headlines.

I started going anytime my Wall Street job would give me time, driven by curiosity. I would walk the neighborhood, talking to everyone. On my third trip, on a quiet Sunday afternoon, I met Takeesha who stood by a trickling fire hydrant, washing her face. She looked over at me, and with a smile yelled, "Hey, take my picture." When I asked why, she said, "Because I am sexy, a beautiful prostitute."

We talked, and over the next half-hour she condensed her life story. She told me how her mother's pimp put her on the streets at twelve. How she had her first child at thirteen, the result of a rape. How she was addicted to heroin. She was calm, polite, and funny. How did she want to be described? She replied, "As who I am, a prostitute, a mother of six, and a child of God." No equivocation there.

Soon I started going at nights, drawn by the stories and the frankness. It was jarring to leave my Wall Street job where the focus was luxury, golf, kids, and second homes, and then hear small talk about rape, murder, and jail. It was equally jarring to come home to my wealthy neighborhood. Once pulling into my parking space at 3:00 am I saw a large rolled-up rug in the alley trash: My Hunts Point eye saw it as a great sleeping place, how dare somebody throw it away. A second look revealed it had come from my apartment.

I was being tugged in two directions. My days were safe, practical, and obvious. My nights were dangerous, impractical, and not at all obvious. I started choosing the nights. My friends and family started to question my sanity. When asked why, the best I could explain was, "I have learned more from the last year than my prior twenty on Wall Street."

I was seeing firsthand, as my collaborator Cassie Rodenberg later would write, "How resilient people are, how, as brutal and bleak as life gets, people can find humor and friendship."

I was also seeing firsthand what Katherine Boo, the journalist, saw in the slums of India, "There's some way in which we would prefer not to see very clearly the immense gifts and intelligence of some of the people who live in our most abject conditions. Maybe there are some things at work in deciding who gets to be society's winners and who gets to be society's losers that don't have to do with merit."

I would come home filled with a mixture of empathy and anger. My Wall Street job started to seem less important.

Seven months ago I quit my job to focus on the photography and the stories. It was a remarkably stupid financial decision, but my mind told me, "you only live once."

Soon I was fully immersed. I started working with Cassie who also quit her job to focus on the project. Pictures became only a part of the story. We delved into every part of Hunts Point life. We followed people into the jails, into the courts, into the hospitals. We became friends with the addicts, pimps, dealers, bodega owners, and prostitutes. We both started getting calls from them at all hours, cries for help or just someone desperate to be heard. It became both of our lives.

The intensity increased. Stories became interlocked.

Every additional day was eye-opening, a new layer removed to reveal even more subterfuge, more pain, and more desperation. Everybody either sold drugs, did drugs, or ran from drugs. The kind gentleman standing on the corner helping kids cross the street was eventually thrown in jail for dealing. The effects of poverty seemed to seep into every corner.

We started searching for a hopeful core, the trajectory of a story that would end with peace and tranquility. It just kept getting uglier.

No day was a respite from drama. Thanksgiving brought the death of a fifteen-year-old girl, Destiny Sanchez, whose body was found in a Hunts Point vestibule strangled and covered in bleach. The story melted into the mist of death and dysfunction: The fifth shooting or death of the month. Nobody has been charged yet.

The teenager Jose, who does amazing flips and was my feel good story, ended up homeless, fleeing an abusive father. A late September Sunday meant to be spent taking pictures of his aerial tricks turned into a standoff with his drug-addled uncle, who flashed me a knife: The police were unconcerned.

It started to creep up on me, as I would drive home, emotionally exhausted. The lack of a positive story was the story. I didn't want to admit it, and nobody else wanted to hear it.

Denial kicked in. I started to grasp at tiny strings of happiness, desperate for a salve. I turned to saving a kitten. Even that became a black comedy of drugs and emotions.

Desperate to prove the world wrong, to justify the commitment, Cassie and I started to get more involved.

We went regularly to Rikers to visit Daphne, a charismatic twenty-one year old prostitute. We brought her books and clothes. We kept reminding her of what she could do once out, even offering to drive her back home to Oklahoma. We sat in the courthouse, learning the language of law, to follow her case. We circled the day she would be released from jail, waiting in the cold alley outside criminal court. Her first request after four months? A cigarette and a ride back to Hunts Point to smoke drugs with her friends. She is still there, on the same wall, smoking dope and working with a pimp.

So when Michael, a transsexual, lifelong addict, and something of our Hunt Point guide, mentioned she wanted to get clean, we jumped. We drove her on a road trip upstate to visit her mom for encouragement. We cleared a bureaucratic and emotional path to get her into detox and then rehab.

Three weeks ago we drove to Staten Island and checked Michael into Bayley Seton Detox. It felt like our first real story of hope.

The system however fought back, dumping Michael into the streets. Detox released her on a Saturday morning. Rehab began admissions the following Monday. That Saturday morning, we sat stunned and confused. We were in too deep to let her spend the weekend in Hunts Point and certain relapse. She would have to stay those days at Cassie's home. Now the boundary between our subject and us was completely broken.

That weekend was hell, a continuous fight to keep her clean. Neither Cassie nor Michael slept, one out of dope sickness, the other out of empathy. Sunday was the worst. Michael was desperate for drugs, and threatening to run away back to Hunts Point. The lesser evil was getting a dose of methadone to hold her one more day.

So two years of Sundays after I entered Hunts Point I found myself driving to Long Island to buy methadone off the black market from a former prostitute. As I drove I thought back to two years before, when I was resting in a bar reading research reports on G7 currencies.

Michael left for Hunts Point anyway, back into the arms of crack, heroin, and walking the street. "Hunts Point is safe for me. It's what I know." The following week brought a cascade of promises to try rehab, but there were always caveats, and finally the truth: "I will stay an addict until my last excuse."

That weekend was in some sense the natural culmination of everything we had started. The imagery was too clear and close for me to recognize at the time.

We were in over our heads, fighting a symbolic battle to prove that maybe poverty and addiction could yield a happy ending. We wondered if we were doing this to feel better about ourselves and force a happy ending.

This week we are both emotionally, physically and financially drained. I fluctuate between feeling I have wasted two years of my life tilting at windmills, to feeling I have spent two years immersed in the most fascinating place in all of New York City.

Regardless we are both left staring into the abyss asking ourselves, what now?

What now?

Chris Arnade received his Ph.D. in physics from Johns Hopkins University. He joined the bond trading desk of Salomon Brothers in 93. He traded bonds, currencies, and interest rates until 2012 when he left to focus his attentions on photography and writing. His series Faces of Addiction focuses on addiction and poverty in the South Bronx, and can be followed on Facebook. He is on Twitter at @Chris_arnade.

Cassie Rodenberg's writings on Hunts Point, White Noise, are published at the Scientific American website.

In a project overseen by contributing editor Kiese Laymon, Gawker is running a personal essay every weekend. Please send suggestions to saturdays@gawker.com.

A version of this essay was originally published on the author's Tumblr. Photos by Chris Arnade.

For the second time in 17 years, an Arizona couple has won a cool million while playing the lotto, this time receiving the second prize in their state's Powerball. Diane and Kerry Carmichael, a retired couple, also won $2.5 Million in 1995, and have been receiving a $125,000 annuity on it since.

"Good things come in threes. Two down, one to go," said co-winner Diane Carmichael, who is being selfish. Kerry Carmichael looks unenthused about the whole thing, although the news anchor does point out that it looks like he's wearing a cool cartoon hat. Great hat!

[Image courtesy of KTVK]

The NYPD is trying to get a "status update" on a particularly unlucky iPhone thief who took a picture of himself smoking weed with a stolen iPhone. Unfortunately for him, the iPhone was set to post any pictures it took directly to the victim's Facebook page, and we, the public, are left with one of the most unaware and self-satisfied pictures of all time.

The woman was unharmed in the attack, which took place on March 2nd.

For SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk the future is.... now. Now, now, now! In a keynote address at SXSW today, Musk laid out his plan to open a Spaceport in Texas (if lawmakers play along), as well as his company's progress on a reusable vehicle capable of reaching orbit. He also talked about his intention to die on Mars.

"The US is a country of explorers and people need to believe that [space travel] is not going to bankrupt them," Musk told Chris Anderson. Musk stressed the need for a Spaceport that was closer to the equator, and believes one could be up and running in Texas by 2015.

He also discussed his plan to take off into space, never to return (which would be very Ender of him, btw). "I've said I want to die on Mars," he told the audience. "Just not on impact." Musk believes human habitation of Earth is very important for our future, in preparation for when the sun begins to expand and engulf the earth (in just about 7.6 billion years, which is a lot sooner for Elon Musk, who lives in the future).

Shannon Carr's late husband, Jason Carr, loved watching NASCAR and the Indianapolis Colts from his favorite couch. So when Jason died two years ago in a car accident, his wife decided a fitting tribute would be a $9,600 couch-shaped tombstone engraved with color logos of the Colts and NASCAR. A lovely, touching gesture, right? Maybe, but certainly not according to those in charge of the Catholic cemetery where Jason is now buried.

When Carr showed the Reverend Jonathan Meyer, a priest at St. Joseph Catholic Church in North Vernon, Indiana, the tombstone's plans, he rejected them, saying they were too secular for the church's 100-year-old graveyard.

"We provided the family funeral rites, prepared a funeral meal and offered family members individual counseling after the services," Meyer said. "We were with them the entire way until this matter came up."
…
"They told her not to move forward with the purchasing of the monument, but she went ahead anyway," Meyer said. "We have consistently communicated the same message prior to the purchase and after the purchase. We did not think a granite couch was an appropriate monument in our historic cemetery."

Carr went ahead and made the tombstone anyway, noting that the church had never set regulations on what was and wasn't allowed in the cemetery. In fact, the regulations weren't finalized until a year after she first attempted to install the headstone. She is now suing the church to have the tombstone installed.

The church's attorney, John Mercer, said the lawsuit falls outside of the court's domain, since the First Amendment prohibits courts from influencing the church's business.

Regardless of the outcome, Henry Carr, Shannon Carr's father-in-law, is sure of one thing; he'll now be taking his dead corpse's business elsewhere. "I haven't been back to (St. Joseph) church and have asked that I not be buried there along with my son," he told The Republic. "I'm told the controversy is splitting the church apart, tearing it in half. But I guess that's what has to be done."

That's probably fine with Rev. Meyer, who sees the issue – and its sympathy within the community – as a problem with the modern, Godless way of life.

"Our culture breaks all the rules to make people feel good," Meyer said. "Faithful Christians know rules and regulations are set up so there can be good for everyone."

[Image via Daily Kos]

Just a few weeks after the shit-covered, disabled Carnival Cruise landed in Alabama, the cruise industry was hit with another PR disaster: Last week, a Royal Caribbean cruise ship returned to shore after an 11-day cruise during which over 100 passengers and three crew members fell ill with the norovirus, a gastrointestinal virus that causes vomiting and diarrhea. The virus is usually spread by water contaminated with feces.

The sick passengers and crew were treated with over-the-counter medication – they responded well, according to Royal Caribbean – and crew members scrubbed the ship once word of the infection spread.

The company issued a statement to ABC News:

"At Royal Caribbean International, we have high health standards for all our guests and crew. During the sailing, we conduct enhanced cleaning on board the ship to help prevent the spread of the illness. Additionally, when Vision of the Seas arrived to Port Everglades, Fla., today, we conducted an extensive and thorough sanitizing onboard the ship and within the cruise terminal to help prevent any illness from affecting the subsequent sailing."

The lesson here, in case you need reminding, is: never go on cruises.

[Image via AP]

Drug-resistant superbugs are "a ticking time-bomb not only for the UK but also for the world," England's top medical official warns in her first annual report, released today. Chief Medical Officer Dame Sally Davies writes that increasing bacterial resistance to antibiotics could turn routine operations into life-threatening procedures if infections become difficult to treat, and in the absence of tougher restrictions on the use of antibiotics—not just in prescriptions for humans but in the agriculture and meat industries—and concerted efforts to discover new drugs—there have been no new antibiotic classes since 1987—we could be heading toward "a health system not dissimilar from the early 19th century." Of particular concern are so-called "Gram-negative" bacteria like E Coli, which are now being seen in the UK more often than previously-hyped drug-resistant superbugs like MRSA, and are more common in the old, young, and immune-compromised. "This is your own gut bugs turning on you," Professor Mike Sharland tells The Guardian. "Between 10% and 20% are resistant to drugs." Davies suggests that the UK divert more resources toward developing antibiotics, and sound a global alarm on the issue: "This threat is arguably as important as climate change," she writes. Meanwhile, in the U.S., pet frogs are giving kids salmonella. [Guardian | Independent | Reuters | GIF via]

For a solid week now, media types have been discussing the ethical and economic quandaries of asking writers to write for free. For—oh, about a decade and a half now, at least—media types have been discussing how the internet might affect the longstanding economic model of journalism as an industry. Now, one of most highly credentialed media thinkers in America weighs in with a proposal: Hey, someone should do something about that.

L. Gordon Crovitz is the former publisher of the WSJ, who stepped down in 2007, but still writes a column for the paper. Today—not several years ago, but today!—Crovitz asks, "What happens to in-depth reporting in the age of the blog post?"

Real interesting question, L. Gordon. We are salivating to hear the expertise of a man who is a highly paid media industry advisor and board member of several media companies. Let's jump right to your conclusion:

The tumult in the news industry is driven by declines in advertising revenues. Readers still value news, both light blog posts and in-depth reporting. Some journalism will be unpaid, but the kind that makes a difference-that finds and questions Pol Pots and drug lords-will continue to cost money. We need to find ways of paying for it.

"We need to find ways of paying for it."—the complete proposal of a man who actually co-founded a company dedicated to helping newspapers make money off online readers. (The fact that he is writing vague columns about the problem years later will tell you how successful his company was at solving the problem in question.)

I believe we've heard this proposal before.

[WSJ. Photo: Getty]

Would you be surprised if I told you that putting on makeup enhances the aesthetic appeal of some women? No?

How about if I told you that the same truism applies to porn stars? Still nothing?

Okay, then, what if I told you that someone actually had a thoughtful comment to make about a compilation of photos showing porn stars before and after their cosmetic makeovers?

Yeah? Now we're getting somewhere:

I think it's interesting that these are women whose job is to be physically attractive. That adds a dimension that you wouldn't get with just random people off the street. Also, for me, seeing them without makeup humanizes these women who are often objectified and dehumanized.

A few examples of "makeup artist to the [porn] stars" Melissa Makeup's award-winning makeovers can be seen below. There rest can be found on Instagram.

Alexis Ford

Allie Haze

Brooklyn Lee

Ash Hollywood

[H/T: MetaFilter, photos via Instagram]

The United States Senate, like the electoral college, is a profoundly undemocratic institution that should be abolished. If we ever want to live in a well-functioning democracy that actually reflects the will of its citizens, that is.

This is one of those big, perpetual, systemic stories that does not get discussed often, because it never changes, and therefore is not perceived as "news," but rather as just the way things are. Today, though, the New York Times—too journalistic and impartial to come right out and say "The Senate is profoundly unfair and should be abolished"—has a nice story that leaves any reasonable person with the unavoidable takeaway that the Senate is profoundly unfair and should be abolished. I mean,

Vermont's 625,000 residents have two United States senators, and so do New York's 19 million. That means that a Vermonter has 30 times the voting power in the Senate of a New Yorker just over the state line - the biggest inequality between two adjacent states. The nation's largest gap, between Wyoming and California, is more than double that.

For some reason, rectifying this flatly stupid system of government designed hundreds of years ago for a much different country is considered "far-fetched." It is considered more reasonable for political thinkers to tie themselves in knots attempting to justify this flatly stupid system, since it's been around so long.

In conclusion, the US Senate is a profoundly undemocratic institution that should be abolished, if we ever want to live in a well-functioning democracy that actually reflects the will of its citizens.

[Image by Jim Cooke]

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell is the latest powerful brand to be hacked. Powell's official Facebook page has been taken over and is being peppered with insults to his old boss George W. Bush as moderators fight to take back control. (The page seems to be down at the moment.)

It's safe to say this social media fail is the biggest fail of Colin Powell's entire career.

Update: Powell's page has been fixed. According to a post Powell's page: "I'm happy to report that the hacking problem has been fixed. We have been working with fb this morning and they took immediate action to remedy the situation."

Bad: Criminal defense attorney Thomas Lewis Edwards of Gainesville, Florida, was arrested over the weekend and charges with multiple counts stemming from an alleged drunken hit-and-run.

Worse: His mug shot appeared on a local mug shot website juxtaposed with an online banner ad for his own legal practice, Schackow, Mercadante & Edwards.

Worst: Back in 2007, Edwards was interviewed by The Gainesville Sun about bad-looking mug shots, and had this to say:

"Mug shots, unfortunately, are never good pictures. They've usually got people who are in compromised positions," said Gainesville defense attorney Thomas Edwards.

"They arrest you and you're not looking so good. They're not going to give you a plastic comb. They are not going to concern themselves if you look like crap."

Short of someone turning themselves in at the jail, most people can't prepare for getting their mug shot taken, Edwards said.

Legally, he added, there's nothing a defense lawyer can do about a bad mug shot except make sure it doesn't prejudice a jury that will hear the case.

Oof. If he's looking for a good lawyer, I hear Thomas Lewis Edwards is superb.

[H/T: Reddit]

When a Washington Post columnist fell for a fake news story on the "satire" site Daily Currant a few weeks ago, Breitbart.com's John Nolte suggested the paper was without "a shred of self-awareness, integrity, and dignity" and wrote that it "never... let facts get in the way of a good Narrative."

Of course, that was before his own outlet got fooled by the exact same "satire" site. Over the weekend, Breitbart.com's Larry O'Connor published a post based on a Daily Currant item with the title "Paul Krugman Declares Personal Bankruptcy." The Daily Currant had its piece picked up by an Austrian magazine, and in turn by a blog called The Prudent Investor, which is republished on Boston.com (a property owned by Krugman's employers at The New York Times). "Krugman Files for Bankruptcy," O'Connor crowed:

In his post, O'Connor jabbed Krugman for supposedly spending "$84,000 in one month" on Portuguese wines and "a dress from the Victorian period," and concluded that "apparently this Keynsian [sic] thing doesn't really work on the micro level."

O'Connor's post was deleted without explanation. (Later, on Twitter, he wrote that he'd trusted Boston.com.) In a post on his blog today, Krugman admitted that he'd seen the false reports but kept quiet because he "wanted to wait and see which right-wing media outlets would fall for the hoax."

This is your monthly reminder that The Daily Currant is not a news source but a "satire" site whose output is largely limited to semi-believable political wish-fulfillment articles distinguished by a commitment to a complete absence of what most people would recognize as "jokes."

[Media Matters]