When Ross Douthat was named Bill Kristol's replacement at the New York Times, both liberals and conservatives were happy. Now we understand why: The "squishy" right-winger fools everyone into thinking he agrees with them.

Maddow's plucky enthusiasm for boring things is part charming (stimulus!) and part annoying (card check!), but her unhinged fervor last night for a supposed Barack Obama's smackdown of Dick Cheney was actually sort of creepy.

Hey, CNN: You've got a long sit-down with Dick Cheney. Would you like to maybe ask him about the newly-revealed assassination squads that reported directly to him, bypassing all military commanders?

The New Yorker's Seymour Hersh just spilled the beans on the roving killer team in Minnesota, leaving everyone terrified, as the investigative reporter tends to do, since he's constantly revealing, accurately, various secret horrors.

Man mountain of evil shmutz Dick Cheney recently appeared on CNN. Thank God, he's remanded to punditry forevermore. In two more years, he'll just be an evil florist.

Did you know that the reason talk show hosts don't have sidekicks anymore is because of blogs and Dick Cheney? Alessandra Stanley cracked the code!

So, Dick Cheney. Is he really a being so evil that even George W. Bush was alarmed at his cold amorality or is he just trying to make Bush look good?

Publicist (and new mom) Lizzie Grubman turns 38 today. Dick Cheney turns 68. Christian Bale is 35. Gene Hackman is 79. Wilmer Valderrama turns 29. Vanessa Redgrave is 72. Phil Collins is turning 58. Theater impresarios Harold Prince and Bernard Gersten are 81 and 86, respectively. NHL star Chris Simon is 37. Singer/songwriter Josh Kelley is 29. Weekend birthdays—including that of Andre Balazs—after the jump.

Hope and change has come to Google Maps. The official residence of the vice president, obscured until Dick Cheney's last days in office and residence, now shines in satellite sunlight.

The inauguration was a dilemma for late-night shows, which had to joke about an event Americans tended to consider moving and joyous. Surprisingly, the Bush-bashing Daily Show had the most biting commentary.

Vice President Dick Cheney injured his back personally torturing one last enemymoving out of government housing, into a new lair. He'll be at the inauguration in a wheelchair.

Two-and-a-half weeks until the end of Bill Kristol's New York Times contract! What's he up to? UGH.

In four weeks, every single email and document the Bush administration created is required by law to be sent to the National Archives. They are scrambling to make sure that doesn't happen, obv.

Here is your hilarious coda to the Bush presidency: Vice President Dick Cheney has been indicted by a grand jury, in Texas. He is expected to repair to his moonbase shortly, never to return to Earth. [Chron.com]

Is it the stress of the upcoming election? Earlier today Dick Cheney was rushed to the hospital after he experienced atrial fibrillation or an abnormal heartbeat. Now Nancy Reagan is in the hospital with a broken pelvis. John McCain? Still healthy, as far as we know.

When we solicited thoughts on VP candidate Sarah Palin from reality star Brooke Hogan, Brooke's naive response of "Who's that?" initially echoed in our hearts as a poignant reminder of the bygone, pre-Palin media era. You can imagine our confusion, then, when Hogan appeared on today's Howard Stern show and as the subject of the now-notorious Defamer video came up, she coolly denied that we'd ever asked her about Sarah Palin in the first place:Still, her tenuous grasp on the memory is understandable, as proven when Stern and Co. continue to quiz her about presidential candidates (asked Obama's first name, she carefully answers, "'Barack' or something?"), forcing an overwhelmed Hogan to cry out, "There's too many friggin' people in office!" Perhaps that would explain the blank she draws when asked the name of the current Vice President? The answer, dear Brooke, is "Dick Cheney," and it's as plain as the nose on your face (which, if you're not careful, Mr. Cheney will shoot off). [Howard Stern]

Here's a photo from Vanity Fair's article about Oliver Stone's upcoming George Bush biopic W. that is, deliberately we assume, reminiscent of their own cover portrait of the actual war mongers. We have the real Colin Powell, Dick Cheney, and Dubya on the left and then Jeffrey Wright (Powell), Richard Dreyfuss (Cheney), and Josh Brolin (Dubs) on the right (along with fake Karl Rove and fake Paul Wolfowitz). The teaser trailer suggests that the impersonations (if that's what you want to call them), especially Brolin's, are spot-on and we think the likenesses are pretty uncanny, too. Anyone you would have cast differently?

• The war between News Corp. and NBC rages on. Today Page Six reports that Keith Olbermann is so concerned about being "assassinated," he's refusing to cover the Republican National Convention unless MSNBC springs for a more secure location. They also claim none of Luke Russert's new colleagues at NBC News like him, especially since he got to ride around the convention in golf carts while they had to walk. [P6, P6]

• Luke Russert golf-carted around the Democratic convention like some kind of boy king while his bitter coworkers had to hoof it. Obviously this rumor is made up, because everyone knows NBC correspondents air their bitter grievances only on camera. [P6]

"There's a new Star Wars movie, and no one cares," announced New York Times Opinionator blogger Chris Sullentrop in a Friday afternoon post, about which we would not have cared if it hadn't been closely followed by sixteen ominous words: "(Warning: if you click through the link there will be language that The Times frowns upon.)" (Warning: Spoiler alert: "Fuck.") Okay so: every newspaper has anachronistic decency standards, but the Times is the most stubbornly prudish. One time, for instance, they refused to print the name of the bar The Cock. Another time, Dick Cheney told Patrick Leahy to "Fuck off" on the Senate floor on the same day the Senate passed the "Defense of Decency Act" and everyone printed the word then — except the Times. One special historical figure has been directly quoted uttering those four letters in the Times's database-searchable history and it is:Monica! Duh. Remember the Starr Report? Bet you never thought you'd look back on that era as one in which the mainstream media seemed less disingenuously pious.

Oliver Stone's semi-comic masterpiece W may yet make its mid-October release deadline, as reports speculate Richard Dreyfuss is close to signing on as vice president Dick Cheney. The role was the only one Stone had not cast for the film, which started shooting last week in Louisiana. The 60-year-old Brooklynite who once fought off Jaws, mashed-potatoed his way into an alien abduction in Close Encounters of the Third Kind and scored a Best Actor Oscar for The Goodbye Girl, will be entrusted with Cheney's despotic war hawk in the weeks ahead.