(Here is the Las Vegas Review-Journal story on the confusion at sports books.)

Six years ago, Green was the back judge who failed to realize guard Rich Seubert was an eligible receiver when he was hauled down illegally by Chike Okeafor at the end of the Giants’ epic playoff loss to the 49ers.

I attended the Ravens-Giants game Sunday and had a nice chat with Seubert, with whom I had a very friendly working relationship in my Giants beat days and who has made an amazing comeback from having his leg broken into many pieces to become a member of the best line in football.

Seubert had a better weekend than Green did, which is poetic justice of some sort.

The Sirius Star — a crude “super tanker” flagged in Liberia and owned by the Saudi Arabian-based Saudi Aramco company — was attacked on Saturday more than 450 nautical miles southeast of Mombasa, Kenya.

“It was attacked more than 450 nautical offshore of Mombasa. This means that the pirates are now operating in an area of over 1.1 million square miles. This is a measure of the determination of the pirates and … a measure of how lucrative piracy could become,” Campbell said.

Campbell said the Navy does not expect to dispatch a vessel to aide the super tanker because it does not have dangerous weapons aboard like the MV Faina, a Ukrainian ship loaded with arms that was seized by pirates on September 25.

Ships are patrolling the area where most of the attacks have happened in the past but this points out how ineffective patrolling is in dealing with the pirates. The most effective way to deal with them is to attack their bases in Somalia and destroy their boats. We clearly have a force that is capable of doing that, but so far there is a lack of will in dealing with the pirates. That has only emboldened them as this attack points out.

The Obama campaign has reportedly been spending time vetting the New York senator before any offer of a cabinet post, presumably Secretary of State, is made.

As part of the vet, Obama’s transition team is attempting a full scrub of the former president’s business dealings. But evidently, it’s rough going.

As the Politico reports:

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) is President-elect Obama’s first choice for secretary of State but his aides are becoming exasperated by the Clinton camp’s pokey response to demands for extensive information about former President Bill Clinton’s finances, according to numerous Democrats involved in the process.

“The sense among the no-drama Obama world is: This is well on its way to winning best Oscar for drama,” said one well-connected Democratic official.

There are signs, however, that the Clintons may move decisively to satisfy the vetting requests in coming days, clearing the way for a “Team of Rivals” cabinet that would bring the president-elect’s opponent for the Democratic nomination into his historic administration.

Democratic officials make it sound like the job has been all but offered to her. But the ball is in her court to show that the former president’s many foreign and financial entanglements would not pose huge conflicts of interest if she were the nation’s chief diplomat, the officials said.

Obama isn’t likely to formally offer the post to Clinton unless he’s given assurances Bill Clinton’s global charitable foundation won’t create future conflicts of interest with foreign governments, according to a person familiar with the situation.

Maybe Obama can get past that hurdle if he really wants to appoint the senator from New York to be the nation’s top diplomat.

But it would seem to be a very challenging problem for Obama, especially based on the little we know about the former president’s post White House activities.

The New York Times, for instance, earlier this year had a revealing story about a large donation the former president’s foundation received from a Canadian businessman.

Frank Giustra, the Canadian, won a uranium deal from Kazakhstan after he visited, with the former president, Nursultan A. Nazarbayev, the president and strongman ruler of that south Asian country who, ironically, wanted Clinton’s support for the leadership of “an international organization that monitors elections and supports democracy,” according to the NY TImes.

On the surface, these are the kind of dealings that raise red flags, despite the former president’s spokesman’s explanation contained in this excerpt.

A spokesman for Mr. Clinton said the former president knew that Mr. Giustra had mining interests in Kazakhstan but was unaware of “any particular efforts” and did nothing to help. Mr. Giustra said he was there as an “observer only” and there was “no discussion” of the deal with Mr. Nazarbayev or Mr. Clinton.

But Moukhtar Dzhakishev, president of Kazatomprom, said in an interview that Mr. Giustra did discuss it, directly with the Kazakh president, and that his friendship with Mr. Clinton “of course made an impression.” Mr. Dzhakishev added that Kazatomprom chose to form a partnership with Mr. Giustra’s company based solely on the merits of its offer.

After The Times told Mr. Giustra that others said he had discussed the deal with Mr. Nazarbayev, Mr. Giustra responded that he “may well have mentioned my general interest in the Kazakhstan mining business to him, but I did not discuss the ongoing” efforts.

If the senator from New York were to become secretary of state and wound up making a favorable policy recommendation involving Kazakhstan, how could her husband’s relationship with Nazarbayev and Giustra not raise conflict-of-interest questions? And how many more of these situations are there?

These are the kinds of questions the Obama people will have to answer to their satisfaction before she gets the nod. Of course, if they really don’t want her to have it, these questions give them the out they need.

Through November Sweeps, the big 3 networks are each sharing a piece of first place. CBSleads as the most watched network with 11.33 million viewers, while ABC placed first with Adults 18-49 and Adults 25-54. ABC and NBC are both tied with 2.8 rating/8 share for Adults 18-34. This may seem like a positive, however, total numbers are down year-to-year, between 7 &11 percent in each category, with Fox down 15-19%.

SAG and the AMPTP are scheduled to meet Thursday for the first time in four months. The meeting, set up by Federal mediator Juan Carlos Gonzalez, is a sign that diplomacy may help get a contractual deal done. While SAG has been quiet since asking for mediation, studios are betting that the guild will not strike and are planning to increase production in the new year.

Plus, today’s consulting question, “I’ve read that Hollywood has really cut TV development dollars, is it the economy?” Shelly has the answer on today’s MediaBytes.

No matter how it ends, at the very least, the charges will make Cuban’s effort to buy the Chicago Cubs even more difficult. The government wants to enjoin Cuban from future trading and get the usual financial penalties—“disgorgement” of gains plus interest and a civil fine. I’ve asked Cuban for his response. In the meantime, here’s what he wrote on BlogMaverick in March 2005 about selling the shares (punctuation his): “I had purchased stock in Mamma.com in hope that it could be an up and coming search engine. I thought I had done some level of due diligence. Talked to the company management. Talked to some employees who worked in sales. Read the SEC Filings. I knew that they had a checkered past and had been linked to stock promoter Irving Kott, and that their law firm still handled some of Kotts business, but the CEO, Chairman, lawyers all said that things were reformed and the company was focused on its business. Then the company did a PIPE financing. Im not going to discuss the good or bad of PIPE financing other than to say that to me its a huge red flag and I dont want to own stock in companies that use this method of financing . Why? Because I dont like the idea of selling in a private placement, stock for less than the market price, and then to make matters worse, pushing the price lower with the issuance of warrants.So I sold the stock.”

The government alleges it wasn’t that simple, that Cuban sold the stock before he was supposed to despite acknowledging to the CEO that he knew he couldn’t sell his holdings before the public announcement of the PIPE financing: “Cuban knew or was reckless in not knowing that he had received material, non- public information from Mamma.com and that he breached a duty of trust or confidence that he owed to Mamma.com when he sold on the basis of that information.” Mamma.com changed its name to Copernic in 2007 after acquiring that company.

Cuban also wrote about it when his purchase of a 6.3 percent stake in Mamma.com went public in early 2004: “I invested in mamma.com for the same reason I invested in Netidentity.com back when it was known as mailbank.com. I love businesses with low overhead, that don’t need to be technology leaders to succeed, that generate cash that they can put in the bank, and at some point, hopefully payout to shareholders. I think mamma.com has that potential.”

Sykes, who had not discussed her sexual orientation publicly, chose to share the news with more than 1,000 people at a rally outside a Las Vegas community center because of her concern about the recent passage of a referendum that outlawed same-sex marriage in California.

“I felt like I was being attacked, personally attacked — our community was attacked,” she reportedly told the crowd, according to an account in Sunday’s New York Times.

The measure, known as Proposition 8, was passed on November 4 by California voters, sparking an outcry from gay and lesbian activists who have taken to the streets and the airwaves in protest. The new law only recognizes marriages between a man and a woman and may invalidate thousands of marriages performed in California during the months when the practice was legal in the state.

Sykes, who reportedly divorced her husband of seven years in 1998, said she married her wife on October 25.

“You know, I don’t really talk about my sexual orientation. I didn’t feel like I had to. I was just living my life, not necessarily in the closet, but I was living my life,” Sykes reportedly told the crowd, according to an account by the Associated Press.

Sykes, 44, said her sexual orientation was well known among her friends even if she hadn’t spoken about it with her fans. “Everybody that knows me personally they know I’m gay. But that’s the way people should be able to live their lives,” she said. “Now, I gotta get in their face.”

After weeks of bitter protest that seemed to pit some gay activists against blacks who supported Prop. 8, Sykes appeared to bridge the divide. ”I’m proud to be a woman. I’m proud to be a black woman, and I’m proud to be gay,” she said, according to AP.

Even before she came out publicly, Sykes has been outspoken in her support of same-sex marriage and has posted a video from her comedy routine on the subject on her web site. “Government shouldn’t be involved in this,” she says in the video. “It’s very simple. If you don’t believe in same sex marriage, then don’t marry somebody of the same sex.”

By coming out, Sykes instantly became one of the most visible African American public figures in support of same-sex marriage. The Emmy Award-winning performer recently appeared in the feature film Evan Almighty, the sequel to Bruce Almighty, and his starred in numerous other films and television series. She’s also the author of a book calledYeah, I Said It, published by Simon and Schuster in September 2004.

What Obama is doing by putting various speeches on youtube has been done before with more interesting twists.  Foreign leaders put their addresses on youtube; Tony Blair congratulated his French colleague Nicolas Sarkozy upon his election over youtube, in both French an English.  It would be interesting if other foreign leaders responded to Obama on youtube, and that could potentially be exciting depending on what results.  

If you want to see innovative approaches to politics and government, check outNumber 10 Petitions or Fix My Street.  These are tools that let citizens group and speak to the government in interesting ways, and allow the government to react effectively or face political pressure if it does not.  That’s a shift in power, not just form.  

The reason I point this out is because it’s important to understand that it isn’t the mere use of technology that creates innovation, it’s the detailed understanding of how that technology intersects with political power and public pressure to create a different type of political order.  I hope Obama has his cabinet officials put out content on youtube, but I hope he goes far beyond that and lets the formerly powerless speak back as well in ways that actually force needed changes to happen.

The agreement will be submitted to parliament later. The draft agreement consists of 31 articles and calls for US troops to pull out of Iraqi cities by June 2009. 

As the cabinet meeting started a roadside bomb went off at a Baghdad checkpoint, killing three people, according to AFP. Another seven people were wounded in the attack, which took place in the capital’s northeast Al-Shaab neighbourhood.

The exchange between Lesnar and Mir was interesting in that Mir is the only man to have beaten the new champ. Lesnar expressed that he felt confident after Randy Couture weighed in at 220 pounds and revealed that he weighed 276 pounds after having re-hydrated following Friday’s weight cut.