• Bush summoned Sulzberger and Keller to Washington earlier this month in a last-ditch attempt to get them not to run the domestic-spying story, reports Jon Alter. [Newsweek]
• And, says Greg Mitchell, as the Times's handling of the domestic-spying story increasingly seems to be another major management fuckup at the paper, George W. Bush proves he is the true Teflon president. [E&P]
• Bigtime journalists aren't paid enough, argues Slate's Daniel Gross, who, charmingly, hasn't yet realized that of course we'll never make enough to live like real human beings anywhere in New York City. [Slate]
• Redesigned TV Guide, which now looks basically nothing like TV Guide, is doing great numbers. But they may not be great enough. [WWD]
• Carl Icahn, who hasn't been happy with Time Warner management in a while, ain't at all happy with the proposed TW-Google deal. [NYP]
• Radar published what might have been the best sentence of magazine writing this year: "In 2004, a man playing Pluto was run over and killed by a 'princess float' in the Share a Dream Come True parade at Disney World's Magic Kingdom." Plus Peter Carlson's other "wild and wacky" magazine moments from 2005. [WP]

• More cuts are coming at Time Inc., according to David Carr. [NYT]
• Time Warner picks Google search over Microsoft for AOL, and sells the the search company a 5 percent stake in AOL — which means Parsons ain't selling off the whole thing. [NYT]
• The Times gets it from two sides on wiretapping story: Some media folks don't like the paper held the story for so long, while Bush doesn't like that the paper pointed out he's spying on citizens. [USAT]
• Jon Friedman thinks the new Nightline sucks. [MW]
• Media Guy Simon Dumenco looks back at the 10 big media-news stories of 2005 — nearly all of them bad for the biz — and realizes where it'll all end: Google Hunting and Gathering. [Ad Age]

Poll: Most Say Bush Has No Iraq Victory Plan [CNN]
Bush Victory Plan [CNN]

Maybe we misunderstand our colonial history, but — what with a government far away attempting to manage its colonial outpost, an insurrection by the locals against those foreign rulers, a king named George who may well be crazy — doesn't that analogy make us the bad guys?

Funny thing: When CNN goes with a "Bush is the Messiah" photo, we almost believe what he's telling us.

It's nice to see, every now and then, that Americans aren't quite as gullible as we often fear they are:

Cindy Sheehan, spotted by a spy on the 6 train today. We support the lady, of course. But we don't really see how she expects to finally get the president's attention when she's on the IRT.

"Good one," President Bush said in an aside to Prime Minster Shinawatra. "Wish I'd thought of that first. Heh."

• After Blairgate and Judygate (and with Wen Ho Leegate and Stephen Hatfillgate pending) Times cancels J.T. LeRoy piece for T after New York convinces them he may or may not exist. [WWD]
• Is People the new Us Weekly? Keith Kelly seems to think so, saying that Time Inc. celeb title is up while its competitors are down. [NYP]
• Bill and Cathie at ASME: Buckley and Hearst's Black to receive lifetime-achievement awards from the mag group. [AdAge]
• Tokion sold, as if that makes any difference to your life. [Folio:]
• Taking a cue from his pals' pal Judy, Bush, too, should take a severance and a letter to the editor and just retire already, says Greg Mitchell. [E&P]
• It seems the kids like the blogs. [News.com]

Wal-mart and the web? Well, yeah, OK.

We know what happens if we go to Google, type "failure," and click "I'm feeling lucky." It's the same thing that would have happened if we did that at any point in the last few years. It's not new, your friend wasn't the first to discover it, and, no, we don't need to act quickly before Google "fixes" it. (First Nexis mention: December 2003, in The Washington Post.) We understand you mean well, but, please, stop emailing about it.

CNN answers the questions you never thought to ask:

• In new VF, producer Mary Mapes tells her side of Memogate. We can't bring ourselves to read it; perhaps you can. [VF (pdf)]
• In war over unauthorized Donald Trump bio, author calls subject a cartoon character; Trump replies by proving the point. [NYP]
• CBS News White House reporter John Roberts didn't really mean any sexual innuendo when he called Judge Sam Alito "sloppy seconds." We never would have figured that out if Public Eye didn't get to the bottom of it for us. [Public Eye]
• Reader's Digest chairman and CEO retires, looks forward to actually being old enough to read the magazine. [Folio:]
• Steve Case finally leaves TWX board; even so, stock still trading in upper teens. [AP via NYT]
• "Jeff Gannon" reappears, now as a columnist in the gay press. Shockingly, some gays react bitchily. [E&P]

In fairness, we imagine "Bush Picks Not-Unqualified Judge," or, "Bush Picks Penis'd Judge" — which are the two actually newsworthy parts of this nomination — don't quite pass the Al Siegal test.

Nicknames? Shit. Who knew people with nicknames were getting killed? Now the tide will definitely turn against the war.

Newsweek reports in today's edition that part of the reason the Harriet Miers Supreme Court nomination is going so badly — in addition to the obvious fact that it's because she's blatantly unqualified — is that the White House Counsel's office, which she heads, and which gathers information to support the president's court nominations, is just too overloaded right now. "They really should have just said, 'We have too much on our plate,'" a former White House official told the mag.

Top three headlines on NYTimes.com a few minutes ago:

This email arrived the other day:

Bush Job Rating Continues to Drop [CNN.com]

See, you might think this is shockingly bad, sad news on CNN.com's front page right now, reflecting Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers's total lack of informed judicial opinions or willingness to do anything than exactly what the White House wants: