The biggest news in this blockbuster Joe Hagan piece is that Bill Burkett is talking again. Between Burkett, Mapes, and the CBS Three, we haven’t heard the last of this story. And that’s a good thing, since we still don’t know the truth yet.

Wesley Smith suggested recently that Million Dollar Baby missed an opportunity. Turns out he was right. Today’s New York Times has a tough, amazing story about Katie Dallam, a female boxer who was brutalized in the ring, nearly died, and has lost the use of the left side of her brain. An astonishing article.

(Again, say what you will about the political biases of the Times, it’s still one of the wonders of the world.)

Kathleen Parker notes the Globe‘s ongoing crusade against Mitt Romney in he Manchester Union Leader:

Actually, it’s worse than that. For his support of the traditional, two-parent, heterosexual family, Romney has been accused of being like President George W. Bush. Now them’s fightin’ words, for sure. In a damning editorial, the Boston Globe criticized Romney for taking “a page from President Bush’s illogic by insisting that every child ‘has a right to a mother and a father,’ implying that two women or two men could not possibly do the job.”

Actually, Romney’s statement implies nothing of the sort. Two men and two women can raise children, just as one woman or one man can raise children. But neither case provides an ideal environment, which is Romney’s point as well as the opinion of a majority of Americans.

Just received a notice about a press screening for the upcoming movie D.E.B.S. I’d never heard of it either. Here’s what the flack sheet says:

Recruited by the U.S. government for their unique ability to lie, cheat and fight, Amy, Max, Janet and Dominique . . . join an underground academy of secret agents known only as D.E.B.S. These crime fighting hotties set out to save the world and keep their lipstick perfectly applied while doing so. Now the girls must combine their skills for their most important mission – to capture vexing vixen Lucy Diamond (Jordana Brewster), the deadliest criminal the world has ever known. When D.E.B.S. star player, Amy, falls for Lucy, chaos erupts and her loyalty is put to the test.

Huh? You can see how the pitch must have gone: It’s Clueless meets Zoolander meets The L Word! Dyn-O-Mite!

Be that as it may, Galley Friend M.L. is so there. Don’t worry, I won’t tell.

A quick shout-out to Carole Lee “Phantom Lady” Sussman who, it turns out, runs her own excellent blog, For the curious…..

Sussman’s blog is hockey-obsessive, which is an important thing in today’s troubled world. The NHL lockout is destroying America’s great institutions–starting with ESPN’s SportsCenter.

More on that later today. In the meantime, check out For the curious…..

Beldar deconstructs Noam Scheiber’s latest brilliant post.

Marshall Wittmann has an item calling Joel Kotkin’s latest Weekly Standard piece to the attention of Democrats. I hope they’ll heed him. Wittmann, Peter Beinart, and some other smart Democrats are trying to save their party. Remember, not all Democrats are Kossacks.

Joel Engel is a Daily Standard contributor, a brilliant author, and a good friend; beginning tomorrow his latest book, By Duty Bound : Survival and Redemption in a Time of War, will be available.

If you don’t recognize Joel from his brilliant Standard essays (see this one on Ronald Reagan and The Twilight Zone; or this one on the rise of Mussolini), you’ll probably recognize him as the author of the amazing Jim Morris book, The Rookie.

Joel’s latest, written with Ezell Ware, Jr., tells the story of a soldier who finds honor in Vietnam. Ware grew up poor and black in Mississippi and became a helicopter pilot in the Marines. Shot down in Vietnam, he and another soldier (who’s a Ku Klux Klan member), spend three weeks fighting through the jungle together. I won’t tell more, but it’s crackerjack stuff.

Despite what you may have heard, good writers are awfully hard to come by. Joel Engel is on my wall of pinups alongside Ferguson, Lane, and Grann. Don’t miss By Duty Bound.