It looks like Clayton Cramer has gotten himself a book advance. Anyone care to speculate on a title for this magnum opus? (Bonus points if you can work in more than one of Cramer’s obsessions.)

I’ll leave the interpretation to someone who actually cares about Plamegate, like Tom Maguire, but offhand this New York Times report sounds like a big deal:

I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, first learned about the C.I.A. officer at the heart of the leak investigation in a conversation with Mr. Cheney weeks before her identity became public in 2003, lawyers involved in the case said Monday.

Notes of the previously undisclosed conversation between Mr. Libby and Mr. Cheney on June 12, 2003, appear to differ from Mr. Libby’s testimony to a federal grand jury that he initially learned about the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson, from journalists, the lawyers said.

The notes, taken by Mr. Libby during the conversation, for the first time place Mr. Cheney in the middle of an effort by the White House to learn about Ms. Wilson’s husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, who was questioning the administration’s handling of intelligence about Iraq’s nuclear program to justify the war.

Meanwhile, the GOP appears to be gearing up for a Ken Starr-reminiscent smear operation against special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, which isn’t making TigerHawk or Andy McCarthy very happy.

Today’s “big sports news” is that Texas is #1 and ahead of Southern Cal by a few billionths of a point in this week’s release of the BCS rankings, thus reigniting the BCS doom-and-gloom scenarios.

The bottom-line facts are as follows:

• USC has done nothing more impressive this season than any of the other major undefeated teams (Texas, Alabama, Georgia, and UCLA). Bama and Georgia are both undefeated in the only conference where every team has a defense; Texas just demolished a Texas Tech squad who themselves were demolishing all comers; UCLA has beaten up on the same weak conference opponents as USC with identical results.
• The only reason we think USC is entitled to be ”#1” is because the AP and coaches ranked them #1 in August before a single game was played—back when they also thought Tennessee was the third-best team in the country (instead of the third-best team in the SEC East) and UCLA was in the “others receiving votes” category in both polls.
• It doesn’t matter who’s ranked #1, as long as you don’t drop out of the top two.

So, guys, can we put the controversy on hold until Thanksgiving, at least?

þ: OTB and others.