Call me when they start using Foursquare: “Tech-savvy gangsters have long been at home in chatrooms and on Web sites like MySpace, but they appear to be gravitating toward Twitter and Facebook, where they can make threats, boast about crimes, share intelligence on rivals and network with people across the country.”

“I felt like an actor in the movie National Treasure, but [actor] Nicolas Cage was nowhere to be found. However, what I found was a national treasure — the real national treasure.”
-Researcher Lorianne Updike Toler proves that historians can be as vapid and mundane as the rest of us. Toler recently discovered an early draft of the United States Constitution written by Framer James Wilson. The draft, which had been misplaced amongst Wilson’s papers, differs from the final Constitution as passed by including an article which calls for the will of the people to be constrained by a minority of 40 senators, particularly if any of them have posed naked in popular periodicals of the day. The document also follows the famous formation “We the people” with the lyrics to “We’re Gonna Groove,” previously thought to have been written by Ben E. King and James A. Bethea.

Because New Jersey’s reputation as a corruption mecca could use some burnishing, here is some videotape that could help. Meet former Jersey City deputy mayor Leona Beldini, one of 44 Garden Staters arrested in a July sting aimed at political graft and money laundering. (Also among the busted: five rabbis, three mayors and two state legislators.) Beldini, 74, is the first to stand trial, facing charges that she accepted $20,000 of illegal campaign donations in exchange for helping to secure building permits. The guy giving her money while wearing a tiny hidden camera (reportedly one disguised as a button on his collar!) is Solomon Dwek, a former real-estate developer who turned undercover informant after his 2006 arrest for bouncing two $25 million dollar checks related to a massive Ponzi scheme he was operating. The best part is when Beldini, who faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted, leans in to explain, sotto voce, “What we’re trying to do is put money into different funds so we can, when we need it, funnel it back to the mayor-which everybody does.”

The Independent talks to former South African President F.W. de Klerk. Twenty years ago today de Klerk delivered an opening address to Parliament. “When he sat down 30 minutes later, the ANC and 30 other political parties, including the Communist Party, had been unbanned unconditionally; the death penalty was suspended; the state of emergency was lifted; trade unions were allowed to function freely; all political prisoners were to be released immediately and restrictions on political exiles were lifted; and, perhaps most importantly of all, de Klerk opened the way for South Africa’s first fully democratic election in 300 years by promising ‘a totally new and just constitutional dispensation in which every inhabitant will enjoy equal rights, treatment and opportunity’.”

As it does each time this year, the nation turns its eyes to Punxsutawney, PA, where famed groundhog Punxsutawney Phil delivers his verdict on the coming of spring. We spoke with Phil by phone shortly after he made his announcement.

Good morning! How are things in Pennsylvania?
Cold. It’s like fucking winter out here. Jesus Christ, you think they’d let you sleep in on a day like today. Cocksuckers.

You seem a little upset.
You try being shoved into a box and then yanked out by some fuckers in old-timey hats at the crack of dawn and see how cheery you are. Also, I just heard about the Oscar nominations, and I am PISSED about Nicolas Cage getting jobbed. Apart from Steve Buscemi, he’s your most rodent-like actor. Fuck Jeremy Renner, Cage should have gotten a nod.

Okay, well, opinions differ. Let’s get to the subject at hand. What can we look forward to, an early spring or six more weeks of winter?
What am I, a fucking weatherman? I’m a goddamn oversize ferret. It’s amazing to me that you guys actually give a shit about this. I could see seven shadows and it wouldn’t make a goddamn bit of difference in the way the seasons work. I think next year I’m gonna whip out my PUNXSUTAWNEY PENIS and show that to the world. You bet your ass you’ll see a shadow then.

Wow, for a beloved woodland creature who has signaled the coming of spring since time immemorial, you certainly are a disagreeable character.
You want agreeable? Dig up Punxsutawney Phil ’94. There was a bastard who loved the spotlight. Couldn’t get enough of it. I should be out in the woods, molesting gophers. This is some goddamn bullshit right here. You can gobble my knob.

Okay, I think we’re going to have to end it here. So, for the record, you’re predicting six more weeks of winter?
I’m predicting six more weeks of “kiss my ass and lick it clean,” you upright-walking shitmouth. This whole goddamn gig is a fucking travesty.

Thanks, Phil, we’ll check in with you next year.
Hopefully I will be stuffed and mounted in the Asshole Museum by then, dickwad. Also: Go Saints!

David Brown, the man who was Mr. Helen Gurley Brown since 1959-and a journalist, editor, stage producer, Army veteran and a producer of Jaws-died yesterday at his home here in Manhattan.

Sandy Bullock: AMERICA’S SWEETHEART, ROUND THREE.

To Britain, where the penchant for stabbing is about to get a whole lot more exciting due to those innovative chaps from across the pond: “Senior police officers have been warned to look out for a new knife which can inject a ball of compressed gas into its victim that instantly freezes internal organs. The ‘wasp knife’, which can deliver a ball of compressed gas capable of killing its victim at the press of a button, may be heading for Britain, the Metropolitan Police fear. A needle in the tip of the blade shoots out the frozen ball of gas which instantly balloons to the size of a basketball, freezing organs. The Metropolitan Police have told colleagues in the West Midlands to be on the lookout for the blade, which is designed to kill sharks and bears.” Knives! Bears! My work here is finished!

Those triple-washed bags of greens you buy to be healthy? They are full of doody!