A year ago, people were predicting his demise, but few stand to benefit from financial reform as much as Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. The Washington Post says he’ll have “vast powers to determine the final form of the new rules.” The final bill, which is similar to his own proposal from last year, puts him in charge of a new council of senior regulators and also the new consumer-protection bureau until a director is confirmed by the Senate. He’ll also be able to color in the legislation’s many gray areas—for example, deciding whether financial derivatives are subject to the new trading rule. “In wake of the bill’s passage, there is recognition within the administration as well as on Capitol Hill that Geithner is not going anywhere anytime soon,” The Washington Post says.

Kenneth Feinberg, the Washington-based lawyer turned government-appointed BP-claims administrator, is a busy man: He’s toured communities from the Florida Panhandle to the Louisiana bayou; he’s met with business owners and fishermen and crabbers and boat captains; he’s told a majority of them, “You have a claim.” As funding dwindles, however, his generosity will have to as well. And when it does, Feinberg will bare the brunt of communities hit hard by the oil disaster, predicts the Wall Street Journal—communities that never got money from the $20 billion BP-funded escrow account he manages. For now, though, without any legislation or contracts to guide him—unlike, say, the 9/11 terrorist attacks—Feinberg will be forced to wrangle with complex questions: Which businesses will get the money? And how much of it? “In my business,” says Feinberg, “there is no such thing as happy or grateful. All I want to do is help people get compensation.” From the looks of it, Feinberg’s got a heavy task cut out for him.

A mid-July weekend means summer vacation for every hard-working American, right? The answer, apparently, is no—if you're President Obama. At least that's what critics who are speaking out against his family’s weekend trip to Mount Desert Island, Maine, think. Most of the criticism comes from the fact that the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is still an urgent issue. The Republican National Convention has set up a website bashing Obama’s recent “leisure activities”, for one. And then there’s the fact that the First Family is vacationing in the northeast instead of the Gulf region—an area Obama has repeatedly stressed for vacation-goers to travel during the summer months. "Presidents are certainly entitled to vacation, just like everybody else,” said Brad Blakeman, a former George W. Bush's senior staffer, “but there is a fine line as to when presidents should do it, what they should and where they should do it.” The president’s time off, though controversial, will nonetheless provide him with a respite from what will surely be chaotic months ahead. “Where he chooses to take his days off should really be up to him,” Jamal Simmons, a Democratic strategist, told CNN. “We don’t want to get into a situation where the president is making familial vacation decisions based upon polling or political maneuvers.”

The NAACP’s decision to pass a resolution demanding that the Tea Party “repudiate those in their ranks who use racist language in their signs and speeches” has mostly been frowned upon—even by liberals who are no friends of the Tea Party. But Ta-Nehisi Coates at The Atlantic says the NAACP was right. The Tea Party, he argues, excels at “the most potent component of racism,” which is “frame-flipping—positioning the bigot as the actual victim.” Glenn Beck said President Obama has a “deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture,” and that universal health care was “stealth reparations.” Iowa Rep. Steve King said that Obama always comes down “on the side that favors the black person.” And the Tea Party itself said in its response that the NAACP “make[s] more money off of race than any slave trader ever.” Coates concludes, “The notion that [the NAACP] are somehow being unfair to the Tea Party, that President Obama should denounce the NAACP, says a lot about our desire to forget and their insistence that we do no such thing.”

This is truly crazy: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has exhumed the 180-year-old grave of South American hero Simon Bolivar to see if he was poisoned by Colombian enemies. Chavez does not believe the traditional account of Bolivar’s death, which is that he died of tuberculosis in Colombia in 1830. Chavez believes he was murdered by a Colombian rival and is so sure of his theory that he created a state forensics laboratory to test it. “I tell them: this glorious skeleton must be Bolivar because you can feel his presence. My God,” Chavez tweeted after the casket was opened. John Hopkins University Professor Paul Auwaerter agrees that Bolivar probably died of arsenic poisoning, but think that it probably came from contaminated drinking water or attempting to use the substance as a medication. He says Chavez is misconstruing his research.

Watch out: The U.S. Justice Department is getting serious about Medicaid and Medicare fraud, announcing on Friday that it charged just shy of a hundred people with cheating the health-care system. Federal agents wrangled defendants—doctors, health-care company owners, and executives among them—from five different states. Officials said the group is accused of pillaging more than $251 million through false claims. “Countless Americans rely on Medicare for their well-being,” FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III told The Washington Post, adding that federal agencies will continue “to stop those who would illegally manipulate the system.”

No new recordings, but a busy day for the Mel Gibson scandal all the same: RadarOnline.com posted a photo that it says features Oksana Grigorieva, beaten up and missing teeth after Gibson attacked her. Separately, TMZ says Gibson’s lawyers are claiming to have proof that Grigorieva tried to extort $10 million from the movie star. TMZ has followed that up with a report that the judge in the custody battle between Grigorieva and Gibson ruled in Gibson’s favor, saying that he does not believe he poses a threat to his children. The case apparently included testimony by Gibson’s ex-wife, who says he never hit her. So Gibson will continue to have visitation rights with Lucia, his baby with Grigorieva, and one overnight a week.

The chances for Peter Sutcliffe, aka the Yorkshire Ripper, to be eligible for parole were never good: In 1981, the British man received 20 life sentences after being convicted of murdering 13 women and attempting to murder another seven in a rampage across northern England. So perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that on Friday a court denied the 64-year-old Sutcliffe parole and sentenced him to spend the rest of his life in custody. Sutcliffe, who’s currently being held in a high-security psychiatric hospital, joins 38 others who will never be released from British prisons.

What are all those English majors from small, liberal-arts colleges to do? As old-school newspaper jobs dry up and, in the SEO age, copy editors are no longer expected to help write headlines, Gene Weingarten poses this very question in his latest op-ed for The Washington Post. “The only really creative opportunity copy editors had was writing headlines, and they took it seriously,” writes Weingarten. Some of his examples: “CLOSE BUT NO CIGAR” (when the Senate was unable to convict President Clinton) and “KISS YOUR ASTEROID GOODBYE” (when a meteor avoided hitting Earth). Now such opportunities for wordplay seem to be disappearing. Digital journalism, argues Weingarten, is creating headlines that are “dull but utilitarian.” In other words, headlines are not designed to maximize creativity. Rather, they’re designed to maximize clicks.

With the actress in a sober-living facility, her new lawyer Robert Shapiro is fast whipping her into shape—he agreed to represent Lohan as long as she goes to jail.  “I have agreed to represent Ms. Lohan on the condition that she complies with all the terms of her probation, including a requirement of jail time that was imposed by Judge Marsha Revel,” Shapiro told TMZ, adding that Lohan “is suffering from a disease that I am all too familiar with.” (Shapiro’s son died of a drug overdose in 2005.) This comes on the heels of Lohan’s previous lawyer, Shawn Chapman Holley, quitting in frustration, and Shapiro urging Lohan to enter a sober-living facility in Los Angeles where he is a founder.

Ruth Madoff is trying to go incognito. She was spotted by ABC News at a midtown New York City cafe with her hair dyed red, not her trademark blond. She has plenty of reason to go undercover—victims and former friends want her prosecuted along with her convicted Ponzi husband Bernie. "She was her husband's bookkeeper for all those years, and we wonder why she has not been prosecuted for all this," said Ronnie Sue Ambrosino, a Madoff victim. Indeed, Bernie’s right-hand man, Frank DiPascali, has cut a deal with the government to provide information that could lead to the prosecution of Madoff family members.

With his family trip to Maine this weekend, President Obama becomes the first sitting president in 100 years to visit the area. Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns gave Obama a private showing of highlights before his PBS special The National Parks was aired last September. "He understood that the parks resonated in a way,” said Burns. "He spoke very movingly about the trip that he took" to Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon as a kid. Obama was apparently so moved by the experience, he took his own family on the same trip to see the famous national parks, and now has chosen Maine for their summer holiday. The Obamas are staying at Acadia National Park on Mt. Desert Island, where they’ll explore miles of hiking trails and carriage roads, and take a sunrise trip up Cadillac Mountain. At 1,532 feet, it’s not a giant, but it’s the tallest peak along the North Atlantic seaboard, and one of the first places in America to see the sunrise.

Christopher Nolan's hotly anticipated movie Inception—starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Ellen Page, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt—elicited widely positive responses from critics. Ann Hornaday at The Washington Post wrote that " Inception is that rare film that can be enjoyed on superficial and progressively deeper levels, a feat that uncannily mimics the mind-bending journey its protagonist takes." Peter Travers at Rolling Stone called it "the mind-blowing movie event of the summer," one that "rewards the attention it demands." But the dissenters found it shallow, while praising its visual style. A.O. Scott at The New York Times writes "The accomplishments of Inception are mainly technical...though there is a lot to see in Inception, there is nothing that counts as genuine vision." Rex Reed at The New York Observer went even further, calling the picture an "assault on rational coherence" that "is the kind of pretentious perplexity in which one or two reels could be mischievously transposed, or even projected backward, and nobody would know the difference."

Police have arrested over 5,000 people across China, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand in sweeping raids targeting illegal World Cup gambling. According to  Interpol, Asian authorities "identified and raided nearly 800 illegal gambling dens" that had dealt with $155 million in bets. The effort, Operation Soga III, ran from June 11 to July 11. Police seized $10 million alongside cars, bank cards, computers, and cellphones. Interpol expects that the operation will have a lasting effect on Asian gang activity, and also curb corruption, money laundering, and prostitution.

Mel Gibson's career is effectively over, but his legal woes may just be beginning. Los Angeles County sheriff's officials are launching a domestic-violence probe into whether or not Gibson assaulted ex Oksana Grigorieva. In one of the now-infamous recorded phone calls made to Grigorieva that were leaked onto the Internet by RadarOnline, Gibson purportedly admits to hitting her, telling her that she "deserved" it. The conversation, in which Gibson hurled derogatory remarks at Grigorieva, was secretly recorded. Under California law, in order for such a conversation to be permissible in court both parties have to have consented to its recording, but surreptitious recordings may be used in cases involving victims of violence. "If she falls in that exception, then [the] recording is, in fact, admissible," Dmitry Gorin, a defense attorney, told The Los Angeles Times.

Although pressure is building inside the cap on the Gulf of Mexico oil well, the new part has stayed in place for two days and no oil appears to be flowing. Hope is growing that BP has found a long-term solution to the gushing leak, but the company has been quick to remind people that for the time being, it is just a test, due to run for another 48 hours or so. “I am very pleased that there’s no oil going into the Gulf of Mexico but we just started the test and I don’t want to create a false sense of excitement,” said Kent Wells, a senior vice president for BP. Thad W. Allen, the retired Coast Guard admiral who is coordinating the spill response, explained that they had not yet reached a permanent solution, but that now recovery teams could safely leave the site for several days in case of a hurricane.

This was always going to happen wasn’t it? Within days of Levi Johnston and Bristol Palin announcing their engagement, they are reportedly in negotiations to subject everyone else to their marriage, too, by angling for a reality TV show. According to TMZ, the couple is trying to sell "multiple reality shows" and some of the pitches even include their 2-year-old son, Tripp. At this point, it is unclear whether the show would be based in Alaska or include any appearances by Sarah Palin. But a deal could come in the near future.

Suicides in the U.S. Army spiked in June to the highest monthly level since the Vietnam era. According to military statistics, 32 soldiers took their own lives last month. Twenty-one of those were on active duty, while 11 were reservists with inactive status. Seven soldiers were serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. Army officials are at a loss for explanations for the sudden rise: "I have no silver bullet to answer the question why," said the head of the Army's suicide prevention task force. He did, however, point out that, "Continued stress on the force and the opportunities we have been facing in terms of the challenges in the Army continue to cause these events to take place." Last year already broke the annual record for Army suicides with 245 service men and women killing themselves. So far, 2010 has seen suicides rise to over half of 2009's numbers.

Republican-turned-Democratic Senator Arlen Specter will be out of a job at the close of this congressional session, putting an end to his 30-year Senate career. He lost Pennsylvania's primary election to Rep. Joe Sestak, who caused a scandal when he announced that Bill Clinton had offered him a job in an attempt to keep him from running against Specter. But sources tell ABC News that Specter has expressed an interest to the administration to remain in public service. Specter is a close friend of Joe Biden and a well-known supporter of funding for the National Institutes of Health. Republicans, however, are keeping a close watch: Specter recently switched his support in favor of Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan, after opposing her for solicitor general last year.

This is scary: Pink plummeted from her harness into a barricade during a performance in Nürnberg, Germany, Thursday night. The show was stopped, and she was then hurried into an ambulance and rushed to the hospital. But she was well enough to tweet her fans an apology: “I am embarrassed and very sorry,” she wrote. “didn’t get clipped in2 harness correctly…Getting xrays. I hope it at least looked cool!!!” According to recent tweets from Pink, nothing is broken—she’s “just seriously sore.”

The House Judiciary Committee released a transcript Thursday of its May interview with Jay Bybee, former head of the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel under George W. Bush's tenure, in which Bybee said that the CIA used interrogation techniques his office never approved. He also said that techniques his office did approve, such as waterboarding, were used too many times. Meanwhile, the Obama administration's inquiry into “black site” prison interrogation practices is nearing completion, but Attorney General Eric Holder has stated that the probe won’t necessarily result in criminal charges. Nevertheless, the investigation has attracted criticism from Republicans, who argue that its affect on morale would jeopardize future intelligence operations.

Now that the financial overhaul bill, passed Thursday by the Senate, is on the threshold of becoming law, bankers and regulators are busy predicting how things will change. The legislation empowers 10 regulatory agencies with the ability to write new rules governing all aspects of the financial industry—from the types of trades banks can conduct to the standards for mortgages, credit cards, and ATM fees. Many of these decisions will be made by regulators, and this has lawmakers on both the right and the left worried: Those on the right worry about government overreach, while those on the left worry about regulators becoming cozy with lobbyists. Indeed, the banking industry has been reaching out to regulators for months, and JP Morgan Chase has more than 100 teams studying the legislation.

Despite the outpouring of support from governments all over the world in the immediate aftermath of the Haitian earthquake, most of the funds they pledged are still a long way from the devastated Caribbean nation. Only $506 million of $5.3 billion that was raised at an international donors' conference in March has been delivered, according to the United Nations Development Program. Australia, Brazil, Estonia and Norway are the only countries that have handed over anything. The $1.15 billion promised by the United States, for instance, has been tied up on Capitol Hill. So Bill Clinton, the U.N.’s special envoy to Haiti, has taken it upon himself to find out what the holdup is. "I'm going to call all those governments,” he said. “I want to try to get them to give the money, and I'm trying to get the others to give me a schedule for when they'll release it."

Recent talks between large utility companies and environmentalists on Senate legislation seeking to limit carbon emissions from power plants are showing some signs of progress. But it may not be enough for those in Congress who hope to move forward soon with an energy package that includes a utility-focused carbon plan—Senate debate on energy legislation is scheduled to begin on July 26. “The schedule is not our friend,” said Senator John Kerry, a proponent of climate change provisions. One major point of contention in whether or not power companies accepting carbon caps should be still subject to Environmental Protection Agency's regulation of greenhouse gases and other pollutants. Another issue is how a carbon-pricing program would allocate emissions credits to companies.

Is Chelsea Clinton’s wedding really going to happen in Rhinebeck? That’s what the conspiracy theorists in the small New York town are beginning to wonder. Mayor Jim Reardon says he has not heard from a single person associated with the planning. The town has not yet been given any official notification either. "I'm upset," he said. "My biggest concern is traffic and emergency response, and I want to make sure this kind of stuff is secure." Still, most of the buzz suggests a lavish celebration is in the works—which, if the conspiracy theorists were right, would mean the Clintons fabricated one elaborate decoy. The family has reportedly scheduled a rehearsal dinner in a stone barn on a 525-acre estate, whose residents have already been asked to vacate their residence during the end of July.

Tina Fey may have more Baby Mama drama headed her way. Creative Artists Agency is shopping around a film package tentatively titled Mommy & Me, starring Fey and Meryl Streep, the Los Angeles Times reports. Stanley Tucci is slated to direct—and possibly co-star—with two of Hollywood’s leading ladies. With no script and no writers attached yet, all that’s really known is that it’s a mother-daughter comedy. And as Entertainment Weekly points out, it’s not yet clear who will be the mother and who will be the daughter: “When I asked Fey whom she still dreams of working with, she said, ‘Well, doesn’t every person dream of, like, Meryl Streep?’ . . .  Then she added, ‘I’d like to play Meryl Streep’s mother.’” Time will tell if the 30 Rock star’s dream is coming true. The Los Angeles Times reports that several studios have shown interest, but that Sony is in the best position to land the film.

This ought to be a good test of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s influence with Obama: The Huffington Post writes that Geithner is opposing the possible nomination of Harvard Professor Elizabeth Warren to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which will be created under the new financial-reform law. Warren’s the obvious choice for the job, because the agency was her idea—she advocated its creation way back in 2007. She also has run a bailout watchdog to keep track of how the administration spends bailout dollars—a job that involves much criticism of Geithner’s Treasury Department. Her dogged oversight has annoyed Geithner, the Huffington Post says, as have her aggressive stances against big banks.

This ought to fill the day’s pulp quotient: Two porn actors—Jason Andrews, who starred in numerous gay films, and his girlfriend Amanda Logue—have been charged with murdering a Florida tattoo-parlor owner with a sledgehammer. The couple met on the set of a movie and allegedly hatched the plot to kill Dennis Abrahamsen, who had hired Logue to have sex on camera at one of his parties. The couple exchanged text messages during the party, with Andrew telling Logue to “just get him on his face either bash or tell me to get in,” and Logue replying, “K I’m horny!” When Abrahamsen was found dead 18 hours later, he was face down on a massage table with blood on the walls and ceiling fan.

We guess this means Andrew Young is getting paid: Aaron Sorkin has signed up to adapt Young’s tell-all about John Edwards, The Politician, for the big screen. Sorkin will direct the film—the first, in fact, that he will direct. No studio or actors are attached to the project yet, but hopefully Sorkin will take The Daily Beast’s advice and cast Jack McBrayer as Edwards.

Maybe West Virginia wants a new senator who can serve as long as Robert Byrd did? Its next senator is a young’un: The Associated Press is reporting that West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin will choose his former legal counsel, 36-year-old Carte Goodwin, to fill Robert Byrd’s Senate seat until the special election in November. Goodwin will be the youngest senator presently serving. He served as Manchin’s general counsel from 2005 until early 2009; it's expected that he won't run again in November so that Manchin himself can enter the race. Manchin will announce his decision Friday afternoon.

It’s not too often that we say this, but you should really read Charles Krauthammer’s Friday column. The conservative columnist has a warning for Republicans: “Don’t underestimate Barack Obama.” The net effect of health-care reform, financial-regulation reform, and the stimulus is a “structural alteration of the U.S. budget” that will eventually “require massive tax increases” (because, Krauthammer says, “there just isn’t enough to cut” if you take Medicare and Medicaid off the table, as Obama has). He then compares Obama to Reagan—“highly ideological, grandly ambitious and often underappreciated by their own side.” He says that Obama’s accomplished everything that he needs to for his first term, and that the next things on his agenda—energy, education, and immigration—will not be tackled until 2012. For that reason, “For Obama, 2010 matters little. If Democrats lose control of one or both houses, Obama will probably have an easier time in 2012, just as Bill Clinton used Newt Gingrich and the Republicans as the foil for his 1996 reelection campaign.”

Ever hear of the Italian fashion brand George Clooney? Most likely not because the brand, named after the Up in the Air actor, never became much more than the fraudulent scheme of three Italian men who used Clooney’s name during a fashion show two years ago. Now Clooney, who testified on Friday, is getting back at the exploiters, Vincenzo Cannalire, Francesco Galdelli, and Vanja Goffi. “I came here because I believe in the judicial system and because there were people using my name to take advantage of people,” Clooney told the court. The suave star said the men had illegally copied his signature on several documents and inappropriately took advantage of his Hollywood-star cache. At the end of the two-hour hearing, the judge thanked Clooney, adding, “This hearing lasted as long as a film.”

Apple did the right thing: The company will offer all customers who bought the iPhone 4 a free bumper case in order to address problems with the phone’s external antenna. “We’re not perfect,” CEO Steve Jobs admitted at the Friday press conference. “Phones aren’t perfect either.” Jobs made four main points: First, that all smart phones drop calls when held in certain ways (he gave video evidence of Blackberry, HTC, and Samsung phones losing bars); Two, that AppleCare has only received complaints from 0.55 percent of customers; Three, that customers are returning the iPhone 4 at one-third of the rate they returned the iPhone 3GS; and four, that the iPhone 4 drops more calls than the iPhone 3GS, but that the difference is less than one call per hundred. The free cases will be available on Apple’s website starting late next week; people who already purchased bumpers will be able to receive a refund. And customers who are still unhappy will be able to return the actual phones. 

Well, she still has better sense than most of the men in the Roman Catholic Church: Maria Jepsen, the world’s first female Lutheran bishop, has resigned after accusations that she mishandled the case of a pastor who abused young boys and girls in the '70s and '80s in her German diocese. "My credibility has been called into question," she said at a press conference Friday. "Therefore, I am no longer in a position to continue the duty I promised to God and to my congregation when I was ordained and when I was elected as a bishop." The abuse victim, now 46 years old, says she told Jepsen about her treatment as far back as 1999, though Jepsen says she did not know the specifics until this year. Jepsen became the first female Lutheran bishop in 1992.