Sarah Palin’s signature on a ghostwritten book is worth at least $1.25 million, according to a financial disclosure released today — the last filing for Talibunny’s temp job as Alaska governor. She claims to have blown $600,000 of that on “legal fees to fight false allegations while governor,” which still leaves $625,000 for a live-in airplane hangar.

Alas, a cool million doesn’t go as far as it used to, so Palin’s still reading prepared texts for beer money. Which brings us to today’s email from Team Sarah:

The Iowa Family Policy Action center needs to raise $41,000 in order to have Sarah Palin come to speak on November 21, 2009. They have raised $59,000 already, but they need to know there is enough coming in to ensure that they can pull this off.

Won’t you give generously? Mommy needs a Northland to keep the mooseburgers fresh.

Palin’s book retainer: $1.25 million [ADN, via TPM]

Antonin Scalia follows judicial activism to its logical conclusion:

Using his “originalist” philosophy, Scalia said he likely would have dissented from the historic 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision that declared school segregation illegal and struck down the system of “separate but equal” public schools. He said that decision, which overturned earlier precedent, was designed to provide an approach the majority liked better.
 
“I will stipulate that it will,” Scalia said. But he said that doesn’t make it right. “Kings can do some stuff, some good stuff, that a democratic society could never do,” he continued.
 
“Hitler developed a wonderful automobile,” Scalia said. “What does that prove?”

Stephen Breyer, sparing us the trouble of a comeback, notes that while flogging may have been legal in the 18th century, our standards of “cruel and unusual punishment” have drifted as well.

Scalia: Some on court inventing rights [East Valley Tribune, via Political Wire]

Update: Scalia didn’t say it…

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Geraldo Rivera v. Lou Dobbs

Rivera: “Lou Dobbs is almost single-handedly responsible for creating, for being the architect of the young-Latino-as-scapegoat for everything that ails this country.”

Dobbs: “Geraldo Rivera wouldn’t know a fact if it hit him in the rear end — and that would probably be an appropriate place if you wanted him to absorb the information.”

Analysis: Plenty of material to mine for both of them — you can just hear the dicks thump the table.

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First they award a Peace Prize to some dude who isn’t George W. Bush. Then when we’re not looking, they steal the Monopoly championship from us. And now, this:

Norwegian authorities have arrested a 22-year-old man for smuggling pythons by taping them to his body.

The Norwegian man, who was arrested in Oslo yesterday, smuggled the reptiles in underneath his clothes.

Customs officials became suspicious when the man, who arrived on a passenger ferry from Denmark, was stopped for a spot check.

When they found a tarantula in his bag, they decided to search further.

And that’s when they discovered the 14 baby pythons and 10 albino gecko lizards strapped to his person.

Which brings us to the best photo caption we’ve seen all year: “Real-life ‘trousersnake’.”

Snakes smuggled on a plane: Customs officials catch man with 24 illegal pythons and geckos taped to his body [Daily Mail, via Raw Story]

Last time we watched Jeopardy with any frequency, Don Pardo was still the announcer. But for the record, CNN sucks at it:

Wolf was blitzed last month, coming in last with minus-$4,600, behind comic Andy Richter, a past winner who racked up $68,000 for charity…

[Michael] McKean, a previous winner, ended with $24,800 [this month], followed by Abdul Jabbar with $8,800 and [Soledad] O’Brien with $6,200.

“They are reporters, not trivia experts,” explains a CNN source. “And the buzzer is complicated.”

More complicated than holographic correspondents, apparently.

Anchors sink on ‘Jeopardy’ [NY Post]

Burt Prelutsky, “a very nice person once you get to know him,” used to be somebody — “humor” columnist for the L.A. Times, movie critic for Los Angeles magazine, a TV writer whose voluminous credits include Dragnet and McMillan & Wife. Now he’s just an old fart blogging for Andrew Breitbart:

Why, in 2009 America, are mulattoes invariably identified as blacks? Surely there is nothing wrong with being a mulatto. There is no stigma attached, as once there was. It merely refers to those who have one white parent and one black. There are many notable individuals who are mulattoes, including Halle Berry, Derek Jeter, Lisa Bonet and Barack Obama. Tiger Woods, on the other hand, is a true amalgamation, being one-quarter Chinese, one-quarter Thai, one-quarter black, one-eighth Native American and one-eighth Dutch. And, yet, with the possible exception of the New York Yankee shortstop, we insist on identifying all of them as black.

It’s as if there is something shameful about their being half or even one-eighth white. If there is, I’d sure like to know what it is. If, on the other hand, there isn’t, why do we insist on acting as if there were?

Dunno, Burt — maybe it has something to do with the history of the word’s use in America. But just to get you up to speed, the polite term du jour appears to be “biracial.” Although we know you were itching to work in “octaroon”.

(Oh, and regarding Chia Obama: We know it’s making the rounds, but didn’t anybody notice it back in January?)

Questions Even Glenn Beck Hasn’t Asked [Big Hollywood, via Media Matters]

And the award for Best John Cleese Impression of the Day goes to…

Larry Whitten marched into this northern New Mexico town in late July on a mission: resurrect a failing hotel.

The tough-talking former Marine immediately laid down some new rules. Among them, he forbade the Hispanic workers at the run-down, Southwestern adobe-style hotel from speaking Spanish in his presence (he thought they’d be talking about him), and ordered some to Anglicize their names.

No more Martin (Mahr-TEEN). It was plain-old Martin. No more Marcos. Now it would be Mark.

And if you didn’t follow the new rules, you were fired.

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