A 19-year-old kid from Hawaii, Cameron Cayaban, was fined $100 yesterday after pleading guilty to "harassing, harming or pursuing an endangered species" in March, when he slapped an endangered monk seal named Kermit. What an asshole. From the Honolulu Star-Advertiser:

When most people go on vacation, they forget about their workout routines and restrictive diets. Not Michelle Obama. She is, once again, advocating for children to exercise, this time on her trip to South Africa. How does she do it and never break a sweat?

Congressmen and Senators may be having some trouble with their debt ceiling negotiations today — specifically, Republicans keep walking away of them — but that's not really important. Who cares about "bonds"? Especially today, on Seersucker Thursday!

It's been difficult to follow the developments this week in the fight for same-sex marriage in New York. Someone on Twitter says "EXCLUSIVE: VOTE HAPPENING TONIGHT," and then five minutes later, "UPDATE: NO VOTE EVER." So let's try to make some sense of what's happening.

Huguette Clark, the reclusive copper heiress who recently died at 104, left most of her $400 million estate to a new charity to promote the arts and to her nurse and friend, Hadassah Peri, according to the will filed yesterday in New York. Well, hello nurse!

Good news on the national debt competition front (it is a competition, yes? Check this): the size of America's national debt will soon equal the entire size of our annual economy! I'm no "certified economist" or "New Yorker term-coiner," but I believe the official name for this economic period is "The Tipping Point." Think of it as the gateway to fun!

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, one of the GOP's hot little pieces known as the "Young Guns," moonlights as a weiner who's incapable of negotiating to prevent America from defaulting on its public debt. He's just "pulled out" of his role as the House Republicans' leading negotiator in the ongoing talks with Joe Biden, and has demanded John Boehner settle the remaining "tax issues" so he doesn't have to.

Joseph Brooks won an Academy Award for writing the song "You Light Up My Life." On the minus side, he was accused of being a serial rapist and his son was charged with murdering his girlfriend and then Joseph killed himself.

A civic-minded Sarah Palin got a little Twain-y on Facebook to explain why she's taking a break from Tour de Grift. In a post titled *Sigh* Reports of Tour Demise Are Greatly Exaggerated, she writes, in part: "The coming weeks are tight because civic duty calls (like most everyone else, even former governors get called up for jury duty) and I look forward to doing my part just like every other Alaskan." That's so good and American of her to step up for jury duty. Maybe she even pays her taxes and votes, too?

New age "guru" and friend of Oprah, James A. Ray — who charged people $10,000 to enter his Arizona sweat lodge of death, resulting in the deaths of three people in 2009 — was found guilty of negligent homicide yesterday.

In a rare astronomical convergence, two massive celestial bodies will pass through Manhattan on Thursday. One has the moves of Michael Jackson, a megawatt smile, and has to duck teenage girls' panties wherever he goes. The other is Justin Bieber. But don't plan on getting into, out of, or anywhere around the city in anything besides a subway car: traffic will be a bitch.

Any news story about a fatality on the Great White Way should instantly bring to mind everyone's favorite web slinger, but while Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark has maimed many, it has yet to actually kill anyone. (And let's hope it stays that way.) But it's another musical — the far less death-defying revival of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying — that had to contend with the sad loss of a crew member on Wednesday night, just minutes before the curtain went up on its 100th performance.

President Obama will give a speech on Afghanistan tonight, and the Times is reporting on the troop drawdown numbers he's settled on: 10,000 out by the end of the year and an additional 20,000 by September 2012.

Among the many highlights of former Dior designer John Galliano's trial today in Paris—the recounting of his wild anti-Semitic night, his apology and admission that he was drinking heavily and taking Valium "like candy," his hot lawyer—the most memorable was his outfit. Just look at it!

Demographic data indicates that black people are leaving New York for the South in droves, as the historic "Great Migration" of African-Americans from South to North slowly reverses itself. The city of Atlanta now stands as America's new Black Mecca.

I don't know if anybody out there reads the editorials of the New York Observer—I never do, and I actually read the New York Observer—but, FYI, they are hilariously bad! A sample from the past few months:

We've all been spending the last few weeks skimming through silly, summer news stories like the president having an illegal war in Libya and the global economy drifting perilously close to a double-dip recession, waiting on edge for real news about Sarah Palin getting back on a bus and driving through more states. When oh when will the Tour de Grift resume for its promised second leg through the Heartland? Perhaps never, sadly.

Who says the Senate confirmation process is broken? Today the chamber confirmed Leon Panetta as the next secretary of defense by a vote of 100-0. He'll take over when Sec. Robert Gates leaves at the end of June.

There are many great moments in the "Well-Meaning Mitt Romney Nevertheless Struggles to Interact with Human Beings" genre. But this latest one, involving a child craftsman, ranks right near the top — perhaps a notch or two below the infamous "Who Let the Dogs Out?" incident of Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2008. But maybe we shouldn't get ahead of ourselves.

Are taxes in America too low, or too high? That's a trick question, of course. The taxes on the rich are always too low but too high for the rich, but the rich don't actually pay taxes, so it all turns very epistemological.