The Big Three may not be completely out of luck. CNN is reporting that the Bush Administration is considering using the TARP money, originally designated to help banks and Wall Street, to aid the auto industry. The administration long opposed such a move, but with a legislative bailout having failed in the Senate, it may be the industry’s last hope. "Given the current weakened state of the U.S. economy, we will consider other options if necessary—including use of the TARP program—to prevent a collapse of troubled automakers," White House Press Secretary Dana Perino said in a statement. At Portfolio, Felix Salmon points out that the stock market hasn’t tanked too much in the wake of the bailout’s failure in the Senate. “[I]f Wall Street isn't worried, then the chances are that Paulson isn't worried, either. Which is bad news for Detroit, I fear.”

Is Rahm Emanuel the Obama “advisor” named in the Blagojevich criminal complaint? Nope. So says the AP, which learned from sources that the president-elect's chief of staff is not a target of the investigation into the governor's dirty dealings. Yesterday, when a Chicago Sun-Times reporter ambushed him at a children’s concert, Emanuel refused to address whether he's the advisor in question. “You’re wasting your time,” Emanuel said. “I’m not going to say a word to you. I’m going to do this with my children. Don’t do that. I’m a father. I have two kids. I’m not going to do it.” In the criminal complaint, Blagojevich said on tape that he wanted the advisor to know that he expected a high-level appointment or other reward in exchange for appointing Valerie Jarrett, Obama’s preference, to his Senate seat.

Bernard L. Madoff, a legendary trader who’s towered over Wall Street for nearly 50 years, was arrested by federal agents Thursday and charged with running a $50 billion Ponzi scheme—perhaps the biggest fraud in Wall Street’s history. The former chairman of the Nasdaq Stock Market reportedly told colleagues on Wednesday that his investment advisory business was "all just one big lie” that was “basically, a giant Ponzi scheme.” According to one official for the SEC, the case involved “a stunning fraud that appears to be of epic proportions.” Of more than $17 billion in assets under management by Madoff’s firm at the beginning of 2008, all is missing, according to the SEC. Madoff's investment advisory business had "deceived investors by operating a securities business in which he traded and lost investor money, and then paid certain investors purported returns on investment with the principal received from other, different investors, which resulted in losses of approximately billions of dollars,” according to the FBI.

The body found yesterday in Orange County, Florida, is being tentatively identified as Caylee Anthony, according to defense attorneys for Anthony’s mother. Lawyer Linda Kenney Baden said investigators are "proceeding as if this were little Caylee Anthony." The skeletal remains, which were discovered in a plastic bag near Anthony’s grandparents’ home, have “hair color and other features [that] matched Caylee,” says CNN. FBI technicians are now examining the remains. Anthony’s mother Casey, 22, had already been arrested for Caylee’s murder.

Breaking news: Not only has Dick Cheney taken an interest in domestic policy, but, when it comes to the economy, he’s kind of a liberal! Politico reports that, in a closed-door meeting, Cheney told Republican senators that rejection of the auto bailout would mean “Herbert Hoover” time. Senate Republicans rejected the bailout anyway. “Clearly, it’ll be on their heads [if the auto companies fail],” said Democratic Sen. Kent Conrad. The White House could still authorize the Treasury Department to loan TARP money to the Big Three. Ben Bernanke has indicated that the Fed will not lend Detroit any money.

The ongoing recount battle in Minnesota between Al Franken and incumbent Republican Sen. Norm Coleman turned in Franken's favor today as the state canvassing board voted to allow 1,600 previously rejected absentee ballots to be counted. Observers expect the votes to break towards Franken based on pre-election polling of absentee voters. In a race where at one point Franken claimed to be ahead by 4 votes, the decision could tip the scales in his favor. Coleman, meanwhile, may be heading the way of Ted Stevens: A report from a local Fox affiliate says that Coleman may have been under financial stress at the time a Texas businessman allegedly tried to bribe him via payments to Coleman’s wife’s company.

Latest from the Blagosphere: The Illinois attorney general has filed a motion with the state’s Supreme Court to strip Rod Blagojevich of his powers. "The pervasive nature and severity of these pending charges disable Mr. Blagojevich from making effective decisions on critical, time-sensitive issues," the filing said. Under the motion, the lieutenant governor would assume Blagovich’s power. The attorney general is using a rule that is supposed to apply in cases where the governor is incapacitated for health reasons. Blagojevich, meanwhile, spent the day praying with several pastors.

Disaster remake The Day the Earth Stood Still will have a new audience to capture this weekend—an otherworldy one. Twentieth Century Fox is broadcasting the film to Alpha Centauri—the nearest star system to Earth—in addition to 3,560 theaters domestically. Variety reports a celestial communications network is using equipment at Cape Canaveral, Florida, to beam the film. Alpha Centauri will not receive the film for four years, giving the filmmakers plenty of time to produce a few sequels on the ground. Keanu Reeves, playing a judgmental alien, comes to Earth to observe humans and their reactions to global warming. Jennifer Connelly and Will Smith’s son, Jaden, also star. Time will tell if Keanu's acting is as wooden in space as it is on screen.

Have you heard the one about the cholera outbreak in Zimbabwe that has so far infected 16,000 people? Punchline: “There is no cholera.” According to Robert Mugabe’s spokesman, Zimbabwe’s embattled leader was being “sarcastic” when he said exactly that yesterday. Nearly 800 Zimbabweans have died from cholera since August, and the number of cases, in the worst-case scenario, could rise to 60,000.

From a couple days ago, a fascinating statistic that has given rise to the unfortunate label “man-cession”: 82 percent of the 2.4 million jobs that the United States has lost over the past year have been lost by men. “Stated differently,” writes economist Mark J. Perry,” for every female job lost, there were 4.5 male jobs lost.” In the last recession, between January 2001 and January 2002, only 57 percent of the jobs lost were by men. In the recession before that, between May 1990 and May 1991, 70 percent of the jobs lost were by men. According to Perry, men are concentrated in the two business sectors that suffering the most: manufacturing and construction.

The Oscars just got a whole lot sexier now that Hugh Jackman, the signing, dancing and acting Aussie, is set to host the 81st Annual Academy Awards. But don't expect three-time Tony host to follow in the footsteps of his comedic predecessors. With new producers, a new set director, and a new musical director, the Academy Awards are planning a shake-up this year that will play more to Jackman's talents and rely less on Jack Nicholson jokes. (Have you heard that he likes younger women?). Jackman, who’s never been nominated for an Oscar, presented an award at the 2002 ceremony. Afterward he said he’d probably never do it again, because “getting up there in a suit and talking for a little bit is kind of bizarre." Guess he changed his mind.

Those who had been wanting to describe our current economic predicament as “Dickensian” should not feel obliged to wait any longer. The Financial Times brings news that, over in Britain, “Christmas this year will see people eating smaller Christmas puddings and cakes.” Other side effects of the recession in the U.K. include: less frequent haircuts; bottled water giving way to the tap; and Brits eating food that has expired. "We are moving into an area of the frivolous being unacceptable and the frugal being cool," a supermarket executive tells the paper. "A whole new consumer generation will come out of this." Perhaps most heartbreaking: This year’s most popular adult Christmas gift, according to the executive, will be a jumper.

Everyone from George W.Bush to Barack Obama wants the prison for terrorists at Guantánamo Bay shut. But how to do it? Step forward the European Union, led by the Portuguese, who are offering to take the 60 most dangerous terrorists locked up in Gitmo and keep them in maximum security jails. There are about 250 “enemy combatants” at Gitmo, many of whom cannot be returned to their own countries, like the Yemen, because there are inadequate facilities. Or because they would face certain torture or death. Yet there is inadequate evidence to convict them in a court of law. The Portuguese are urging other European nations to help America out of its embarrassment by taking the terrorists captured in the wake of 9/11.  “This is a major milestone in our efforts to secure help … in closing Guantánamo,” said John Bellinger of the State Department. So far only Albania has taken detainees who were not its own citizens: five from Uighur in western China who would be tortured or killed if returned to the communist country.

Dire budget projections are coming out of California, one of the ten largest economies in the world. In February, the state will run out of funds, reports The Times of London. Its debts are increasing at the astonishing rate of $1.7 million per hour. Bill Lockyer, California's treasurer, warns that $5 billion of public works projects will be halted as the state's leaders worry about an Iceland-style financial meltdown. The remedy proposed by "The Governator" Arnold Schwarzenegger, is a 1.5 percent sales tax hike–the same tax increase that led to the ousting of his Democratic predecessor and that Arnie vowed to revoke if elected.

Hunter S. Thompson's widow Anita has revealed that the Fear and Loathing writer could be a father again from beyond the grave: before his suicide he froze some of his sperm. "Hunter and I were always trying to have children," she told the Scottish Herald, " But I could still have his child if I want to. … He left that possibility for me. … Would I want to raise the child without Hunter? Children do better with a father, although I think it would be beautiful for Hunter to have another child, as we had tried so many times unsuccessfully. I believe it's something Hunter would want, but at this point in my life I'm a little fearful of making that kind of decision. I wouldn't want to do it as a way of replicating Hunter, of prolonging Hunter, or as a way of filling the void."

The material girl is living up to her name. Madonna will skip concerts in Sydney and Melbourne after a 31 percent drop in Australia's currency in five months made her too expensive for promoters. The currency slide has added millions to the cost of contracts, and has also prompted Neil Diamond, The Eagles, Green Day, Metallica, and Paul McCartney to cancel their tour there, reports the Herald Sun. “You can sell out a tour and still lose a seven-figure sum," complained Australian promoter Michael Coppel.

Bangladeshi film director Ahsanullah Moni has duplicated the Taj Mahal 20 miles northeast of Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, The Times of London reports, and the Indians are not at all happy about it. Moni dispatched architects to Agra in India to measure the original, then imported marble from Italy and diamonds from Belgium to ensure his replica of the mausoleum built in 1653 would be perfect. But Indian officials are upset. “You can’t just go out and copy historical monuments,” an official at the Indian High Commission in London said. The Bangladeshis, in turn, reject the notion that an historic building can be protected by copyright. “Show me where it says that emulating a building like this can be illegal,” said an official. Moni claims he only wanted to attract tourists to Bangladesh and give locals too poor to travel to India a chance to see one of the most beautiful monuments in the world.

When Belgian police arrested 14 terrorists yesterday as part of an operation to thwart a planned terror attack, an "al-Qaeda living legend" was among them. Malika El-Aroud is a female Al Qaeda recruiter known for her ability to use the internet to draw men and women into jihad. Belgian police said that they aimed to prevent El-Aroud from moving to Afghanistan where she would have played a role fighting coalition forces. Her late husband, Abdessater Dahmane, was one of two men who assassinated Afghanistan's key anti-Taliban commander Ahmed Shah Massoud two days before 9/11. In 2006 El-Aroud professed her love for Osama bin-Laden to CNN: "Most Muslims love Osama. It was he who helped the oppressed. It was he who stood up against the biggest enemy in the world, the United States. We love him for that."

Bettie Page, the "Queen of the Pinups," died yesterday at 85. Page was the most famous pinup girl of the postwar era. She had her first shoot in 1950 and her big break came in 1955, when she modeled for Playboy. She frequently appeared nude or in bondage. But she mysteriously retreated into privacy in 1957 and did not reappear for three decades, when there was a sudden revival of interest in her—comic book artists, biographers, Quentin Tarantino, Demi Moore, and Madonna all revitalized her image. After her disappearance, Page suffered a nervous breakdown and became a born-again Christian, even serving as an adviser to the Billy Graham Crusade. She refused to be photographed later in life, but told the Los Angeles Times in 2006, "I want to be remembered as I was when I was young and in my golden times. I want to be remembered as a woman who changed people's perspectives concerning nudity in its natural form."

The expletive ridden tape recordings of the Blagojeviches damning their enemies have done more than draw attention to the murky politics of Illinois. They have quickly added the word “bleep” to the general vocabulary. Take John McCain, who told Letterman last night, amid applause, “I don't want to talk about the bleeping campaign. Understand? If you think I'm going to go back to that bleeping situation, then bleep you.” Beyond jumping on the latest neologism, McCain was generous about Obama and, to the chagrin of conservatives who never warmed to him, praised Obama’s middle way politics. “I think President elect Obama has made a number of very wise choices which I think shows a centrist approach to government, which, obviously, the way America and the world is today, is necessary,” he told the chat show host. As for Hillary? “She is extremely knowledgeable on the issues. I think it's a good team and I think it's a very wise choice.”

Call it vindication, of a sort. Bush was always skeptical that talking would lead to North Korea giving up its nuclear weapons plans. And the North Korean despot Kim Jung Il has proved him right. As the Bush administration enters its final days, the communist tyrant has called off the long-running talks in Beijing that would have led to him giving up his nukes.  “What’s unfortunate is that the North Koreans had an opportunity here,” said White House Press Secretary Dana Perino. “There was an open door, and all they had to do was walk through it.” Kim is hoping he will get a softer deal from the Obama administration. It will be one of the first tests for the new president, who won the White House on a promise to talk to dictators, and his new secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, who said talking to tyrants is a bad idea. Whose view prevails will be an early indication of whether the Obama/Clinton partnership will work.

Antoin “Tony” Rezko, the convicted fraudster and influence peddler, has won a reprieve -- for now. The judge who will decide how long Rezko will spend in jail suspended his deliberations Thursday pending Rezko’s decision to start spilling the beans about indicted Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich. If Rezko turns up the smoking gun and agrees to testify, he hopes to spend less time behind bars. Any evidence Rezko provides against Blagojevich may also cast light on his relationship with the other Chicago politician he lavishly funded: President elect Obama. On the day Rezko was indicted, Obama showed him around the Chicago home he was preparing to buy. Shortly afterwards, Mrs. Rezko boosted the value of the Obama property by buying the next door vacant lot and selling back a strip of land to the Obamas, meaning the neighboring plot was too small to build on.

The auto bailout is dead, causing the nervous markets to head south. "It's over with," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Democrats and Republicans seemed near a deal several times, but talks eventually broke down with the Republicans' insistence that automakers reach wage parity with foreign automakers by 2009. The vote failed 52-35, eight votes short of the 60 needed to break a Republican filibuster. Automakers now hope the White House will relent on its refusal to allow the Treasury to provide emergency loans from the $700 billion Wall Street bailout. Both GM and Chrysler are consulting bankruptcy lawyers. The news spells a rocky day on Wall Street: domestic market futures dropped following skids in Europe and Asia.

Back-to-school at Sidwell Academy could get pretty awkward. Among the parents at the Obama girls' new school is Hillary’s poll guru Mark Penn. Other Clintonite classmates include the children of Mandy Grunwald and Capricia Marshall. And Obama could also face a grilling from new Meet the Press host David Gregory, whose kids also study at the school. Clintonista-turned-Obamaite Patti Sollis Doyle insists, however, that politics are checked at its school gate. "It's a great school, and my kids have just really grown and thrived at the school. But what's great about it is that, sure, there are a lot of quote-unquote D.C. power parents, but in the carpool and at back-to-school night, they're just regular parents."

In a last-minute rush to repeal green regulations before Obama arrives, the Bush Administration modified the rules of the Endangered Species Act so government agencies can decide for themselves whether development projects will harm protected species. In the past such tricky questions have required independent review by scientific experts. "As the Bush administration fades off into the sunset, it continues to take brazen pot shots at everything in sight, including America's landmark conservation law, the Endangered Species Act," said House Resources Committee Chairman Nick J. Rahall, who promised to introduce new laws next year to repeal the Bush order. The Interior Secretary, Dirk Kempthorne, claimed the rule would still protect endangered species, while leaving Americans free to develop land without having to worry about wildlife.

Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez has launched a campaign to get popular support for a referendum to approve indefinite presidential reelections, currently prohibited under the country’s constitution. Chavez has asked his supporters to help him get at least 7.3 million votes in favor of a constitutional amendment that will allow him to run for President again in 2013, when his current presidential term comes to an end. "Those who want to be a colony, those who want to be enslaved, those who want to be vassals of capitalism, go with them! … Those who want happiness for his sons and daughters, come with me," wrote Chavez on a public board in a plaza in Caracas. The Venezuelan opposition has called this initiative illegal and is promising to fight it in the streets and polls.

The Bush Administration insists the mistreatment of detainees in the war on terror was the fault of a "few bad apples," but a bipartisan panel of senators, including John McCain, begs to differ. "The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees," says a new report. It blames Donald Rumsfeld and other top Bush Administration officials for the harsh treatment of suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, which, the report says, led to abuses like the cruel treatment of detainees by American forces at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. The report is "the most direct refutation to date" of the administration's line that such techniques protect American lives, writes The Washington Post. The report argues that such techniques have "damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies, and compromised our moral authority." Not one of the 12 Republican senators on the panel dissented.