More National:

• The GOP is promising to keep “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” alive. Wait, why is this news? |NY Mag|

• Bill Clinton‘s gonna be in The Hangover 2. Maybe he can become president of SAG next. |NY Mag|

• Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have been trying to make it work out between them, which is very mature and un-Beltwaylike. |Daily Beast|

• Obama‘s being arrogant again. |Village Voice|

• Canadian ambassador to Los Angeles Pamela Anderson wants President Obama to legalize all the drugs. |The Sun|

• The Fed‘s rally is over! It seems like a bad thing. Did you even know that the Fed has rallies? |Daily Caller|

• Looks like GOP Chair Michael Steele will need a new job soon. Maybe he can find employment in sex addiction rehab, one of America’s booming industries. |Daily Caller|

• Rep. Heath Shuler (D-NC) says he’ll challenge Nancy Pelosi for the “top dawg” slot in the Democratic House leadership if she doesn’t step aside by November 17. Heath who? Shuler knows he doesn’t have the votes to win Pelosi’s slot, but is TAKING A STAND and getting some press. |Washington Post|

Local:

• Rep. Charlie Rangel‘s ethics hearing starts today. Hope he takes his lucky pet rock. |NY Times|

• The woman whose voice you hear on the subway doesn’t live in NYC or ride the subway. | NY Times|

• Last weekend, councilmember Eric Ulrich tweeted about watching The Muppets Take Manhattan. This weekend, he tweeted about watching Sarah Palin’s Alaska. Sarah Palin is a muppet. |Eric Ulrich’s Twitter|

• Councilmember Brad Lander blogged about a fire in Park Slope that damaged several apartments and businesses, including Open Source Gallery. It’s sad, so no jokes here. |Brad Lander’s blog|

• The city’s paying $10 million in rent to a guy who’s on the public advocate’s slumlord list. Hey, the city can pay me $10 million to rent my apartment–just cleaned it, so it’s not slummy anymore. |NY1|

Venezuelan street artists have no love for the U.S. and the New York Times caught up with one of them. Meet Carlos Zerpa, he’s a Caracas-based painter who created this endearing stencil of a headless Secretary Clinton. He describes the piece, modeled after this famous painting, as a “metaphor for an empire that is being defeated.” |NYT|

Photo: Meridith Kohut/The New York Times

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton entertained a wacky question while in Saudi Arabia recently, when someone asked if she would leave the country if, god forbid, Sarah Palin ever became president. Apparently, Saudis are just as terrified at the prospect as the rest of America. |Gothamist|

In case you somehow missed it, American student Amanda Knox was found guilty of murdering her roommate by an Italian jury late Friday in what many legal experts are calling a complete farce of a trial. Now it’s possible that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton may enter the fray to bust some Italian skulls over the whole thing.

Reports the Daily Mail:

After the verdicts, Knox’s furious father Curt Knox vowed to fight to clear his daughter’s name and spoke of his ‘anger and disbelief’ at the Italian justice system.

His campaign seems to be gaining support on Capitol Hill. Senator Maria Cantwell, from Washington state, declared there were ‘serious questions about the Italian justice system’.

She said she was concerned there had been an ‘anti-American’ feeling at the trial and said she would be raising her concerns with Mrs Clinton.

‘The prosecution did not present enough evidence for an impartial jury to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that Miss Knox was guilty,’ she said. ‘Italian jurors were allowed to view highly negative news coverage about Miss Knox.’

Naturally, Clinton’s possible involvement did not please any of the Italians working on the case, who apparently haven’t been told that Clinton is no longer a Senator and is actually heading up the American State Department these days.

She said she had not expressed any concerns to the Italian government. Last night, Knox’s Italian lawyer distanced himself from the senator’s claims. Luciano Ghirga said: ‘That’s all we need, Hillary Clinton involved. I have the same political sympathies as Hillary but this sort of thing does not help us in any way.’

Prosecutor Giuliano Mignini said: ‘This senator should not interfere in something she has no idea about. I am happy with how the trial went.’

Imagine that…a prosecutor happy with a possible bullshit guilty verdict.

Peace-loving, staunchly-neutral Switzerland sure has some aggressively-opinionated newspapers. Previously WOZ, a weekly Swiss rag, made Barack Obama look like the anti-Christ in a print ad. Now, the country’s leading Sunday paper, Sonntagszeitung (literally, Sunday’s newspaper), provides “the insight story” on our new president—SuperBam’s broke. True enough, though not what this former journalist would call especially insightful. At right, is a rotating outdoor billboard from the campaign featuring their inside view of the Secretary of State—Hil’s Bill, but Bill’s also Hil. Or something. Well, like here, I’m sure newspapers are also dying in Switzerland. So Sonntagszeitung? Do whatever you gotta do to sell ink, I guess. Because soon, you’ll probably be broke, too. FYI, previously in what the agency Advico Y&R calls this “Babushka principle” campaign, the paper also looked inside Bush and Putin. |Images: BestAdsOnTV|