TMZ Gets There First

The political talk is all about whether this hurts the GOP with Latinos, wise or otherwise. Says Slate's Emily Bazelon: "Why don't the Republicans seem to care? Three reasons: They are playing to their base. Or, ideological doubts about a future justice increasingly are viewed as a legitimate reason to vote no on both sides of the aisle. And a third, wild-card possibility: The Sotomayor nomination hasn't captured the nation's imagination the way the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. did last week. And so Republicans decided, rightly or wrongly, that they could oppose her without self-destructing."

Here's someone who self-destructed, by the way: "An aide to Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer has resigned under pressure after she labeled Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. a 'racist' and dubbed President Obama 'O-dumb-a' in a Facebook rant defending racial profiling." How clever.

The R-Word

Glenn Beck says plenty of inflammatory things -- that's part of his stock in trade -- but have we reached the point where a national talk show host can casually make this charge?

"On 'Fox and Friends,'" TV Newser reports, "Glenn Beck said he thinks President Barack Obama has 'a deep-seeded hatred for white people.' Brian Kilmeade questioned him on it, but Beck persisted: 'I'm not saying he doesn't like white people, I'm saying he has a problem. This guy is, I believe, a racist.'

"Bill Shine, SVP of Programming told TVNewser, 'During Fox & Friends [on Tuesday] morning, Glenn Beck expressed a personal opinion which represented his own views, not those of the Fox News Channel. And as with all commentators in the cable news arena, he is given the freedom to express his opinions.' "

Hey, I'm all for freedom of speech. But is Fox not embarrassed by this?

Huffington Hire

David Axelrod's son is following his father's career path -- that is, the one he had before becoming a political strategist.

Ethan Axelrod is joining the Huffington Post, the liberal Web site that has been largely supportive of President Obama. His dad, the White House senior adviser, was a Chicago Tribune reporter until he quit in 1984 to help run a Senate campaign (and still has a soft spot for newspapers, though his old one is in bankruptcy).

"I've been interested in journalism for awhile," the 22-year-old Axelrod said yesterday. "I heard through my father that they were expanding, so I applied for it."

The younger Axelrod started yesterday as editor of the Huffington Post's new local edition in Denver, the third of a dozen planned sites that have already launched in New York and Chicago and will target Los Angeles next. He applied for the job, was interviewed by Arianna Huffington along with other candidates, and was tapped after submitting a mockup of the Denver home page. The site goes live in September.

Axelrod began writing and editing for the school paper while at Colorado College, in Colorado Springs, and hadn't necessarily planned to join the online world until learning of the Huffington opening. His father's journalistic roots "piqued my interest a bit," he said. "I've always been a follower and admirer of news reporting." Wonder if his father's colleagues will say the same thing after four years.

Separated at Birth

The folks who have been pushing the ludicrous claim that Barack Obama wasn't born in the US of A -- a fringe of a fringe -- have gotten way too much media attention. But it's been fascinating to watch how people on the right have handled this embarrassment.