When assembly-line jobs with Detroit automakers began to decline, Michigan tried to offset them by adding "knowledge" workers to its economy. But in recent years, the Big Three have aggressively cut these jobs, too—30,000 white-collar positions from their North American offices, almost all in Michigan, vanished between the end of 2006 and June. The state's unemployment rate is now 15.2%. While these midcareer professionals are doing OK thanks to generous severance packages, many feel stuck, unable to find jobs in Michigan, but unwilling to pack up their families and move somewhere else. Labor-market economists say these skilled workers' specialized expertise, highly valued in their former posts, is a tough sell anywhere else. "Even if you tell people you'll work for free," says an ex-Chrysler employee with a new consulting business, many companies "don't even want to talk to you."

Look who’s watching YouTube movies now: California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is calling for the state's attorney general to launch an investigation into ACORN, the liberal nonprofit, in the wake of conservative activists releasing undercover videos online that showed some of the group's employees giving advice on how to set up a prostitution ring and other crimes straight out of a Law & Order plotline. Schwarzenegger’s concerns are about ACORN’s San Bernardino branch, where the conservative filmmakers posed in outrageous pimp-and-ho costumes and queried a haggard ACORN employee on "how not to get caught" with their business. The ACORN employee also talks about how she shot her ex-husband and "laid some groundwork" before going to a domestic-violence shelter. The U.S. Senate voted to block federal housing grants to ACORN on Monday.

Just one year after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers sent shockwaves through the U.S. financial system, some of the products that helped bring the firm down, credit-default swaps, have lost their meltdown stigma. While we slog through the slowest recession rebound since 1945, market confidence for credit-default swaps is at its highest level since June 2008, and is contributing to growing confidence in the overall credit market. (CDS provide investors protection against default and the chance to speculate on corporate debt.) One analyst explains to Bloomberg that Lehman’s failure had repercussions that “were astronomical, broadly speaking, but the CDS market worked well” at bouncing back.

Barack and Michelle Obama showed off their sporty side Tuesday by hosting Olympians on the White House lawn ahead of their push to snag the 2016 Olympic Games for their home city, Chicago. Athletes giving demonstrations of their sports included gymnast Dominique Dawes and track star Jackie Joyner-Kersee. The president said he won't be able to travel to Copenhagen next month to push the International Olympic Committee to chose the Windy City, so he's sending "a more compelling superstar to represent the city and the country we love"—his wife. Michelle will pitch Chicago against other potential hosts Tokyo, Rio de Janeiro, and Madrid.

Is the "birther" craze finally ending? An Army captain's lawsuit—claiming she could not "in good conscience" deploy to Iraq under the command of a foreign-born president—was thrown out of court Wednesday, and U.S. District Court Judge Clay Land pulled no punches in his critique of the “frivolous” lawsuit. “Unlike in Alice in Wonderland, simply saying something is so does not make it so,” Land said. He warned the officer’s lawyer, birther demagogue Orly Taitz, that she would face sanctions if she filed any more birther suits. Land held that Capt. Connie Rhodes had presented no credible evidence "that President Obama is ineligible to serve as president… Instead, she uses her complaint as a platform for spouting political rhetoric, such as her claims that the president is ‘an illegal usurper, an unlawful pretender, [and] an unqualified impostor.’” Turning the knife, Land finally noted that even a middle-school student would notice the irony in “abandoning fundamental principles upon which our country was founded in order to purportedly ‘protect and preserve’ those very principles” by treating the president so poorly.

Mary Travers of the popular folk trio Peter, Paul, and Mary died after a years-long battle with leukemia. She was 72. In the early '60s, Travers joined Peter Yarrow and Noel "Paul" Stookey to make music that mixed acoustic guitars with liberal politics. Their version of the Pete Seeger song "If I Had a Hammer" became a civil-rights anthem, and they performed the song at the 1963 March on Washington. The band recorded several Top 10 albums, and scored a No. 1 hit with "Leaving on a Jet Plane." The trio continued performing together until just a few years ago, when Travers was no longer able to perform because of her illness. Peter and Paul didn't sing her part, and were delighted when the audience would sing it for them.

Connecticut’s state medical examiner announced on Wednesday that Annie Le, the Yale graduate student who was murdered shortly before her wedding last week, died of traumatic asphyxiation, otherwise known as strangling. Le was found three days ago in the wall of a Yale medical school research building. Earlier on Wednesday, police released Raymond Clark III, a “person of interest,” after collecting DNA samples from him.

Democratic Senator Max Baucus offered up his version of the health-care bill, which has no provision for a government-run insurance option, and instead allows for a system of nonprofit consumer-owned co-ops. Dropping the "public option" in favor of co-ops was intended to woo the "Gang of Six" moderates on the Senate Finance Committee, but not a single of Baucus’ Republican colleagues is supporting it. Worse, Democrats are bailing, too. "The way it is now there is no way I can vote for the package," said Democratic Senator Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia. Rockefeller is concerned about the lack of a public option, changes to Medicaid, changes to SCHIP, and overall affordability provisions.

Rush Limbaugh has, predictably, gone there: After the right ran wild with a story about an attack by a black student on a white student on a school bus—an attack that the police denied was racially motivated—Rush Limbaugh said, “We need segregated buses. … [I]n Obama's America the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering 'yeah, right on, right on, right on.’” He went on to defend racism—or attack homosexuality, we’re not sure—by offering this gem: “If homosexuality being inborn is what makes it acceptable, why does racism being inborn not make racism acceptable?”

An Australian fathered four children by his daughter over more than 30 years, after he began raping her daily at age 11, authorities say. Child-welfare advocates are asking for an investigation into social-services agencies because the children were all born with health problems in major Melbourne hospitals with no father listed. One of the children died from a severe developmental disorder shortly after birth. Shockingly, the woman alerted authorities three years ago, but because she refused to cooperate with police out of fear of her dad, nothing was done. In a striking similarity to Austria's Joseph Fritzl, who kept his daughter in a dungeon and fathered seven children with her, the Australian woman's mother claims she had no idea her husband was abusing her daughter, even though the three of them lived together with the surviving grandchildren until 2005.

Bet this is a question you didn’t guess pollsters would be asking a few months ago: Is Barack Obama the Antichrist? According to Public Policy Polling, over one third of New Jersey conservative voters either think yes or not sure. (That’s 18 percent yes; 17percent unsure.) We wonder what they think in Oklahoma.

Someone please make Megan Fox go away: “Men are scared of vaginas,” she says in the latest issue of Rolling Stone, lauding her own “powerful, confident vagina” as the secret to her power. She goes on to say that “I don’t really want to share myself with the public. I want to deflect attention from my reality.” Away from reality, toward her vagina, apparently.

Senate Democrats may not have to resort to budget reconciliation to pass health care, after all: The Boston Globe is reporting that legislative leaders in Massachusetts have narrow majorities in both chambers to give Governor Deval Patrick the power to appoint an interim U.S. senator to hold Ted Kennedy’s seat. That move would give the Democrats a filibuster-proof 60 votes in the U.S. senate, as opposed to the 59 they currently have without Kennedy. Patrick has signaled privately that he’d like to sign the bill by Friday and make an appointment within days, possibly having an interim senator by next week.

Who says book publishers are dying? Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol, out Tuesday, sold more than one million hardcover copies in its first 24 hours. It broke Barnes & Noble’s all-time record for first-day sales in adult fiction, as well as snagging the record for the highest number of preorders in the company’s history. The electronic version of the book also holds the number one spot on Amazon and BarnesandNoble.com. The Lost Symbol, which succeeds The Da Vinci Code continues to chronicle the adventures of symbologist Robert Langdon. In Langdon’s third adventure, he travels to Washington, DC to save the kidnapped head of the Smithsonian Institution. Doubleday has printed five million copies of The Lost Symbol in the first run alone, and U.K. Publisher Transworld will print 1 million.

“I love you, and I love Arlen Specter,” President Obama told the crowd at the national AFL-CIO convention this Tuesday in Philadelphia. The feeling is clearly mutual. The Democratic Pennsylvania senator, formerly a Republican, switched his party affiliation this April, which many saw as boon to the Democratic Party and to the President’s stimulus package. Now Obama and other Democrats are doing everything in their power to aid Specter as he seeks election to a sixth Senate term. Later on Tuesday, Obama netted $2.5 million at a fundraiser for the senator, giving Specter a significant leg-up on his lesser-funded rival in the primary, Rep. Joe Sestak. Specter is doing his part, too, offering support for the President’s health care plan including the much-debated public option at a pivotal political moment. The political pairing seems to have longevity – “everybody who has committed has committed above and beyond what is normally expected,” said Pennsylvania Democratic Chairman T.J. Rooney.

Arianna Huffington is bringing D.C. to Hollywood. The Huffington Post founder is translating her penchant for pithy headlines into a new television show based on D.C., The Hollywood Reporter writes. How I Met Your Mother executive producer Greg Malins is teaming up with Huffington and Huffington Post founding editor Roy Sekoff to produce a comedy about three freshman members of Congress—two men and one woman—who live together in D.C. According to Malins, who will write and co-executive produce with Sekoff and Huffington, one of the characters comes to Washington to make a difference, one is a veteran politician, and one is a soundbite master. The show will have its basis in reality too—there's no shortage of politicians shacking up together, such as the famed Democratic quartet of Sens. Charles Schumer, Dick Durbin, and Reps. Bill Delahunt and George Miller, who have shared a two-bedroom townhouse for years.

At least she’ll be leaving the kids at home: Marc Malkin is reporting that Telepictures—the media company behind Ellen DeGeneres’ and Tyra Banks’ shows—is looking to develop a View-like show with Kate Gosselin and TV cook Paula Deen. "They're looking around and casting for other women to be on the show with them," one source tells Malkin. "But they want all the women to be moms." Gosselin guest-hosted the View twice this week, unveiling a new hairdo in the process.

This should help conservatives rally to Joe Wilson's cause: Wilson's now-infamous "you lie!" outburst during Obama's health-care speech last week has drawn the ire of former president Jimmy Carter. The Associated Press reports that Carter told a town-hall meeting at his presidential center in Atlanta that he thought Wilson's "dastardly" heckling was "based on racism" and represented  "an inherent feeling among many in this country that an African-American should not be president." Carter linked the outburst to a trend of disrespecting the president, including demonstrators comparing him to Nazis. "Those kind of things are not just casual outcomes of a sincere debate" on health care, he added.

While driving along Idaho's Lochsa River earlier this month, a tree limb pierced through the passenger side window of Daniel and Michelle Childers' pick up truck, impaling the latter's neck. The 20 year old only remembers a "strange" pressure on her neck and shoulder, not realizing what had happened until her husband exclaimed, "It's in your neck!" As Michelle waited for a "life flight" helicopter, a registered nurse and her husband offered Michelle kind words. "So here I am sitting in a pick-up with all these wonderful people around me and a 13-inch Spruce limb with branches coming off it in still in my neck," Michelle recalls. The helicopter lifted her to St. Patrick Hospital where Michelle uderwent a six-hour surgery to remove the tree limb. She is currently recovering from home.

Is Beyoncé’s alter-ego Sasha Fierce too late to the fragrance game? Abercrombie & Fitch is suing the pop star and fashion designer over her plans to launch a fragrance named after her stage persona. Abercrombie claims its own scent, Fierce, is trademark-protected since 2003. Beyoncé’s team, however, ignored the retailer’s cease and desist request, and is pursuing her own trademark. Apparently it’s a fight worth waging: Beyoncé’s fragrance deal could bring her $20 million over three years.

A brutal story from death row: Executioners failed to find a vein in the arm of death-row inmate Romell Brown, driving Brown to try to insert the lethal-injection needles himself on Tuesday. The Independent reports that Romell Brown sobbed while executioners at the South Ohio Correctional Facility futilely tried to find a suitable vein in his arm for two-and-a-half hours. Finally, Ohio governor Ted Strickland granted Brown a week's reprieve. Broom, 53, was tried and convicted for the rape and murder of Tryna Middleton, a 14-year-old he abducted at knifepoint in 1984.

The next Dancing With the Stars may burn a little less brightly: Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay injured his foot during a rehearsal with pro partner Cheryl Burke, People reports. DeLay announced the injury—where else?—on Twitter, explaining "may have a stress fracture in my foot. No worries, it'll take more than that to keep me off the dance floor." After a doctor's examination in Los Angeles, DeLay tweeted "No stress fracture. It's a pre-stress fracture. I live for another day." Docs will decide whether DeLay can continue the show, which premieres Sept. 21 on ABC.

Money and success don’t always come hand in hand—but for Facebook, they finally do. The social-networking powerhouse turned its first profit, in the second quarter of 2009, it announced Tuesday. Advertising Age notes that the most significant aspect of the news is that Facebook has accomplished its goal without “a fully developed advertising business.” The company is still tweaking how it advertises to its millions of users, and its virtual gifts products are still in the early stage. The company at the root of Facebook’s advertising revenue? The granddaddy of them all, Microsoft.

Has the Mafia moved on from garbage trucks to ships carrying nuclear waste? An informant in Italy has told authorities he blew up three ships carrying the deadly cargo. Apparently, there is much money to be made by bypassing normal nuclear-waste disposal guidelines. A video taken by an underwater robot camera shows the ruins of a sunken ship and toxic yellow canisters by its side, though tests of the site off Italy's southwest coast are still under way. Italian authorities are now looking into at least 30 other suspicious shipwrecks. If the informant’s confession turns out to hold water, it will indicate a new, environmentally damaging direction for the Mafia.

They may have won the battle—but will it help them win the war? House Democrats led a winning 240-179 vote Tuesday to formally sanction Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) for his outburst during Obama's health-care speech last week. Wilson and other Republicans argued strenuously against the Democrats' resolution: "When we are done here today," said Wilson, "we will not have taken any further steps toward helping" America solve its problems. "It is time that we move forward and get back to work for the American people." But Democrats argued that Wilson's behavior was exactly the type of divisive behavior that prevents political productivity by degrading House decorum and the dignity of political office. What's more, Rep. Hank Johnson of Georgia noted, "It only happened when this country elected a president of color." Rep. Gerry Connolly of Virginia added, "No president has been subjected to that type of treatment on the floor of the House of Representatives, and if we go down that road, then it's the law of the jungle, and I think that's just wrong." Wilson called his outburst a "town-hall moment—a type of moment that the Democrats appear to be losing patience for."

Hope you’re not scared of shots: The Food and Drug Administration approved the new H1N1 vaccine on Tuesday. Limited supplies will become available during the first week of October—about a week earlier than expected. Then, 45 million more doses will arrive on October 15. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said they’ll be available at 90,000 sites across the country, including schools and clinics. The government has ordered 195 million doses total, and could order more, just to be safe. Fewer than 100 million Americans typically seek flu vaccinations every year.

New Haven police released Yale lab tech Raymond Clark III early Wednesday morning after holding him for a few hours overnight as a “person of interest” in the killing of graduate student Annie Le. Though he’s not considered a suspect, Clark was apprehended Tuesday night so that DNA samples could be taken from his hair, skin, and saliva. Le’s body was found Sunday in the lab where Clark worked. Le was set to marry on Sunday; Clark currently lives with his fiancée. ''They didn't strike me as someone who would try to kill somebody,” said a neighbor, who described the couple as “really quiet.” Clark’s car was also towed away.

President Obama's administration announced on Wednesday its support for renewing three Patriot Act provisions that are set to expire at year's end. Though the Justice Department said in a letter to Senator Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, that the administration might consider modifying the act so as to protect civil liberties, there is still concern that the provisions, which allow a secret court to grant warrants and allow wiretaps, make government spying easy. "The administration is willing to consider such ideas, provided that they do not undermine the effectiveness of these important authorities," Ronald Weich, assistant attorney general, wrote to Leahy. Obama's decision to extend the provisions is not surprising to many since, as senator of Illinois in 2008, he voted to allow the warrantless monitoring of Americans' electronic communications when contacting someone overseas who the government has linked to terrorism. The American Civil Liberties Union still opposes the renewal.

Democratic Senator and Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus held up health-care reform for this: None of the Republicans in the "Gang of Six" are set to support the bill he will unveil on Wednesday, not even Olympia Snowe of Maine, whom Democrats were hoping would jump on board. Even worse, some Democrats may bail on it too. "The way it is now there is no way I can vote for the package," said Democratic Senator Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia. Rockefeller is concerned about the lack of a public option, changes to Medicaid, changes to SCHIP, and overall affordability provisions.