Quick Hits

Chew on this, my pretties:

• So now a rich real estate mogul from Chicago owns my hometown paper, to which I still perversely subscribe. And the word I heard is that layoffs in the newsroom will commence forthwith. Apparently the LA bigwigs (Geffen, Broad, Burkle) aren't out of the game yet, and still may buy the LA Times from Zell. Then maybe Hollywood buds like Brian Grazer could be hired to edit the op-ed page full-time!

• I guess the Presidential candidates raised a lot of money in the first quarter, none of it from me, mind you. Most surprising to me was that Mitt Romney was able to scrounge up $23 million based on his outlandish flip-flop-o-rama of a 2007 performance so far. I do agree with Chris Bowers; he'd be a dream candidate in the general (though I don't think McCain or Giuliani will be able to escape the downward spiral of the Republican Party to the extent that he does).

• Rudy now says that he should have done a better job vetting Bernie Kerik. Sounds like he did do a good job, he learned that Kerik had mob ties. It wasn't the vetting, it was the giving a damn ABOUT the vetting where Rudy ran into trouble.

• Mike Huckabee had a good line: "If Republicans in this election vote in such a way as to say a candidate’s personal life and personal conduct in office doesn’t matter,” he declared, “then a lot of Christian evangelical leaders owe Bill Clinton a public apology.” I don't agree that personal conduct should be a major factor, but noting the hypocrisy? Yeah, good show.

• Kos did an early outlook on the 2008 Senate races, and it's worth a read. A lot of seats are potentially in play, no doubt because of the longshot victories of Jim Webb and Jon Tester. And if the Club For Growth pulls another Chafee and primaries Gordon Smith, then there's at least a few seats that will be low-hanging fruit for the Dems.

• James Carville admits that he shouldn't be putting his face on Hillary's fundraising emails, but will CNN list him as a "Hillary consultant," that's the real question.

• Holy crap, the Tamil Tigers have an air force! This is a worrisome trend, technology has advanced to the point where non-state actors can jerry-rig a bunch of airplane kits and make a bomber. There's no bigger concern in the world right now, that a terrorist group could duplicate this. Haven't heard a peep from the White House yet.

• Apple and EMI will sell music tracks without digital rights management technology. Maybe I'd actually buy something from the iTunes store if I knew I could move it between my computers and mp3 devices. Emusic is light-years ahead on this score.

• More culture of corruption:

A defense company that got a federal contract with help from then-Republican Rep. Jim Gibbons, now governor of Nevada, hired Gibbons' wife to do consulting work, according to a published report Friday.

Dawn Gibbons was paid about $35,000 by Sierra Nevada Corp. of Sparks, Nev., in 2004, the same year her husband, who sat on the Armed Services and Intelligence committees, pushed for the company to get a $4 million contract to make a helicopter radar system, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Gibbons is now the governor of Nevada, and these continued troubles could do for that purple state what similar corruption stories did for Ohio in 2006, when Democrats swept every statewide race after having none previously.

• And finally, Scotty's ashes will be beamed up into space. No, really, the family's paying $500 to send the ashes up in a rocket. Apparently Gene Rodenberry's ashes were blasted into space 10 years ago as well. I think the whole funeral specific to a profession you didn't actually perform in real life thing is a little odd, but more power to 'em.