Cheat Sheet

As the car companies prepared to close more plants and five hundred thousand new Americans filed for unemployment, the Bush administration discussed the possibility of an "orderly bankruptcy" for the auto industry, a plan the Big Three say would lead to disaster. "There's an orderly way to do bankruptcies that provides for more of a soft landing. I think that's what we would be talking about," said White House press secretary Dana Perino. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said President Bush now has the authority to include the auto industry in the bailout and "with 2 million American jobs riding on the outcome, the administration should provide this assistance with tough accountability standards and an insistence on shared sacrifice." One problem is the number of parties involved in negotiations, from executives to unions to equity holders. Bush is also keen to protect the incoming president. "I thought about what it would be like for me to become president during this period. I believe that good policy is not to dump him a major catastrophe on his first day in office," Bush said.

The Bush administration's blitz of midnight legislation continues today, with the passage of "right of conscience" regulation, intended to protect the rights of medical professional to refuse a patient care if it violates their moral or religious beliefs. The controversial rule allows the federal government to cut off funding to hospitals, clinics, state and local governments that do not accommodate such employees. Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt said the new regulations will allow, "Doctors and other health care providers should not be forced to choose between good professional standing and violating their conscience." The rule is vehemently supported by many conservative and pro-life groups and just as hotly opposed by pro-choice and women's rights organization. The American Medical Association, 28 senators and more than 110 House members have come out against the regulation because, they say, it will create obstacles abortion, family planning and end-of-life among other medical services. The issue will be a thorny one for the Obama administration, and may affect future legislation concerning stem cell research.

Yahya Ahmed/AP

Four generals are among 35 Iraqi officials in the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior have been arrested in a plot to reinstate Saddam Hussein's Baath Party. Among the ringleaders was Ahmed Abu Raqeef, the ministry's director of internal affairs. The raids were carried out over the last three days by an elite counterterrorism force, which reports directly to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal Al Maliki. "The arrests reflect a new set of political challenges for Iraq. Mr. Maliki, who has gained popularity as a strong leader but has few reliable political allies, has scrambled to protect himself from domestic rivals as the domineering influence of the United States, his leading backer, begins to fade," writes The New York Times.

To Gov. Rod Blagojevich's many problems, we can now add a disappointed father-in-law. Richard Mell, who once bragged about being "the governor-in-law," introduced Blago to his daughter in the 1980s. After they wed, Mell served as kingmaker, boosting Blago's candidacy for governor of Illinois, a former Chicago City Council member said. "We figured, if someone wants to cut your throat, you don't give them the knife to do it," Mell told Newsweek. But the power duo had a bitter falling out in 2005 and Mell "went public, claiming Blagojevich was trading positions for money—a charge that surely caught the attention of prosecutors," Newsweek reports. Now Mell doesn't talk to Blago or his daughter.

Rod Blagojevich's criminal misdeeds may have started long before he became governor. ABC7 in Chicago reports that Robert Cooley, an attorney and former undercover informant for the FBI, alleges that in the Eighties Blagojevich was a bookie on the North Side of Chicago who regularly paid tribute to the Mob. "When I was working with government wearing wire, I reported, I observed Rod, the present governor, who was running a gambling operation out in the western suburbs. He was paying street tax to the Mob out there," Cooley said. Cooley's undercover work in the Eighties put away 24 mobsters. A spokesman for Blagojevich would not comment on the accusations.

Bonuses will be paltry on Wall Street this year, at least relative to the excesses of past years, but this may be for the best, according to The New York Times. "Critics say bonuses never should have been so big in the first place, because they were based on ephemeral earnings. These people contend that Wall Street's pay structure, in which bonuses are based on short term profits, encouraged employees to act like gamblers at a casino — and let them collect their winnings while the roulette wheel was still spinning." In 2006, Merrill Lynch's head mortgage honcho made a $35 million bonus. That same year, Goldman Sachs paid more than 50 people $20 million each. "Compensation was flawed top to bottom," said Lucian A. Bebchuk, an expert on compensation from Harvard Law School. "The whole organization was responding to distorted incentives."

Award season continues with Thursday morning’s Screen Actors Guild Award nominations. Doubt scored five-including nods for Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams and Viola Davis-and will compete with Benjamin Button, Frost/Nixon, Milk and Slumdog Millionaire for overall cast performance. Kate Winslet is up for her respective roles in Revolutionary Road and The Reader. Other best-actress nominees include Anne Hathaway for Rachel Getting Married and Angelina Jolie for Changeling. Best actor nods include Brad Pitt, Frank Langella, Mickey Rouke and Sean Penn. The late Heath Ledger is in contention for his role as the Joker in The Dark Knight. As for the small screen, Boston Legal, Dexter, House, Mad Men and The Closer are up for best drama cast and 30 Rock, Desperate Housewives, Entourage, The Office and Weeds will faceoff for best comedy cast.

In the past few days, Bernard Madoff’s victims have begun coming forward and proclaiming their ignorance to his scheming. In today’s Financial Times, John Gapper writes, “No one thought that Mr. Madoff was operating a Ponzi scheme but plenty of people thought he had an unfair advantage. He was a former Nasdaq chairman and one of Wall Street’s biggest marketmakers. Enough said.” According to Henry Blodget, Madoff was widely suspected on Wall Street of insider trading, and on Time.com, one of Madoff’s victims wrote, “We all hoped, but we knew deep down it was too good to be true, right?” Madoff practically admitted to insider trading during a debate last year, when he said “they’re always doing this.” “The fact,” Gapper writes, “that they believed Wall Street was ‘always doing this’ was not a deterrent; it was a recommendation.”

Paul M. Weyrich, the conservative kingpin who was the first president of the Heritage Foundation and the chairman and CEO of the Free Congress Foundation, died this morning at 1:00 a.m. At The Corner, Grover Norquist pays tribute: “Paul Weyrich created institutions and networks that incubated new and old powerful policies and strategies to advance liberty. … He understood that only freedom could successfully promote traditional values. He brought leaders of various freedom impulses together. Most of the successes of the Conservative movement since the 1970s flowed from structures, organizations, and coalitions he started, created or nurtured.”

Putin continues to test Obama’s mettle. In a move designed to aggravate the tense situation between Israel and Hezbollah dominated Lebanon, the Russians have given Beirut 10 MiG-29 fighter-bombers, plus the funds to fly them. Russia is also expected to sell SA-20 anti-aircraft missiles to Iran. The Israelis have dispatched an envoy to Moscow to try to persuade the Kremlin not to go ahead with the deal, which would allow Tehran to shoot down Israeli fighter jets that swooped into Iranian airspace. The Guardian reports that the moves signal the latest Russian efforts to regain its former cold war role as the Arab world's chief patron - and its main supplier of arms.

Kyodo/AP

So much for Bush’s dream of getting to Mars. Nasa is so broke it is putting up for sale its fleet of space shuttles to raise money for the next phase of space discovery. Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour, which between them have flown 86 missions into space since 1984, will cost $42 million each when they are made redundant in 2010. The engines will cost extra. But Iran and North Korea need not apply. According to the "request for information" document that announced the sale, “Special attention will be paid to ensuring they will retire to appropriate places." And only American citizens will be eligible to buy the vehicles, which will be sold with all space-worthy fittings and fixtures except the main engines. In the past, Nasa has donated historically important space hardware to museums for free.

Over 400 gang related deaths in Tijuana since September can be traced to a single brutal gangster. But even with the Mexican military hot on his heels, billboards asking for help in arresting Teodoro Garcia Simental do not include a picture of him for fear of reprisal. "You don't want to be the one responsible for putting Teo's picture in public," said an anonymous U.S. law enforcement source. "There's no future in it." Garcia, thought to be in his mid-30s, runs a network of hideouts in Baja California where he keeps kidnapped victims–his main source of revenue–caged. Another Simental trademark is to leave the decapitated bodies of his victims in public places.

Pat Semansky/AP

A computer games company is launching a scent derived from the stench found in locker rooms: a fetid concoction of grass, sweat, boot leather, and heat spray. Sports Interactive, who make Football Manager, claim the scent, designed as an after shave for sports lovers, could even inspire struggling teams and managers to perform better. "If Britney Spears and Kerry Katona can have their own fragrance I don't see why we can't,” said Interactive’s Miles Jacobson. Others think the idea stinks.

Learning the lesson of George W. and September 11, Obama’s White House team will spend two days before the inauguration learning what to do in the event of a catastrophic terrorist attack on America. “Cabinet officials will be questioned on dealing with potential disaster scenarios, including an attack that would wipe out the top tier of America's political leadership,” reports The Guardian. Ken Wainstein, Bush's homeland security adviser, told reporters the "tabletop exercises" for incoming cabinet officials were part of an initiative by Bush to ensure the US does not drop its guard during the first post-9/11 transition of power. The preparations extend to crafting up to a dozen possible responses to scenarios, from a nuclear explosion in North Korea to terrorists hacking US computer systems.

Here's a far-off rumor: The Sun is reporting that box-office poison Eddie Murphy may play The Riddler in the next Batman film. The article also pegs Shia Lebeouf to play Robin and Rachel Weisz "is up" for the Catwoman role. Of course, direcetor Christopher Nolan hasn't even singed on yet, so take all of this with a grain of salt. The film is set for a 2010 release. No word yet if the Batsuit will feature nipples, but after this, we wouldn't be surprised.

AP Photo/ICTR

Finally, the organizer of the Rwanda massacres has been convicted. A U.N. court in Tanzania has sentenced Theoneste Bagosora, the former Rwandan Minister of Defense who armed the interahamwe militias in 1994, to life in prison along with two co-defendants. Bagosora was found guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity. Bagosora is considered the general organizer of the genocide, in which over 800,000 people died in only 90 days, and he was also found responsible for the deaths of a former Rwandan prime minister and 10 Belgian peacekeepers.