If you've ever wanted to throw the remote control through the front of your tv set when watching Nancy Grace, here's some comeuppance you will nod along with while reading.

Maybe the day is coming when we can say, 'Guilt sells' is so yesterday.

The last word on Newsweek belongs to the Medium Lobster.

The New York Times has announced it will begin charging online readers to access its opinion writers and other columnists in September.

The paper will charge $49.95 per year for TimesSelect, a service that gives readers online access to the work of a few select writers -- columnists on the Op-Ed page as well as in other sections of the paper, including Business, Sports, and Metro. TimesSelect subscribers will also receive unlimited access to the Times' archives (most of the articles fall into the archives after one week online) and to the paper's NewsTracker service.

TalkLeft joins Daily Kos in response:

Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, the proprietor of the popular left-wing blog Daily Kos, said that come September, he'll stop linking to the Times Op-Ed pages. "I think this is the best way they can become irrelevant," said Moulitsas. "If my readers can't read it, why would I link to it? The key to blogging is that readers can look at the source material and make up their own minds." Moulitsas is a fan of Krugman's columns, but he said that he would not personally pay for the subscription service. "I don't think it's worth $50," he said. "There's way too much content out there for me to pay for any of it."

This is an issue on which all sides of the blogosphere seem to agree:

The gloves are off. Over at the Huffington Post Blog, Rep. John Conyers lambasts journalist Bryon York for his column last week referring to Conyers and Rep. Louise Slaughter as "Crazy Aunt Louise and Uncle John ".

Rep. Conyers post is clever. He uses links (although a few don't work quite right.) But most of all, the post shows that Rep. Conyers (or at least someone on his staff) is on top of what's happening in the blogosphere, from Jeff Gannon to the Downing Street Memo.

I'm about to head out for the day, but here's some good reading.

• The LA Times Magazine has a four page article, The Lone Ranger, on Tom DeLay nemesis, Texas DA Ronnie Earle.

• Naomi Klein in the Nation explains why torture works, using Maher Arar as an example. Hint: It's not because torture uncovers the truth. As we mentioned yesterday, David Cole's article on the Patriot Act is another good read.

• Farhad Manjoo at Salon reports on the Real ID Act, and says it will not make things harder for terrorists, but it will make your next experience at Motor Vehicles "hellish." And check out this list of the hundreds of organizations that opposed the Act.

The Columbia Journalism Review reports that "evangelical Christians are creating an alternative universe of faith-based news." Their instrument is the National Religious Broadcasters, whose tag line is "Christian Communicators Impacting the World." The court flap is at the top of their agenda right now. [Via Avedon Carol at Sideshow, who will be a guest blogger at Atrios this week, while he's on the road.

Also guest blogging at the Big A this week are Echidne the Goddess of Echidne of the Snakes and Atta Throat Warbler Mangrove Turk of Rising Hegemon.

There are some interesting art stories in the news.

In Paris, Fernando Botero, Latin America's "best known artist," known mostly for his pastoral scenes of small town life, has created an Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse collection:

Frank Rich writes today about Laura Bush, MSM, bloggers and the Runaway Bride. He begins,

AS we commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Drudge Report and the second anniversary of the Jayson Blair scandal, American journalists are in a race with the runaway bride for public enemy No. 1. Newspaper circulation is on the skids, the big three network anchor thrones are as precarious as King Lear's, bloggers are on the rampage, and the government is embracing fake reporters and threatening to jail real ones. A Pew Research Center poll shows that Americans now trust the press less than every other major institution, from government to medicine to banks. We can only be grateful that the matchups didn't include pornographers or Major League Baseball.

Then - just when you think things couldn't get any worse - along comes the annual White House Correspondents' Association dinner.

I'm surprised people are still talking about Laura Bush's jokes at the press dinner last weekend. Do people actually think she wrote them herself? Or that her interruption of her husband wasn't scripted?

She practiced those lines for days, coached by jokewriter Landon Parvin, who scripted them. Parvin used to write Ronald and Nancy Reagan's jokes, and George Bush Sr,s and Arnold Schwarzenegger's.

According to the first lady's press secretary, Susan Whitson:

Parvin sat down with the first lady some weeks ago to work out ideas, Whitson said. He then wrote a script and helped Bush with her timing and delivery over several days of rehearsals.

Does anyone really believe she's ever seen Desperate Housewives? She hasn't.

Say hello to the the new look of The Nation. It's a terrific redesign, with an added an interactive blogging section, as well as a newswire and a feature called Wal-Mart Nation. Go check it out.

Update: One of the new features is a rotating list of the Nation's favorite sites. Here's what's up right now:

What's up with Greenwich High School? They disinvited TalkLeft pal, Mickey Sherman, from being the graduation speaker because...he's a defense lawyer.

The Greenwich Time takes the school to task, calling the school's action shameful.

It's difficult to decide which is the worse message to send to graduating seniors -- that school officials will topple like tenpins under a wisp of parent pressure, or that they will countenance the implication that defending unpopular clients disqualifies a lawyer from respect. GHS has done both. No one put school officials under the obligation to invite Mr. Sherman. But once extended, the invitation should have been honored.

At its best, Greenwich is the kind of community that nourishes people like Mr. Sherman, who as a youngster was educated in the town's schools and went on to success in a demanding profession. This incident represents the worst side -- equating the avoidance of controversy with the attainment of respectability, and sacrificing principle for appearance's sake.

May 4, 1970. Four students killed by the National Guard during anti-war protests at Kent State University in Ohio. See the Guard lined up to shoot. View the pictures of the four who died. Listen to a clip of the song.

From our archives:

A memorial was held last night and today at Kent State University to honor the four students killed and nine injured at Kent State University in Ohio on May 4, 1970: