Portland Police All in For Round Two of the Al Gore Sex Scandal Investigation

• President Obama will speak today about immigration reform—an issue which everyone widely agrees will not be touched by anyone until after the midterm elections. [The New York Daily News] • Police in Portland will re-investigate 2006 sexual abuse allegations against Nobel Peace Prize–winner Al Gore. Authorities did not indicate why they are doing so, though this will likely not stop everyone from trying to guess. [The Wall Street Journal] • A bitter, public fight between a Minuteman and Congressman Pete Stark (D-CA) is the Internet’s most prominent Controversy™ today. [CNN] • Hurricane Alex was nothing more than a common tropical storm by the time it hit southern Texas. [The Houston Chronicle] • M. Night Shyamalan’s new movie, The Last Airbender, is just terrible. This should not come as a shock, given The Village and The Happening. [Gawker]

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Portland Police All in For Round Two of the Al Gore Sex Scandal Investigation

Is the Liverpool Soccer Club Up for Sale?

Japan’s Princess Aiko, the eight-year-old daughter of Crown Prince Naruhito and Crown Princess Masako, hasn’t been in school for a week, but reasons for her absence are unclear. In an odd public statement, an Imperial Household official said that the Princess had been unwilling to return to Gakushuin Primary School after being bullied by boys in her second-grade class. Apparently, she has been suffering from anxiety and stomach aches. The school, however, held its own press conference and announced, “As far as we know, there was no violent behavior targeted at Princess Aiko.” Here’s hoping the little Princess makes it to class on Monday.

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Is the Liverpool Soccer Club Up for Sale?

Pitino again speaks out against accuser (AP)

A seething Rick Pitino said he could stay on the sidelines no longer. The Louisville men's basketball coach said video aired Wednesday of a police interview with a woman at the heart of sex and extortion scandal surrounding Pitino revived a "total fabrication of the truth." In it, Karen Cunagin Sypher accuses Pitino of sexually assaulting her, an allegation she brought to police…

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Pitino again speaks out against accuser (AP)

A Modest Proposal for Removing Mark Sanford from Office

Photograph by Andy Wilson, via Flickr. While Gov. Mark Sanford continues to cling to office, the good people of South Carolina are spending their Fourth of July weekend resuming a tiresome question that we postponed last week when we all needed a few days to mourn over Michael Jackson—that is, whether or not Sanford should resign. The short and obvious answer is that, as a philandering hypocrite who is despised by virtually every officeholder in his state, he should. This is not debatable. A majority of the Republicans in the South Carolina state senate are calling for him to quit, and at least seven newspapers in the state have seconded it. But Sanford doesn’t seem to get it. Fortunately, there is another way out. South Carolina should just throw him in jail.

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A Modest Proposal for Removing Mark Sanford from Office

What Would Johnny Say About Palin vs. Letterman?

In 1965, the daughter of President Lyndon Johnson, Luci Baines Johnson, grabbed headlines when she converted to Catholicism. She was 18 at the time and her decision prompted The Tonight Show host Johnny Carson to quip, “You don’t think of it so much as losing a daughter as gaining Boston.” Yes, that’s right. Carson made a joke about the 18-year-old daughter of a political figure. As David Letterman tries to pull out of the public-relations tailspin triggered by Governor Sarah Palin’s attack on him for doing the same, it’s worth turning to the patron saint of late-night TV hosts and asking: What would Johnny do? Here’s the recap: In a monologue last week, Letterman made a joke about Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s daughter getting “knocked up” at a Yankee game. He was clearly talking about her formerly knocked-up daughter, Bristol, but Governor Palin erroneously accused him of making a statutory-rape joke about her younger daughter, Willow. Letterman tried to straighten out the record on the ugly charge, but Palin rejected his clarification and continued to bayonet a straw man. CBS lost a sponsor and Letterman issued an abject apology. Palin accepted. You can just imagine Johnny hearing this story, then cocking his head with that tight-lipped smile and opening his hands as if letting go of all reason. He’d hold that a beat, then thrust his hands into his pockets, pivoting his stiff torso to the left, then to the right, in a desperate attempt to try to spot where that reason might have flown.

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What Would Johnny Say About Palin vs. Letterman?