It's a frustrating day for pundits! The political world just wants to see Herman Cain's rapid, painful demise, right now, so we can get on with the business of a "Gingrich surge," which can then be brought to its own rapid, painful demise, leading us to the eventual acceptance of Mitt Romney.

As part of the new Basel III financial regulatory standards, certain banks deemed "systemically important" will be required to maintain higher core capital ratios, draw up plans for their own hypothetical unwinding, and keep a certain amount of highly liquid assets on hand lest another crunch come around. You can probably guess many of the banks that these rule-writers had in mind! But for good measure, the official list of 29 banks has been released.

The final tally of victims in News International's hacking scandal looks like it will eventually reach 5,800, according to the Guardian. Which may explain why News Corp. has set up a dedicated web site for victims to apply for an out-of-court settlement. Think of it as a MySpace for targets of Rupert Murdoch's criminal surveillance operation.

In a brand-new blockbuster ad—titled "High Tech Lynching," in a nod to legendary American victim-of-libruls Clarence Thomas—supporters of Ann Coulter Academy of Superior Blackness graduate Herman Cain rail against all the imaginary sexual harassment allegations their man has been facing in the wake of lying litigant-to-be(?) Politico's lie-filled reports.

Paul Parisi, a prisoner at Stateville Correctional Center in Illinois, suffers from fibroneuroma—a disease that causes benign tumors to form on his nerve cells. When Parisi's illness started causing him severe pains, he asked his (taxpayer-subsidized) prison doctors to treat him. So they gave him some (free) aspirin and ibuprofen, the end.

Just because the glistening, gaudy megachurch he founded is about to be sold in bankruptcy does not mean that fancy religious man/teevee preacher Rev. Dr. Robert H. Schuller should have to give up his limo driver. God wants him to have nice things.

Occupy Wall Street protested Goldman Sachs for being an evil bank today and a bunch of people got arrested. Zzzzzz. Sorry, but banks just aren't going to cut it after yesterday's exciting siege of an Oakland Whole Foods. The stakes have been raised: You gotta protest something with sexy elite cachet. Do the Apple Store!

Just as Massachusetts Senate candidate and liberal deity Elizabeth Warren was getting into a meeting with volunteers in Brockton last night, a decidedly unfriendly heckler rose up and started hurling accusations — and what experts are calling a "gender-based epithet"!

It's already been reported that one Herman Cain's sexual harassment accusers got $35,000 in her settlement. Now Politico reports that the other got $45,000. So we're zeroing in on what the so-called "cost of doing business" is.

Creepy 35-year-old Floridian Christopher Chaney said he was "addicted" to hacking into celebs like Scarlett Johansson's email. But he's pleaded not guilty in the case—after issuing a public apology for his hacking.

Disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff knows a thing or two about political corruption and lobbying. And in his new book "Capitol Punishment: The Hard Truth About Washington Corruption From America's Most Notorious Lobbyist," he has a few ideas on how to fix the system:

Seven years (almost eight, at this point) after Janet Jackson's intentional "wardrobe malfunction" at the Super Bowl and the $550,000 fine leveled against CBS is still being argued in court. Just today an appeals court in Philly threw out the case. Now it might be headed back to the Supreme Court.

A third woman has accused Herman Cain of "what she considered aggressive and unwanted behavior by Herman Cain" when she worked at the Herman Cain-led National Restaurant Association in the 1990s.

Prosecutors in Santa Monica, CA have filed 19 criminal charges against the gold sellers Goldline International for allegedly running a "bait and switch operation" using prominent spokespeople like Fox News' Glenn Beck.

As we predicted, international man of mystery and leaky things Julian Assange has lost his appeal against extradition to Sweden, where the authorities still want to ask him some questions about those two alleged sexual assault incidents. Assange won't have to leave his adoptive party pad in Norwich just yet: his lawyers can appeal to the British Supreme Court, and this will require hearings that will delay Assange's actual extradition. But he's definitely running out of legal options—not that he'd ever admit it.

Justice gets at least one positive bit of justice news this week: the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 went into effect yesterday, bringing the huge disparities in sentencing for powder cocaine vs. crack cocaine somewhat closer to sane levels. According to the NYT, there was previously a 100 to one disparity between the amounts of powder and the amount of crack that would draw equal sentences; now, it's 18 to one. Yeah, that's... somewhat less terrible. U.S. lawmakers truly are beacons of fairness.

The parliamentary committee investigating illegal voicemail hacking at News International has released a cache of internal company documents showing that the firm was well aware of just how deep its phone hacking scandal went way back in 2008, when it was still publicly claiming that the problem was limited to a few bad apples.

Herman Cain's wife, Gloria, has not appeared on the trail or given an interview since her husband launched his campaign in May. But now she's "in talks" with Greta van Susteren for a sitdown this Friday! Everyone be nice.

Hillary Clinton's 92-year-old mother, Dorothy Rodham, died late last night, surrounded by family. Rodham had been living in the Clintons' Washington home since 2006. Her illness prompted Secretary Clinton to postpone a trip to London, Istanbul and Afghanistan.

The New York Times analyzed the attendance records of our industrious Congressional representatives and learned that almost 20 members—including presidents of The Future Ron Paul and Michele Bachmann—missed 10 percent of the votes this year. But one Congressman outshone his peers in the art of absenteeism: time-traveling garden gnome Don Young of Alaska, who missed 16 percent of the votes.