Cheat Sheet

Perhaps driving to the Capitol worked. The New York Times reports that Democratic congressional leaders agreed to a short-term bailout for the Big Three. No details yet, but the paper quotes aides saying the plan “would include billions of dollars in short-term loans to keep the automakers afloat at least until President-elect Barack Obama takes office.” Moreover, “the money would likely come from $25 billion in federally subsidized loans intended for developing advanced fuel efficient cars.” Democrats had wanted President Bush or the Fed to provide the money, rather than tapping into those funds.

Over the past few weeks, Fidel Castro has been tracking Obama’s every move. In the most recent “Reflection” he published in the island’s press, the Cuban leader asks Obama a series of questions related to the embargo, war, torture, and immigration, and discusses the choices the president-elect has made for his administration. It’s clear that Castro wants to ask him some of those questions in person. “We can talk with Obama wherever he wishes, because we are not defenders of violence and war,” Castro writes. “We must remind him that the carrot and stick approach will not be successful in our country.”

ABC News reports that New York Governor David Paterson has spoken with Caroline Kennedy about taking over Hillary Clinton’s Senate seat. The seat was once held by Caroline’s uncle, Robert, and she is reportedly interested in the offer. Kennedy played a high-profile role in Barack Obama’s campaign and, despite being junior senator, would have closer ties to the West Wing than practically any of her colleagues. When Caroline’s cousin, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., took himself out of the running for the seat earlier this week, he said, “Caroline Kennedy would be the perfect choice if she would agree to it.”

According to The New York Times, Indian investigators have uncovered evidence that the Mumbai attacks were stage-managed from at least two Pakistani cities by top leaders from the militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba. It is believed that the contacts in Pakistan guided the gunmen via cell phone as the attack unfolded and even decided, in some cases, hostages’ fates. Yusuf Muzammil, a Lashkar operative, is believed to have been the mastermind of the attacks and to have participated from Lahore. His boss, Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, is believed to have participated from Karachi. Western officials believe that the investigation could broaden to include terrorists within India.

This isn’t quite as fun as it used to be, but: The New York Times is reporting that during the campaign, Sarah Palin’s makeup artist, who won an Emmy for her work on So You Think You Can Dance?, was paid $68,400 and her hairstylist more than $42,000 for two months’ work. Republican officials also confirmed they would be disclosing less than $30,000 worth of additional clothing charges.

O.J. Simpson was all apologies today at his sentencing hearing for a 2007 Las Vegas hotel robbery. He said that he was “sorry and confused” and “I didn’t want to steal anything from anyone.” The judge didn’t buy it. Simpson was sentenced to at least 9 years in prison for armed robbery and kidnapping. The judge ruled that Simpson cannot be freed on bail pending a possible appeal.

Israeli journalist Avi Issacharoff has a provocative name for the violence committed by Orthodox settlers against Palestinians in Hebron yesterday: “A pogrom. This isn’t a play on words or a double meaning. It is a pogrom in the worst sense of the word.” Issacharoff was at a house of a Palestinian family, numbering close to 20 people. Settlers surrounded their home, burned the laundry in the lawn and one room of the house. A group of journalists put down their notebooks and attempted to save the family. “They break into the home and save the lives of the people inside…All around, as if they were watching a rock concert, are hundreds of Jewish witnesses, observing the events with great interest, even offering suggestions to the Jewish wayward youth as to the most effective way to harm the family. And the police are not to be seen. Nor is the army.”

The campaign may be over, but the Straight Talk Express and its team of inseparable amigos chugs along. Unable to part ways after the election, John McCain, Joe Lieberman, and Lindsey Graham have shown up together in Bhutan, the tiny Buddhist kingdom between India and China. The trio visited to congratulate the country on transitioning to a constitutional democracy from a total monarchy earlier this year and met with the king (seemingly without preconditions). Other stops included Iraq, Bangladesh, and India. The trio is due back next week.

The resurrection of Henry Kissinger was one of the more unusual side stories of the last election, and the former secretary of state seems determined to make good on his newfound popularity. In an op-ed for The Washington Post, Kissinger praises Obama’s national security team. Most interesting is his advice to Hillary. "I know of no exception to the principle that secretaries of state are influential if and only if they are perceived as extensions of the president," Kissinger writes. "The Beltway system of leak and innuendo will mercilessly seek to widen any even barely visible split." Clinton’s "most immediate challenges are to provide strategic guidance and to reorganize the department so that its implementing capacity matches its extraordinary reporting skill."

With the main presidential show long over, it’s easy to overlook the fact that Minnesota’s Senate race is still unresolved. So what exactly is going in the Land of 1,000 Lakes? DailyKos has a rundown: Officially, with 99.37 percent of the precincts reporting, Al Franken has a 6,000 vote lead over Norm Coleman. However, the remaining precincts are expected to reduce that lead to more or less the same number the recount started with—a Coleman lead of 251 votes. The campaigns have challenged 5,000 votes, and it will be hard to tell where the election stands until the state canvassing board meets to review them on December 16. Franken’s team is claiming a lead of 10 votes, but this doesn’t count for 133 missing ballots in a strong Franken precinct that have cost him 36 votes. The state will extend the recount to accommodate the search for the ballots.

The stern op-ed page of The Wall Street Journal is not the place you would expect to find an impassioned appeal to legalize marijuana. But to mark the ending of Prohibition 75 years ago, the free marketers have invited Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, to argue that our stern drug laws should be overturned. He says drug prohibition has led to 500,000 people in jail for nonviolent drug-law violations; 1.8 million drug arrests last year; tens of billions spent annually to fund a drug war that has failed; thousands dying each year from drug overdoses “that have more to do with prohibitionist policies than the drugs themselves”; and tens of thousands needlessly infected with AIDS and hepatitis C because the anti-drug policies undermine responsible public health policies. Nadelmann has high hopes Obama will make some modest changes but, he argues, that is nowhere near enough to solve the problem.

It turns out that there was one company Christmas party that wasn’t canceled, but you probably didn’t snag an invite anyway. The host was Dick Cheney. The location was the Naval Observatory. The guest list was, well, we’ll let National Review Online’s Kathryn Jean Lopez tell it. “It was like a gathering of old friends…Cheney aides like David Addington. Conservative Hill aides. Bill Bennett…Karl Rove. And that’s the picture I want for my Facebook page: Karl Rove with Dick Cheney; Karl was too behind me in the receiving line.” No word on whether the Cheneys sang any carols.

Nixon isn’t the only president with unheard tapes to surface. New White House tapes of Johnson reveal the former president attacking Nixon over his attempt to slow down the Vietnam peace talks in 1968 to prevent Democratic candidate Hubert Humphrey from gaining good publicity ahead of the presidential election. “This is treason,” Johnson said, referring to Nixon associates in a conversation with the Senate Republican leader. “If Nixon keeps the South Vietnamese away from the [peace] conference, well, that’s going to be his responsibility.” Even more intriguing is a conversation between LBJ and Nixon, in which Nixon says, “I just wanted you to know that I feel very, very strongly about this. We’ve got to get them to Paris, or we can’t have a peace.”

If Dr. Seuss built a cathedral, it would be La Sagrada Familia, Antoni Gaudi’s still-unfinished masterpiece in Barcelona, with its drippy-sandcastle spires. But now, 125 years after construction began, architectural purists are arguing that modern architects who are completing Gaudi’s masterpiece have perverted his vision. Four hundred Spanish intellectuals, including the director of the Reina Sofia art museum, the president of the Miro Foundation, and Gaudi’s son, have signed a manifesto calling for an end to construction. The group charges that the architects currently working on the building are not following Gaudi’s plans faithfully in order to appease the demands of tourism.

One of the most coveted honors of every year goes to a color. Pantone’s “Color of the Year” proclamation tends to set the tone for fashion designers and style critics for each season. This year, “Blue Iris,” a shocking shade of royal blue à la Yves Klein, was all the rage. Next year, prepare to see the runways (and eventually the discount lines at Target) awash in a citrusy-yellow-explosion Pantone is calling “Mimosa.” With recession, unemployment, and a general grim mood setting in around the country, perhaps wearing the acid hue will lift a few spirits. It’s very difficult to look depressed in neon.

Yankees star Alex Rodriguez has been talking for the first time about his relationship with Madonna. “We’re friends,” Rodriguez told People magazine. Asked whether the friendship was romantic, he said, “I have a lot of respect for her. She’s very committed to making the world a better place. She’s had an amazing career, and we’re friends. That’s it.” He said much of what’s been written about them he found laughable. “I’ve been to two [of her] concerts, yet I’ve read that I went to 20,” he said. “I’ve also read that we were buying an apartment together. That is absolutely ridiculous and not true…You have to have a sense of humor when it comes to this stuff.” He also spoke of his divorce: “I have a wonderful relationship with Cynthia,” Rodriguez said. “I see my children, honestly, seven days a week, which has been great. We both have a lot of respect for each other and she’s a great lady.”

One of neuroscience’s most famous patients, Henry Gustav Molaison, known as H.M., died at 82 on Tuesday night. He was an amnesiac, who lost his memory almost entirely after undergoing experimental brain surgery to correct a seizure disorder in 1953. Beyond his name and a few bits of family history, he could remember almost nothing. At the time, scientists had believed memory was distributed throughout the brain, but Molaison’s loss overturned that assumption. Though Molaison could never remember participating in experiments, he improved each time he repeated them, suggesting that there are two types of memory—“declarative memory” and “motor learning.” “He was a very gracious man, very patient, always willing to try these tasks I would give him,” said one doctor who worked with him. “And yet every time I walked in the room, it was like we’d never met.”

What’s in a name? A great deal, if you believe former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan. She believes Obama should change the name of the Department of Homeland Security, which she describes as “that hopeless bureaucracy,” to…well, she doesn’t say. But she knows she doesn’t like the present title. “Homeland is a Nazi-ish word, not an American concept at all,” she writes in The Wall Street Journal. “And at this point ‘Homeland Security’ is associated more with pointless harassment than safety. No one knows who came up with it.” Quite a mystery. One for the former Nixon speechwriter and lexicographer William Safire, perhaps.

The jobless figure reached 6.7 percent last month, up from 6.5 percent in October. More than half a million—533,000—were made unemployed during November. It’s only the fourth time in the past 58 years that payrolls have fallen by more than 500,000 in a month. “The figures suggest the year-long U.S. recession may approach or even exceed the 1981-1982 downturn in severity, and support expectations that Federal Reserve officials will soon lower interest rates to levels not seen in a half century,” The Wall Street Journal reports. When marginally attached and involuntary part-time workers are included, the rate of unemployed or underemployed workers reached even higher: 12.5 percent last month, up 0.7 percent from October.

Pressure is mounting for Zimbabwe’s president, Robert Mugabe, to step down in the face of the country’s latest horror, a cholera epidemic that has stricken more than 12,500 people and killed more than 560, The Times of London reports. This week Mugabe’s government admitted, for the first time, that the epidemic is an emergency and asked for international aid. Nobel Peace Prize winner and South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu said the world should tell Mugabe he is responsible for “gross violations” and that he faces indictment in The Hague if he doesn’t step down soonest. Tutu said Mugabe should be removed by military force if he refuses to resign. Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga agreed. “It’s time for African governments to take decisive action to push him out of power,” he said.

The Justice Department is preparing indictments for the Blackwater security contractors who, in 2007, killed 17 civilians in Iraq. They have a difficult case ahead of them. Prosecutors are thinking of bringing charges under an anti-drug law that requires a mandatory 30-year sentence for any violence committed with a machine gun. The prosecutors will argue that the law can be applied to non-drug-related crimes. They also have to prove that the contractors can be charged in the US for crimes committed overseas by arguing that military law applied to them in Iraq. Problem is, the contractors worked for the State Department, not the military. The government recently lost a similar case against a contractor who killed four Iraqi detainees.