Could the era of corporate excess finally be ending? Wall Street executives are quaking in their Prada boots after President Obama lashed out against their "shameful" greed twice in two days. In his weekly YouTube address, Obama sharply criticized executives for "draining" bailout funds and pledged "unprecedented transparency" for taxpayers. Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) introduced legislation to cap bailout recipients' executive compensation at $400,000. (In other words, one-third of John Thain's office decor fund.) The Wall Street Journal reports that, though overwhelming voices outside the financial industry want Wall Street to trim the fat, insiders find the assault on their bonus-driven salaries "destabilizing" and "unsettling." The WSJ's editorial page rebuked the anti-CEO fervor: "Mr. Obama wanted to hit a populist nerve this week because he knows he may have to ask Congress for another $1 trillion or more to revive the banking system."

Looks like Tim Geithner isn't the only Washington powerhouse in debt to Uncle Sam: Politico reports that former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle—currently nominated to head Obama's Department of Health and Human Services—owes the IRS more than $128,000 in back taxes over the past three years. Most of that money is owed on a car and driver that were loaned to Daschle, for free, by a friend and Democratic fundraiser. A source tells Politico that Daschle does not plan to end his nomination.

For 55 minutes on Saturday morning, multi-functional mega-hit search engine Google thwarted users from their desired destinations. With the entire internet labeled "harmful for your computer," Google searches pointed users to a series of redirection pages informing them of security risks, even when they tried to use sites hosted by Google. The cause of this temporary rift in the internet continuum? "Very simply, human error," Google writes on its official blog. Somewhere along the pipeline connecting Google to security partner StopBadware.org a single keystroke brought the whole system down.

Obama's plan to restructure the $700 billion financial industry bailout will have to wait another week, the White House announced today. Testament to the collossal work required to pull together the legislation, its unveiling has been pushed back to the second week of February, reports CNN. The legislation will include restrictions on corporate compensation and plans for the so-called federal "bad bank" for buying other institutions' bad assets. Combined with Obama's $825 billion stimulus, Republicans have begun to refer to Obama's legislative debut as the " trillion-dollar Christmas list."

It’s been rumored, but now we have confirmation: President Obama is adding another Republican to his Cabinet. The White House today confirmed that Obama is going to choose Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire as his commerce secretary. “Senator Gregg is now the leading candidate for commerce and a pick that could come as early as Monday,” a senior administration official tells The New York Times. The selection process for commerce has been slightly scandal-tinged, with Gov. Bill Richardson, Obama’s first pick, withdrawing over a grand jury investigation into state government contracts. Gregg would be the third Republican in Obama’s Cabinet, joining Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Transportation Secretary Roy LaHood. The pick could also give Democrats a filibuster-proof 60 seats in the Senate, if Al Franken of Minnesota is seated and New Hampshire Gov. John Lynch, a Democrat, picks a member of his own party to replace Gregg in the Senate.

Can anyone keep track of how many stages the bailout has been through? According to the Financial Times, the Obama administration is planning a “big bang” announcement next week “that will combine a bank clean-up with measures to reduce home foreclosures and probably steps to kick-start credit markets.” Obama’s overhaul of the TARP package will try to restore public faith in the program by including things like strict curbs on compensation for banks receiving public aid. “[Treasury Secretary Timothy] Geithner intends to present a ‘comprehensive’ plan that policymakers hope will command market confidence.”

Provincial elections are under way in Iraq today and, so far, according to The New York Times, there is a "lighter turnout than expected." Fourteen thousand candidates are competing for 440 seats in 14 of Iraq’s 18 provinces and there are, so far, no reports of injuries or violence in Iraq’s largest electoral exercise since violence peaked in 2006 and 2007. According to The Times, "Today's vote could be a curtain raiser for national polls within a year that would elect a successor to Mr. Maliki’s Shiite-dominated government."

Not surprisingly, the White House has no comment on this one. President Obama’s half-brother George Obama has been arrested in Nairobi for possession of marijuana. The 24-year-old, whom Barack Obama is not close with and who did not attend the inauguration, is scheduled to appear in court Monday on charges of cannabis possession and resisting arrest; he says he’s innocent. “They took me from my home,” George Obama told CNN from his jail cell. “I don’t know why they are charging me.” The younger Obama lives in a small house in Huruma, a Nairobi slum, but has denied press reports that he lives in a shack and subsists on less than a dollar a day. “I was brought up well. I live well even now,” he said last fall. “The magazines, they have exaggerated everything.

Ever wonder what Saddam’s last days were like? Well, according to a new book by Charles Duelfer, once the CIA’s top weapons investigator in Iraq, the deposed dictator flirted with American nurses, said he wanted to restart a nuclear weapons program, and even wrote poetry. Hide and Seek: The Search for Truth in Iraq—held up for more than nine months by CIA reviewers—focuses on Duelfer’s decade-long hunt for WMD, but it also offers nuggets about Vladimir Putin’s corrupt oil deals with Iraq and the Russian leader’s effort to persuade Saddam to step down to avert a US invasion. Best bit: Saddam “once asked his top commanders if Iraq had any hidden weapons he didn’t know about.”

Noticing, perhaps, how well it worked for the other party, the Republican National Committee has chosen an African American man as its leader. After six rounds of voting, the RNC chose former Maryland Lieutenant Governor Michael Steele as its next chairman. In the final round of voting, Steele defeated Katon Dawson, the chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party and a former member of a whites-only country club. Steele’s politics are generally centrist.

The economic contraction of 3.8 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008 wasn’t as bad as the 5 or 6 percent most economists expected…except output was somewhat inflated by goods that were produced but not sold. Excluding the inventory adjustment, GDP fell 5.1 percent, which, according to The Wall Street Journal, “economists say more accurately reflects the nation's weakness.” The Dow, meanwhile, ended January down 8.8 percent—the worst opening month ever for the market and a bellwether for the year to come.

Has Nicolas Sarkozy had a “let them eat cake” moment? According to The Independent, the French president transferred the prefect and fired the director of police in Manche, where a speech of his was protested earlier this year. Sarkozy was reportedly furious that he was able to hear the jeers of the 3,000 protesters at the site of his speech, saying, at the time, “What an asshole, this prefect is.” The police chief who was canned was, according to the statistcal system Sarkozy introduced, the most successful in all of France. Last year, Sarkozy also ordered the firing of a successful Corsican police chief after nationalist protesters invaded the garden of his friend, actor Christian Clavier.

Now that the first leg of her Sticky & Sweet tour is over, Madonna’s getting busy on her next project: moving back to New York. She’s leaving London—and she’s taking her children with her. Ex Guy Ritchie was expected to fight her for custody of Rocco, 8 and David Banda, 3, but The Daily Mirror reports he’s agreed not to fight the move. Ritchie’s reportedly “happy” with the arrangement: “He is adamant he wants to keep the boys and their sister Lourdes together. He does not want to tear them apart from each other. Guy is telling Rocco and David he will still see them a lot.” Ritchie will look after the kids when Madonna goes back on tour this summer.

Is North Korea lashing out? Yesterday the country said it was scrapping all agreements with South Korea in what the South Korean prime minister said was a bid for Obama's attention. In response, the US State Department has said it will continue pursuing the 2005 multilateral deal under which North Korea abandoned its nuclear programs, The Independent reports. North Korea has repeatedly talked of war over the past few months and threatened to destroy the conservative government in Seoul that ended aid to Pyongyang a year ago. But the South does not seem too worried by the North’s belligerence. "There is no need to react sensitively or get happy or sad over every single statement issued with some political motive," a presidential spokesperson said.

Does Hollywood really think it can draw men away from the Super Bowl? Variety reports that several movie houses are “breaking a longstanding taboo” and releasing aggressive, male-driven pictures on Super Bowl weekend. Usually a box office refuge for chick flicks and lighter fare, this year’s Bowl weekend will feature the action-packed Liam Neeson vehicle Taken and horror pic The Uninvited. Also out this weekend is Renee Zellweger's romantic comedy New in Town.

Bush may be gone, but his court lives: Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts recently wrote the majority opinion challenging the exclusionary rule, a bedrock of earlier liberal courts that forbids the use of unlawfully obtained evidence in court. "To trigger the exclusionary rule," Roberts wrote, "police conduct must be sufficiently deliberate that exclusion can meaningfully deter it, and sufficiently culpable that such deterrence is worth the price paid by the justice system." That price, in Roberts' words, "is, of course, letting guilty and possibly dangerous defendants go free."

After months of talks, Morgan Tsvangirai will become the prime minister of Zimbabwe on February 11, while Robert Mugabe will remain president despite his loss in an election ten months ago. Tsvangirai did not win as many concessions from Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party as he had hoped. Zanu-PF and the MDC, Tsvangirai's party, will share the post of home-affairs minister, which controls the police, and Mugabe has reappointed Gideon Gono, the governor of the Reserve Bank, whom one diplomat called "destroyer of Zimbabwe's economy." Gono has printed money with abandon, fueling hyperinflation, and in reappointing him Mugabe may succeed in shutting the MDC out of economic policy. Currently, 94 percent of Zimbabwe's population is jobless, and 80 percent depend on food aid.

What was it like in Gaza during Israel’s assault? Journalists were banned from the area, so they’re attempting to find out now. Writing for The Abu Dhabi National, Jack Shenker attempts to reconstruct the attack on Khoza’a, a village in southern Gaza. Shenker’s account is contentious—including allegations that the Israel Defense Forces intentionally targeted civilians and used white phosphorus—and incredibly violent: a man is “split in half,” a child is “falling apart.” “By the time night fell on January 13th, 14 residents of Khoza’a had been killed, 50 lay wounded, and 213 had been taken to hospital for gas inhalation. Given the scale of destruction wrought by the invading army Khoza’a’s death toll was remarkably low. Indeed, the village’s story is significant largely because it is so ordinary,” he writes.

We all know job security is bad, but how secure is the job application process? Federal jobs website USAJOBS, run by mega-hit jobs site monster.com, has announced that a recent hack compromised users' e-mail addresses, passwords, names, addresses, phone numbers, and demographic data. USAJOBS' director assured worried clients, "The information accessed does not include resumes." So, then, job seekers shouldn't worry about hackers trying to offer them a job.