Arianna Huffington for many years sought to downplay the extent of her involvement in the Movement For Spiritual Inner Awareness, a cult ex-members described as sexually and financially exploitive in a series of Los Angeles Times exposés in the 1980s and 1990s. During her then-husband's 1994 U.S. Senate run, the Greek-born socialite claimed movement founder John-Roger (pictured with her at a 2004 book party, left) was a mere friend, and pictures of him holding her daughter were ordered withheld from the group's newspaper, the editor later said. But the Huffington Post editor-in-chief is an ordained "Minister Of Light" in the group and once described John-Roger to Interview as her "way-shower." She relaxed a bit in the New Yorker's Oct. 13 profile , admitting she had been too "defensive" about John-Roger, and allowing writer Lauren Collins to listen to a guided MSIA meditation stored on Huffington's iPod. But she wasn't entirely forthcoming. What about the role she has fashioned for her cult in HuffPo staff development?

Elitist New York media obsessives keep alerting us to the guy who cheered John McCain tonight at the Republican convention with a sign reading "THE Mavrick [sic]." So here's the money shot, liberals! This image was, of course, captured by the Bolshevik intelligentsia at MSNBC, probably through a camera personally operated by Rachel Maddow, since Keith Olbermann was in New York. Cut this patriot a break, linguistic totalitarians. He's probably a farmer or factory worker who could barely afford that finely tailored suit or the donations necessary to score good convention seats, much less a fancy college education. Besides, John McCain was tortured in Vietnam, so you can shut up and apologize for laughing at this now The End.

Forget the speeches and the platform, the delegate votes and the big Barack Obama speech tonight. Political conventions are nothing if not stages on which the craziest campaign volunteers — both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have them! — can strut around in their wildest costumes. No one's been spotted with a sticker on their forehead yet, even though that's a trademark move of Clinton's crazier supporters, or wearing an Abercrombie shirt, even though that's the preferred apparel of Barack Obama's emptiest young volunteers. But the hoi polloi are coming to the big stadium event tonight, so anything is still possible. So far the DNC has seen hats and other attire in flavors vaguely gay, cowboyish, flag-desecrating, Mexican and just plain insane. There's a photo gallery after the jump, culled (mostly) by our own Richard Blakeley from the sea of convention footage.

"The justice stopped a line of questioning into whether a form of group problem solving known as 'feedback learning' could drive its participants insane through invasive examinations of their personal affairs before a group... The commune condones some nontraditional arrangements, like wife-swapping and the pooling of material resources." [Times]

Some of Hillary Clinton's crazy dead-enders, the sort of supporters who like to wear stickers on their foreheads, screamed criticisms of Barack Obama during Clinton's end-of-election speech Tuesday night, nearly interrupting her. Less privileged cultists vented their hysterics on Web forums like HillaryClintonForum.net, where they said Obama "sounds like a donkey," only got into law school thanks to affirmative action and is a front for Islamic extremists. You can practically feel the Democratic party getting stronger. Some excerpts:

Hillary Clinton's suicide cult followers trailed her all the way to Puerto Rico, where they celebrated the Democratic presidential candidate's two-to-one victory over Barack Obama by, once again, wearing stickers on their foreheads, this time at a rally/brainwashing session in San Juan. Only 10 percent of eligible Puerto Ricans bothered to show up at the polls, because they know pandering, disingenuous gringos when they see them . Clinton is, as predicted, using the victory as proof that she won the popular vote in the Democratic primary, an assertion that requires the counting of Clinton's dubious victories in Florida and Michigan. After the jump, a video in which two crazed Clinton cultists scream about the Democratic National Committee's decision to seat only half of the improperly elected delegates from those states.

The Brits are rather less enthusiastic about the whole "free speech" concept than the US is. A 15-year-old kid was holding a sign that said "Cult" at one of the Anonymous protests against Scientology in London. The precocious young scalawag had even memorized a 1984 UK court ruling in which a judge called the science fiction-based religion a "cult." But the police gave him a summons and confiscated his dangerous slogan-bearing poster, and now he has to go to court to defend himself.

Hillary Clinton squeaked by with 23,000 votes in Indiana. The Democratic presidential candidate ran out of money. Supposedly she has canceled public appearances the next few days. Matt Drudge and Tim Russert say it's over. Who is still standing behind Clinton, chanting "Yes she can?" Crazy dead-ender cult people like the ones in the picture above, with goddamned stickers on their foreheads. After the jump, Gawker videographer Richard Blakeley (who spotted the stickers) imagines the conversation that led to this awful visual:

Oprah is scary. There's no denying it. She essentially runs the foremost happy cult in America, surpassing even Martha Stewart at her pre-prison height of popularity. So it's not odd, we guess, that her devotees want to buy all types of tchotchkes with her menacing "O" logo stamped on them like a gang sign for suburban women. But is it really necessary to orgasmically revel in the sweat-stained experience of wearing her old clothes?

HBO's The Wire will cure cancer, save your newspaper and stand for millennia as the highest recorded form of human culture ever, every publication in the world reported this week. Gawker commenters have called the Wire "the best show ever," "completely addict[ing]," "really that good" and "I fucking love this show." But apparently "getting people to watch it is like pulling teeth" — hence the video after the jump, providing four seasons of backstory in four minutes.

Mediabistro founder Laurel Touby and all her Laurel Touby-loving friends have put together a very special Christmas video to wish you happy holidays! From Touby's "media family" (which includes husband Jon Fine, Bonnie Fuller, and Arianna Huffington) to yours (which probably doesn't), please have a "warm and fuzzy New Year!" It's just like that I Am African campaign but without any social good and slightly less funny!

BBC, Church of Scientology involved in online dispute [World Today]

Ah, this is why you shouldn't run tech from Hollywood. A friend of Valleywag was browsing Rolling Stone's Scientology article (to ogle at Tom Cruise and maybe catch a peek of Beck, natch) when he stumbled on this: