Michael Moore Bumped for Paris Hilton Interview

Heiress and reality star Paris Hilton will do her first post-prison TV interview on CNN's "Larry King Live."

It turns out that "Sicko" propagandist Moore had to be bumped so Larry could do some jail time talking with "The Simple Life" star.

"She will be on for the hour," Spokesperson Bridget Leininger told Reuters. "We had Michael Moore originally scheduled for that time."

Hilton was released from jail after serving roughly half of her 45-day sentence.

It turns out that Hilton's jail stint produced something positive after all.

It generated some discussion about the appearance of a two-tiered justice system, shed light on the "checkbook journalism" issue, and sank a Moore promo spot.

Checkbook Journalism Checks In

Larry King won the Paris post-jail interview sweepstakes by default.

NBC and ABC backed away from a Hilton interview. CBS also let it be known it wasn't interested.

However, the reason for the sudden chill toward Hilton had less to do with the heiress and more to do with the networks' reps.

Networks have been trying to distance themselves from numerous reports that have implied that, in an attempt to obtain an exclusive post-jail interview with Paris, checkbook journalism may have been at work.

The New York Post started the ball rolling when it reported that NBC agreed to pay up to $1 million for a "Today" show sit down. The report ignited other stories about media bidding.

ABC and NBC News were then forced to publicly insist that they do not pay for interviews and that neither had a deal with Hilton.

However, an ABC executive has said otherwise. According to the executive, the Hiltons had taken NBC up on a $1 million offer for the licensing of family photos and a video because it was more lucrative than ABC's $100,000 bid.

For decades news organizations have frowned upon checkbook journalism primarily because the practice implicitly taints the credibility of sources. Cash payments provided in exchange for news may give a source an incentive to inflate a story. The hotter the account, the more money it is worth. In all of the jockeying, truth may be lost in the mix.

The nets have been cleverly getting around the rule by paying money for what they call "licensing" of photos, videos, or made-for TV movie rights.

Here are some examples:

     NBC scored exclusive interviews with the two U.K. princes, William and Harry. Coincidently, the Peacock network paid a reported $2.5 million fee to air a concert in July that commemorates the 10th anniversary of Princess Diana's death.

     ABC News paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to Steve Irwin's widow for footage used in a Barbara Walters primetime interview in Fall 2006.

     In 2003, CBS News offered Pvt. Jessica Lynch, the former prisoner of war in Iraq who was rescued by U.S. forces, possible movie and book deals through its sister corporate divisions.

Prior to the 1970s, paying for stories was fairly routine. It is an acceptable practice in Europe.

Disclosure is the key. Now if we can only get the networks to quit the charade.

Ralph Nader Calls Hillary a 'Coward'

In what could be a looming nightmare for Democrats, Ralph Nader said he is seriously considering running for president again in 2008 – calling front-runner Hillary Clinton a "political coward.”

"The two parties are still converging,” he declared in an interview with Roger Simon of politico.com.

"I really think there needs to be more competition from outside the two parties . . .

"What third parties can do is bring young people in, set standards on how to run a presidential election and keep the progressive agenda in front of the people. And maybe tweak a candidate here and there in the major parties.”

Nader offered praise for two very dark horses in the 2008 race, Republican Ron Paul and Democrat Mike Gravel, but he strongly criticized Hillary.

"She is a political coward,” he said. "She goes around pandering to powerful interest groups on the one hand and flattering general audiences on the other.

"She doesn’t even have the minimal political fortitude of her husband.”

Many Democrats still blame Nader for siphoning votes away from Al Gore in 2000 and helping to elect George Bush. Nader got only 2.74 percent of the popular vote as the Green Party candidate, but he received 97,448 votes in Florida – a state Gore lost by just 537 votes.

Chris Lehane, who worked on Gore’s presidential campaign, told politico.com about Nader’s possible candidacy: "His entry into the race, even to those who voted for him in 2000, would be just another vainglorious effort to promote himself at the expense of the best interests of the public.”

McCain Buys Anti-Romney Web Site Name

John McCain’s presidential campaign has bought the Web site name www.mittvsfact.com and will launch the site to illustrate White House hopeful Mitt Romney’s alleged flip-flops.

As NewsMax reported, the McCain campaign on Wednesday sent out an e-mail release, with a "Mitt vs. Fact” letterhead, that attacked Romney on the abortion issue.

It linked to a video showing then-Massachusetts Gov. Romney vowing to uphold the state’s abortion-rights laws.

Romney has now called for the repeal of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion nationally.

A McCain aide confirmed to The Politico on Friday that his campaign had purchased the mittvsfact Web site last month and "indicated that they would use it as a sort of one-stop shop ‘to brand’ Romney,” according to The Politico.

But the Romney campaign said McCain’s attacks pointed to trouble in his own campaign.

"Desperate candidates do very desperate things,” Romney spokesman Kevin Madden declared.

"Sen. McCain has, sadly enough, been faltering so badly lately that his campaign is left with the last resort of launching attacks against Gov. Romney.”

N.C. panel disbars Duke prosecutor

District Attorney Mike Nifong will be disbarred for his disastrous prosecution of three Duke University lacrosse players falsely accused of rape, a disciplinary committee decided Saturday. Even the veteran prosecutor said the punishment was appropriate.

"This matter has been a fiasco. There's no doubt about it," said committee chairman F. Lane Williamson.

Nifong sat motionless, one hand resting over his mouth, as Williamson recounted how he engaged in dishonest and deceitful conduct. He said Nifong's early comments about the case — which included a confident proclamation that he wouldn't allow Durham to become known for "a bunch of lacrosse players from Duke raping a black girl" — were purposefully designed to boost his campaign for district attorney.

"At the time he was facing a primary, and yes, he was politically naive," Williamson said. "But we can draw no other conclusion that those initial statements he made were to further his political ambitions."

Nifong will not appeal the punishment, his lawyer said.

"He hopes this helps restore some of the confidence in the criminal justice system of North Carolina," said attorney David Freedman.

"On one hand, it's very devastating. On the other hand, he's been going through this process for a long time, so you always have some semblance of relief when the process is over with regardless of the outcome."

The North Carolina State Bar charged Nifong with breaking several rules of professional conduct, including lying to both the court and bar investigators and withholding critical DNA test results from the players' defense attorneys.

The committee, after deliberating for a little more than an hour on Saturday, unanimously agreed with the bar on almost every charge — including the most serious allegations — that Nifong's actions involved "dishonesty, fraud, deceit and misrepresentation."

State Bar prosecutor Douglas Brocker told the committee that as Nifong investigated the allegations that a stripper was raped and beaten at a March 2006 party thrown by Duke's lacrosse team, he charged "forward toward condemnation and injustice," weaving a "web of deception that has continued up through this hearing."

"Mr. Nifong did not act as a minister of justice, but as a minister of injustice," Brocker said.

The verdicts and the punishment did not appear to surprise Nifong, who acknowledged during sometimes tearful testimony Friday that he would likely be punished for getting "carried away a little bit" when talking about the case.

During Saturday's closing arguments, Williamson repeatedly interrupted Nifong's attorney, Dudley Witt, as he discussed the DNA testing.

Williamson questioned why it took several months for the defense to get DNA test results that found genetic material from several men in the accuser's underwear and body, but none from any lacrosse player.

"It wasn't just one little oversight," Williamson said later. "This was conduct over an extended period in a very high-profile case."

Aware of those test results, Nifong pressed ahead with the case anyway and won indictments against Dave Evans, Reade Seligmann and Collin Finnerty. State prosecutors later concluded the three players were "innocent" victims of a rogue prosecutor's "tragic rush to accuse."

Nifong made "multiple, egregious mistakes" as he pursued the charges, but not intentionally, his attorney said in closing statements.

"It didn't click," Witt said as he tried to explain one of his client's errors. "His mind is just his mind. That's the way it works. It just didn't click."

Brocker said Nifong had to have known he was making improper comments to reporters. Nifong said he regretted some of his statements, including a confident proclamation that he wouldn't allow Durham to become known for "a bunch of lacrosse players from Duke raping a black girl."

He also focused on when Nifong learned about the full extent of the DNA test results and when he shared that information with the defense.

Nifong gave defense attorneys an initial report on the DNA testing in May 2006 that said private lab DNA Security Inc. had been unable to find a conclusive match between the accuser and any lacrosse players.

But lab director Brian Meehan testified this week that he told Nifong as early as April 10, 2006 — a week before Seligmann and Finnerty were indicted — about the more detailed test results.

Nifong testified that when he gave the defense the initial report, he "believed at the time that I had given them everything."

The disciplinary hearing committee had the choice of suspending Nifong's law license or taking it away entirely.

Nifong told the panel hearing the case Friday that he would resign from his post as Durham County district attorney over his handling of the rape charges.

The players' attorneys have pledged to seek criminal contempt charges next week in Durham.

Study: Chickens beat Columbus to America

Why did the chicken cross the ocean? To get to America before Columbus — and from the other direction — according to a new report in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Many scholars had thought chickens arrived in the New World with the early Spanish or Portuguese explorers around the year 1500.

When Juan Pizarro arrived at the Inca empire in 1532, however, he found chickens already being used there, raising the possibility they had been around for some time.

And now, researchers led by Alice Storey at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, report finding evidence that may ruffle some scholarly feathers. They found chicken bones of Polynesian origin at a site in what is now Chile.

Radiocarbon dating of chicken bones at the site on the Arauco Peninsula in south central Chile indicated a range of A.D. 1321 to 1407, well before the Spanish arrival in the Americas.

The researchers were able to obtain DNA from some of the bones of these early birds, and found they were identical to ancient chicken bones previously found in Tonga and Samoa.

Chicken had been used in the Pacific for at least 3,000 years, spreading eastward across the region as Polynesians gradually populated the islands.

The DNA from these chickens also shared some unique sequences with modern Araucana chickens from South America and some current chicken types in Hawaii and Southeast Asia, the researchers found.