In democracies such as ours, our elected officials are considered public servants. How much should these full time public servants be paid?

ORLANDO—(BTC @ $355.27) The hotel is a tomb of hopeful thinking. Built in the 1980s, the single tower of the Wyndham Lake Buena Vista Hotel at Disney World juts up from the Orlando ground as if tectonic forces pushed skyward a sheet of pure, brown stucco. A soundtrack of Mickey Mouse anthems plays around the clock. The carpets are damp. And for a weekend in October, a group of men and women who mean to change the future of civilization were staying there.

The gentle woman with the rampageous voice, Susan Boyle, has for the first time in her 53 years on this earth, bagged a dude. And with that man comes all the uncertainty of first-time love. As the Britain's Got Talent alum recently said of her new American (nice!) doctor (niiiiice!) friend:

Elizabeth Lauten, the GOP staffer who resigned Monday morning after calling President Obama's teenage daughters classless, was arrested when she was 17 for shoplifting, according to the Smoking Gun.

Deroy Murdock of National Review Online would like everyone to stop protesting the lack of an indictment in the killing of Michael Brown, so that Americans can focus instead on the problem of black-on-black crime. He asks:

Honey Boo Boo mom Mama June Shannon told TMZ on Sunday that she has "made mistakes" in her life, but "no one is perfect." While Shannon still won't cop to rekindling a relationship with the man who molested her daughter Anna, Mark McDaniel, she did admit that she's seen him.

Conservative British minister Penny Mordaunt gave a speech in Parliament last year that was ostensibly about the welfare of chickens, but was actually written with the express purpose of saying "cock" as many times as possible.

Howard University students raised a Pan-African flag on the campus flagpole last week, prompting the school's president to issue a statement saying, "While I openly support freedom of expression on our campus, I do not support unauthorized use of University property or official platforms to transmit these expressions of thought and ideas." Uh... huh.

Who puts the MAN in Batman? Not George Clooney, according to professional growler Christian Bale. Bale tells WSJ magazine this week that Clooney, who basically enacted laws in Italy to protect his wedding from the paparazzi, should "shut up" and "stop whining" about privacy.

The unidentified hackers who reportedly crippled operations at Sony Pictures last week have made good on their threat to release files stolen from the studio's servers, leaking a handful of new movies—some of which haven't even come out in theaters yet—to file sharing sites.

According to St. Louis police, a group of at least three teenagers (and possibly a fourth), attacked and killed 32-year-old Zemir Begic early Sunday morning. The teens allegedly bludgeoned Begic to death with hammers.

While you slackers were all spending quality time with your families, the global oil markets were plummeting! This is good news, perhaps. Or maybe bad news? Let's explore how this will save—or possibly destroy—our world.

I'm not prepared to paper over the faults in my perceptions of politics. I'm not ready to confront whatever comes after post-race. I'm not ready to eulogize whatever vestiges of Black Camelot remain. And I don't know if I'm equipped for the world After Obama.

Three days after stupidly criticizing Malia and Sasha Obama's perfect teen reaction to their dad's turkey pardoning ceremony, GOP staffer Elizabeth Lauten told NBC News that her resignation as the communications director for Tennessee Rep. Steven Fincher is "in the works."

A Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens video game probably won't come out until 2016, but the (unofficial) trailer just arrived way ahead of schedule.

Actor and faded tough guy Mickey Rourke, age 62, fought in and won a professional boxing match last Saturday night. His opponent: a "homeless drifter" who clearly took a dive.

In a revealing interview with New York's Frank Rich, Chris Rock talks Bill Cosby, the president, and what "racial progress" really means in America today. When asked how he'd cover the ongoing crisis in Ferguson as a journalist, Rock suggests, "I'd do a special on race, but I'd have no black people."

In his new memoir, Andy Cohen flatly asserts that Hollywood actor Kevin Spacey is gay. “I still get enraged when I think about [Spacey] talking about being in love with that woman on 60 Minutes,” he writes. “Come out, sir.” Given the Bravo host’s stature, the passage has caused a ruckus in gay and entertainment circles. (The book carries a glowing blurb by none other than Anderson Cooper.) Still, Cohen’s statement hardly lacks supporting evidence—such as a few long-lost photos published nearly 15 years ago.

Snow Dogs star Cuba Gooding Jr. was at Tao Lounge in Chelsea Saturday night when his night of "being all skeezy and hitting on girls" was apparently interrupted by fighting between a group of men seated next to him in the bar's VIP area, a source tells the New York Daily News' Confidential.

The former first lady of both California and Arnold Schwarzenegger is reportedly withholding her approval due to troubling concerns over the blessed union between her son and known penis aficionado Miley Ray Cyrus.