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Jake and James had previous run-ins. James was texting about some really terrible things before he died. The special prosecutor lied about Jake's texts to get the grand jury to bring charges. And that's just some of what Jake's friend, Ben, laid out on the radio with me here.

David Checketts, an investor and owner of sports teams, approached me in late May about investing in the St. Louis Rams football franchise. As a football fan, I was intrigued. I invited him to my home where we discussed it further. Even after informing him that some people might try to make an issue of my participation, Mr. Checketts said he didn't much care. I accepted his offer.

Of course!

Merle Haggard can make a case for himself as the hardest working man in country music these days. The veteran "Okie From Muskogee" (actually Bakersfield, Calif.) will be spending the year promoting a number of new album projects. In October he joined forces with George Jones on "Kickin' Out the Footlights ... Again." On March 20, he'll be part of "Last of the Breed," a collaboration with Willie Nelson and Ray Price. Before the year's out, Haggard also plans to put out his first-ever bluegrass album, "Runaway Mama," and a compilation for Cracker Barrel that features six of his classic...

We seem to be seeing a late-breaking trend towards Republicans, according to Rasmussen. Their daily review of races show momentum shifting back towards the GOP in some key contests: Tennessee: Bob Corker pulling away from Harold Ford Missouri: Dead heat between Jim Talent and Claire McCaskill; both have had slight leads in the last few polls Virginia: James Webb has dropped his five-point lead over George Allen, and it's now a dead heat Maryland: Michael Steele has pulled into a tie with Benjamin Cardin, despite the heavy Democratic Party registration advantage Montana: Conrad Burns has come back from double-digit deficits...

10/02/2006, Volume 012, Issue 03 A good deal of hoopla greeted the grizzled rock-musician Neil Young's musical assault on George W. Bush earlier this year. His album Living With War included a hundred-voice choir singing a song entitled "Let's Impeach the President." For those survivors of anti-Vietnam war protests, and their younger would-be imitators, it was a moment for a sharp intake of breath and the tantalizing hope that maybe now, after all, music really could change the world. I mean, everyone has to sit up and take notice of Neil Young, right? Young's crusading album included another song called...

October 5: No Work. No School. Protest in the Streets. On Thursday, OCTOBER 5TH 2006: All day and into the night, across the country, we must decidedly break the paralysis that still grips too much of American political life. Taking off work, taking off school, shutting down campuses and coming together in mass gatherings, we must let the country and the world know that: ---millions of us reject this illegitimate regime that is as criminal as it is dangerous to humanity & the existence of this planet. ---we refuse to grow accustomed to a political climate that is becoming everyday...

MEMPHIS, Tenn. – Fifty years ago, as Elvis Presley was about to make his first appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” Helen Kreis was staring at the TV screen, barely able to contain her teenage excitement. Then her father pulled the plug. “He was just joking, but before he could get it plugged back in, I was next door at the neighbor’s house. They were watching Elvis, of course, and I wasn’t taking any chances,” said the now-65-year-old Kreis, of Olney, Md. “Everybody was watching Elvis.” Well, maybe not everybody, but nearly everyone in America who had a TV had...

Forget the Reuters “fauxtography” scandal (well, don’t actually forget it) — the Dylan world is rocked this morning by a completely unsourced quote published in the Christian Science Monitor, in an article that attempts some kind of overview of Dylan’s career coinciding with the release of Modern Times . (Thanks to RCB for the tip.) Here it is, in context (bolding mine): Dylan, who declined to comment for this article, remains, as ever, an enigma. (Three years ago, he called himself “a 62-year-old Jewish atheist.'’) But he’s more open than he’s ever been about his past, even opening himself to...

On July 29, 1966, something happened to Bob Dylan while he was riding his motorcycle near his Woodstock, New York, home. Forty years and a small library of biographies later, it’s still hard to be much more precise or detailed than that. What really befell Dylan on that day remains, like so much in this pop-culture icon’s closely guarded life, cloaked in mystery. Ill-defined or not, the accident has been treated as a major event in Dylan’s life; at least one biographer divides the founder of folk-rock’s career into “pre-“ and “post-accident.” What made the event so significant? Since 1961,...

It’s a special thing when artists who’ve achieved greatness in their own right join forces to create a new musical entity. We’ve been blessed with a number of these “supergroups”: Blind Faith, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Velvet Revolver and Golden Smog, to name just a few. When a supergroup clicks, it can be magical. But when they don’t work…look out. The Million Dollar Quintet It’s a little-known fact that the Million Dollar Quartet —Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins— was originally a quintet. The fifth member of this historic December 4, 1956, Sun Studios jam...

The Bush administration is planning to use nuclear weapons against Iran, to prevent it acquiring its own atomic warheads, claims an investigative writer with high-level Pentagon and intelligence contacts. President George W Bush is said to be so alarmed by the threat of Iran's hard-line leader, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, that privately he refers to him as "the new Hitler", says Seymour Hersh, who broke the story of the Abu Ghraib Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal.

In the fall of 1964 I was living in a rented room in north London. The house was owned by a lady who had misplaced her husband somehow — I don’t recall the details. She had a son and a daughter living at home. The daughter was in her early twenties, and working. The son was about my age — I was 19 — and a student at the local art college. I didn’t know much about the art-school scene, and the little I knew I didn’t much like, so I can’t say I found the guy very simpatico. We...

U.S. Special Forces killed Al Qaeda's (search) No. 2 terror mastermind in Iraq (search), Defense Department officials say. FOX News has confirmed that Abu Azzam (search), who was believed to have been in charge of the financing of terrorist cells in the war-torn country, was killed during a raid in Baghdad Sunday. Azzam is thought to be the top deputy to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (search), Iraq's most wanted terrorist.

"WINNER / BEST PICTURE 2004 ANY FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL"

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Two of this year's most-talked-about films have hit snags on the road to awards season, specifically in their quest to secure nominations for the Golden Globes. Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" is out of the running, while Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" cannot compete in the best-drama category. "Fahrenheit" (Lions Gate/IFC/Fellowship Adventure Group) will not be eligible in any Globes categories because it is a documentary. The rules of the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn., which administers the Globes, state that docus are ineligible for consideration in the top film award categories; there is not...

What is he afraid of?

Amsterdam — "No, no, no," Bob Dylan says sharply when asked if aspiring songwriters should learn their craft by studying his albums, which is precisely what thousands have done for decades. "It's only natural to pattern yourself after someone," he says, opening a door on a subject that has long been off-limits to reporters: his songwriting process. "If I wanted to be a painter, I might think about trying to be like Van Gogh, or if I was an actor, act like Laurence Olivier. If I was an architect, there's Frank Gehry. "But you can't just copy somebody. If you...

With $23,240,000 for Friday, Mel is now in the black.

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