Three small town mayors in Monmouth County, New Jersey have been arrested on charges of extortion, money laundering, and what have you.

Alert readers will remember that Vic “Vegas” Matus, lover of all things organized and criminal, hails from Monmouth County. Draw your own conclusions.

Like the non-heteronormative gal seeking same from yesterday, the Law Jedi found another bit of alumni fun. A notice in his alumni magazine reads:

After spending some time in Oregon & California, I finally settled in Philadelphia, PA in 1999. My wife Kathleen [name redacted] & I married under the care of our Quaker meeting in October of 2002 and are excitedly expecting the birth of our first child in early March. (I’m the one who’s swelling.) Kathleen works for the National Park Service and I serve as Development Manager for Friends General Conference….

The kicker here is that Darth Liberty once took the swell gal out.

The fall issue of Doublethink is finally online. We’re experimenting with a staggered Internet release of articles to strengthen our so-far modest efforts to sell at newsstands.

One thing I try to do in this little magazine is to get young writers to do the kind of reporting that involves talking to strangers and getting them to tell you things. Sounds elementary, I know, but it can make a writer who knows one or two things seem to know many things. Heather Wilhelm was the most intrepid in this regard, going undercover as an anti-Bush protester. In a different, more policy-oriented vain, Brooke Oberwetter also turned out a fine piece, on Social Security, an article written from and about the point of view of twentysomethings. I had only had to give these two bright writers a few pointers and they were off to the races. If only all articles came out so easily.

Lest I seem indifferent to the issue’s other offerings: Peter Brownfield interviewed several moderate American Muslims to talk about Islam’s anti-American problem; Tim Marchman kicked out a mean little essay on Luc Sante; and Doublethink’s go-to writer Shawn Macomber (he of Amspec and such) did a really fine piece about Greg Allen, blogger, filmmaker, businessman, art guy.

I hadn’t followed the Jason Leopold story, but it makes an interesting sidenote to general goings-on at Salon. The Village Voice has a good, if too gentle, catch-up profile that discusses this plagiarist-and-alleged-fabulist’s forthcoming book.

Another reason to love Uncle Grambo: His mild, yet very nasty, obsession with certain Nick Denton properties.

The Bull Moose is finding that the new Dean Democratic party can be as Leninist as the Norquist GOP. He doesn’t name names, but it appears he’s talking about Kos.

Marshall and Peter Beinart have a long road ahead of them. I wonder what they’ll do if their project to save the Democratic party fails.

Anthony Lane, who owns film criticism the way we all pretend Pauline Kael once did, has a snort-your-coffee review of Inside Deep Throat:

Deep Throat was a sixty-one-minute film, released in 1972. It was directed by Gerard Damiano, whom even French critics would struggle to classify as an auteur. He had been a hairdresser, before making the tediously traditional leap from blow-drying to pornography. Damiano also claims to have written the script of Deep Throat over a weekend, although I suspect that he got up late on Saturday, started writing, and was done before brunch. The star of the movie was Linda Lovelace, who plays a woman named Linda Lovelace. This Method-like combustion of performer and role was understood to have searing implications for society’s grasp of the real, although one might equally suggest that, given what Linda did best, and given the gourmandise with which she did it, it was asking too much of the poor woman that she pretend to be somebody else at the same time

If you can believe it, Lane gets better from there. “Pornography, like high-school poetry, has both a weakness for metaphor and a terror that the message might not get through,” he explains.

Later: “Adolf was Lovelace’s cat, with a perfect mustache of black fur under his nose. In stills, he looks unimpressed by the whole affair. He may have been a Republican.”

Still later, Lane describes Helen Gurley Brown as “a bundle of simpers and tics.”

Go. Read it now. It will make the rest of your day.

Not really trouble, but controversy. The trailer is now out for Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven. It’s a movie about the crusades in which, so far as I can tell, the hero is a young Christian knight fighting to protect Jerusalem against the invading Muslim hordes.

How do you think that’s going to go over?

In the past, Scott has been fairly unflinching in his depiction of certain enemies of Western civilization (see Black Hawk Down and G.I. Jane). It will be very, very interesting to see how the Kingdom of Heaven handles the crusades and how the CAIR-style backlash is manufactured leading up to the film’s release (expect Time and Newsweek cover stories in April). Also of interest will be the European reaction to the movie. What happens to European anti-Americanism when Europe is cast in the role of America?

Kingdom of Heaven is a loaded proposition; keep your eye on it.