Forget David Axelrod and John Podesta. Barack Obama needs to listen to Hollywood.

A pair of beautiful actresses have left messages for the President-Elect, offering him advice on the key issues of sex appeal and marijuana.

"God help me because I hope I don’t get in trouble for saying this, but I think he's so articulate and so intelligent and so charismatic when he delivers speeches, that there is something very sexy about that... very! And he's also very slim and lean," Megan Fox said this week.

While the Transformers star was drooling over Obama, Pamela Anderson was putting together an agenda. In a recent blog entry, the busty blonde advises Obama to stop animal testing, bring the troops home safely and legalize pot.

Let's quote her stance on the last issue:

"I think we should Legalize Marijuana... this would make our borders less corrupt and then I think eventually this will be more secure option and save children in the long run – we should be able to farm Hemp in America - it’s just silly - it would create jobs - and be good for environment..."

We're gonna assume Anderson is also is favor of quicker divorce settlements and tax exemptions for sex tape stars.

Throughout the election cycle President-elect Barack Obama and his campaign remained tight-lipped. These days, its tougher to keep a secret. (EMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images) Throughout President-elect Barack Obamas primary and general election campaigns, his political inner circle took an enormous...

E! Online - Megan Fox has a thing for President-elect Barack Obama!

Stop 1 on Chris Matthews' Whirlwind Tour of LA — which will bring him to his reunion with Ellen DeGeneres — was the "Tonight Show with Jay Leno." Tuesday night Matthews sat down with Leno to discuss the Obama presidency, the possibility of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, the bailout of the auto industry,

Matthews admitted to Leno that he has been, and still is, "partial" to Barack Obama.

"Well, I'm partial," he said. "You got me. You nailed me! I've been watching politics since I was a kid and all the way back to the days of Kennedy and Nixon and I've never seen anything like Barack Obama. No one's ever been as inspiring."

Matthews said that Obama's run was "stunning to [him] from the time it started" and described Obama as "a remarkable political reality."

When Leno brought up the topic of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, Matthews laughed, saying, "Come on, you're setting me up!" Matthews is a frequent Clinton-antagonist who was recently overheard on a train trashing her as a Cabinet pick.

The always-excited "Hardball" host may was also passionate about the auto industry bailout. Matthews told Leno, a well-known car enthusiast, that if the CEOs of the "Big Three" auto companies are going to become government employees through a bailout, they ought to accept government salaries.

"These auto company CEOs have not had a good year, or a good decade, and they're still making hundreds of millions of dollars," Matthews said. "I think we ought to say, if we're going to be in a bailout situation...stop getting paid like capitalists. You didn't do it," he added, suggesting a $400,000/year cap on their salaries (equivalent to what the President makes).

Watch:

Megan Fox has a thing for President-elect Barack Obama! "I think he's very sexy," the sultry starlet said at last night's party celebrating GQ's annual Men of the...

CSI: NY will celebrate its 100th episode on Wednesday (Nov. 19) night, but on a conference call with the press, few reporters wanted to talk to Hill Harper about his CBS hit. Instead, they wanted to discuss one of Harper's friends from law school.

E! Online - Barack Obama's television approval ratings are through the roof.

Barack Obama's television approval ratings are through the roof. Last night's 60 Minutes, featuring a sit-down with the president-elect and wife Michelle Obama, scored...

And I'm Barack Obama: The post-election afterglow scored a direct hit last night on 60 Minutes, where the President-elect and wife Michelle's rangy hour-long interview with Steve Kroft drew 24...

GQ has named Barack Obama one if its "Men of the Year" with a cover and article — penned by Senator Ted Kennedy — that went to press before Election Day.

Obama is joined by Michael Phelps, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Jon Hamm, each of whom grace one of GQ's four "Men of the Year" covers.

GQ named Obama "Game Changer of the Year," and an excerpt of Kennedy's piece appears below:

As I write this, Barack Obama and John McCain have just completed their final debate, and the country is a few short days away from a historic election. Of course, I'm doing all that I can for my candidate. But whether he wins or loses, Barack Obama has ushered in a new era of American politics with a limitless vision of a better future that will endure for many years to come. Through his candidacy, Obama has provided a glimpse of a stronger, better, fairer America, where change comes from the bottom up, where we all come together to meet the great challenges of our time. He has inspired millions of new voters of all ages, races, and incomes to lend their voices for real change. For in this man, Americans can see not just the audacity but the possibility of hope for the country that is yet to be....

That is what I saw when I enlisted in his campaign. I saw new hope for a way out of the economic wilderness and for a just and fair prosperity that rewards the many and not the few. New hope that this nation will at last lead the world to turn the tide of global warming and turn aside from an energy future that threatens the future itself. New hope that we will teach all our children well. New hope--and this is the cause of my life--that we will guarantee for every American quality affordable health care as a fundamental right and not as a privilege. New hope--and this is the great cause of America itself--that we shall overcome once and for all the setting of race against race, gender against gender, ethnic group against ethnic group, and straight against gay.

Win or lose, with the Obama candidacy the torch has been passed, and I hope I made a difference.

Read Kennedy's full article about Obama here. The "Men of the Year" issue goes on sale nationally November 25, and will be online at men.style.com tomorrow morning.

The cover shot, which appears below, was taken by Mark Seliger in Philadelphia on October 3. The photographer was only given 1 minute, 45 seconds for the entire shoot:

This inside black and white shot was taken by Seliger at a rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan on October 2:

The issue also includes photographs of Ted Kennedy — declared a "Legend" by the magazine — at his home in Hyannisport, MA on October 14. One of the photos appears below:

All photos: Mark Seliger/GQ

On Sunday, in his first television interview since winning the Presidential election, Barack Obama repeated his campaign pledge to close the prison at Guantánamo Bay and to ban the use of torture by US forces. Speaking on 60 Minutes, he explained, "I have said repeatedly that I intend to close Guantánamo, and I will follow through on that. I have said repeatedly that America doesn't torture. And I'm going to make sure that we don't torture. Those are part and parcel of an effort to regain America's moral stature in the world."

Ever since Obama began meeting with his transition team, leaks, gossip and rumors concerning the new administration's plans to close Guantánamo, and the hurdles they will have to surmount, have been filling the airwaves and the front pages of newspapers. In an attempt to separate fact from fiction and to provide useful information to the President-Elect, I'd like to offer my advice, based on the three years I have spent studying Guantánamo in unprecedented detail, as the author of The Guantánamo Files, the first book to tell the stories of all the prisoners, and as a commentator and analyst responsible for numerous articles on Guantánamo in the last 18 months.

As the President-Elect and his transition team are no doubt aware, there are three categories of prisoners at Guantánamo: around 50 prisoners cleared for release or approved for transfer after multiple military reviews; up to 80 prisoners regarded as eligible for trial by Military Commission (the system of "terror trials" conceived in the Office of the Vice President in November 2001); and another 125 prisoners who have long been regarded as "too dangerous to release but not guilty enough to prosecute."

However, before looking in detail at what should be done with each of these groups of prisoners, it's important to understand how the administration came to hold prisoners without charge or trial for nearly seven years, and how it came to put some of them forward for trial in a novel and untested system for "terror suspects," and to examine the dangerously flawed manner in which the prisoners were seized, held, interrogated and appraised as a threat to the United States.

9/11: an excuse for unfettered executive power

In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the nation's response was mainly driven forward by Vice President Dick Cheney, former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and their close advisors (including, in particular, Cheney's legal counsel, David Addington). According to the "new paradigm" dreamt up by these men, prisoners seized in the "War on Terror" were regarded neither as criminals nor as Enemy Prisoners of War protected by the Geneva Conventions, but as "illegal enemy combatants," who could be held indefinitely without charge or trial. The primary justification for this was a military order drafted by Cheney and Addington in November 2001, which also created the Military Commissions. Approved with virtually no oversight whatsoever, the military order was followed by a number of secret legal opinions, which attempted to redefine torture, and approved the use of "enhanced interrogation techniques" (the administration's chosen euphemism for torture) by both the CIA and the military in general.

This was repugnant enough, but what was even more disturbing was the theory that underpinned these innovations. The military order and the secret memos -- and the "signing statements" that the President attached to a record number of laws passed by Congress, as recommended by Addington -- served as a baleful example of the administration's quest for unfettered executive power, based on "unitary executive theory."

Embraced by Cheney and Rumsfeld during their formative years in Richard Nixon's White House, and also by Addington, who teamed up with Cheney to protect Ronald Reagan during the Iran-Contra scandal, the theory contends that, when he wishes, the President is entitled to act unilaterally, without interference from Congress or the judiciary. It is, of course, in direct contravention of the separation of powers on which the United States was founded, and critics have long insisted that it is nothing less than an attempt by the executive to seize the dictatorial powers that the Constitution was designed to prevent.

The "War on Terror" provided the supporters of "unitary executive theory" with an unprecedented opportunity to act without any oversight whatsoever, but what made it even more shocking in its execution was that it effectively allowed no questions to be asked about whether or not the administration's policies were misguided, overzealous, or just plain wrong.

Buying prisoners for bounties and shredding the Geneva Conventions

Sticking to a mantra that whatever the President chose to do was a justifiable expression of his role as the Commander-in-Chief during wartime, the administration was unconcerned that, when it began collecting prisoners during the invasion of Afghanistan, many of those held as "enemy combatants" were seized not by US forces, but by their Afghan and Pakistani allies, who were encouraged by bounty payments, averaging $5000 a head, that were offered for "al-Qaeda and Taliban suspects."

In his 2006 autobiography, In the Line of Fire, President Musharraf of Pakistan bragged that, in return for handing over 369 terror suspects (who were mostly transferred to Guantánamo), "We have earned bounty payments totaling millions of dollars." When researchers at the Seton Hall Law School analyzed 517 Unclassified Summaries of Evidence for the prisoners (documents laying out the Pentagon's case for holding them as "enemy combatants"), they discovered (PDF) that 86 percent were seized not by US forces but by their allies, which indicated that the probability of innocent men (or Taliban foot soldiers with no knowledge of al-Qaeda) being passed off as serious "terror suspects" was enormous.

Just as disturbing is the realization that, once they were in US custody in the prisons at Kandahar airport and Bagram airbase, the majority of the prisoners who ended up in Guantánamo were never even screened to determine whether they should have been held in the first place. A senior interrogator at Kandahar and Bagram, who wrote a book about his experiences (The Interrogators) under the pseudonym Chris Mackey, stated explicitly that, under orders handed down from senior figures in the US military and the intelligence agencies, who were sent the prisoner lists from Afghanistan, all "non-Afghan Taliban/foreign fighters" were to be sent to Guantánamo. As Mackey noted, "Strictly speaking, that meant every Arab we encountered was in for a long-term stay and an eventual trip to Cuba."

The same was true of the majority of the 220 or so Afghans who were also transferred to Guantánamo. Although Mackey made it clear that only Afghans with "considerable intelligence value" were supposed to be sent to Guantánamo, it was not until June 2002, when around 600 prisoners in total had already been transferred, that those in charge on the ground in Afghanistan came up with a category of temporary prisoner, who could be held for 14 days without being assigned a number that entered the system overseen by the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies. It was, he explained, the only way that they could deal with at least some of the many innocent Afghans who ended up in their custody. Even this, however, failed to stem the flow of wrongly detained Afghans who continued to be sent to Guantánamo until the industrial-scale rendition of prisoners ended in August 2003.

This whole process was in marked contrast to the Article 5 battlefield tribunals, enshrined in the Geneva Conventions, which had taken place in all other US wars since the Second World War. Held close to the time and place of capture, these enabled the military to separate soldiers from civilians caught up in the chaos of war by allowing prisoners to present their case to a military review board, and to call witnesses. During the first Gulf War, for example, the military held 1,196 battlefield tribunals, and in nearly three-quarters of them the prisoners were found to be innocent and were subsequently released.

Guantánamo's deliberately flawed tribunals

When tribunals were finally allowed, they occurred up to three years after the prisoners were seized, and took place at Guantánamo, half a world away from the place of capture. They were, moreover, introduced solely as a rebuke to the Supreme Court. In June 2004, alarmed that prisoners seized in wartime were being held without any possibility of review (even if they maintained, as many did, that they were innocent men seized by mistake), the Supreme Court delivered an unprecedented ruling, granting the prisoners habeas corpus rights -- the right to challenge the basis of their detention before an impartial judge, based on an 800-year old English law that was one of the foundation stones of US law.

As a mockery of the battlefield tribunals (and of the Supreme Court's intentions), the Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRTs) at Guantánamo prevented the prisoners from having access to lawyers, gave them no opportunity to present evidence in their defense, and prevented them from either seeing or hearing the classified evidence against them.

In addition, although they were empowered to call witnesses from outside Guantánamo, the authorities responded to every single request by claiming that they had been unable to contact them, even when, as Carlotta Gall and I reported for the New York Times in February, the witness requested by one particular prisoner (Abdul Razzaq Hekmati, an Afghan who died in Guantánamo of cancer on December 26, 2007) was Ismail Khan, a minister in Hamid Karzai's government.

Moreover, doubts about the quality of the information that was presented as evidence by the government were spectacularly confirmed in June 2007, when Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham, a veteran of US intelligence who had worked on the tribunals, denounced them for being nothing more than a front to confirm the prisoners' prior designation as "enemy combatants." In detailed analyses of the tribunals' failings (available here and here), Abraham explained, unambiguously, how the body set up to administer the tribunals, OARDEC (the Office for the Administrative Review of the Detention of Enemy Combatants), was staffed for the most part by people with no expertise of analyzing intelligence, was not empowered to seek evidence from the intelligence agencies, and was obliged, for the most part, to rely on information "of a generalized nature -- often outdated, often 'generic,' rarely specifically relating to the individual subjects of the CSRTs or to the circumstances related to those individuals' status," and on other information drawn from the interrogations of the prisoners themselves, in which their "confessions" about their own activities and those of other prisoners may have been -- and frequently were -- obtained through torture, coercion or bribery.

A hallmark of the Bush administration has been its refusal to concede that it has ever made any mistakes in the "War on Terror," and this was also made clear during the CSRTs. Because of what one tribunal member called the "low evidentiary hurdle" for deciding that prisoners were "enemy combatants," only 38 of the 558 prisoners held at the time were cleared for release, even though it has subsequently become apparent that many more innocent men were actually held. What makes this situation even more disturbing, however, is the knowledge that the administration insisted on reconvening tribunals on several occasions when it was not satisfied with the initial result.

This happened to Lt. Col. Abraham after he was asked to take part in a tribunal, when he and his fellow officers refused to conclude that Abdul Hamid al-Ghizzawi, a Libyan shopkeeper with an Afghan wife and a small child, was an "enemy combatant." Abraham and his colleagues were dismissed, and a second, secret tribunal duly reversed their opinion. It also happened on other occasions, including the cases of two of Guantánamo's 22 Uighurs (Muslims from the Xinjiang province of China, who had fled to Afghanistan to escape persecution by the Chinese government).

Forever tainted as "enemy combatants"

Moreover, as one of Lt. Col. Abraham's colleagues noted last summer, the refusal to concede that any of the prisoners were innocent meant that, "after several detainees were found to be 'not an enemy combatant,' DoD took away that option and we had to start using the term 'no longer an enemy combatant' for those held for no apparent reason."

By the time of the CSRT's successors, the annual Administrative Review Boards (ARBs), whose stated aim was to determine whether the prisoners still constituted a threat to the United States, the authorities rapidly dispensed with the claim that prisoners were "no longer enemy combatants." Of the 207 prisoners approved to leave Guantánamo after the first three rounds of the ARBs, only 14 were regarded as "no longer enemy combatants," and the rest were still explicitly regarded as "enemy combatants," who were only approved for transfer from Guantánamo -- to the custody of their home country, or to a third country.

In a second article, I will demonstrate the effects of this cynical semantic maneuvering on the 50 prisoners still held at Guantánamo who have been cleared for release or "approved for transfer," but cannot be repatriated because of international treaties preventing the return of foreign nationals to countries where they face the risk of torture. I will suggest how Barack Obama can break this deadlock, and will also examine the gulf between rhetoric and reality concerning the Military Commissions, proposals to transfer prisoners to the US mainland, and what the new President should do with the prisoners considered "too dangerous to be released, but not guilty enough to prosecute."

When Barack Obama takes office as president in January, he'll make history. As the first commander in chief conversant in geek, of course. True, the young Bill...

Sure, we're in an economic crisis, but that doesn't mean nobody's hiring. President-elect Obama is looking for a few good men, and by "good," we mean squeaky-clean, unbesmirched, never-done-a-thing-wrong-ever good. Anyone seeking a high-level post in the new administration has been asked to submit a seven-page questionnaire that includes extensive requests for personal and professional information. For instance:

And that's just question one of 63. Applicants are asked for financial details, copies of e-mails and online transactions, information about organizations to which they belong, and a hell of a lot more. One section requests immigration information for domestic help, while 11 separate questions dig into an applicant's history of legal proceedings. (Sorry, sexual harassers!)

Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. (born August 4, 1961) is the President-elect of the United States, a U.S. senator, celebrity politician (or, "celebritician"), and a dick. He has also written the bestselling Dreams of My Father and Audacity of Hope, exactly the kind of books people "casually" leave lying open on their coffee tables right before a cocktail party.

It is important to note that Obama is not so much a dick by virtue of who he is, but rather by what he has chosen to involve himself in (e.g. presidential politics) and the resulting crowd it forces him to deal with (e.g. Joe Biden).

Viewed by many as an "alternative" candidate to "politics as usual," Obama's message of hope has coalesced supporters, captivated the electorate, and forced the excruciating protraction of an incredibly lengthy lead-up to what was the most unendurable presidential election in U.S. history.

On the left, you see President Elect Barack Obama's website. On the right, that's not just Obama's site localized in Hebrew...well, maybe it sort of is. It's the campaign site of Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu (who is running for Prime Minister of Israel). Everything has been copied, from the colors to the donation areas to the integration of social networking platforms. And no one is denying that fact, either.

From one of Netanyahu's top advisors:

Imitation is the greatest form of flattery. We’re all in the same business, so we took a close look at a guy who has been the most successful and tried to learn from him.

I never doubted that Obama's successful technological campaign would be imitated by others in the future, but never did I expect it so soon...let alone in a semi-literal mirror image. [NYTimes via The Raw Feed]

Forget about the puppy. It appears that Barack Obama's daughters may get Miley Cyrus as the most exciting benefit from being the First Daughters.

America's most trusted and accurate student survey has predicted the winner in 12 of the past 13 elections.

Shift Toward Democratic Party Continues

As a small business owner who voted for George W. Bush in the previous two elections, I am endorsing Barack Obama for President.

Unlike Joe The Plumber, who has no small business, I actually own and operate a small business that currently employs 12 Americans. And it makes me proud to know that I am sharing my success (i.e. spreading the wealth) with my employees.

My employees are Americans who buy increasingly expensive groceries and gas. Americans who pursue the American dream on a daily basis, yet have seen their hopes and dreams slip away under an irresponsible Bush administration.

But unlike Joe The Plumber, who doesn’t own a small business and wouldn’t benefit under McCain’s tax plan, I endorse Barack Obama’s economic plan with vigor and enthusiasm. Here’s why:

1. Productivity is the bedrock of our economy

Barack Obama understands that government can have a positive influence on the productivity of our nation. Under Obama’s tax plan, small businesses would be given tax breaks for creating new jobs with their profits, rather than hoarding their money in off-shore accounts.

Under McCain’s tax plan, which is the equivalent of a blind-shot, businesses who take jobs oversees are equally rewarded as those who create jobs here in America.

This is a fundamental difference.

2. Trickle down economics is leaky

What advocates of trickle down economics won’t tell you is that on the way down, most of the wealth leaks out. CEOs spend wildly on corporate retreats and sex romps while their employees salaries stay flat to declining over the decade.

John McCain wants to give unqualified tax breaks to big companies and their CEOs rather than providing guidance to re-ignite our economy.

Barack Obama wants to create economic mandates for fueling our economy by providing tax cuts to companies that help our economy.

What’s better: tax cuts spent by CEOs at health spas and employees in China or tax cuts used by small businesses to hire new employees, develop new technology, and build a new energy infrastructure?

3. People in a floundering economy need positive vision

John McCain is stuck in the past regarding economics. He falsely believes that a blind-shot tax cut, the same tax cut that has failed miserably under George W. Bush, will save our financial systems and economic health. He’s wrong.

Barack Obama has given us both a short and long term vision for how we direct this country out of our economic downturn and into a state of economic prosperity and global dominance once again. It is a vision that is clear and decisive. One that recognizes the capabilities of this great nation in the same vein as JFK when he called on our country’s space agency to reach the moon. He is not afraid to reach for the sky, and to carry the nation into glory once again.

John McCain, for all his honor, is a gloomy prospect. He does not inspire people to greatness. Barack Obama does.

4. We can do better on health care

There is nothing more important than health. Health is what enables the American Dream. Health is what allows for economic prosperity. Without health, a person’s ability to thrive is severely undermined.

The current state of our health care system is in rough shape. I do not believe that John McCain recognizes this, because I do not believe that John McCain has ever encountered, face to face, a struggle with the health care system. My evidence: McCain’s plan does not come to terms with the nature of our nation’s poor health coverage.

Barack Obama has demonstrated that he is aware of the deep problems within the health insurance industry. Since you can’t solve the problem unless you understand the problem, this disparity between Obama and McCain is a big deal. But Obama doesn’t just know the problem, he has a plan that takes steps in the right direction towards systematically dealing with the problem.

5. A global economy requires global leadership

George W. Bush took our nation from being a global leader to being a global bully. Besides Africa, which George Bush deserves strong credit for, we have lost tremendous ground in every other continent on Earth. This has come to a head with the current global financial crisis as nation after nation is calling for the world to abandon economic policies that place the United States at the center.

I want America to be the center of the world’s economy. But to get there again, we need a leader who the world will respect and take leadership from. John McCain is not this person. Barack Obama is.