Secrets and Lies

It's never good news when you walk into your office at 7 AM, and the maintenance that started last night at 7 PM is *still* going on, and everyone who was there then is still here, and yes, your entire floor is down so you're (self) exiled to some other floor to work on reports quietly and avoid getting involved in the nightmare downstairs.

Gonna be a banner day, people.

(Although, in good news, The 4400 got renewed for another season.)

PS-> HAPPY BIRTHDAY 224215152!

"The State Department is investigating whether Israel's use of American-made cluster bombs in southern Lebanon violated secret agreements with the United States that restrict when it can employ such weapons."

African Command: the Pentagon plans for the Long War.

What's going to be my new #1 news go-to, now that both Dana Milbank and Howard Kurtz are on hiatus? (And Andrew Cohen just doesn't write enough?) Hellooo, Abu Aardvark. (Here's a good example of why.)

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Cruise v. Paramount: yes, celebrity still matters, but money rules all. Was it all due to a slump in DVD sales?

Technical Emmys named, plus Conan O'Brien's plans to screw up.

Evolutionary biology "accidentally" left off the list of acceptable fields of study for recipients of a federal education grant.

"Movie studios once felt confident they had at least two weekends to sell as many movie tickets as possible before toxic buzz would undermine their multimillion-dollar marketing campaigns. Hollywood executives now say that the proliferation of movie-related e-mail, Internet blogs and text messaging has reduced that window to mere hours...

"Since word of mouth helps good movies while punishing weaker ones, it may result in a new Hollywood emphasis on playability — a film's intrinsic quality — instead of marketability, the easy sales hooks that yield so many forgettable sequels and remakes."
-LATimes.com