ACORN isn't giving up just yet. The community-based advocacy group filed a lawsuit in Baltimore over a documentary revealing employees offering legal advice to a pair of conservative activists disguised as a pimp and a prostitute, which led to Congress pulling funding and a condemnation from the White House. James O’Keefe (the pimp), Hannah Giles (the prostitute), and Breitbart (the Web site that broke the video) are all targets of the suit. The complaint seeks $500,000 for the two employees secretly filmed in the video and $1 million for ACORN in damages, Politico reports.

At least eleven delegations to the United Nations, including France, Canada and the United States, walked out during a speech given by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Wednesday night. Although Ahmadinejad said that his country is ready to shake all hands "that are honestly extended to us," he said of Israel, "It is no longer acceptable that a small minority would dominate the politics, economy and culture of major parts of the world by its complicated networks, and establish a new form of slavery… to attain its racist ambitions." A spokesman for the American mission to the UN called the comments "hateful, offensive and anti-Semitic rhetoric." Hot Air responded with exasperation: "Every year this degenerate does his same Jew-baiting shtick... and every year our moronic media lines up to interview him." The media in question are the Washington Post and Newsweek, the latter of which began their new interview of Ahmadinejad by asking why, if he wants to work with the West, he continues to deny the Holocaust.

The birthers are taking over: Via Talking Points Memo, a new Public Policy Polling survey finds that only 59 percent of Americans believe President Obama was born in the United States. Among Republicans, a plurality of 42 percent say he was not born here, while 37 percent say he was. The birthers, however, aren’t even the craziest wing of the party: 19 percent of Republicans think Obama is the Antichrist.

The Massachusetts Legislature passed a bill allowing Governor Deval Patrick to fill Ted Kennedy's vacant seat until a special election is held, paving the way for the Democrats to secure a 60 vote majority in the Senate. But health-care advocates should not rejoice too soon; The bill came with the caveat that it could not come into effect for 90 days. Both Democratic and Republican Massachusetts lawmakers bristled at the notion that their hand was being forced due to political realities in Washington D.C. It is likely the governor will claim that the senate seat should be filled immediately due to an "emergency," a notion that doesn't fly with many state politicians. Meanwhile, it is increasingly likely that Paul Kirk, a former top aide to Kennedy, will be appointed to the seat. However, it remains to be seen when he will actually be able to cast any votes.

The Federal Reserve reiterated Wednesday that the worst of the recession is over and that economy is on the road to recovery—but it still isn't exactly brimming with confidence. The interest rate will remain "exceptionally low" for an "extended period," Fed officials said. Bloomberg reports that the low interest rate—between 0 and .25 percent—is an effort to encourage lending and reduce the unemployment rate that is still hovering close to 10 percent. Stocks rose on the largely optimistic news. One long-term issue concerning economists is how the Fed will prevent inflation as the economic recovery gains steam.

Green living has never been so intimate. The Washington Post reports that, for Americans, one of the most extraneously wasteful consumer products—ultra plush multi-ply toilet paper—is also one of the hardest to give up. While environmentally enlightened Europeans are content to wipe with recycled paper products, Americans find themselves unable to give up the soft caress of freshly harvested virgin paper. Together with facial tissue, toilet paper accounts for 5 percent of America’s forest-products industry—which environmentalists say is too much. “It’s like the Hummer product for the paper industry,” said one scientist. “We don’t need old-growth forests… to wipe our behinds.” Resistant to recycling as Big T.P. may be, some small manufacturers are tiptoeing into the recycled toilet paper niche: “At what price softness?” asked one Marcal executive. “Strength of toilet paper is more important,” anyway.

It’s fitting that Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi is currently homeless: He’s ranting like a crazy man before the U.N. Qaddafi used his speech on Wednesday to attack the U.N. itself. Waving a copy of the U.N. charter, Qaddafi said, “We do not accept it, we do not acknowledge it, neither do we recognize it.” He called the Security Council “terrorism itself,” compared it to Al Qaeda, and will submit a plan for a new security council that he designed himself. As a representative of the African Union, he also congratulated “our son” Obama, praising the “black, African Kenyan” and saying “we would be happy if Obama would stay forever as president.” He also suggested a new location for the U.N. instead of New York, complaining about the jetlag. His speech, which was scheduled to last for 15 minutes, ran over 100 minutes. 

A U.S. Census field worker was found hanged—with the word "Fed" scrawled across his chest—in a cemetery in Kentucky's Daniel Boone National Forest. The body of Bill Sparkman, 51, a single father who worked for the Census Bureau part time, was found September 12, though the details of his death were not widely reported until Wednesday. The FBI said it is investigating the case, while the Census has suspended door-to-door operations in Kentucky’s rural Clay County while law enforcement figures out whether his death was the result of foul play—and whether his Census work was part of it. The mysterious death comes as a slew of conspiracy theories involving the Census have made their way into the mainstream, including one U.S. congresswoman announcing she would boycott the Census to protect herself from invasive government questions, even though refusing to answer the Census is illegal.

This won’t make the U.S. and the NATO commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, happy: President Obama is exploring several alternatives to a major troop increase in Afghanistan, including a proposal by Vice President Joe Biden to scale back America’s troop presence and focus on striking al Qaeda cells mostly in Pakistan, rather than protecting Afghan civilians. That same plan was rejected by Obama in March, but is again under consideration. On September 13, Obama met in the situation room with his top guns: Biden, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, NSA Adviser James Jones, and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen. They reached no consensus and three or four more meetings were scheduled.

Twitter may have conquered the hearts and minds of Congress, but in the battle to tweet profusely, Republicans lead Democrats by a wide margin. According to a report by the Congressional Research Service, congressional Republicans on Twitter outnumber Democrats, 101 to 57. Among actual tweets the discrepancy is even larger: during two weeklong periods surveyed in July and August, Republicans posted 932 messages to the Democrats' 255, Politico reports. Republicans are also more popular. The median republican Senator and Congress member had 4,186 and 1,615 followers respectively, while their Democratic counterparts logged medians of 2,874 and 969 followers. It's not all a bed of roses, though. Republican House members, including Rep. Joe Barton (Texas) were called out for using Twitter during Obama's February address to Congress. The Republicans audience may also be lacking, as research suggests that most Twitter users are "affluent urban professionals" who lean left.

Indonesia’s heaviest newborn ever recorded was delivered on Monday, weighing in at 19.2 pounds and measuring 24.4 inches long. The baby boy, who is currently nameless, was born at nine months by caesarean section Monday at hospital in North Sumatra province to a 41-year-old woman named Ani, who has three other children. “This heavy baby made the surgery really tough, especially the process of taking him out of his mum's womb,” said Binsar Sitanggang, a gynecologist who took part in the procedure. Sitanggang attribute’s the newborn’s size to his mother’s diabetes, which results in high levels of glucose, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Nevertheless, the baby is reportedly in healthy conditions and has a strong appetite, despite having initially been given oxygen. Indonesia’s previous heaviest baby was born in 2007 and weighed in at 15.2 pounds.

Looks like another corrupt New York businessman will enjoy the luxuries of house arrest this year. Iranian-American financier Hassan Nemazee pleaded not guilty to $292 million in bank fraud charges in a federal court hearing in Manhattan on Wednesday morning. Earlier this week, Nemazee was indicted for conning the money from three different banks in the form of fraudulent loans. Prosecutors have painted a Madoff-like picture in which Nemazee used the money to live in luxury and fund Democratic political campaigns. Nemazee’s lawyer Paul Schetman emphasized that his campaign donations were “modest and lawful” and should not be the focus of the case. Nemazee was released to his home after today’s hearing and his trial date has not yet been announced.

Taking the stand in a Bahamian court Wednesday, John Travolta relived the tragic morning that culminated in the death of his 16-year-old son earlier this year. Travolta recalled being awoken by his nanny who was frantically performing CPR on his son. He then assisted, but to no avail. Travolta was testifying in connection to an alleged blackmail attempt by two ambulance drivers who arrived on the scene and subsequently threatened to release private medical documents should the film star not pay them. The documents were reportedly tied to Travolta's desire to take his ailing son directly to an airplane instead of a hospital. The testimony is also the first time Travolta has admitted that his son was autistic and suffered from frequent seizures. Travolta was accompanied by his wife, Kelly Preston. One source described the couple as "graceful" in the courtroom.

Michael Jackson may be gone, but he is not soon to be forgotten: A new Jackson single, “This Is It,” will be released on October 12, according to The New York Times. Sharing the same name as the comeback tour for which he was rehearsing when he died, the track will be available in two versions, including one with back-up vocals from Jackson’s brothers and former bandmates. A two-disc set, also called This Is It, will then be released on October 27th, complete with Jackson’s spoken word poetry. The following day, Sony’s documentary film Michael Jackson: This Is It, comprised of rehearsal footage from Jackson’s planned concerts, will hit theaters.

In order to beat the terrorists, New York's finest and the FBI should probably make nice with each other. As The Daily Beast reported on Tuesday, a botched incident involving a Queens imam has exposed rivalries and communication problems between the Intelligence Division, a police unit that has created a city-wide network of informants and is run by an ex-CIA official, and the Counterterrorism Bureau, the police unit that oversees the 100 detectives working with the FBI on the Joint Terrorism Task Force. Evidently, detectives from the police's Intelligence Division contacted a Queens imam, Ahmad Wais Afzali, in order to find out more about a man at the center of a long-running cross-country terrorism investigation. The imam has now been charged with warning the suspect and lying about it, which may have forced law enforcement officials to speed up raids and arrests related to the extremely sensitive investigation. The rivalry between the city's police force and the FBI is long-standing.

Eat your heart out, Apple. Deep in the bowels of Microsoft, the company's brightest engineers have been working on a top-secret tablet computer called the Courier. Gizmodo reports that the design is in the "late prototype" stage of development. The Courier has dual 7-inch multi-touch screens connected by a hinge that contains a single home button and doubles as a pocket that holds items you want move from one screen to another. Users can write, flick, and draw with a stylus as well as fingers. Gizmodo called the interface, as demonstrated in a promotional video leaked to the site, "unlike anything we've seen before."

“Don’t hate my father,” former childhood star Mackenzie Phillips tells People, but it may be hard not to after this: Phillips, who starred in American Graffiti and the sitcom One Day at a Time, says she had sex with her father, musician John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas. “On the eve of my wedding, my father showed up, determined to stop it," writes Phillips, who was 19 at the time, in a new book. "I had tons of pills, and Dad had tons of everything too. Eventually I passed out on Dad's bed. My father was not a man with boundaries. He was full of love, and he was sick with drugs. I woke up that night from a blackout to find myself having sex with my own father." In 1980, she went to rehab with her father. By that point, her sexual relationship with him had become consensual.

The Republican Party quickly soured on President Obama’s appeals for a new, more civil era. Might world leaders be more receptive? Obama pleaded for “a new era of engagement” before United Nations leaders on Wednesday, saying that he understood “an almost reflexive anti-Americanism” in recent years but that it cannot be the basis for America’s international relations. “The time has come for the world to move in a new direction,” he said, “a new era of engagement based on mutual interest and mutual respect.”

While President Obama is blasted on a daily basis over health care and the worsening war in Afghanistan, he has been keeping a low profile on another key issue: education reform. Without attracting much attention, Obama is successfully standing up to teachers unions and the student-lending lobby and reforming the system, according to Ruth Marcus in The Washington Post. One advocate likens Obama's approach to a slow and steady drive in a football game: "This is a ground game where they are grinding out big important change without a lot of fanfare." Still, one of the challenging tasks still lies ahead: Overhauling the gargantuan No Child Left Behind law.

Kevin Federline has landed—finally—on reality TV. TMZ reports that Britney Spears' tubby ex-hubby has evidently tired of the K-Fat and K-Overfed jokes and has signed on to the next season of Celebrity Fit Club, where he'll appear with Bobby Brown, Nicole Eggert, and his other baby-mama, Shar Jackson.

Half of Bernie Madoff's victims weren't really victims, according to prosecutors. Federal officials are claiming that at the time of Madoff's arrest last December, half his active investors didn't lose money in his elaborate Ponzi scheme because they'd already withdrawn more than they contributed to the accounts, the New York Daily News reports. The less-lucky half of investors contributed more than they were able to withdraw. However, this model doesn't take into account how much investors thought they'd made, or the money they could have made if they'd invested their funds in a legitimate firm. In court papers, prosecutors told a judge that Madoff's assets—luxury apartments, cars, yachts and millions in corporate holdings—would be enough to distribute to his victims and that no restitution was needed.

In true Bedouin style, Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi has once again been sent packing: Town officials in Bedford, New York kicked Qaddafi off of the lawn of Donald Trump’s Seven Springs estate, which he rents out for tens of thousands of dollars per month, after they found that workers setting up Qaddafi's Bedouin tent lacked a proper permit. It’s possible still that Qaddafi could stay in the estate’s seven-bedroom, nine-bath mansion. Trump denies knowing that his property was leased to Qaddafi, saying that it’s possible that it was arranged for Qaddafi through a Middle-Eastern business partner without his knowing.

In another reversal from Bush-era policies, the Obama administration will announce new rules on Wednesday that will make it harder for the government to withhold information about programs such as warrantless wiretapping and rendition on the grounds that a revelation would threaten national security. Under the old policy, in order to invoke "state secret" privilege, the government only needed one official to back the claim, The Washington Post reports. Under the new rules, government agencies, including intelligence and military agencies, will have to convince the attorney general and a team of Justice Department lawyers that the release of sensitive info would significantly harm "national defense or foreign relations"—a higher standard of proof that disclosure would be harmful. The change in policy will take effect on October 1, and is supposed to restore public and congressional confidence in the concept of national security privilege, which was invoked dozens of times during the Bush administration.

Looks like Bank of America will have to find a new way to scrape together a profit: Getting ahead of credit-card reform in the U.S. Congress, the bank joined J.P. Morgan in overhauling overdraft fees and practices that have been criticized by consumer-protection agencies. Reversing course, Bank of America said it will cap the fees on customers who overdraw their accounts, and it will not charge any fee on overdrafts of less than $10 in one day. It will limit to four the maximum number of fees per day, from a pervious cap of 10. The bank will also allow customers to opt out of overdraft protection, meaning that they’ll be turned away at the register rather than given a negative balance and a fee.

The Food and Drug administration announced that it would outlaw cigarettes flavored with chocolate, vanilla, clove, and other tastes that they say entice children and teens. The agency considers the products to be a gateway, easing young consumers into the acquired taste of addictive nicotine. The FDA was first given the power to regulate tobacco products last year, though it cannot ban regular cigarettes, cigars, or chew. Menthols may be a next target. Research in 2004 showed that "17-year-old smokers were more than three times as likely as those over the age of 25 to smoke flavored cigarettes, and they viewed flavored cigarettes as safer." The agency warned that making little flavored cigars to get around the ruling would not be tolerated. They will be looked at on a "case by case" basis.

Sarah Palin’s international debutante ball is over: The former Alaska governor spoke overseas on Wednesday for the first time, in Hong Kong. The comments were supposed to be off the record, but The Wall Street Journal obtained a recording. Palin blamed the world financial crisis on government excess, saying “We got into this mess because of government interference in the first place," and then adding, "We're not interested in government fixes, we're interested in freedom.” Other subjects included health care, China (“[China] "rightfully makes a lot of people nervous”), and her political philosophy of “common-sense conservatism,” which consists, mostly, of using the phrase “common sense” a lot. “It's just common sense that government attempts to solve problems like [the] health-care problem will just create new problems,” she said at one point, defending her “death panels” charge.

It seems unlikely that building a hotel is the best way to commemorate one of the Holocaust's most notorious massacres of Jews, but that's what's on the table in Ukraine. Haaretz reports that last week, Kiev approved a plan to build 28 hotels to accommodate tens of thousands of visitors expected to mob the town during the 2012 European Championships in soccer, including one hotel on the site of the Babi Yar massacre, which is now in a residential district of Kiev. On September 29th and 30th, of 1941, German SS troops herded 33,771 Jewish civilians into a ravine outside of Kiev and machine-gunned them.

Sorry, Michael Dukakis: Fox News’ Major Garrett is reporting that Paul Kirk has been chosen as the placeholder for the Massachusetts Senate seat previously held by Ted Kennedy. Kirk chaired the Democratic National Committee from 1985 to 1989 and was a longtime aide to Kennedy. He is currently the chairman of the board of directors for the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation. Kennedy’s son, Teddy Jr. and Patrick, are said to have endorsed Smith. An official announcement could come Wednesday afternoon.