Relief is on the way for millions of jobless Americans: The Senate swore in West Virginia’s new senator, Carte Goodwin, on Tuesday, and he went on to cast the 60th vote to break the Republican Party’s filibuster of an extension of unemployment benefits. Maine Republicans Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe joined the Democrats in breaking the filibuster. It is expected that the House will take up the bill on Wednesday, and President Obama will sign it into law by week’s end.

The Senate Judiciary Committee voted 13-6 on Tuesday to confirm Elena Kagan and move her Supreme Court nomination to the full Senate. South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham was the only Republican to vote for her. "I'm going to vote for her because I believe the last election had consequences," Graham said. "This president chose someone who is qualified, who has the experience and knowledge to serve on this court ... and understands the difference between being a liberal judge and a politician." The full Senate will take up her nomination in early August.

Sources close to BP’s president, Tony Hayward, who was lambasted for his poor handling of the Gulf oil spill, told The Times of London that he will resign in either late August or early September, the paper reports Wednesday. BP strongly denied the report, saying “there is no truth in this article.” But one source told the Times "you would be hard-pushed to find anyone within the company who does not think he is irreparably damaged—both by his own performance and by the event itself.” The rumors of Hayward’s departure came on the same day BP announced it will sell off $7 billion of oil and gas assets to meet the growing cost of the oil spill.

Who should be more ashamed of himself here: Andrew Breitbart, for falsely accusing a woman of racism, or Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, for handing him her scalp? On Tuesday, Breitbart posted a video of what he called a "racist tale" on his Big Government website in which USDA employee Shirley Sherrod, an African American woman, said she didn’t give a white farmer “the full force of what I could do” 24 years ago because of his race. However, Breitbart’s video was only a snippet of her speech—the full speech shows that she told this story as part of a larger narrative about how she came to help this family and learn that “race is not the issue, it's about the people who have and the people who don't.” In fact, the wife of the white farmer at the center of her tale says Sherrod is a “friend for life” and that Sherrod’s help “kept us out of bankruptcy.” Breitbart, who likes to scold journalists on his website Big Journalism, is now saying that he never saw the full video and that he simply posted the edited clips as they were sent to him, without investigating the story. Vilsack fired Sherrod on Tuesday, but said early on Wednesday that he's willing to reconsider his decision.

U.S. Special Operations Forces have increased their role in Pakistan to defeat Islamist militants in an area that has been restricted to U.S. ground troops. The goal of the mission will be to aid local forces and determine the security risks, and U.S. troops will reportedly wear civilian clothes and only be allowed to discharge their weapons if they are attacked first. Pakistan has long avoided U.S. military presence—despite reports that wanted Islamic militants were within their borders—and the country has requested the U.S. keep a low profile. Pakistan has gradually allowed U.S. Special Operations Forces in since the first 30 troops were allowed in June 2008, and now there are around 120 trainers in the country, with the goal of winning over tribal leaders with development projects. Congress recently approved $10 million for aid missions in Pakistan, and one congressional staffer said "the goal is never to have a U.S. footprint on any of these efforts."

Score another point for Sarah Palin's Mama Grizzlies: Karen Handel, Georgia's former secretary of state whose candidacy was buoyed by Palin's endorsement, handily won the Republican gubernatorial primary Tuesday night with 64 percent of the vote. Though her victory was decisive, she didn't quite earn enough to avoid a run-off. For the Democrats, Roy Barnes won the primary and will continue his quest to regain the governor's seat he last held from 1999 to 2003. Handel started the race as a long shot, but positioned herself as an antidote to her "good old boy" opponents, ultimately benefitting from allegations of ethic violations against them.

Lindsay Lohan surrendered at a Beverly Hills courthouse to begin her 90-day jail sentence Tuesday morning, despite her lawyer quitting her case on Monday, Reuters reported. Lohan's father, who was in the courtroom on Tuesday morning with her mother during a brief hearing, said, "We love you, Lindsay," after the judge said she was remanded to serve her sentence. Lohan was then taken to the Century Regional Detention Facility in Lynwood, California, where she served for a mere 84 minutes in 2007. She may have been sentenced to 90 days—but the Los Angeles Times reported late Monday that Lindsay will now only serve thirteen or fourteen days. According to a document in the Sheriff's Department, Lohan's "projected release date" is "Aug.1 or Aug. 2." And, what goes around comes around: Lindsay has also reportedly been placed in a cell next to Alexis Neiers, the 19-year-old made famous for robbing Lohan's home.

New research released Tuesday suggests that a baby’s babbling may contain clues that can help determine if the child is autistic. Researchers at the University of Memphis have designed a computer program that can reportedly distinguish between the speech of unaffected children with autism—and they claim it can correctly differentiate more than 85 percent of youngsters. Scientists tucked miniature voice recorders—each about the weight of a candy bar—into the chest pockets of more than 200 children ages 10 months to four years and recorded everything that came out of the children’s mouths for about a week and tested it with the software. They discovered that autistic children tended to have more obvious speech impediments, such as slurring syllables. Kim Oller, head of the research team, said the results were “totally surprising,” but they're welcome news. The earlier the detection of autism, the more effective intensive therapy will usually be.

Get ready for even more Jersey Shore: MTV announced the cast list for Season 3, ending the cast’s strike. Sources say almost all the guidos and guidettes will be getting nearly $30,000 per episode after holding out, with the exception of one cast member: Angelina, who left early in Season 1 only to jump back on board for Season 2, will not return for Season 3. 

A blonde-haired, blue-eyed baby was born Sunday in Britain to a black couple with no known white ancestry. Doctors said the baby, named Nmachi Ihegboro, is not an albino, though the BBC reports that the hospital has not ruled this out. Both mother and father are from Nigerian ancestry and have black skin. Father Ben Ihegboro said after the birth, “What the flip?” before adding “Is she mine?” Despite his jokes, Angela Ihegboro said their daughter is a “miracle baby.” The couple has two other children, both of whom have black skin. A genetics professor said the birth is “truly extraordinary” and said “the rules of genetics are complex, and we still don’t understand what happens in many cases.”

Soup for you! Al Yeganeh, the New York soup vendor whose cold style inspired the infamous Seinfeld character known as the “Soup Nazi,” reopened his location shop on 55th Street in Manhattan on Tuesday. Yeganeh, who calls himself “The Original SoupMan,” shuttered the tiny shop back in 2004 after he sold the rights to his business—though he still controls the brand and his recipes, which can now be found in 22 locations and online. Yeganeh lives within walking distance of the stall, but true to his TV counterpart he snubbed the opening ceremony, which featured a ceremonial cutting of zucchini. The "SoupMan" reportedly detests the “Soup Nazi” character and banned Jerry Seinfeld in 1995. Unfazed, Seinfeld himself showed up at the stall this weekend, wishing Yeganeh well by telling the company's president to "take care of that guy."

While diplomats from 70 nations—including Hillary Clinton—gathered in Kabul to discuss the path toward a self-sufficient Afghan military, a tragic example of the hurdles along the way unfolded at a weapons base in the north of the country. During a routine training course, a renegade Afghan army trainer opened fire on his fellow instructors, killing two U.S. civilians, another Afghan soldier, and ultimately himself. Further details have yet to emerge, but a British NATO spokesman called the event "a great tragedy," and officials have already opened a joint investigation into the matter. Though expanding Afghanistan's military is a top priority for both the government and the NATO coalition occupying the country, today's loss left some wondering if eligibility requirements are too loose. "The security process is in place," a NATO authority said, but added: "It's not infallible."

While everyone was busy speculating about Sarah Palin’s fundraising ambitions, Minnesota Republican star Michele Bachmann quietly banked $4.1 million in the first six months of 2010. That’s twice as much as Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and more than any other member of the House of Representatives besides top Republican leaders John Boehner of Ohio and Eric Cantor of Virginia. Bachmann, 54, has been making headlines as a conservative firecracker since she first gained attention in the 2008 election, and her profile has only risen with the support of her Tea Party affiliation. Though Bachmann doesn't hold any leadership positions in her party, she recently started her own Tea Party Caucus in the House. Most of her money comes from small-dollar donations, but her biggest contributions—surprisingly, given her politics—come from organized labor.

In an ending even better than Footloose, the Itawamba School District has agreed to pay 18-year-old Constance McMillen $35,000 for discriminating against her. Rather than allow the teen to bring her girlfriend to the school's prom, the school canceled it instead. McMillen says she was taken to a “sham prom” while the rest of the students partied elsewhere. The school district has agreed to follow a non-discrimination policy, though says the settlement is not an admission of wrongdoing. McMillen said of the outcome: "I knew it was a good cause, but sometimes it really got to me. I knew it would change things for others in the future and I kept going and I kept pushing."

Well this is embarrassing: BP has photoshopped images of its “crisis command center” to make it appear as though employees are watching several screens with images of the leaking well. AmericaBlog’s John Aravosis catches the company red-handed—you can clearly see white lines around the employees’ heads and the screens where someone cut and pasted the images. A reader points out to Aravosis that the meta info for the image is from 2001, so it appears as though BP took an old photo and pasted pictures of the Gulf well onto it to make it look updated. BP has apologized for the doctored photos but says it was the photographer who did such an amateurish job.

Playboy isn’t just for sneaking a peek anymore: The company launched a new, non-nude website, TheSmokingJacket.com, on Tuesday. The site, which includes categories such as Girls, Entertainment, Sex, Videos, and Lifestyle, is described as workplace-friendly and a “satirical antidote to the drudgery of the work day.” Also included are links to videos, as well as photos from Playboy’s archives. Hugh Hefner, Playboy’s 84-year-old founder, told Reuters of the site, “Next to the mansion, it’s the best hangout on the planet.” Posts so far include, “ How to Get Laid at Work” and “ How to Hang Out with Porn Chicks”. Time will tell whether the site can reach the 6 million unique monthly visitors that Playboy.com claims to receive.

Get ready, it’s time to find out what a man wants. AskMen.com, the online men's publication, has released the results of its “Great Male Survey,” which polled 100,000 men in the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Australia about dating, sex, style, and what it means to be male in 2010. Some of the answers are surprising: 67 percent of men said they still believe in the institution of marriage; 79 percent said they think men get “screwed over” in divorce proceedings. Disowning Tiger Woods and Jesse James, only 5 percent of respondents said it was “very likely” that they would cheat on their partner if there was no chance of the partner finding out—but 48 percent admitted finding trashy women appealing because they will do things in bed they wouldn’t dare ask a girlfriend or wife. One last tip for women: Don’t pick a man based on his ability to fix things: Only 13 percent of men said “having manly skill such as the ability to fix things” is what best defines a “real man.” The quality that best defines a real man? According to 50 percent of respondents, it’s “being a great father and husband who takes care of a family.”

How's this for a bold statement: “Somebody in this Pakistani government does know where Osama bin Laden is hiding,” Hillary Clinton told reporters in Kabul this week. Her remarks highlight the often-tenuous relationship the U.S. has with Pakistan as it fights to rein in terrorists in the region. Bruce Riedel, a contributor to The Daily Beast and a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution, argues in a blog post today that “Pakistan is our most important ally in the war against al Qaeda and its affiliates, and our most difficult ally.” And bin Laden's whereabouts aren't the only factor straining the alliance. Unconfirmed reports that Pakistani intelligence was behind the 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai, India, are "the ticking time bomb that could wreck the nascent U.S.-Pakistan partnership," Reidel writes, urging a prompt and "robust" crackdown on Pakistani intelligence in order to bring stability to diplomatic relations.

Not much seems to be too taboo for television these days. A new reality TV show will document real-life cases of domestic abuse while offering counseling and support for both the abuser and the victim. Abusers, produced by a one-time aide to former New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey, Albert Harris, Jr., has two familiar faces on its creative team: Ashley and Josh from The Real World D.C.—both of whom have experienced domestic violence. Harris said he became interested in addressing domestic violence based on experiences his girlfriend had in an abusive relationship.

“Family-values” Louisianans may be stuck between a rock and a hard place when it comes to the upcoming Senate Republican primary. Incumbent Senator David Vitter, of course, was nailed for visiting prostitutes in 2007 and, more recently, was exposed to have kept a staffer working on women’s issues even after it was revealed that the staffer had abused his girlfriend. But, his primary challenger and possible replacement, retired Supreme Court Justice Chet Traylor, may not be so much better: Salon’s Justin Elliot points to a news article that says Traylor is currently sleeping with his stepson’s estranged wife. Indeed, it seems to be something of a habit for Traylor, who entered the race on the basis of personal integrity: The first husband of Traylor’s late wife, Peggy McDowell (the wife whose son’s wife he’s currently sleeping with), also says that Traylor begin his affair with McDowell while she was still married. Traylor denies the charge.

Heroes star Ali Larter and her husband, writer/actor Hayes MacArthur, are expecting their first child, Larter’s representative announced Monday. Larter, 34, who wed Hayes last August, is reportedly due in the winter. Larter told Cosmopolitan she looks “forward to that time when I’m home with babies.”

We guess 36-year-old Carte Goodwin—who will be sworn in as Robert Byrd’s successor in the Senate on Tuesday—won’t get a chance to match the 51-year tenure of the man he’s replacing: West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin announced  Tuesday that he will run for Byrd’s seat in November’s special election, when Goodwin will step down. The special election primary will take place August 28; no Republicans have announced their candidacies yet.

RadarOnline.com has a slew of new details on Mel Gibson’s alleged assault of ex-girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva—and her allegations include that Gibson threatened to kill her, her children, and himself. Grigorieva says Gibson was furious at her for attending her son’s basketball game while leaving their infant daughter at home with a nanny. She says that, when she got home, Gibson started screaming at her, then punched her and choked her in front of her children. Then Grigorieva claims he pulled a gun and threatened to kill everyone in the room, including himself. Grigorieva’s son Sascha, whose father is former James Bond star Timothy Dalton, was interviewed about the incident by child protective services on Friday.

Points for creativity? A Mexican man has been arrested after authorities at Mexico City's international airport discovered 18 titi monkeys stuffed into socks and tied around his waist. Roberto Sol Cabrera was returning from Lima, Peru, and had been trying to smuggle in the tiny primates by wearing them slung on a belt under his clothing—“to protect them from X-rays." Two of the monkeys were dead when they were confiscated. Many species of titi monkeys are on the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora's endangered list, and can be sold for around $1,550 in Mexico.

He figures to get a few “amens” for this one: British Prime Minister David Cameron said that the decision to release the Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, was “profoundly misguided” and announced that the “Lockerbie bomber should have died in jail,” during his visit to Washington on Tuesday. Cameron originally planned to dodge a group of senators who are investigating BP’s involvement in the al-Megrahi release, but later changed his mind. "I will say to [the senators] that I agree that the decision to release al-Megrahi was wrong. I said it was wrong at the time," he told NPR. However, he does not plan to indict BP’s meddling. "It was the Scottish government that took that decision. … It was not the decision of BP—it was the decision of Scottish ministers."

Back to the drawing board: With oil leaking once again from its containment-cap system, BP is looking into a new plan that it says would permanently stem the Gulf oil leak. This time it’s the “static kill,” a method in which heavy mud would be pumped into BP’s new containment cap, forcing the gas and oil back underground. If BP goes ahead with the procedure—it says it will consider it over the next several days—then the relief wells, which will not be completed until August, will only be needed to confirm that the “static kill” had worked. The procedure could be carried out with the same “top kill” equipment that failed in May.

Addressing officials from 70 countries in a meeting to secure more aid for Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai called for his war-torn country to take over control of its security by 2014. Karzai said he was dedicated to fighting corruption and establishing peace, and that Afghan security forces will be in charge of some areas by the end of 2010. British Prime Minister David Cameron said it was a “realistic” goal to pull his country’s troops out of Afghanistan by 2014. But analysts say that Afghanistan is in large part controlled by insurgents, making Karzai’s goals quite ambitious. The remarks were part of a plea to boost the amount of foreign money funding the Afghan government to 50 percent of the budget while giving Afghans more control over it.

Does someone have a white horse he can ride in on? The late West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd’s successor, Carte Goodwin, arrives in Washington Tuesday and will give Democrats the votes they need to extend unemployment benefits. He comes just one day after President Obama took Republicans to task for filibustering the measure. At least two Republicans, Maine Senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, are expected to join Democrats in voting to break the GOP filibuster. If the measure passes as expected, 2.5 million jobless Americans will receive benefits retroactively.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg doesn't reach far beyond his social circle to staff his pool of City Hall interns: A list of past interns obtained by The New York Times (via a Freedom of Information Act request) reveals that many big-name children and relatives of the rich and powerful—like Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein, Blackstone Group co-founder Peter G. Peterson, and former CBS CEO Laurence A. Tisch—have been hired for unpaid internships under Bloomberg. Jacob Doctoroff, the son of Bloomberg LP President Daniel L. Doctoroff, got hired as an intern while he was in the 8th grade. “I truthfully couldn’t tell you how I got the internship,” he said, “but you’d be working with a bunch of 35- to 45-year-olds, and you didn’t have a sense that you were in an internship program.” Bloomberg spokesman Stu Loeser said only a small percentage of internships were awarded to those with connections to the office, but admitted that one in five of interns have been recommended by an employee in the administration.

Well, one of them is going to have change: The covers of the August issues of British Vogue, British Elle, and W all feature the same dress. The piece is an appliquéd dress by Miu Miu and costs between $3,000 and $5,000. "You have to take these things in your stride," Elle editor Lorraine Candy tells The Guardian, but she admits that "obviously I'd rather it wasn't on a major rival" and “Usually press offices are pretty good at making sure we don't get the same dress as our rivals.”

Lou Dobbs may have been a populist on the air, but how’s this for elitism: His daughter won the $30,000 Grand Prix riding a horse named Marengo at the Vermont Summer Festival—an honor that pushed her winnings past $1 million. At 22, Harvard-grad Hillary is the youngest person ever to win a million dollars on the horse-show circuit. It’s unknown whether Lou saw his daughter’s feat or whether he was occupied checking the stable workers’ immigration papers.

The Washington Post's massive probe of America's counterterrorism efforts and intelligence networks is so in-depth that one government official called it a “ roadmap to our enemies.” Post editor Marcus Brauchli has swept to the story's defense, telling Yahoo that the paper's staffers took great care to address the national-security issues: “Whenever we believe our reporting may imperil national security or public safety, we seek input from the government or other industries that may be affected, so we can make sound judgments about what to publish." According to Brauchli, in recent months high-ranking government officials previewed the story, pointing out red flags and even removing “certain data points.” The story was kept under considerable wraps, but is now being trumpeted by TV appearances and social-media promotion. Brauchli staunchly defended the Post's right to publish the piece: "It's an important piece of journalism, and I think it goes to an issue that is of great importance to the country."

File this under collateral damage: The BP oil spill will cloud talks between President Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron in Washington on Tuesday, potentially complicating the “special relationship” between the U.S. and U.K. The pair will discuss BP’s role in the massive oil spill blackening the Gulf of Mexico and the oil giant’s role in getting the convicted Lockerbie bomber released to Libya. (Cameron has agreed to meet with senators about the Lockerbie probe after originally saying he did not have time.) This is Cameron’s first visit to America since he was elected, and he has to defend BP for the sake of many British pensioners who depend on the oil giant’s dividends. U.S. officials are calling for an investigation into BP’s role in the Lockerbie case; the British government insists the company had no role in the release of bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi. Aside from the BP controversy, Obama and Cameron have a full plate: The war in Afghanistan, the Middle East, and the global economy are on the agenda.

First George Alan Rekers, now this: Truth Wins Out, an organization dedicated to fighting “ex-gay” organizations, has published a report in which two former clients of Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality (JONAH) accuse the group’s lead therapist of sexual misconduct. According to clients Ben Unger and Chaim Levin, the therapist, Alan Downing, encouraged them to undress and fondle themselves in front of him. “He was encouraging me, ‘it’s OK Ben, you can take your shirt off’… here was a man that was much older than me, and I was around 20,” Unger says. “At that point, I was just staring at a mirror with my shirt off and he was right behind me staring at the mirror with me at my body. Then telling me to look at my body and feel my body. It was weird.” Levin’s account is similar: “While I was standing there without my clothes on, he asked me to touch my genitals. Once again, I communicated that I was not comfortable with it. And he was like, you know, ‘just feel yourself. Just feel it for a second. So, you can grasp your masculinity physically.’”

Times Square terrorist Faisal Shahzad’s plan may not have worked, but law-enforcement sources tell the New York Post that a secret FBI test has shown  that, had Shahzad constructed his car bomb correctly, it “would have killed thousands of people.” The feds reconstructed Shahzad’s bomb according to its original plan and detonated it in Pennsylvania. "It definitely would have been bigger than [the 1995] Oklahoma City,” a source tells the Post. Another source says, “If you look at the four corners [near the bomb] that night, there could easily be 500 people between 20 to 30 feet from the car.”

How close were the Mel Gibson tapes to never seeing the light of day? TMZ says that Mel Gibson’s ex-girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva signed a $15 million deal to keep the tapes of the actor’s threatening rants quiet before eventually rejecting the settlement. The deal was worked out during child-custody mediation in May and included child support and a house—in return, Grigorieva would promise to keep her tapes secret. She played some of the tapes for Gibson’s lawyers, but not the ones with racial slurs. Both Gibson and Grigorieva signed a “short form agreement,” an outline of the deal, but then Grigovieva refused to sign the long detailed version because she felt coerced.

Apple and AT&T have raised the iPhone to the top of the smartphone market, but there’s been no love lost in the process. Wired magazine examines the fraught relationship between the iPhone maker and its exclusive carrier. When the iPhone launched, AT&T begged Apple to lift some of the load off its network by limiting YouTube videos in some way, but Apple outright refused. “We consistently said ‘No, we are not going to mess up the consumer experience on the iPhone to make your network tenable,’” an Apple source says. “They’d always end up saying, ‘We’re going to have to escalate this to senior AT&T executives,’ and we always said, ‘Fine, we’ll escalate it to Steve and see who wins.’ I think history has demonstrated how that turned out.” Wired says Jobs is “apoplectic” about AT&T’s network and has discussed dropping AT&T altogether at least half a dozen times. AT&T complains, meanwhile, that the iPhone’s main radio was filled with bugs that led to dropped calls and that Apple has abandoned them to angry customers.

Lindsay Lohan is trying to make light of her situation as jail looms. "The only 'bookings' that i'm familiar with are Disney Films, never thought that i'd be 'booking' into Jail... eeeks," the actress tweeted. Her ex-girlfriend and supporter Samantha Ronson responded, "well- you haven't lost your sense of humour." Lohan will appear at a hearing in Beverly Hills Tuesday to surrender for a 90-day jail sentence for violating the rules of her probation stemming from a DUI charge. She’s plowed through several lawyers, including Robert Shapiro, who, after a different lawyer quit, was unofficially representing Lohan but is officially no longer doing so. Due to jail overcrowding, the troubled star is unlikely to serve much more than a small fraction of her sentence.

The Times of London has lost 90 percent of its online readership from February since implementing a paywall on its website in June, according to the estimate of rival newspaper The Guardian. That actually may not be a surprise to all of the Times’ employees, as the Sunday Times’ editor, John Witherow, predicted in May that the site would lose “perhaps more than 90 percent” of its readers. Still, News Corp. Chairman and CEO and Times owner Rupert Murdoch predicted “significant revenues” from the paywall; it’s unclear whether enough people are visiting the site to back him up.

The right wing is in a fury over a video of a black Department of Agriculture employee saying at an NAACP banquet that, 24 years ago, she didn’t offer a farmer “the full force of what I could do” because he was white; the employee, Shirley Sherrod, has resigned since Andrew Breitbart posted the video on his website, BigGovernment.com. But Breitbart also edited the video so that it did not include the second part of Sherrod’s tale, in which she describes how she went on to work with the man for two years, helped him fight foreclosure, and befriended him and his wife. "And I went on to work with many more white farmers," she said. "The story helped me realize that race is not the issue, it's about the people who have and the people who don't. When I speak to groups, I try to speak about getting beyond the issue of race." After learning that the tape was edited, the NAACP issued a statement saying it was " snookered" into criticizing Sherrod, and asked the White House to reconsider her resignation.