So Tiger's car crash will cost him $164, plus whatever millions he has had to pay for such fine lawyering. The state troopers say they will stop going after his medical records, and that "no one involved has made any claims of domestic violence." Of course, in Florida no one has to make any claims of domestic violence for domestic violence to be charged, as I wrote in my story yesterday. The state police just have to have "probable cause" of domestic violence. Which takes us back to those medical records.

If those records show wounds consistent with a bash on the head with a golf club, we have probable cause of domestic violence. Without them, we have only Tiger's word that his wife was a rescue angel at the scene of the crash. In the meantime, a new mistress, aptly named "Grubbs," aptly a cocktail waitress, and aptly in possession of some racy texts, has surfaced. Which makes option one—the bash in the head by the jealous wife story—the more likely one, no?

Tags: Jaimee Grubbs, new mistress, tiger woods, Tiger Woods and domestic violence, Tiger Woods and Jaimee Grubbs

While I was covering Mike Huckabee for a profile in 2008, people kept insisting that he wasn’t your “typical politician.” This was true in some ways. He was terrible at raising money. As governor he took positions with no conceivable political payoff; he supported the funding of college aid for the children of undocumented immigrants, for example, a position not terribly popular among mainstream Republicans in the recent past. He spoke against a "revenge-based corrections system.” He commuted prison sentences and weathered the ensuing scandal. Little of this idiosyncrasy survived when Huckabee began to aim for the White House, but it had been there when the stakes were lower.

Now one of the men he helped to free stands accused of killing four cops in a Seattle suburb, and Huckabee is getting grilled by lock-‘em-up types like Michelle Malkin. Liberals are piling on, too. Like Ta-Nehisi Coates, I think this is unfortunate. Huckabee saw a kid who had gone on a crime spree at the age of 16—burglary, robbery, possession of a firearm. Clemmons had been handed a 95-year sentence before he was old enough to buy cigarettes. Huckabee felt, not unreasonably, that this punishment was unduly harsh. A five-member state board unanimously recommended that the sentence be commuted, and Huckabee’s decision made Clemmons eligible for parole. Anarchy! Clemmons served 11 years for his crimes. He spent his 20s in jail.

Maybe Huckabee was blinded by his faith; maybe his commutation process was flawed. He’s certainly paying for it now, as cable news declares his political prospects doomed. But to ask a question beloved by law-and-order Republicans, what kind of message does this send? No politician has anything to gain by giving a second chance to a poor kid who had a rough start in life. It's a check on prosecutorial excess that only works if a governor or president is willing to take a risk. The downsides, if the released convict returns to crime, are all very material. The upsides are moral and personal. It’s unclear why liberals would wish to tip the scales even further in favor of the former.

Tags: Huckabee, Maurice Clemmons

For the MJ lover in your family—My DNA Fragrance, a Los Angeles company that seems to exists mainly to translate the DNA of the rich and famous and deceased into scents for the rest of us mortals to wear, has derived a perfume based on Michael Jackson’s DNA. Using a follicle of his hair.

Creepy? Absolutely! But kind of fascinating at the same time? I think so! The perfume, dubbed M, is available to order now. For a hefty $60, one gets 3 ounces of the absolutely “unique” Jackson juice packaged in a bottle resembling the late singer’s torso (disembodied body part bottle = +3 CREEPINESS POINTS). Maybe the most bizarre part of this one-of-a-kind holiday gift (honestly, I have a cousin who would go thriller for this) is that the company claims the hair strands used to create the scent come from the world’s largest collector of historical hair, John Reznikoff. Yes, this is a thing, and yes, this man exists. My DNA Fragrance has also created scents modeled on the DNA of Einstein (iQ) and Marilyn Monroe, and if you care to wear your own genetic code outwardly on your pulse points, the company will make you a signature scent based on your own DNA. Swab kit included.

But the question still at hand: What exactly does Michael Jackson’s DNA smell like? Ambien, Lisa Frank folders, puppy chow, and baby powder? There’s only one way to know for sure, and it’s $60, an Internet connection, and a somewhat perverse soul.

Tags: creepy, DNA, michael jackson, perfume

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Last year my former Jezebel colleague Moe Tkacik picked up on a new and horrifying development in the way that tabloids discuss women's bodies: Somewhere along the line," pregnant" turned into merely "fat." In an insane-o hybrid of baby and skinny fetishization, famous women are encouraged to gestate, but God forbid they stop working out. I was reminded of Moe's savvy observation when I saw this headline on People's Web site about Padma Lakshmi: "Padma Lakshmi Doesn't Mind Baring the Baby Weight." And what's inside gets worse. "One of the reasons I think I've gained weight pretty quickly during my pregnancy is that I'm not exercising as much as I do normally ... I can't. I'm feeling tired, and I have this business to run," Padma explains ... as if anyone needs to give an explanation for putting on weight while pregnant. Don't worry, she still poses half-naked on the most recent cover of Page Six Magazine, though they make sure to cover her "burgeoning belly."

I don't blame Padma, I'm sure the interviewers asked her about her pregnancy weight gain, and she felt she had to answer. I just wish the questions didn't occur to people to ask in the first place.

Tags: department of feminist outrage, padma lakshmi, pregancy, weight gain

Jess, if Gen Y is indeed less pro-choice than prior generations, it shows that there's a dark underbelly to the generation that's been applauded as more tolerant and diversity-oriented than any other. They're also rumored to be the generation of bicycle helmets and overscheduling—kids who grew up in an environment that implied that one could wipe out all risk—and that kind of attitude explains why they would have developed contempt for anyone who does draw the short stick. What older generations might see as a reasonable amount of risk, Gen Y might see as nothing but carelessness.

I've definitely encountered know-it-all Gen Y-ers whose argument against abortion seems to be that forced childbirth is just desserts for carelessness. And frankly, I prefer their attitude over the disingenuous hand-wringing over fetal life that you get from more traditional anti-choicers. Americans' opinions on abortion resemble their opinions on welfare— they primarily see it as an out for lazy people, but always reserve the right to make exceptions. Jennifer Senior's article touches on this reality when she writes, "According to a Gallup poll from July, 60 percent of Americans think abortion should be either illegal or 'legal only in a few circumstances.' " Clinic workers have a dark joke about people with this opinion: They want exceptions for rape, incest, and "me".

Many of the people who snarl about irresponsibility leading to abortion are telling themselves a little fairy tale, namely that they're responsible, so accidental pregnancy could never happen to them, and even if it does, surely the universe will see that they deserve abortion. Unlike those other women, those sluts. Unfortunately, there's no way to write a law that looks into someone's heart to find if they got knocked up despite precautions. Prior generations know from experience, or at least recent historical memory, that the law didn't distinguish between a broken condom and simply not using one at all. Let's hope this generation doesn't have to learn that the hard way.

Tags: abortion, Gen Y

Jess, there's another dismaying element of the hand-wringing in the pro-choice movement over Stupak and declining suport among twentysomethings and the greying of the menopausal militia. It's that acknowledging the complicated emotions that some women have about their own abortions may be hurting the pro-choice side. I hate to make this point, because I've helped make the case for a while now that feminists need to own the regret and confusion that some (not all) women feel after the procedure. But Jennifer Senior does a great job talking to abortion counselors who are very much aware of all the emotional wrinkles. Then she poses "a very real and terrible dilemma for those of us who are pro-choice: Engage these questions and you play into the hands of the pro-life movement; refuse to engage in them and you risk living in a political vaccuum."

Exactly. The Clinton-Obama rhetoric of legal but rare leads to a similar conundrum: In casting abortion as the best choice in a bad situation, our Democratic leaders are running down the procedure even as they support it. I'd like to think that all this moral ambiguity and recognition of complexity is a good thing, because it reflects reality. But complexity and politics once again seem a bad match. As Senior points out, we now have more crisis pregnancy centers than we do abortion providers.

Tags: abortion; stupak amendment; menopausal militia

KJ, the Internet may no longer care about the Salahis, but morning TV sure does. The White House gate-crashers Michaele and Tareq Salahi went on the Today Show this morning to proclaim their innocence. They say they had clearance to attend the state dinner last Tuesday, and that their lives have been ruined by all the bad press and the paparazzi attention. Too bad for them, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs showed up to debunk the Salahis' lies. "This wasn't a misunderstanding," Gibbs told Meredith Vieira, "You do not show up at the White House as a misunderstanding."

The best part was when Michaele Salahi—who ,according to the Washington Post, hasn't held a job in years and lied about being a Redskins cheerleader—complained to Matt Lauer that all her "hard work" was destroyed by this kerfuffle. I guess social climbing is really exhausting. Watch the full interview by clicking here.

Tags: Meredith Vieira, michaele salahi, tareq salahi, Today Show

Content creators, content consumers, and advertisers already exist in an uneasy, precarious balance (and please don't think I'm unaware of my own place in the media food chain). Online, the symbiotic cycle takes on new intensity because of the incredible speed with which it operates. AOL, which owns and operates a number of sites across the Internet, just announced a renewed intent to stay on top of the precise content we're interested in, and to have freelancers and editors ready to respond with more and better stories about exactly what we're looking for. (Disclosure: I've written for an AOL site.)

Of course, that's nothing new—editors and writers have always intended to write and publish stories about things readers care about, and advertisers have always rewarded the publications that best achieve that goal with the most advertising dollars. What's different is that AOL hopes to predict the most sought-after content, not through editorial judgment and reporting, but by using an algorithm created by a "wide swath of data" collected by AOL. In other words, when we search online for news, we won't just be looking for news, but demanding it. So the more fascinated we are by the Salahis and their ilk, the more we'll have to read about them.

That said, we've already moved on. According to Google Trends, neither the Salahis, the Heenes, nor any other reality TV celebrities or wannabes even made yesterday's top 40. So while 15 minutes of fame may be easier to get, it's also easier for our tiny collective attention span to hit the gong and get somebody else out on the stage. But if AOL's plan works, we'll have absolute proof that you're both right: When it comes to the fame of the Salahis, we'll have no one to blame but ourselves. Maybe we should all try Googling "health insurance that covers everyone" and see if we can't get that, too.

Tags: AOL, Salahis