So his exchange with onetime California beauty queen Carrie Prejean came as something of a surprise.

Prejean threatened to walk off King's Wednesday night interview after King asked her why she'd settled a lawsuit against the Miss California Pageant. Prejean lost her Miss California title after it emerged that she'd posed in racy shots, and made comments against same sex marriage. She sued the organization, alleging libel and religious discrimination.

Then, this week, it emerged that Prejean had filmed a secret sex tape.

"Why settle since you had a fight to carry on?" King inquired.

Prejean didn't answer.

King repeated: "You can't even say why you settled?"

"Larry," Prejean replied, "it's completely confidential and you're being inappropriate."

Prejean appears to have settled after a lawyer for the organization revealed a home-made sex tape Prejean made when she was 17.

After a minute of back-and-forth exchange, King remarks, "Okay, I, uh... inappropriate King Live continues."

It gets worse for Prejean. A caller begins a call with, "I'm a gay man and I love pageants," and Prejean reaches to disconnect her mic.

"Did she hear the question?" King asks.

Prejean retorts, "Yeah, I think you are being extremely inappropriate right now, and I'm about to leave your show."

After Comedy Central's The Daily Show pointed out Tuesday night that Fox News' Sean Hannity program used footage from another GOP protest in a clip about a recent teaparty rally, Hannity admitted the network incorrectly used bogus footage in their interview with Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-MN).

"Finally tonight...Although it pains me to say this, Jon Stewart, Comedy Central - he was right," Hannity admitted Wednesday.

"On his program last night he mentioned that we had played some incorrect video on this program last week while talking about the Republican Health Care rally on Capitol Hill," Hannity continued.

"He was correct, we screwed up - we aired some video of a rally in September, along with a video from the actual event," he added. "It was an inadvertent mistake, but a mistake nonetheless. So Mr. Stewart, you were right… we apologize… and by the way, I want to thank you, and all your writers, for watching."

Stewart noted Tuesday that Fox showed clips of two rallies and pretended they were one and the same.

"I'm sorry, can we get back again," Stewart remarked. "That was weird. Because when that clip started, it was a clear fall day in Washington, D.C. Not a cloud in the sky, the leaves have changed.

"All of a sudden, the trees turn green again, and it's cloudy, and it looks like thousands and thousands of more people arrived," he continued. "If I didn't know any better, I would think they just put two different days together and acted like they didn't."

Hannity's apology, and The Daily Show's Jon Stewart's report, follows.

This video is from Fox News' Hannity, broadcast Nov. 11, 2009.

Download video via RawReplay.com

Yoo's lawyers have filed an appeal against a lawsuit by convicted terrorist supporter Jose Padilla to the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. One of the judges on that bench is Jay Bybee, who served early on in the Bush administration in the same Office of Legal Counsel where Yoo wrote the torture memos.

Bybee is known for having written the "Bybee memo," which spelled out the definition of "enhanced interrogation techniques" the Bush administration used against terrorism suspects, now abandoned by the Obama Justice Department. Yoo wrote a number of controversial memos regarding torture, including one that declared "enhanced interrogation" only met the legal definition of torture if it caused pain equal to "organ failure, impairment of bodily function or even death."

Both Bybee and Yoo are defendants in a Spanish prosecution of the principal creators of the Bush administration's torture policies.

In their appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court, Yoo's lawyers declared that a lawsuit against him by convicted terrorist supporter Jose Padilla could "open the floodgates to politically motivated lawsuits" against government officials, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Wednesday.

"Threatening executive branch lawyers with personal liability for reaching allegedly incorrect legal conclusions regarding the constitutionality of a president's wartime actions would infringe on the core war-making authority that the Constitution reserves to the political branches," the Chronicle quoted attorney Miguel Estrada.

Last June, federal court Judge William White allowed Padilla's lawsuit against Yoo to proceed. Padilla's lawyers had argued that the inmate had been tortured during his three-year detention at a naval brig in South Carolina, largely on the basis of the justifications provided to the administration by Yoo.

The lawsuit stated Padilla suffered “gross physical and psychological abuse at the hands of federal officials as part of a systematic program of abusive interrogation intended to break down Mr Padilla’s humanity and his will to live.” Padilla's lawyers are seeking a symbolic $1 in punitive damages and a declaration by the court that his treatment was unconstitutional.

Yoo's lawyers are now appealing Judge White's decision. Padilla's lawyers have until Dec. 9 to challenge the appeal, notes the San Francisco Appeal.

Padilla's arrest at Chicago's O'Hare Airport in May, 2002, on his return from Egypt, was widely publicized. Initial statements from authorities identified him under his Muslim name, Abdullah al-Muhajir. He was accused of planning a dirty bomb attack.

In what many observers saw as a White House test of the limits of constitutional powers, the Bush administration declared Padilla, a US citizen, an "enemy combatant" who was not eligible for a civilian trial, and kept him in detention at a naval brig in South Carolina for three-and-a-half years.

Under pressure from civil-liberties groups, the Bush administration granted Padilla access to civilian courts, and in 2007 he was convicted of aiding a terrorist organization. The indictment in that case made no mention of the dirty bomb plot for which he was initially detained.

Yoo rose to public prominence in the later years of the Bush administration, as his and others' memos on torture practices came to light. He now teaches law at the University of California in Berkeley. No date has been set for the appeals court hearing to dismiss Padilla's lawsuit against him.

"This will be my last broadcast here on CNN, where I've worked for most of the past 30 years," Dobbs told an unsuspecting audience on Lou Dobbs Tonight.

Dobbs said, "Over the past six months, it's become increasingly clear that strong winds of change have begun buffeting this country and affecting all of us. And some leaders in media politics and business have been urging me to go beyond the role here on CNN and to engage in constructive problem solving."

Dobbs said he "talked extensively" with CNN President Jonathan Klein and "we have agreed to a release from my contract that will enable me to pursue new opportunities."

Dobbs' sudden departure is certain to fire up speculation over whether the veteran news anchor was pushed out or decided himself to leave the network, and whether anger from some political activists over Dobbs' increasingly conservative coverage of news issues played any role in the decision.

Viewers of CNN may remember Dobbs as the host of Moneyline, a business-focused show that aired during the heady days of the 1990s tech boom. In the past decade, Dobbs' show morphed into Lou Dobbs Tonight, a more populist brand of TV news that championed two principal issues: The outsourcing of American jobs overseas, and the phenomenon of illegal immigration.

Dobbs' focus on illegal immigrants inflamed a great deal of controversy, particularly among Latino advocacy groups. Last month, numerous immigration activist groups joined together to create BastaDobbs.com, a Web site that pressured CNN over its "hypocrisy" in seeking Latino viewers while giving Dobbs a nightly platform for criticism of immigration policies that some observers said spilled over into xenophobia.

But, in the months since Barack Obama took the oath of office, media observers have accused Dobbs of evolving from populist reporter into dogmatic conservative pundit. Last summer, media watchdogs and progressive groups raised the alarm over Dobbs when he became one of very few non-Fox News reporters to give large amounts of airtime to the "birther" conspiracy that states Obama is not the legitimate president of the United States because he wasn't really born in the US.

That editorial approach may have backfired, as Dobbs' ratings reportedly dropped following criticism that his show had abandoned responsible journalistic practices. And, in a subtle sign that Dobbs' birther coverage may have upset his bosses, news reports came in that CNN President Jonathan Klein had declared in an email that "the birther story is dead."

But speculation over Dobbs' departure may also focus on the news anchor's personal safety. Dobbs' home was recently hit by a bullet, something that Dobbs reportedly blames on his political views.

The following video, of Dobbs' resignation announcement, was broadcast on CNN November 11, 2009, and uploaded to YouTube by MediaMatters.

President Barack Obama, speaking at a ceremony in the United States, hailed "the brave men and women of this young nation, generations of them, who above all else believed in and fought for a set of ideals."

In London, Queen Elizabeth II led tributes to the war dead, including the growing number of soldiers killed in Afghanistan. But the last British veteran of the 1914-18 conflict boycotted official events.

President Nicolas Sarkozy and Chancellor Angela Merkel rekindled the flame on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris and vowed that their nations would never wage war on each other again.

"We are not commemorating the victory of one people over another but an ordeal that was equally terrible for each side," Sarkozy declared before a military honour guard and crowds of on-lookers.

German leaders have attended World War I memorial events in France before, most notably in 1984 when Chancellor Helmut Kohl took President Francois Mitterrand's hand near Verdun, the scene of one of the war's fiercest battles.

But Merkel's visit was the first time a German leader had attended the Armistice Day ceremony in Paris and was seen as a signal of ever closer ties between the two neighbours.

The two leaders observed a moment of silence -- at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month -- to mark the moment 91 years ago when the guns stopped firing across Europe after Germany signed a treaty conceding defeat.

The Great War set the tone for the 20th century's litany of brutality and in terms of sheer mass battlefield killing has rarely been equalled.

Much of the fighting -- which pitted Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey against France, Britain, Russia, Italy, Australia and, from 1917, the United States -- was in northern France and was characterised by horrific trench warfare.

In Britain too, people fell silent Wednesday to remember those who fought and gave their lives in the war.

The Queen led commemorations at a service at Westminster Abbey in London which was also attended by Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

Brown has faced severe criticism this week over the war in Afghanistan, where a new generation of British service personnel are making the ultimate sacrifice.

In Camp Bastion, the main British base in Helmand province in Afghanistan, a gun salute marked the start of a two-minute silence and people stood still to pay their respects, the BBC reported.

Of the eight million British soldiers who fought in WWI, only 108-year-old Royal Navy veteran Claude Choules, who lives in Perth, Australia, remains alive. But he stayed away from official events in his adopted land.

"After my father left the navy, he never went to ANZAC Day again," Edinger told Fairfax media, referring to the day Australians and New Zealanders remember their war dead. "He didn't think we should glorify war."

The last three veterans of World War I living in Britain died this year. The last American veteran is Frank Buckles, 108, while Canadian John Babcock also survives.

The last French veteran, an Italian immigrant who lied about his age to join the Foreign Legion and fight in the trenches, died last year aged 110.

In the United States, where November 11 is a national holiday, Veterans Day, Obama attended a traditional wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery near Washington.

"We don't mark this day each year as a celebration of victory as proud of that victory as we are," the president said.

"We mark this day as a celebration of those who made victory possible."

In Belgium, which saw some of the bloodiest trench warfare, King Albert II took part in a commemoration at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in the capital Brussels.

In Canada, Prince Charles and his wife Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, attended a memorial in Ottawa with Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Solemn services took place across Australia to remember those killed in action in the war the country joined as part of the British Empire.

Frank responding to backlash Dems' inaction on gay rights, critics say

The US military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy barring homosexuals from serving openly in the armed forces will "likely" be ended next year, in the 2010 defense spending bill, says US House Rep. Barney Frank.

Frank, who is only the second openly gay member of the House of Representatives, told Advocate.com that repealing DADT as part of a military spending bill was always the plan for approaching the issue.

“Military issues are always done as part of the overall authorization bill,” Frank said. “'Don’t ask, don’t tell' was always going to be part of the military authorization.”

This marks the first time that a prominent Democrat with access to the Obama administration has set a timeline for ending the controversial military policy. In October, President Barack Obama told a fundraiser of the gay-rights group Human Rights Campaign that he planned to end DADT, but was almost instantly criticized for not stating when.

But Frank's announcement was met with skepticism by some progressive and gay-rights bloggers, who noted that the Advocate article cites Frank as saying the repeal will "likely" be included in the bill, and noting also that they would be more certain of the new policy's implementation if the news came from a member of the Obama administration and not a congressman.

"The problem is 'might' isn't good enough," writes John Avarosis at AmericaBlog. "And Barney Frank as the messenger isn't good enough. A senior White House official needs to go public, by name, and tell the world that the White House is going to push for the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell next spring."

Avarosis says he believes a boycott of the Democratic Party that he helped launch several days ago helped spur Frank into making his statement. The "Don't Ask, Don't Give" boycott -- which is supported by numerous progressive blogs and organizations and is described as a "pause" in donations to the Democratic Party -- came in reaction to the Obama administration's perceived lack of action on gay-rights issues.

AMA URGES REPEAL OF DADT

The American Medical Association, the US's largest doctors' group, voted on Tuesday to oppose the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, and adopted a resolution stating that bans on same-sex marriage contribute to health disparities. But, as the Associated Press noted, the organization stopped short of supporting gay marriage.

The AMA "made clear that Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell should be repealed because of the ethical dilemma between doctors and LGBT service members who are unable to share all of the information that may be necessary in giving medical guidance and treatment,” Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese said in a statement.

Conservative groups expressed disappointment over the decision. Focus on the Family's Jenny Tyree told the Houston Chronicle that the AMA's decision was based on a "political agenda." She said disparities in health care for gay and straight people should be addressed in health care reform, without touching the definition of marriage.

"This one is the decision that will have consequences for years to come," Powell said he'd told the president. "If you decide to send more troops ... make sure you have good understanding of what those troops are going to be doing and some assurance that the additional troops will be successful."

"You've got to make sure that you are putting this commitment on a solid base," continued Powell, "and the base is a little soft right now. ... Karzai's been told he's got to do something about this [corruption], and he's got to do something about the drug problem, and he's got to start pulling the Afghan people together."

"So Mr. President, don't get pressed by the left to do nothing, don't get pushed by the right to do everything," Powell concluded. :You take your time and you figure it out. You're the commander in chief and this is what you're elected for."

A new CNN poll shows that Americans are almost evenly divided over whether Obama is taking too long to reach a decision on Afghanistan, with men agreeing that he is and women saying he should be given more time. A majority of those polled, however, oppose a buildup and even more are against the war itself.

Despite some recent claims that President Obama has already decided on a substantial troop increase, the White House insists that no such decision has been made. When British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, for example, stated that he expected Obama "to announce in a few days what his numbers for Afghanistan will be," a White House spokesman responded that the decision was still weeks away.

An article in Tuesday's New York Times indicates that Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen have all been pressing for a substantial troop increase, but Vice President Joe Biden and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel "remained skeptical of the value of a buildup." The president himself was described by the Times as being "unsatisfied" with answers he has received on "how vigorously the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan would help execute a new strategy."

(Via blackamericaweb.com)

The following audio is Tom Joyner Morning Show, broadcast on Nov. 11, 2009.

Download audio

"You know who's guarding Hillary Clinton in Afghanistan right now? Blackwater," Scahill told MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Tuesday night. "You know who guards members of Congress? Blackwater. They have half a billion dollars in contracts in Afghanistan right now. CIA, State Department, Defense Department. Why is President Obama keeping these guys on the payroll? There has never been a company in recent history that made the case that corporations are corrupt, evil organizations [better] than Blackwater."

Scahill was on The Rachel Maddow Show discussing the New York Times' revelation that senior Blackwater executives allegedly arranged for bribes of up to $1 million for Iraqi politicians in a bid to retain its contracts and silence criticism of the company in the wake of the Nissour Square massacre in 2007, in which 17 Iraqi civilians died after Blackwater guards opened fire.

Though the Times report stated that it's unknown if the approved bribes ever reached their targets -- Iraqi politicians -- Scahill drew a connection between the alleged bribes and the fact that, after the Nissour Sqaure massacre, the Iraqi government first decided to bar Blackwater from operating in the country, and then reversed its position.

"You had the Iraqi government saying Blackwater was banned from that country, then suddenly doing an about face, and Blackwater remains in Iraq to this day," Scahill said.

That sentiment was echoed by Spencer Ackerman at the Washington Independent, who also suggested a link between the alleged bribes and Blackwater's continued presence in Iraq. "Now we have some inkling of why the Iraqis allowed the firm to stay," Ackerman blogged.

Scahill suggested that the security firm's deep and continued involvement in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars means the company could potentially embarrass any administration with the things it can reveal.

"Another way of looking at this is Blackwater knows where a lot of bodies are buried," Scahill told Maddow. "These are guys who worked on the CIA assassination program, the drone bombing campaign, and regarding all of the senior officals, they know a heck of a lot about what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan, and those are not guys that you want on the other side of the fence if you're running Washington."

Scahill dismissed as "nonsense" the idea that Blackwater continues to have contracts because its services can't be carried out by regular military forces.

This video is from MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show, broadcast Nov. 10, 2009.

Download video via RawReplay.com

The vice president was not in either of the vehicles when the motorcade, on its way from Andrews Air Force Base to a garage on Washington, struck a pedestrian. A Washington Post traffic report states the accident took place at around 3 a.m. ET near the corner of Naylor Road, on the DC-Maryland border, but other sources place the accident closer to 2:30 a.m. ET.

The pedestrian was taken to St. George's Hospital with "multiple critical injuries" and declared dead later that morning, reports The Hill:

The circumstances of the accident, such as the color of the traffic light and the speed of the vehicles, were unclear but the Park Police was investigating.

Secret Service spokesman Malcolm Wiley said the employees involved in the accident remained at the scene and administered first aid to the man until an ambulance arrived to take him to the hospital.

Story continues below...

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US Park Police are investigating the accident. As of Wednesday afternoon, they had not released the victim's name.

The Gazette in Gaithersburg, Maryland, reports that two Secret Service agents were the only occupants of the vehicles at the time.

The two vehicles had been flown back to Washington, DC, from Tacoma, Washington, where they were used to transport the vice president to and from a speaking engagement. They were headed to a Secret Service garage at the time of the accident.

The vehicles will remain in Park Police custody during the investigation, which is expected to take about a week.

The proposals, which were immediately criticised by rights campaigners, were made in order to comply with a European ruling which said Britain was in breach of the Convention on Human Rights for holding onto DNA samples indefinitely.

Under the new proposals, DNA samples and fingerprints collected from people arrested in England and Wales on suspicion of minor offences, then cleared, would be deleted from a central database after six years.

With respect to minors, the DNA profile of any youngster arrested but released without charge will be held for three years before being destroyed.

However, samples taken from anyone arrested on 'terror charges', even if they were not charged or acquitted, could be kept for life.

The government has repeatedly insisted the database, which was created in 1995 and holds information on about 4.5 million people, is a "vital tool" in fighting crime.

But last December, Britain was found to be in breach of human rights law for not destroying the DNA samples of a man accused but not charged of harassing his partner, and of an 11-year-old who was acquitted of theft.

In the ruling, the Strasbourg court ruled that the indefinite preservation of personal data logged in police files of anyone suspected of committing an offence was "blanket and indiscriminate".

The new proposals will mean anyone convicted of a crime will have their DNA data held on police file indefinitely. The same applied to juveniles convicted of the most serious offences, such as murder, rape, manslaughter and serious assault.

Home Office minister Alan Campbell said the move to hold the DNA of terror suspects for an indefinite period was necessary because such investigations often took longer than usual.

"The reality is that many investigations of certain terrorist activity take a very long time indeed, and they have to be treated differently to the other offences we are talking about," he said.

He said each case would be reviewed by senior police officers every two years to see if it was still necessary to retain the suspect's sample.

Shami Chakrabarti, head of the civil rights body Liberty, slammed the proposals, accusing the government of retaining "a blanket approach to DNA retention" and refusing to distinguish between the innocent and the guilty.

"Nobody disputes the value of DNA and anyone arrested can have a sample taken and compared to crime scenes. But stockpiling the intimate profiles of millions of innocent people is an unnecessary recipe for error and abuse," she said.