"...some airline passengers watching the oscar-nominated film "sideways" on foreign flights are, in fact, hearing "ashcroft" as a substitute for a certain seven-letter epithet commonly used to denote a human orifice.

the post's monte reel, based in buenos aires, tells us he heard the former attorney general's name substituted at least twice in "sideways" dialogue when he watched the film earlier this week on an aerolineas argentinas flight to lima, peru. the movie was shown in english and the dubbing was done "in the actual voices of the actors," reel reports. star thomas haden church utters the a-word."

schneider loathes dukes of hazzard redo

look out stifler, duck for cover jackass, disguise yourself in a tin of 'chicken of the sea' simpson......the original "duke" is out to get ya.

john schneider, one of the original 'good ol boys', tells iesb that if he's asked to cameo in the new "dukes of hazzard movie" - starring the aforesaid sean william scott, johnny knoxville and jessica simpson - he'll give the offer the birdie. "i wouldn't drive into that movie even with your car", the "smallville" actor says.

according to the site, schneider isn't happy that the movie is going to be a spoof of the old television series.

jon: ted, you're sort of 'old media,' you're an old media reporter. what are your thoughts on, in your mind, the role of these new media figures?

stephen: jon, the vast majority of bloggers out there are responsible correspondents doing fine work in niche reporting fields like gilmore girl fan fiction, or cute things their cats do or photoshopped images of the gilmore girls as cats. that's great. where i draw the line is with these "attack bloggers," just someone with a computer who gathers, collates and publishes accurate information that is then read by the general public. they have no credibility. all they have is facts. spare me...

"and what's so frightening is that we're seeing the beginnings of the first post-9/11 generation � the kids who first became aware of the news under an "americans need to watch what they say" administration, the kids who've been told that dissent is un-american and therefore justifiably punished by a fine, imprisonment � or the loss of your show on abc."

on "countdown," a nightly news hour on msnbc, the anchor, keith olbermann, led off with a classic "daily show"-style bit: a rapid-fire montage of sharply edited video bites illustrating the apparent idiocy of those in washington. in this case, the eight clips stretched over a year in the white house briefing room - from february 2004 to late last month - and all featured a reporter named "jeff." in most of them, the white house press secretary, scott mcclellan, says "go ahead, jeff," and "jeff" responds with a softball question intended not to elicit information but to boost president bush and smear his political opponents. in the last clip, "jeff" is quizzing the president himself, in his first post-inaugural press conference of jan. 26. referring to harry reid and hillary clinton, "jeff" asks, "how are you going to work with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?"

if we did not live in a time when the news culture itself is divorced from reality, the story might end there: "jeff," you'd assume, was a lapdog reporter from a legitimate, if right-wing, news organization like fox, and you'd get some predictable yuks from watching a compressed video anthology of his kissing up to power. but as mr. olbermann explained, "jeff gannon," the star of the montage, was a newsman no more real than a "senior white house correspondent" like stephen colbert on "the daily show" and he worked for a news organization no more real than the onion. yet the video broadcast by mr. olbermann was not fake. "jeff" was in the real white house, and he did have those exchanges with the real mr. mcclellan and the real mr. bush.

"jeff gannon's" real name is james d. guckert. his employer was a web site called talon news, staffed mostly by volunteer republican activists. media matters for america, the liberal press monitor that has done the most exhaustive research into the case, discovered that talon's "news" often consists of recycled republican national committee and white house press releases, and its content frequently overlaps with another partisan site, gopusa, with which it shares its owner, a texas delegate to the 2000 republican convention. nonetheless, for nearly two years the white house press office had credentialed mr. guckert, even though, as dana milbank of the washington post explained on mr. olbermann's show, he "was representing a phony media company that doesn't really have any such thing as circulation or readership."

how this happened is a mystery that has yet to be solved. "jeff" has now quit talon news not because he and it have been exposed as fakes but because of other embarrassing blogosphere revelations linking him to sites like hotmilitarystud.com and to an apparently promising career as an x-rated $200-per-hour "escort." if mr. guckert, the author of talon news exclusives like "kerry could become first gay president," is yet another link in the boundless network of homophobic republican closet cases, that's not without interest. but it shouldn't distract from the real question - that is, the real news - of how this fake newsman might be connected to a white house propaganda machine that grows curiouser by the day. though mr. mcclellan told editor & publisher magazine that he didn't know until recently that mr. guckert was using an alias, bruce bartlett, a white house veteran of the reagan-bush i era, wrote on the nonpartisan journalism web site romenesko, that "if gannon was using an alias, the white house staff had to be involved in maintaining his cover." (otherwise, it would be a rather amazing post-9/11 security breach.)

"video footage showed shoppers fighting over furniture - one man was pinned against a wall by a burly customer as they argued over a sofa - while others were stretchered into ambulances.

after 30 minutes the store was closed, staff holding up signs written in marker pen against the glass doors to announce the fact. the crowd refused to disperse and some tried to smash their way in.

more than 30 police tried to keep the peace amid fights between ikea staff and shoppers. firefighters freed trapped customers. assistant divisional officer william bird said: "i have not attended anything like this before." traffic on the a406 seized up as people stuck in jams for more than an hour abandoned their cars."

"a few basic reforms could help end the devastating consequences of combining sports and intoxication. professional sports leagues, teams, stadiums, colleges and vendors need to review and reform their alcohol policies. limiting tailgate parties, prohibiting open containers, restricting the amount of alcohol sold to a single customer, training staff to recognize signs of intoxication, and monitoring staff and customer behavior are among the reforms needed. some colleges ban alcohol altogether at sporting events. why should college football be saturated with beer advertising and drunken behavior? ohio state provides a sensible approach to the problem."

"intelligent design proponents do question whether random mutation and natural selection completely explain the deep structure of life. but they do not doubt that evolution occurred. and intelligent design itself says nothing about the religious concept of a creator."

a manhattan judge declared friday that the section of state law that forbids same-sex marriage is unconstitutional -- the first ruling of its kind in new york and one that if upheld on appeal would allow gay couples to wed.

state supreme court justice doris ling-cohan ruled that the words "husband," "wife," "groom" and "bride" in relevant sections of the domestic relations law "shall be construed to mean 'spouse,"' and "all personal pronouns ... shall be construed to apply equally to either men or women." ling-cohan ruled on the side of five same-sex couples who were denied marriage licenses. she said the new york city clerk could not deny a license to any couple solely on the ground that the two are of the same sex.

dr. eugenie scott, executive director of the national center for science education, said she heard "all the time" from teachers who did not teach evolution "because it's just too much trouble."

"or their principals tell them, 'we just don't have time to teach everything so let's leave out the things that will cause us problems,' " she said.

...when told of the exact text of the first amendment, more than one in three high school students said it goes "too far" in the rights it guarantees. only half of the students said newspapers should be allowed to publish freely without government approval of stories.