Well look at that, the stuffy old cranks in our House of Lords are doing "Secret Santa" this year! America really is becoming weak. So far, 58 of 100 senators have signed up for the gift-exchange promoted by Sens. Al Franken and Mike Johann. There's a $10 gift limit, but you just know that Lieberman's going to break the rules and buy someone a Mercedes, like an ass.

Patrick J. Sullivan Jr. was the beloved Republican sheriff of Arapahoe County, Colo., for nearly 20 years before he retired in 2002. In 2001, he was named national Sheriff of the Year. Yesterday he was arrested by the department he used to run for offering a man meth in exchange for sex.

Does Herman Cain just drink constantly on the campaign trail? We didn't hear much about this as he was becoming the frontrunner, but the faster he plummets, and the more his allies turn on him, the more delicious these stories should become! It's already starting.

Warren Buffett, the third-richest man in the world, is buying the Omaha World-Herald, his hometown newspaper. The purchase price has not been revealed. But even if it was, oh, $50 million, it would be a purchase for Warren Buffett approximately proportional to you buying a cheap pair of shoes.

In today's Muslim threat news: Some New York cabbies are Muslims! And they pray, to their Muslim god! And when they do, they illegally double-part their taxicabs on the street, because Muslims "obey religious laws over parking rules."

After a solid decade in the "luxury cars whose jaw-dropping price tags are a marketing tool rather than an accurate reflection of the cost of the good in question" business, Daimler is putting an end to its Maybach line, due to the fact that it somehow did not make a profit even though you could buy enough Lexuses to form a Voltron-like robot for the price of a single Maybach. Anyhow. On to the real news here:

Successfully smuggling little bags of pot (and pot seeds) into jail is difficult enough. How do you smuggle in a whole lady? Especially a stripper-lady, who might look conspicuous in her Lucite goldfish shoes, neon spandex underpants, and bare-boobs ensemble?

The Tucker Carlson-helmed Daily Caller publication has an EXCLUSIVE story today that disrupts the very fabric of our political system and could even alter the trajectory of the cosmos for millions of years to come, killing us all retroactively, too, and so on! THE HEADLINE, PLEASE: "Exclusive: Obama in 2006: I ‘stole' book title ‘Audacity of Hope' from Rev. Wright, ‘my pastor.'" Has your face begun to melt yet, or are your eyes merely exploding?

The other storylines are spent: Newt Gingrich surging, Herman Cain maybe dropping out, Mitt Romney hanging in there, still, while being hated by his political party. But about our man Rick Perry? Sure, he's a terrible candidate who screws himself over each time he does anything in public. And his campaign's funding has mostly dried up, although he still has a modest stack of summer cash in the bank. How will he come back, even though he probably won't? It is a three-part strategy.

Turns out that the trio of rich asset managers might not actually be the winners of the $254 million Powerball. A different and richer anonymous client of the bankers is the real winner here. And it makes sense: those pinched and constipated faces are not the faces of lottery winners.

Poor old Herman Cain has told his senior staff on a conference call this morning that he's "reassessing" whether to stay in the race and will make his final decision in "the next few days," National Review reports.

Earlier this year, New York times photographer Lynsey Addario was kidnapped in Libya while covering that nation's revolution. That sucks. Shortly after being freed, she was shut out at the National Magazine Awards. That sucks. And last month, she was strip searched by Israeli soldiers—while pregnant! Shitty year, all around!

Each year, Black Friday is plumbed for symbols of American decline and avarice. Oh, look at the riffraff with their Wal-mart pepper-sprayings and $2 waffle iron riots! But now it's Cyber Monday, which is so cool and new.

We're still monitoring Mitt Romney for the moment in which his bottled-up frustrations rise to an unsustainable level and he explodes, in triumphant fashion. But what would it look like? Well, there'd be body parts to go along with the machine parts laying all over the place, of course, since it would be an explosion. But stories of his previous outbursts offer some clues for what the build-up to the final blast might look like.

As a rule, you'd best avoid peering behind the scenes of your favorite online pastime; you probably won't like what you find. Drill into the backstory of "Mafia Wars" creator Zynga, for example, and you'll find a sweatshop where ruthless managers closely monitor the performance of even cafeteria workers, and where employees are pitted against one another and bullied into emotional breakdowns.

In your mordant Monday media column: NotW readers disappear, newspapers must advertise, Keith Gessen's pale jail tale, the Tribune Co. screws more shareholders, in-house news, and your headline fuckup of the day.

The writing, so to speak, was on the wall, and now, it seems, what we all feared most shall, in fact, come to pass: our brothers and sisters on Wall Street—from the 18th floor to the 80th floor, from the fixed income desk to the investment banking division, from Goldman Sachs to Lehman... no, Lehman is dead... to WaMu... no, I mean, you know what we mean—well, they're all suffering, that's all. Just like the rest of us. It won't be a pretty Christmas this year on Wall Street. Not with paychecks projected to drop (*scary music*) as much as thirty percent!! From the WSJ:

High-school student Emma Sullivan has decided not to follow her principal's orders and write an apology to the Republican governor of Kansas, Samuel Dale Thinskin Crybaby Brownback, for tweeting that he #blowsalot. She was only speaking the truth. Apologizing would be phony and politician-y.

Occupy Philadelphia was supposed to evacuate its OnePercenterville by 5 PM EST Sunday. On the opposite coast, Occupy LA was supposed to tear down its camp Monday at 12 AM PST lest their tents turn into pumpkins, and their protest footwear turn into Nike child-labor shoes. But as we type this, both Occupies are still occupyin'.

By tweaking the H5N1 bird flu virus a bit, a Netherlands-based virologist and his crew have created a highly contagious version that, if ever unleashed upon the general population, could kill millions of us. But don't fret! Their research, like that one Rolling Stones documentary, hasn't been released to the public. At least not yet, anyway.