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If you have a nose for cruel humor, this is the post for you. I just can’t bring myself to exploit the possibilities: Veteran singer-songwriter Barry Manilow, recently waking up disoriented in the middle of the night, walked into a wall and broke his nose, knocking himself unconscious, the entertainer …

Martha Stewart, jailbird, I like the sound of that. Damn, that desiccated hag rubs me the wrong way: Martha Stewart’s company said Tuesday the home-decorating mogul has been warned that federal prosecutors plan to seek an indictment against her soon in the insider-trading scandal that has been hanging over her …

As Nigel reported here on May 22, Natalie Maines wore a shirt with “F.U.T.K” during her May 21 performance at the Academy of Country Music Awards. Although I disagreed with her assessment of the war and Bush that caused all the original flap, the reaction was way overblown, and the …

Malaysian government tries to help it’s CD and DVD industries help themselves with some tough love: This week, Deputy Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Minister Datuk S Subramaniam told buyers to quit spending – temporarily, at least – to force the industry to reduce prices. Subramaniam’s statement, reported by the …

The irony never ends: Metallica is offering exclusive Internet downloads of songs from their website to buyers of their new album St. Anger: Three years after suing Napster, Metallica is offering songs from its new album exclusively on the Internet. The heavy metal band, whose first album in six years …

Lessig on the move with an interesting public domain initiative: We have launched a petition to build support for the Public Domain Enhancement Act. That act would require American copyright holders to pay $1 fifty years after a work was published. If they pay the $1, the copyright continues. If …

FCC Chariman Powell and Sen. Byron Dorgan, who opposes the media ownership rule changes the FCC voted in yesterday, on the Newshour with Jim Lehrer: TERENCE SMITH: To explain the new ownership rules, we’re joined by the commission’s chairman, Michael Powell. Commissioner Powell, welcome to the broadcast. Would you make …

Conason on FCC’s Powell in Salon: The driving forces behind Powell, in the White House and the Congress, are indeed highly ideological but hardly conservative in Safire’s sense. Their ideology is corporate conservatism, which treats democracy as a procedural formality that should under no circumstances interfere with the prerogatives of …

Okay, time to own up to a certain lassitude since the war has wound down: there’s still plenty going on, and in many ways this “war after the war” is more important than the war itself because the outcome seems to be much more in doubt. But after the frenzy …

California Supremes rule on the Winter Bros. comic book suit.