“Mike Huckabee has been approached by Republican and conservative activists unhappy with the current crop of presidential hopefuls and he is considering entering the fray, two sources who have spoken with Huckabee told Reuters.” [via Political Wire]

“More than 550 health professionals and organizations have signed a letter to McDonald’s Corp. asking the maker of Happy Meals to stop marketing junk food to kids and retire Ronald McDonald.” [WSJ]

Abercrombie & Fitch’s summer line of swimsuits includes a padded push-up bikini top for 7-year-olds.

This news comes to us the day after a story about a mother who is grooming her 8-year-old daughter to someday be a famous celebrity by injecting her with Botox and giving her a monthly “virgin wax” to make sure she doesn’t develop pubic hair because “it will save her a fortune in waxing when she’s older.”

We are fucking doomed.

Short-fingered vulgarian Donald Trump, whom Spy notes was teasing a Presidential run a generation ago, lays it on the line: “Part of the beauty of me is that I’m very rich. So if I need $600 million, I can put $600 million myself. That’s a huge advantage. I must tell you, that’s a huge advantage over the other candidates.” [ABC]

Hey y’all! Put on your hoop skirt or gray uniform and pick up that Stars-N-Bars, because it’s time to come on down to Montgomery to celebrate the sesquicentennial of the inauguration of Jefferson Davis as the President of the Confederacy.

Though the swearing-in was a historical re-enactment down to the antique buttons, there were contemporary political overtones. More than one speaker, insisting that “the South was indeed right,” extolled the Confederacy as an example of limited government that should now be followed, and said vaguely that the rightness of the Southern cause was evident by a glance at the headlines every day.

Really, feel free to secede Alabamans. I’d love to not subsidize your asses.  Oh, and I’m looking at you, too, Governor Good Hair.

[NYT: Commemorating Davis’s Confederate Inauguration]

“The Huffington Post, which began in 2005 with a meager $1 million investment and has grown into one of the most heavily visited news Web sites in the country, is being acquired by AOL in a [$315 million] deal that creates an unlikely pairing of two online media giants.” [NYT]

[Politico]