The Daily Digest

Green Sea Turtle

Starting today, I'm renaming the Daily Dose, the Daily Digest.

CBS fired Don Imus for a sexual and racist remark he made on the air. But CNN's Jeffrey Toobin, who was shown Imus's contract, asks, "How is CBS going to argue that what he said was so controversial and so offensive that it isn't what they asked for in the contract?" According to Toobin, Imus's contact included a clause that CBS wanted him to be "irreverent" and "controversial": "Company [CBS Radio] acknowledges that Artist's [Imus'] services to be rendered hereunder are of a unique, extraordinary, irreverent, intellectual, topical, controversial and personal character and that programs of the same general type and nature containing these components are desired by Company and are consistent with Company rules and policies."

Two conservative heavies, Ramesh Ponnuru and Pat Toomey, debate the issues of the day on Laura Ingraham's radio show. Listen here.

Radley continues to highlight the important but underreported aspects of governmental motorcades: "[A] couple of weeks ago I noted that the troubling thing about Gov. John Corzine's crash wasn't that he didn't use his seat belt (which only imperils his own safety), but that he felt he was so important that he could have his motorcade fly down the highway at 90+ miles per hour, shunting everyone else on the road out of the way (which imperils everyone on the highway). . . . Well, now we learn that Gov. Corzine held a press conference yesterday in which he apologized (whether it was for not wearing his seatbelt or for thinking he's so important that he can put everyone else on the road at risk isn't clear). He then got into his car and sped off in his motorcade, which once again routinely broke the speed limit while taking the injured governor back to his mansion."

Somebody had to say it: Alberto "Gonzales's tenure is more scandalous even than the mess he created by firing eight federal prosecutors" (my hyperlink). Cato's Tim Lynch lays out the case why the AG should resign. Meanwhile, Marshall Manson observes that Gonzales's recent congressional testimony "illustrated just how laughable the notion of his nomination to the Supreme Court really was. It also revealed how thoroughly ill-prepared Gonzales would have been for the intellectual rigor of the Court."