Q: Do video games cause violence?

A:  Somebody else made this chart, using stats from the Dept. of Justice):


The biggest surprise here is the number of murders caused by Super Mario Bros. 2.

Q: If you prick Lindsay Lohan, does she not bleed cocaine?

A: The District Attorney of Los Angeles officially declared today that Lindsay Lohan is not a felon, just gellin' like one. And by "gellin'" I mean "carrying cocaine."

But only a little cocaine! As the D.A. explained, a little blow is totally fine, you know, just enough to take the edge off. Moderation is the key. Remember, it's cocaine, not Pringles.

Anyway, this is very sad news indeed — and not because Lohan is quote catching a break unquote in the words of some quote journalists unquote comma but rather because the D.A. is being way way too harsh exclamation point exclamation point exclamation point

The fact is, letting Lindsay "La Dolce BJ" Lohan roam the streets unsupervised by law enforcement is the precise equivalent of sentencing her to death.

Q: Is President Bush gellin'?

A: Yuh huh. Like a felon. [via Sullivan]

(Earlier today, I was going to make a joke about the motto for Folgers coffee being "The best part of wakin' up..." but I decided it wasn't timely enough. And yet gellin' jokes still = comedy gold? Yes, yes they are. Also, dude, get a Dell.)

Anyway, where was I? Oh right, George W. Bush is so going to prison, circa 2011. Patience.

Q: What's surprising about a Republican politician being outed as gay and/or into hookers?

A: Nothing. Under normal circumstances, the story of a Republican politician running around banging hookers, or gay hookers, is what people in D.C. like to call "the weekend." Or just "nighttime." Or "being awake."

For one thing, getting caught with hookers is totally hip and getting hipper. And by now, it can safely be assumed that all Republican political figures — especially the ragingly homophobic among them — have caught gay.¹ It's barely even news anymore, let alone surprisinger^TM news.

In Florida, though, everything's a little more shall we say complicated.

TITUSVILLE -- Florida Rep. Robert "Bob" Allen, R-Merritt Island, was arrested this afternoon at Veteran's Memorial Park on East Broad Street for solicitation for prostitution.

He is currently being booked into Brevard County Jail in Sharpes. The charge is a second-degree misdemeanor, according to police.

Yawn. Snore. Zzz. It's by no means surprising that Bob Allen has an alleged taste for prostitution. It's not even surprising when, in the next paragraph, it turns out to be gay prostitution. And it's only a teensy bit surprising when it's revealed that Allen wasn't looking for a prostitute — he was prostituting himself.

No, the surprise here isn't that Rep. Allen allegedly moonlights as a gay hooker. It's that he moonlights as an extremely cheap hooker.

According to police, the park was under surveillance today by a detail of undercover Titusville Police officers. Officers noticed Allen acting suspicious as he went in and out of the men’s restroom three times. Minutes later, he solicited an undercover male officer inside the restroom, offering to perform oral sex for $20.

Florida Rep. Bob Allen: They call that a bargain — the best I ever had.

What is happening to the Republican Party when one of its members is willing to blow a stranger for twenty bucks? Twenty bucks!? If Reagan were still alive and a gay hooker, I assure you he would take nothing less than $50, minimum. Either Allen should be ashamed of himself, or else he gives terrible beejes, for which he should be ashamed of himself.

The other surprising thing is that, unlike all other recently disgraced Republicans, Allen wasn't working for the Giuliani campaign. He was working for McCain.

Of course, the fact that it all took place in a state park men's restroom is so overwhelmingly unsurprising as to render all other related surprises nil. So let's move on.

---

¹ The only Republican who isn't gay is teleportational date rapist George W. Bush. Well, okay, he was a little bi in the 80s, but who wasn't a little bi in the 80s? From what I remember of 1984, it was all cocaine and sodomy. Granted, I was only four, but I ran with a kind of wild crowd.

Q: Alberto Gonzales — a liar?

A: Say it ain't so! Say it ain't... oh, wait, it's so:

• Gonzales was told of FBI violations [WaPo]

As he sought to renew the USA Patriot Act two years ago, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales assured lawmakers that the FBI had not abused its potent new terrorism-fighting powers. "There has not been one verified case of civil liberties abuse," Gonzales told senators on April 27, 2005.

Six days earlier, the FBI sent Gonzales a copy of a report that said its agents had obtained personal information that they were not entitled to have. It was one of at least half a dozen reports of legal or procedural violations that Gonzales received in the three months before he made his statement to the Senate intelligence committee, according to internal FBI documents released under the Freedom of Information Act.

Oopsie daisy.

But aside from all the blah blah civil liberties blah, I mostly highlight this story for posterity, as it's the 1000th time the attorney general has been caught perjuring himself. Way to go, Al!!!

To commemorate the occasion, the Franklin Mint will release a series of collectible coins, and Gonzales himself will be awarded a special personalized coffee mug.


Of course, Gonzales is not truly a "grandpa" — but he would be willing to testify to the contrary, were he under oath. The man takes a lot of criticism for being what appears to be an execrable A.G. and lying fuckhead, but it's really just that he hates the Bible.

Alberto Gonzales: "I solemnly swear to ignore John 8:44."

Q: Are you happy now, Consumerist?

A: Faced with dwindling international confidence in its occasionally poisonous exports, China erred on the side of caution and executed the former chief of its food and drug administration. PUBLIC RELATIONS CRISIS = AVERTED! HURRAY!

Of course, if the president prime minister shadowy cabal that runs China had really wanted to impress the West, they would have handled this the American way: by commending the FDA chief for his magnificent work, and then promoting him.

Q: How did Harvard students celebrate Alberto Gonzales' 25-year reunion?

A: By showing up dressed in Gitmo prisoner outfits. Totally awesome.

Attn. Gen. Gonzales: Sticks out like a stress-positioned thumb.

MORE: T.A.M.S.Y. on Alberto Gonzales

Q:uote of the Day | Alberto Gonzales' "reconfirmation hearing"

A: "The Department of Justice should never be reduced to another political arm of the White House — this White House or any White House."

— Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.)

P.S.: It's not just Democrats. Everyone hates Alberto Gonzales.

Q: How does the Bush administration define loyalty?

A: The Voice reports on some of the criteria employed by Karl Rove and the Bush White House in choosing, and weeding out, U.S. Attorneys.

Of course, as with candidates for any W.-appointed gig, inexperience is forgivable so long as you're "loyal." But loyalty, as defined by Alberto Gonzales and Team Dubya, isn't just a matter of being Republican or targeting Dems; it's also a willingness to implement administration dogma into the justice system, with a shoehorn if necessary.

Drink the Kool Aid, man: Karl Rove's Just-Us Department

For Roslynn Mauskopf, one of New York's two U.S. Attorneys, keeping the White House's love has been pretty simple. Like they say in Sin City, sometimes standing up for your friends means killing a whole lot of people.

While Mauskopf did not score well on the gun, immigration, and public corruption standards that the DOJ claims it uses to evaluate prosecutors, she was at the top of the charts by a standard the department has not acknowledged that it employs: enthusiasm for the death penalty. Her office has sought the death penalty against at least 16 defendants...The judge in one of those cases called the decision to seek the death penalty "absurd," just as another judge declared in a 2004 case that he was "deeply troubled" by the government's death penalty application.

The attorney general, not Mauskopf, makes the final decision in death penalty cases, acting on the recommendation of the U.S. Attorney. But Mauskopf's aggressive support of the Bush efforts to "federalize the death penalty" has helped make New York one of the three states with the most cases. The use of these cases as a DOJ measure of U.S. Attorney performance became clear in a department e-mail that derided one of the dismissed U.S. Attorneys for expressing "differences of opinion about when to seek the death penalty." The Los Angeles Times reported that three of the fired eight disagreed with Justice on capital cases.

Mauskopf's hard-on for tax-sponsored executions isn't lost on the White House, and her loyalty is already paying dividends: She's currently a nominee for federal judge — a lifetime appointment. Bush and Rove may be out of the White House soon, but unfortunately for the justice system, their heckova-jobisms will linger for decades.

Q: "The most important work anyone has ever done in blogging about sports"?

A: Here I though it was Deadspin's coverage of Carl Monday, but it turns out they're #2.

CANADA.COM: Midnight blogger exposes a scandal

KC Johnson does not fit the stereotype of blogger, journalist, legal analyst or lacrosse fan.

Yet in the last year he has become all four. The bow tie-wearing, Harvard-educated professor is the prolific blogger behind Durham- in-Wonderland, writing hundreds of posts about the Duke University sexual assault scandal. A tenured history professor at Brooklyn College in New York state, he stays up until midnight to post his latest musings on the case, even though he is five states from the action in Durham, N.C.

One of the accused lacrosse players publicly thanked Prof. Johnson for his "diligent work exposing the truth" after the North Carolina Attorney-General dropped the charges against the three last week. Indeed, some of the defence lawyers relied on the blog to help build their court arguments.

Nothing against Johnson, but the day my lawyers are relying on "the blog" is the day I get new lawyers.

Fellow bloggers frequently said if a Pulitzer were awarded for online commentary, the contrarian professor would win. "There is absolutely no doubt that Johnson's blog, Durham-in-Wonderland, was the single best source of information about what happened in that house in March of 2006 and what has happened with the case since," one sports blogger wrote this week.

"[W]hat he's done is the most important work anyone has ever done in blogging about sports."

Nothing against Johnson, but the day a Pulitzer is awarded for online commentary is THE DAY I WIN A PULITZER.

Q: Why why why is Honduran lobster fisherman David Henson McNab still in an American prison?

A: I don't mean to alarm you, but once in a while, I get the sense that George W. Bush's performance as President of the United States is subpar.

(I hope you're sitting down.) Sometimes I feel as though, were I in his shoes, I might conducts things differently, vis a vis prioritizing.

Not to challenge your conceptions of reality, but here and there I suspect the U.S. criminal justice system could use a teensy bit of tweaking.

This would be all three of those times. [via Sully, again]

Also, AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH- HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH-
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH-
HH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

WHEN I AM ELECTED PRESIDENT: I am going to explode the record for Presidential pardons and clemencies. I'm going to grant like 100-10,000 of them per day.

I will make time for this by not attending boring galas. Also, freeing innocent people from prison seems like it would be way more fun than Camp David. I don't think this makes me a heroic person. I'm pretty sure it just makes me not a complete asshole.

EARLIER: Speaking of reasons to scream maniacally, Genarlow Wilson.

Q: After stabbing Scooter Libby in the back, how will Dick Cheney wash the blood from his hands?

A: As I'm sure you've heard, Bush administration scapegoat I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was found guilty on four of five counts today. The conviction — for perjury, false statements and obstruction of justice — mandates a prison term of 1.5-to-3 years (barring retrials, appeals and/or pardons).

Meanwhile, Karl Rove and Dick Cheney, the prime architects of the scheme on behalf of which Libby lied, receive no punishment, aside perhaps from the downgraded political status they'd already suffered as the scandal unfolded.

So will Cheney, Scooter's old boss, be haunted by his own act of betrayal? Will he be left to wander the halls of the White House in a maniacal haze, ever disturbed by visions of symbolically blood-soaked hands?

Well. Probably not, T.A.M.S.Y. supposes.

Thing is, Cheney's got real blood problems to worry about.

---

RELATED: While taking stock of the fallout from PlameGate, the Washington Post's Andrew Cohen says "Cheney gets my vote for the biggest loser in all of this...

Cheney's friends and opponents alike now have to concede that he was also in this instance at least a meddling, petty bureaucrat who spent time at his undisclosed secure location worrying about how the White House would get back at [Joseph] Wilson, a penny-ante operator in the high-stakes game of politics over Iraq.

Me, I'd still go for the dude bound for prison as the biggest loser in all this, but hey, I like the attempt. And I particularly appreciate Andrew Sullivan taking it one step further and asking Should Cheney resign?

His health is rough; he has been the most disastrous vice-president in history; he has lost two wars; he has lost every ally; he is despised in much of the country; he is now going to be the center of all the questions that the Libby guilty verdict raise. Why did he get so exercized about a two-bit critic during a critical time in the Iraq war? Why would he risk losing his most trusted aide by coordinating a media sting on a minor political opponent?

Um... because he's a total dick?

Why would he risk committing a crime to pursue Wilson unless he had something very serious to hide?

Oh, well, also that. But Cheney's been lying and manipulating media and redefining "legality" so constantly for so long, he probably just lost the ability to gauge which crimes were worth committing to protect which secrets. That's the thing about compulsive lying; it's as corrosive to one's greater sense of logic as is, say, power. Or greed. Or being a total dick.

---

FOR THE RECORD: It's generally against T.A.M.S.Y. policy to make light of our subjects' critical health problems, but we're willing to make an exception for the truly evil. Which includes, obvs, the Antichrist.

Q: How do I rip off the CoinStar machine that keeps ripping me off?

A: I found this tip via Boing Boing's Xeni Jardin, who writes, "I'm fairly certain this may not be legal, and it's posted here for technical analysis purposes only."

I should emphasize that T.A.M.S.Y. doesn't condone doing this either. In fact, I condone that anyone caught following these step-by-step instructions be savagely beaten.

1. Choose the iTunes gift card option.
2. Put in all your coins.
3. Unplug the machine's phone cord.
   
4. Select the option to have all your funds delivered via gift card.
5. Wait a few minutes while the machine tries to figure out what the hell happened to its online access.
6. The machine will spit out a receipt, which can be redeemed for cash money at the nearby cash register (bypassing the standard 9% fee).
7. Burn for eternity in hell.

I stole all of that from Anti Yawn, but I don't think he can complain, given the circumstances.

As far as I know, Roger is the only person who uses CoinStar machines. But don't make fun of him; he lives in Las Vegas, where it is culturally acceptable to pour money into machines that are openly ripping you off.

Q: What does Fox hope to accomplish by subpoenaing YouTube?

He thought his problem was the Chinese

A: On the surface, the subpoena Twentieth Century Fox recently sent YouTube's way is just a means of acquiring information about ECOTotal, the user responsible for uploading four episodes of 24 and 12 episodes of The Simpsons to the Google-owned video site. The subpoena was filed Jan. 18th, but didn't receive media coverage until it was tipped to Steve Bryant's GoogleWatch blog Wednesday.

The part about the Simpsons episodes is almost certainly incidental; people upload illegal content to video sites (including Fox's own MySpace) all the time. What really pissed off Fox was that the episodes of 24 -- comprising the four-part season six premier -- appeared on YouTube more than a week before their Jan. 14th and 15th air date. Fox also served a subpoena to the lesser-known video site LiveDigital, targeting a user with the handle "Jorge Romero" who also uploaded the premier.

The premier was a big deal for Fox; 24 is its hottest show, and season five ended on a much-discussed cliffhanger. The new episodes were so hotly anticipated that, in addition to blocking out four hours of prime time over two days for their airing, the company poised itself for an extra cash-in by releasing them to DVD on the 16th.

ECOTotal has been suspended by YouTube, but with a little help from the Google cache, we can uncover a tiny bit of information about him. For one thing, he was popular, rating as the third-most subscribed-to uploader as of Jan. 9th (maybe thanks to the 24 leak). I also strongly suspect that he's German, given that his uploads of an episode of CBS's King of Queens were targeted to sprechers of Deutsch.

The most damning evidence: ECOTotal watches King of Queens.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess LiveDigital's "Jorge Romero" is probably Chicagoan Jorge Romero, whose blog includes tips for light hacking of video sites. Romero's profile lists him as 23, and a tiny bit of detective work identifies him as popular Digg user kal-el (current rank: 430 -- not too shabby). That will probably come in handy if he ever needs a legal-defense fund.

Once Fox receives the two users' IP addresses and email accounts from the subpoenaed sites, the next step is presumably a lawsuit. Which leads to the more important Q: What would be the point of suing these dudes?

The answer may surprise Fox, if they think this brings them any closer to revealing who leaked the premier in the first place, or to preventing future digital piracy.

The real source of the problem for Fox is the leak itself, which points directly back to sources within the company. The only reason ECOTotal and Romero had access to the premier is that the four episodes were posted to BitTorrent sites three weeks ago, by the well-known pirate collective AsiaTeam. And it's not the first time such a thing occurred; the premiers of the current Simpsons' season¹ and the previous season of 24 were also available on BitTorrent trackers prior to their air date.

Pirates: Arrrrr Jack's real problem.

Suing a couple of people at the bottom of the piracy food chain -- both of whom are probably young and broke, and one of whom might have to be extradited from Germany -- would serve little purpose for Fox. It's like targeting the Mob by arresting its drivers.

And considering that there are thousands or millions of citizens worldwide with access to the dozens or hundreds of Torrent trackers where these episodes are originally posted, it'd do very little to prevent anyone else from doing the same thing in the future. It only takes one person to post a video to YouTube or anywhere else.

At best, these subpoenas are nothing more than a litigious temper tantrum. Maybe it makes them feel bigger to scare a couple of college kids, or to force Google's hand on anything. In the real world, it accomplishes zilch.

---

¹ When the Simpsons' Halloween premier leaked in late October, I wondered if it wasn't an act of aggression against Fox perpetrated by the show's staff. The network's contract to air the World Series means that the annual "Treehouse of Terror" special usually doesn't air until November, which can't sit too well with the people who make it.

But that's just baseless speculation on my part; the leaked episode was watermarked as a preview for critics, so it could have come from any number of sources.

Q: What is the most infuriating story you'll read in 2007?

A: It's still early, and there's plenty of 2007 left to be infuriated by, but I doubt you'll come across a story more absurdly, pointlessly horrible than that of Genarlow Wilson, the African-American former honor student currently serving a 10-year prison sentence for having received a blow job from a 15-year-old when he was 17.

No, you didn't misread that. Wilson's been in prison two years already.

Journalist Wright Thompson has the whole story, currently parked front and center on ESPN.com (and getting the bejeezus dugg out of it on Digg -- for the second time in as many months). Read it and weep.

It's about time this story is drumming up the attention/indignation it deserves, and you have to believe/hope something will be done to grant Wilson his freedom, and soon. But until that day, all the coverage in the world can't possibly provide due consolation for a young man so ruthlessly hijacked by the justice system.

RELATED: I first discovered the Genarlow Wilson story last month in the New York Times, via this tangentially related Daniel Radosh post on the fascinating complexities of kiddie porn laws.

I've been meaning to bring these topics over to T.A.M.S.Y., but they're such a Pandora's box can of worms (see: the crazed long-windedness of my response to Radosh) that I kept putting it off. Misguided sex laws drive me absolutely insane. Now that I've brought this up, expect me to never shut up about it ever again.

Q: Where can a feller get some good meth in this town?

A: While researching random-number generators government statistics on drug use/production, I came across some useful information for those among you who are hungry for meth¹:

• DEA Creates First-Ever National Meth Site Registry [dea.gov]
  

WASHINGTON, D.C.--Today, the Drug Enforcement Administration announced that, as a free public service, DEA’s webpage (www.dea.gov) will post locations in each state where known methamphetamine clandestine labs blah blah blah I stopped reading after this part.

So yeah, I didn't get through the whole press release, but it's safe to assume that it's like the Gawker Stalker map, except instead of detailing where Brittany Murphy partied last night, it shows you which neighborhoods have the hottest meth.

CORRECTION: Oopsie daisy! Apparently this service is aimed to protect property buyers by providing a registry of former meth labs.

"In a cruel twist of fate, people who have never used or manufactured meth have become some of its hardest hit victims after unknowingly buying property contaminated by chemicals and waste generated from a meth lab," said DEA Administrator Karen P. Tandy.

Say, that is a cruel twist of fate. You know what's even a crueler twist of fate, though, is what happens to some of meth's other hardest hit victims: meth addicts. Because of how, you know, they try meth and then have their lives ruined by addiction to meth. And how their faces fall off and they die, or they're arrested by the DEA and subjected to constant beatings and rape in the badly mismanaged US prison system. I'm not sure what my point here is, aside from that existence is horrible, and that you should not try meth.

OH, ANDBYTHEWAY: Another good way to look for clues that your new property was formerly a meth lab is to check and see if the entire surrounding area reeks of meth. And if faceless people keep showing up on your doorstep desperately asking what happened to the guy who used to sell them meth, you're probably a former meth lab. Hey, this would make a great routine for Jeff Foxworthy.

---

¹ Ted Haggert = HUGE fan of The Answer May Surprise You.

Q: Remember that would-be "dirty bomber," Jose Padilla?

A: If you're like most of our nation's capital, writes Andrew Sullivan, you've probably forgotten him.

Sullivan's essay in the Sunday Times will surely jog your memory -- and his account of what's happened to Jose Padilla in the four years since Bush dubbed him an "enemy combatant" will leave you with some disturbing new ones.

• Jose, Victim of a Sinister New America [Sunday Times] [via the Daily Dish]

"Pucho" Padilla: Not such a "dirty" bird after all?

Note that the media hysteria from 2002 about Padilla's ominous plans to detonate a dirty bomb was probably bullshit; the crimes for which he was finally charged don't even mention it. Meanwhile, federal prosecutors seek to block Padilla's attorneys from asking questions the Pentagon doesn't care to answer.

Of course, Americans only have time to be outraged about one Padilla, and they prefer to focus on the one who can throw a baseball. Not that paying Vincente Padilla $11.25 million per year isn't outrageous -- it totally is. Dude's not even that good.

Q: Could someone get Angela Lansbury's agent on the line?

A: She's still alive, right? Because I have the comeback role of a late-lifetime with her name on it. Think Golden Girls meets Weeds in the Arizona desert: An adorable grandmother turns to dealing dope, hundreds of pounds of dope, to feed her crippling bingo habit. Based, obvs, on a true story:

Bingo-playing grandma guilty in pot case [AP Wire, via attu]

This thing has all the universal themes covered: crime; money; drugs; bingo; sweaty senior citizens; did I already say bingo? And it's the role Angela Lansbury was born to play -- an desperate, impoverished Mexican American.

Jessica Fletcher: She just don't give a fuck.

I smell Emmy gold, people. Feel the pathos:

"People who play bingo almost every night of the week end up losing in the long run," Prosecutor Doyle Johnstun told jurors. "The underlying issue is that she's got a bingo problem, which explains why an otherwise nice person might get sucked into something like this."

Oh, maybe also because she was trying to survive on a $275/month welfare check. On the other hand -- 210 pounds!? Christ, that must have been some high-stakes bingo.

Anyway, kudos to the American legal system for sending a 61-year-old woman to three to 12 years in prison for the unthinkable crime of getting a bunch of people stoned. Man, do I feel safer.