So apparently Trig Birtherism is heating up, The Preznit of These United States said some Fine Things yesterday that we’ll wait to see translated into actual policy before we give a shit, and Teabaggers are collectively demanding to Keep Government Out Of Their Medicare.

But in weighing the relative significance of these stories against a Penguin Tickling Video, we’re reminded yet again how easily our editorial priorities are subverted.

Watch Cookie the Ticklish Penguin go viral in real time [Salon, via Sully]

While everybody’s excited about the new “.xxx” Internet red-light district soon to flood a series of glandular tubes near you, an enterprising company has been diddling Ma Bell:

Records obtained by The Associated Press show that over the past 13 years, a little-known Philadelphia company called PrimeTel Communications has quietly gained control over nearly a quarter of all the 1-800 numbers in the U.S. and Canada, often by grabbing them the moment they are relinquished by previous users. As of March, it administered more 800 numbers than any other company, including Verizon and AT&T.

And many, if not most, of those 1.7 million numbers appear to be used for one thing: redirecting callers to a phone-sex service.

We can’t help but consider the news adorably quaint: With free video online to satisfy every exquisitely perverted urge imaginable, who the hell spends money on phone sex anymore?

Porn Company Is Amassing 1-800 Numbers [AP/ABC, via TPM]

Born on this day: George Takei, Crispin Glover, Joan Miró, Harold Lloyd, Jessica Lange, John Paul Stevens, Edie Sedgwick, Don Mattingly, Andrew Tobias, Clint Howard, and Andy Serkis. Oh, and Hitler.

“The Club for Growth today noted that Donald Trump once tried to use eminent domain to evict an elderly widow from her Atlantic City home to build a limousine parking lot, and has repeatedly tried to use eminent domain as a tool of his development business.”

Our guest columnist this morning is David Caton of the Florida Family Association, working hard to make your teen’s life as miserable as possible.

MTV is airing through their Teen Nick channel for kids episodes of the show called DeGrassi which affirms and promotes the transgender lifestyle to an audience of millions of young teens and children.

You would think by the number of episodes that MTV devotes to including the relationship between a female to male transgender high school student and a bi-sexual lesbian student that such relationships are a common occurrence in America’s high schools.

The odds of this bizarre relationship occurring in high school are likely less than one in a million. Yet, MTV feeds this salacious and irresponsible propaganda to an audience made up almost exclusively of young teens and children as if it were common place.

MTV airs a free promo for PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) on DeGrassi which directs kids to an organization that will encourage our youth to embrace a different sexual identity that may stay with them for life.

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Jan Brewer may not have the stomach for Circumcision Certificates, but she just signed a bill that allows patriotic citizens to escape the tyranny of homeowner associations:

Current law overrides any [association] rules when it comes to the U.S. flag, the flags of any branch of the military, the state flag, the POW-MIA flag and the flag of any Indian nation. The new law will add the Gadsden flag to that protected list, that yellow flag with the drawing of a coiled rattlesnake and the phrase “Don’t Tread on Me.”

That yellow teabagger flag, to be precise.

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Note that it’s Palin weighing in on Trump, and not Trump weighing in on Palin. Trump gets plenty of publicity on his own without dropping her name.