In an interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes” aired on Sunday, Joe Biden, who announced this week that he would not run for president, disputed accounts that his son Beau, on death’s door, told him to run for president. “Nothing like that ever, ever happened,” Biden said.

How do you get a quote from Sony Pictures chair Amy Pascal for a column you want to write about her? It helps if you're good friends with her husband—and it helps even more if you show him your column in advance to assure Pascal that the coverage is positive.

The New York Times' Maureen Dowd journaled through a THC-infused hallucination this week and published it as a column—and as it turns out, she's a really paranoid stoner.

In an "opinion" column mostly devoid of opinions, Maureen Dowd seems to express some wistful hope for a future internet that forgets and buries all references to our past mistakes and transgressions. That's Maureen Dowd, admitted plagiarist.

"Frozen In a Niche?" is the headline of today's Maureen Dowd column, as well as the headline of Maureen Dowd's career.

Her 20-year supply of pop-political topics exhausted, Maureen Dowd goes back and starts running 1992 columns over again.

Maureen Dowd's column in today's New York Times created a mini-shit storm today, with several political pundits accusing her of using anti-Semitic imagery to make one of her typical points, which is that Romney is bad, etc. Basically, Dowd said Dan Senor, one of Romney's advisors, was a "neocon puppet master" who was trying to help neocons "slither back" into power. According to several "experts on American-Israeli relations," this sort of language is similar to ancient anti-Semitic imagery, like when Matt Taibbi called Goldman Sachs a vampire squid.

Half a year has passed since we pointed out the obvious: the New York Times has a columnist problem. (The columnists are bad, is the problem). The paper's made major editorial changes in the intervening six months. So has the columnist problem been solved? Not a bit.

Multimillionaire musician Bob Dylan performed in China this week and, shockingly, did not sing ancient protest song "Blowin' in the Wind." This, writes New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, "is a whole new kind of sellout."

Earlier this month, former Senator Chris Dodd became the new CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America, making him, in essence, Hollywood's chief lobbyist. This was notable, since Dodd—a onetime favorite of populists—had repeatedly promised not to become a lobbyist when he left the Senate. Glenn Greenwald reflected on the depressing statement that Dodd's hypocrisy made about the entire American political system:

It is 2011, and Maureen Dowd wrote a column about how people are mean on the Internet. Were you aware that Yahoo! comments are often disgusting?

Click to viewElizabeth Edwards, the long-suffering wife of crinkly-faced twit John Edwards, died today after a long battle with breast cancer. So get ready for D.C. establishment types who hated her when she was alive to pretend they admired and liked her!

Is this Maureen Dowd comic book awesome (superhero journalist!) or offensive (she's, uh, naked)? I'm leaning toward awesome.

Every Washington pundit-type wants Obama to be more emotional about this damn oil spill. Most people want him to be angrier. Obama has told them he is "angry and frustrated," already. But they do not want him just to be angry. They need him to express that anger. CBS White House correspondent Chip Reid, when told by Press Secretary Robert Gibbs that Obama is mad, asked "Can you describe it? Does he yell and scream? What does he do?" Yeah, like, does he chase Rahm Emanuel around the West Wing with a decorative samurai sword? What does he do?

Oh boy, Maureen Dowd pissed off Marty Peretz! How can I not click on a blog post from The New Republic's prickly, racist sometimes-owner headlined "Maureen Dowd And The Saudi Royals"?

Maureen Dowd's column yesterday was a predictably amusing interview with would-be Senator Harold Ford. The funniest line was his bizarre assertion that Eleanor Roosevelt opposed Bobby Kennedy's Senate run from beyond the grave.

It hasn't been the easiest year for Vikram Pandit, but the Citigroup CEO has at least one reason to smile today: It's his 53rd birthday. Cranky 60 Minutes commentator Andy Rooney turns 91 today. Fox News anchor Shepard Smith is 46. Maureen Dowd of the New York Times is turning 58. Director Steven Soderbergh turns 47. Jason Bateman is 41. Dave Grohl is turning 41. LL Cool J is 42. Model Angela Lindvall is celebrating her 31st birthday. And Faye Dunaway turns 69 today.

Peter Feld counted nine separate references to The Flintstones (a primetime tv cartoon from the 1960s) in Maureen Dowd's op-ed columns of the 2000s. But what other tv shows did Maureen compare everything to, in this decade?

Ombudsmen, the Internal Affairs officers of journalism, should be feared and respected—but mostly: feared—by their respective publications. It's their job. The New York Times' Clark Hoyt? Quickly going soft. The Washington Post's Andrew Alexander? Pussywhipped. What's happening here?

Maureen Dowd, this weekend: Obama should try to be "dynamic" like Sarah Palin, instead of all this "dithering" and bowing. Today, Ross Douthat writes a "reality-based" column on more or less the same topic!