WaMu fails. JP Morgan picks up the scraps (”43,000 employees, more than 2,200 branch offices in 15 states and $188.3 billion in deposits”). It’s the largest bank failure in the country’s history, but still not the story of the day.

That would be, the flailing Republican plan to write a blank check to big business, thus derailing progress on a bailout plan.

And Sarah Palin’s bizarre interview with Katie Couric. This is not the transcript.

And McCain’s campaign “suspension” that wasn’t.

Meanwhile, Europe is starting to feel the heat from our economic meltdown.

New Japanese subway platforms have suicide prevention barriers. Perhaps we should install these in trains near Wall Street.

The Smoking Gun has documentation on a baggy pants crackdown in Florida. Police reports detail the damning evidence: “black male” in “tan baggy shorts with blue and white boxer style undergarment below his waste.” We continue on to hell in a hand basket with news that a priest in Illinois was dealing coke out of the rectory.

As if I’m not in hate enough with my stupid iPhone, it’s spying on me, so says a hacker.

It’s Mushroom Month!

Oh, phew! Juicy Campus is publishing a Georgetown version after all. But perhaps Georgetown isnt’ juicy enough to produce content. C’mon guys, get with it!

The Post explores Cindy McCain’s Tangled Story of Addiction, which began after her husband’s stressful entanglement with the Charles Keating scandal. She used her own charity to get prescriptions, cost one doctor his license, and only attracted her husband’s attention when she attracted the attention of investigators at the DEA.

“Cool mom” who let kids ride in the trunk of her Volvo three years ago headed back to court for buying booze for teens. She served the kids, whom she didn’t know, screwdrivers with cheap vodka in the woods behind a school.