• Is it sexist to call Nikki Finke crazy? Either way, we're about five minutes from a batshit rant in our inbox. [Cathy's World]
• All of alleged plagiarist Ann Coulter's alleged plagiarisms in one convenient spot. Ann Coulter is 45. [TPM Muckraker]
• New York Times writers: always wanting more. [E&P]
• Jon Friedman thinks bloggers are loudmouths who resort to name-calling just to be heard. Douchebag. [Marketwatch]

• Meghan Daum is still finding ways to make money off of having lived in Nebraska. [Salon]
• It's been a year since Judy Miller went to jail, and ain't a damn thing changed. [HuffPo]
• Shock magazine review. Apparently it's for illiterates. [WP]
• Whether or not she's a plagiarist, alleged plagiarist Ann Coulter should be careful about picking a fight with The Post, which could show her picture alongside an embarrassing heading. For example: "45-YEAR-OLD PLAGIARIST." [Political Cortex]

Alleged serial plagiarist Ann Coulter, 45, went on the attack against The New York Post, after that paper became the latest outlet to note that Ann's deranged ravings might actually be the ravings of other deranged people. (Those charges have resulted in an investigation by Universal Press Syndicate, the organization that distributes her column, "Crazy Bitch Screaming.") Coulter, in a paragraph she may very well have written herself, says:

There are over 1000 columnists spewing brilliance and lunacy in unfortunately unequal doses, but a survey of 154 of them turns up batshit results: when describing what it's like to write a column, "26% of salaried columnists called it a job and 17% likened it to sex." But what kind of sex? As painful as it is for us to imagine fornicating journalists (shudder), we've got our guesses: When writing, Maureen Dowd goes cowgirl, but John Tierney prefers missionary (so that's why it didnt work). Stanley Crouch would never admit it, but he can't meet deadline without bottoming; Andrea Peyser just reads like a bondage freak. And of course, Ann Coulter's just hate-fucking all sorts of fuzzy baby animals.

• Jeff Jarvis thinks everything's about the web. We're as shocked as you are. [Guardian]
• Dana Priest, John Harwood, and Bill Safire gang up on William Bennett. Maybe Bennett can head down to A.C. to console himself. Oh, right. [E&P]
• Shreveport paper concludes Ann Coulter "more about entertainment and self-promotion." Also plagiarism, allegedly. [Shreveport Times]
• In a loft on Spring Street some dude checks his e-mail, doesn't bother to pretend he's paying attention to David Carr. [NYT]
• Edger Bronfman, Jr., won't be happy until he pisses his entire family fortune into the ground. And not in the good, Warren Buffett kind of way. [Guardian]

Upsetting news for fans of Goebbels- impersonator Ann Coulter: The New York Post, a paper which knows a thing or two about plagiarism, has advanced the ball on the "does she or doesn't she" question, at least if that question regards whether or not the 45-year-old's comical hate speech has been ripped off. Seems that "John Barrie, the creator of a leading plagiarism- recognition system, claimed he found at least three instances of what he calls 'textbook plagiarism'" in Coulter's latest opus, I'm Glad That Your Husbands Died in Those Towers, You Whores, in addition to other "borrowings" in Coulter's syndicated column, which, depressingly, appears in over one hundred newspapers nationwide. Following close on the heels of earlier charges, this represents the all- important third accusation, which means that even Appropriating Annie's staunchest defenders will have to take note. Coulter herself was unavailable for comment, but she might have just been standing sideways.

• Palm Beach airport officials find a bottle of Viagra in Rush Limbaugh's bag, but the prescription is not in his name. The situation could result in a second-degree misdemeanor, and one very unsatisfied lady friend. [CNN]
• People's online appendage is hiring — and much like OK!, they're looking on Craigslist. If that's the best their HR can afford, Time Inc. is suffering more than we all know. [Craigslist]
• Naomi Campbell sashays into court to deal with that silly time she chucked a crystal-encrusted BlackBerry at her housekeeper's head. Alas, she did not wear the coveted denim for her appearance. [TMZ]
• A very pregnant Lizzie Grubman — imagine, if you can, what horror grows within her womb. [New York Scene]
• Ann Coulter scores exactly 666 mentions on the HuffPo People Ranker. Coincidence? Hell fucking no. [HuffPo]
• It was only a matter of time before Billyburg hipsters made themselves their own ironic, Billyburg sitcom. Forgive us for kind of loving it. [The Burg]
• Dan Radosh's love of hardcore porn makes the New York Approval Matrix, but not without the snub of not naming his website. Though his wife is likely relieved. [Radosh]
• This may be the most adorably stupid item ever: hot priests who look like celebrities. Naturally, these men of the cloth have their own calendar. Even more naturally, we've ordered ourselves one for every square foot of HQ. [TMZ]

• Apparently Joe Lieberman has some sort of bet going to determine how stupid voters in Connecticut really are. [YouTube]
• When an outfit like The Nation calls something "the stupidest press release ever" you need to sit up and take note: It's got to be egregiously dumb to stand out amongst all the touts for new bongs and "progressive netroots" conferences. [The Nation]
• American Apparel flack responds to 2005 resignation letter; apparently, Dov Charney is so saintly that if you threw him out of a plane, he'd float up. [Consumerist]
• Philadelphia follows lead of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, bans smoking. Racist cheesesteaks still available. [Philadelphia Will Do]
• Britney Spears has no plans to birth newest Federline in Namibia, decides it's just as easy to sob yourself to sleep here in the U.S.A. [People]
• The Daily News doesn't need a touching quote to make us cry - they can just keep running that unsightly picture of Lloyd Grove each day. [Observer]
• Jack Shafer's not gonna be happy until every single American child is on the drugs. Also, he ran with a tough crowd in high school [Slate]
• Ann Coulter calls for assassination of Pennsylvania congressman; weary nation yawns, wonders who said it first. [ThinkProgress]
• A heartwarming story about respect. [OINY]
• OMG, this is SO. FUCKING. CUTE. [Corporate Casual]

We've yet to see any conclusive proof on the all-important question of Ann Coulter's plagiarism, but we've got a deeper query: Where does all the anger come from? Is Ann manufacturing her outrage, or is there something within her that actually generates this anger? Could it spring from a love of country that has become so twisted by the perversions of liberalism that it has no choice but to lash out with high-decibel hatred? Is its origin an issue with society and its marginalization of voices which dissent against the prevailing orthodoxies of the day? Or maybe it's just having looked like a chubbier, dark-haired version of Drew Barrymore in high school (26 years ago). One for the psychiatrists to figure out, we guess.

Following up on yesterday's suggestion that hate-speech-Pez-dispenser Ann Coulter may have plagiarized material from other writers, we've been informed that this isn't the first time Ann's been accused of lifting material. In 2001, Boston Globe columnist Alex Beam examined a controversy surrounding her 1998 tome, High Crimes and Misdemeanors. This is the book that David Carr called "fairly scholarly," which is interesting, because it appears that the scholarship came from someone else. Beam compared Coulter's prose to that of Michael Chapman, a former colleague of Coulter's who, in 1997, wrote "A Case for Impeachment" in the popular right-wing nutjob periodical Human Events. After the jump, those comparisons:

This morning we asked the question, "How does a venomous harpy who doesn't even believe the hate that she spews continue to play a part in our national conversation?" As it turns out, a more appropriate question would have been "Is the hate spewed by venomous harpy Ann Coulter original?" Blogger The Rude Pundit thinks not. He's got a couple examples of what he considers plagiarism on Annie's part, and while the second one seems a somewhat tenuous argument, the first one looks like a pretty clear case of theft. It's funny: All this time we thought Coulter just made stuff up, like James Frey; as it turns out, she ripped it off, like Kaavya Viswanathan. If only she could be more like Harper Lee, and shut the fuck up.

Hot on the heels of her recent morning show widow-bashing, Ann Coulter makes an appearance in today's Times, where media explicator David Carr takes a look at the New Canaan Natterer. It's a wagging finger piece, complete with fanciful line art, and it allows Carr to get off a few good ones at Coulter's expense: She's cynical, "all knuckles and know-how", her pronouncements are "uninterrupted by conscience, rectitude or logic," and she lies about her age (45, if you're scoring at home). So how does a venomous harpy who doesn't even believe the hate that she spews continue to play a part in our national conversation? Carr digs deep to reveal the shocking formula behind her success: controversy causes sales! More in sorrow than anger, Carr concludes "the fact that she is one of the leading political writers of our age says something about the rest of us". We agree, we're all to blame. Particularly those of us who spend over one thousand words in the nation's Paper of Record perpetuating her publicity.

And on a lighter note, Kathy Griffin's response: "Who wears a cocktail dress at 7 in the morning?!"

• New York mag's sex columnist Amy Sohn spares us her return. Instead, she'll be writing in-depth features for the magazine on matters such as breast milk and bjorns, reasoning that "parenting is hot right now." Yeah? Tell that to our Ortho Tri-Cyclen, crazy lady. [NYO]
• A glimpse into Jared Paul Stern's future at Page Six: "Insiders say that Walter Ripley, currently serving a six-and-a-half-year sentence for racketeering, has been slowly moving in on the cigarette and pornography concession previously run by kidnapper George 'Two Thumbs' Theophilus." [McSweeney's]
• More on Ron Burkle's power in Democratic party. [Kausfiles]
• And even The Onion weighs in. [The Onion]
• MySpace is so dangerous, they've hired former federal prosecutor Hemanshu Nigam to keep the kiddies safe from internet predators. [NYT]
• The only Ann Coulter movie we'd ever see. [Towleroad]
• "JT Leroy" continues to write, albeit for something called Lemon. [FishbowlNY]
• Smirnoff will teach Brooklynites "how to do graffiti." Brooklynites, in return, will teach Smirnoff how to fuck off and die like the corporate whores they are. [Consumerist]

• Lindsay Lohan may have cried wolf about being misquoted in Vanity Fair, but she's been legitimately misquoted in W about acknowledging that her mother and siblings visit their father in jail. There are no such visits and W will be issuing a correction. No correction in VF however — the girl said she puked, and the tape recorder doesn't lie. [Page Six]
• If Alec Baldwin were forced to sleep with right-wing harridan Ann Coulter, he'd "jump out the window" — and then the Republicans would win again. [Lowdown]
• Katie Holmes is so dedicated to smiling her way through this nightmare, she'll blankly grin even while Tom Cruise talks about being abused as a child. Or maybe she's just genuinely happy to hear about that kind of thing. [Page Six]
• After a whopping 82 days of their second try at marriage, Eminem has filed for divorce from Kim. [R&M (2nd item)]
• Paris Hilton says former BFF Nicole Richie is "jealous" and "pathetic." Atta girl, Paris — keep this bitch fight going! Simple Life 15 premieres soon! [Scoop]

MediaCitizen, Timothy Karr, dissects the secret to marketing female pundits to the masses:

We sometimes wonder: what, exactly, does one have to say to no longer be welcome on our television sets? Especially before we've had our coffee?

· Drudge rushes to his gal pal Ann Coulter's defense when a student asks her about anal sex. How rude — everyone knows Drudge is the only one who talks to Annie about assfucking. [Drudge Report]
· Inside Nerve's offices, a world of impotent pain. [Work]
· The Politicker wonders why there are no important, politically engaged blogs in New York City. The short answer: everyone's too busy at the Magician's happy hour. [Politicker]
· Another stab at televisions in taxis — but will the sitcom dialogue drown out the sweet sound of bhangra? [Gothamist]
· Can someone please explain why model Stephanie Seymour insists on wearing sheer black items? Let's mix it up a little bit. [Getty]

Today's item regarding the left-leaning love life of conservative stick pundit Ann Coulter has prompted several kind readers to inform us of a brave new addition to the canon of Ann Coulter fan fiction. (We hope it's fiction, anyhow — or do we?) Now sit down, take a breath, and grab your Santorum-issued lube and beads:

· Ann Coulter just might give a blue-stater some of her malnourished love. She's reportedly shacking with a 20-something to her left who likely rubs on her Nicoderm patch oh-so-right. [Gatecrasher]
· Daily News EIC Michael Cooke has been branded a foot fetishist by a columnist who worked for him during his stint at the Chicago Sun Times. This would explain the otherwise inexplicable. [Page Six]
· Arianna Huffington to Supreme Court Associate Justice Stephen Breyer: "You should blog for me." Sweet Jesus, MAKE HER STOP. [Lowdown]
· I leave town for one freaking week and suddenly Katie Holmes wants to stay a virgin and is thus sucking face with Tom Cruise? What the hell? [Scoop]
· BREAKING: Reality television has no basis in reality. [ELK]
· Actress Mira Sorvino's baby husband Chris Backus throws a temper tantrum; Sorvino calms the amateur ballplayer with his binky. [R&M]