Were there other famous people attached at one point or another to adaptations of the J.R.R. Tolkien stories? There were! In fact, several non-Peter Jackson hobbit movies have already been made. You may have even seen some of them, when you were a little child, or when you were smoking marijuana "hobbit weed" and looking at videos on the Internet this very afternoon!

If you have kids and/or once enjoyed the indoor sport of Dungeons & Dragons, then you will probably go see The Hobbit next weekend. But what if Magneto and that guy from The Office weren't in the movie, then what? Other people would [...]

Republican provocateur Andrew Breitbart has apparently died of natural causes at the age of 43. This is extremely distressing to those of us who are not that many years younger.

This is very, very weird! Andrew Breitbart, who is a blogger, is taking questions from the press at a press conference, instead of Congressman Anthony Weiner, who is now late. He took the time to trash the bloggers who named the woman who came forward with the Weiner alleged crotch photos. "Salon dot com and Joan Walsh played the role that Weiner wanted…." Then he went on to trash Gawker. And "The Daily Kos." And: "I'm here also to get some answers as well!" Also he is guaranteeing that the Weiner pictures are of an "x-rated nature." (Which he will not release.) And someone asked—it sounded like Azi Paybarah, [...]

Ooh, Shirley Sherrod says she's going to sue Andrew Breitbart. (Her announcement today made Twitter fun again briefly.) But. Lawyers? Please to discuss her claim.

The secrets of the liberal media e-newsletters will be revealed! Now that there's a $100,000 reward offered by new media top thinker Andrew Breitbart, I would absolutely cough up a complete archive of JournoList just as fast as I could upload it. (Or at least as fast as a very binding contract could be drawn up between my lawyer and Breitbart.) Why, that's probably almost half of JournoList member Eric Alterman's annual salary! Fortunately for the liberal cabal down in Washington, I'm not a member. But if anyone wants to give the JournoList archive to me for the reward, however, I'll totally donate half the money [...]

"The 3:30 a.m. email bizarrely ended with a reference to the movie Footloose."

"This is the Abu Ghraib of journalism! Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib, everywhere you go. I heard that two million times, from when they reported in 2004 to right now. This is the Abu Ghraib of Abu Ghraib. Abu Ghraibs for everyone! NEA Abu Ghraib! White House Abu Ghraib! ACORN Abu Ghraib! Journalism Abu Ghraib!" -Conservative gadfly Andrew Breitbart puts the Acorn mess in perspective.

"The establishment media has become a part of the establishment class. That means it’s against their best interests to do the right thing and expose the corruption that plagues Washington—if they did, they’d be fighting against themselves. At Breitbart News, I plan to investigate these people. Together with Breitbart News, I’m going to expose corruption in Washington." —A blogger is moving from one wingnut website to another, and the establishment media is all over it!

When Andrew Breitbart commandeered Anthony Weiner’s admission-of-digital-lecherousness press conference earlier this month, just seven minutes elapsed before he began to recount the tale of how America was first introduced to his strange media empire. In 2009, James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles approached Breitbart with footage of low-level ACORN employees apparently offering to abet the proprietors of an illegal immigrant child prostitution ring. “To those who say your journalism here is suspect,” a reporter asked, “what do you tell those folks?” Breitbart snickered.

“'You're going to be held to a different standard,'" Breitbart said he told O’Keefe and Giles at the time. “But I said, what we're going [...]

"Allen West [R-Fla.] and Michele Bachmann [R-Minn.]." —In an odd and disturbing coincidence, conservative provocateur Andrew Breitbart's dream Republican presidential ticket for 2012 is exactly the same as my dream Republican presidential ticket for 2012.

"I am of course willing and will conduct a thorough review and consider additional facts to ensure to the American people we are providing services in a fair and equitable manner." -Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack emerges from emergency spine-implantation surgery to announce that he will reconsider the firing of Shirley Sherrod. The NAACP has also reversed its early and hasty condemnation of Sherrod, who was the victim of a credulous media which operates at the beck and call of Andrew Breitbart's "moral ugliness."

Maybe you've heard of Andrew Breitbart. The former Drudge #2 and Huffington pal has been on an absolute tear recently, exposing anti-Tea Party demonstrators as "thugs" and insisting that this group of patriots is "on the receiving end (of threats and intimidation) every single day, but haven't made anything of it because they know that the press isn't going to be sympathetic to their cause."

DO YOU LIKE PEOPLE SCREAMING AT EACH OTHER ON THE TV? DO YOU LIKE THE WORDS "TWITTER" AND "JAMES O'KEEFE" AND "JURY TAINTING" AND "RETRACTION"? WELL HERE YOU GO AMERICA!

Here is a remarkably fair—generous, even—assessment of the late Andrew Breitbart.

I think the Mainstream Media, whatever that is, has been doing a very good job reporting on the New York 9th District Congressman Anthony Weiner and his naughties. I’m kinda sick of hearing about it, but that’s my fault, because I consume lots of super-obvious Lowest Common Denominator News and Infotainments, where I have heard a kabillion-jillion things about Anthony Weiner from my teevee in the morning when I put the stupid TODAY show on and then in the bathroom, where I perform my morning ablutions in the manner of Pontius Pilate (one of History’s notable Public Servants), and I hear more about Anthony Weiner on the news programs [...]

Read all of our Wisconsin coverage here.

It's already been a long weekend in Madison, Wisconsin. Protesters slept on the capitol floor and some Republican state legislators, after attempting to hold an illegal vote on Friday, made excuses for why they would not be seen in the communities they represent.

Republican Senator Alberta Darling canceled her weekend plans to attend an event in Menomonee Falls, a city she represents. She tweeted, "I will not be attending ChillyFest in MF tomorrow. I have to be ready at a moment's notice to go back to Madison to do the people's work." Maybe because she was born in [...]

Sadly, yes: "Actually it's looking great for Breitbart. He won the day, ruined an innocent woman's life, and a willing media will wait for his next scalp." If you haven't been following the Shirley Sherrod story-she's the USDA employee who was forced to resign after Andrew Breitbart's Big Government website produced an out-of-context videotape that purported to show her racism against white people-you can learn more here, but be forewarned: It is pretty much as disgusting as everything else Breitbart feeds into the rightwing echo chamber.

RELATED: "By 2013, Andrew Breitbart will be stuffing himself inside a trash bag, smearing himself with feces, and scrawling "honky" [...]

Andrew Breitbart is in the news! The Atlantic offered him space to discuss his media diet, the Village Voice called him a "pussy," and Slate ran an enormous profile of the man, which will be of interest to you if your taste runs toward lengthy features about self-regarding comic monsters. What's most fascinating to me about Breitbart is how he exemplifies the most powerful trend of conservative argument. Let's call it the "look at this fucking retard liberal" school of thought.

Here is an in-depth look at the relationship between Reuters and Matt Drudge and Andrew Breitbart. Drudge and Breitbart's business decisions couldn't be more brilliant, so I suspect their relationship with the news wire service is equally genius. After a legal fracas, Reuters and Breitbart made an arrangement that including using a click-tracking code in Reuters URLs-like that used for Amazon "partner" links, basically-which indicates a commercial understanding. The Drudge Report linked to Reuters.com just 29 times from January 1, 2005 to October 14, 2005. Then, Breitbart signed his new deal to drive traffic to Reuters.com for money. From October 15, 2005 to December 31, 2005, the Drudge Report [...]