As people were trying get to seated at the Inaugural swearing-in dealing with the crowds, the lack of information, gates being slammed in their faces and too many puffy winter coats, Mariah Carey was spotted by a figgy friend “unprotected in the throng” (Ben Vereen was there too, and very nice, says my source).

But Mariah–who had VIP seats with Bruce Springsteen, Jon Bon Jovi, Mary J. Blige, and Alicia Keys and later performed at the Neighborhood Ball with Blige–wasn’t happy with her choice location. A source tells Page Six:

But somehow she thought she’d be up with the Obama family. When she realized she wasn’t, she bailed.

Obama closes Gitmo – the right thing from the start.

I first met Mike Lux when he was director of the Iowa Citizen Action Network in the mid-1980s. With his wife Barbara Laur – herself a progressive leader – I knew Mike was someone to watch. Citizen Action was designed to connect local organizing efforts across the country – to build power from the grassroots up. I was part of Citizen Action Illinois and our goals were – and still are – to give people a sense of their own power and to make immediate/concrete improvements in people’s lives.

In the wake of the spectacular meltdown of Caroline Kennedy with regard to. . . well, anything about her bid for the New York Senate seat–from her disastrous trip to upstate New York to her calamitous interview with the Times, her history of not voting, her unwillingness to release her financial records or even say what she stood for, her failure to tell her own people she was pulling out of the race. . . .

This morning the Lehigh Valley has been in the news because a former congressman, Club For Growth president Pat Toomey, has given Arlen Specter a pass in terms of his right flank. The somewhat demented Toomey, a right wing extremist who preceded Charlie Dent as PA-15′s rep, said he’s not going to primary Specter (and run for governor instead).

Four pathologists say the science points to yes.

The four include the medical examiner whose testimony helped secure Swearingen’s guilty verdict. That medical examiner now says college student Melissa Trotter’s curiously preserved body could not have lain in the East Texas woods for more than 14 days.

Whatever snacks David Gregory left behind in the NBC White House correspondent’s cubicle, Chuck Todd seems to be ingesting them along with kool aid newly appointed Washington Post White House correspondent Chris Cillizza brings to work in his Debbie Howell lunchbox.

The Obama administration has, in theory at least, supported Bush’s motion to appeal Judge Vaughn Walker’s al-Haramain decision. But that’s with an administration that doesn’t have a DOJ yet.

Faced with President Obama’s order setting in motion the shutdown of Gitmo and other US-run-and-approved torture sites, the folks who in a really just world would be in the dock at The Hague are now doing a full-on, lie-driven media pushback.

Some people center themselves every morning with yoga, and others jog. Some read scripture and others pray. Quite frankly, I wouldn’t mind it one bit if Obama retook his Oath EVERY morning before breakfast. After eight years of GWB, it might even be a good idea.