Update: Really sad to watch the helicopter fly Michael Jackson's body to the morgue where the coroner will do the autopsy.

A news conference with the hospital where Michael Jackson died is about to begin. I will live-blog. (Update: There is no hospital news conference. I've changed the title to his brother's press conference and posted the video. ]

Hasn't started yet but a LAPD police detective gave a little interview. A coroner's investigation is underway. The robbery/homicide division was assigned because of high profile nature of the death. He said "Don't read anything into it."

Hospital conference still to come. Stay tuned. I may have to change channels. CNN's pundits can't stop talking about unproven allegations against Jackson and even bringing up Joe Jackson's alleged childhood abuse of Michael. [More...]

Update: LA coroner on CNN: At 2:26pm PT Michael Jackson was declared dead. He's evasive but it sounds like he was dead on arrival at the LA Medical Center. (Update: They tried to resuscitate him at the hospital for an hour and failed. His brother Jermaine said his personal physician was with him at his home when he went into cardiac arrest.)

Update: LA Times, CBS and all media outlets except CNN confirms Jackson has died. The hospital reportedly is on lock down as crowds swell around it. (Added: CNN confirms too.)

R.I.P. Michael Jackson. What a sad day. First Farrah, now Michael. Herre's Billie Jean, Live. From the best selling album of all time.

TMZ reports Michael Jackson died of cardiac arrest at his home today. While others are reporting he was taken to the hospital, TMZ says he was dead when paramedics arrived and attempts at resusitation failed.

Actress Farrah Fawcett lost her battle with cancer today. She was 62.

It's hard to describe what was so special about her to people who weren't around in the 70's. As this writer says, she was more than a pinup on a poster, but that poster just may be the most memorable one of the era.

She was an All-American Girl at a time when a country clawed bloody by scandal and war really needed one, and The Farrah Fawcett Poster became to late 20th century America what Betty Grable was to GIs in World War II. Half the boys in the country had it on the wall and the other half didn't need to, because they'd memorized it.

My review of Farrah's Story, her documentary about her battle with cancer is here.

She had such grace and beauty and a smile that lit up the world. At least her suffering is over. R.I.P. Farrah, and condolences to her family and friends.

The final act on America's Got Talent tonight. Great singers with a very moving story.

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

Ed McMahon, best known for being Johnny Carson's sidekick on The Tonight Show, has died at 86. He suffered from bone cancer and had been ill many months.

With his broad, genial, regular-guy features, Mr. McMahon had the face of someone you would buy a used car from. Indeed, for decades he was one of television’s most ubiquitous pitchmen, selling everything from boats to beer.

But it was in the role of the faithful Tonto to Carson’s wry Lone Ranger that Mr. McMahon made his sideman’s mark.

On his Tonight Show gig:

“I laugh for an hour and then go home,” Mr. McMahon once said. “I’ve got the world’s greatest job.”

R.I.P. Mr. McMahon.

Via Lambert and Kevin Drum, imagine this being written at some progressive blogs:

President Barack Obama is morphing into George W. Bush, as administration attorneys repeatedly adopt the executive-authority and national-security rationales that their Republican predecessors preferred.

In courtroom battles and freedom-of-information fights from Washington, D.C., to California, Obama's legal arguments repeatedly mirror Bush's: White House turf is to be protected, secrets must be retained and dire warnings are wielded as weapons.

The DFHs at McClatchey, once the progressives' favorite news syndicate service.

Speaking for me only

Pulitzer Prize winner and NY Times investigative reporter David Rohde, 41, was kidnapped 7 months ago while interviewing a Taliban commander for a new book. The Times kept it mum, as did other media outlets, so as not to jeopardize his safety. Yesterday, he and a local reporter kidnapped with him, Tahir Ludin, escaped by climbing over a wall. A Pakistani army scout safely delivered them to a U.S. military base.

The article reads like a novel, but it's all true. And Rohde sounds like an incredibly committed journalist. He was previously captured and held in Bosnian Serb territory while investigating mass graves. "After 10 days of imprisonment, during which he was interrogated relentlessly and deprived of sleep, Mr. Rohde was freed."

He spent three months in Afghanistan in 2001, and from 2002 to 2005, was co-chief of The Times’s South Asia bureau. As for the local reporter with him, [More...]

Yesterday, in criticizing the Washington Post, I jokingly asked whether, like the Weekly Standard, it too would merge with the Washington Times, owned by billionaire conservative Phil Anschutz.

Today, WaPo has an editorial criticizing the court's decision to allow the Jose Padilla civil case against John Yoo to proceed.

Mr. Yoo provided legal opinions on what he believed the law allowed the executive to do, but he did not make the final policy decisions. Allowing Mr. Padilla's case to proceed could have a chilling effect on the ability of government lawyers to give candid, good-faith advice for fear of being held personally liable.

On Monday, the paper called for passage of a law that would allow D.C. to create "public "safety zones" deemed off-limits to individuals identified as members of gangs." Violators would face up to 120 days in jail. The editorial found no civil liberties problems with the bill.

There's no editorial this week on the Supreme Court decision rejecting an inmate's right to DNA testing to prove innocence (unlike the NY Times which ran a great one.)

Sad, just sad. It really used to be a good paper.

The Washington Post has given columnist Dan Froomkin his walking papers. What a stupid, myopic decision. Froomkin is the best columnist the paper has. As Gawker puts it:

"The Washington Post, which pays money to opinion writers such as Bill Kristol (smarmy) and Richard Cohen (smarmier), has fired blogger Dan Froomkin, one of the only WaPo opinion writers who pointed out that the Bush White House was crooked."

The Post says his column has outlived its usefulness. Is that another way of saying Obama is so popular there's no need for a journalist who seeks to hold him and others in the Administration accountable? Do they really think because Bush is gone, the problems are over? Just wait a few more months...the restless stirrings by interest groups are already there, criticism is just around the corner.

Froomkin undoubtedly will have no trouble landing another media outlet for his work. I hope it's soon because his voice is too important not to be shared.

ABC will be airing an hour long program on health care with the President of the United States and other government officials. The Right Wing has employed the tried and true Drudge tactic of "working the refs." See Memeorandum. This tactic is as old as the John Birch Society.

Have no doubt though, it will work. Charlie "college professors make $250,000 a year" Gibson will be appropriately hostile to President Obama on the health care issue. And no, not by asking him about single payer. It will be a Harry and Louise night. Such is the state of our Media.

Speaking for me only

NYTimes Editorial:

The Obama administration, which came to office promising to protect gay rights but so far has not done much, actually struck a blow for the other side last week. It submitted a disturbing brief in support of the Defense of Marriage Act, which is the law that protects the right of states to not recognize same-sex marriages and denies same-sex married couples federal benefits. The administration needs a new direction on gay rights.

. . . The administration has had its hands full with the financial crisis, health care, Guantánamo Bay and other pressing matters. In times like these, issues like repealing the marriage act can seem like a distraction — or a political liability. But busy calendars and political expediency are no excuse for making one group of Americans wait any longer for equal rights.

Read the whole thing. It was disturbing to see apologias for this distressing action by the Obama Administration featured in many of the leading "progressive" blogs. The Times gets it right. The Obama DOJ has been incredibly disappointing to date.

Speaking for me only

Thank goodness, this is over. David Letterman, losing the p.r. war over his boorish joke about Bristol Palin, the 18 year old daughter of Sarah Palin, has apologized. It will air on tonight's Late Show. Palin was milking it for all it was worth. Yes, it was her 14 year old that went to the baseball game but Letterman was clearly referring to Bristol, her 18 year old.

I thought Conan O'Brien's Paris Hilton joke was worse, yet nobody jumped on him.

Now, onto tonight's Bachelorette, Weeds and Nurse Jackie, and if there's time, "I'm a Celebrity, Get me Out of Here."

This is an open thread, all topics welcome