• Comedian Paula Poundstone calls in at 8:05am Pacific to riff on the news of the day, and to tell us about her new CD, “I Heart Jokes: Paula Tells Them In Maine.”
• Prominent Liberal groups and gay rights proponents criticized President-elect Obama yesterday for choosing evangelical pastor Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at the presidential inauguration next month. The founder of the Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, CA opposes gay marriage and abortion rights.
• Chrysler announced late yesterday that it is stopping all vehicle production in the United States for at least a month. All 30 of the carmaker’s plants will close after the last shift tomorrow, and employees will not be asked to return to work before January 19, 2009. Employees will be paid, but they will not receive the full amount of their working pay.
• President-elect Obama has picked Republican Rep. Ray LaHood of Illinois to be his nominee for transportation secretary. Obama will formally announce his choice of LaHood, a seven-term congressman from Peoria, at a press conference in Chicago this morning.
• Embattled Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich said yesterday that he “can’t wait to begin to tell my side of the story.” Although Blagojevich hasn’t commented publicly on his federal corruption charges, his lawyer Ed Genson said the governor had done nothing wrong and does not intend to step down. The Illinois Supreme Court has rejected an attempt to oust Blagojevich from office, saying it had refused to hear a motion that deemed the governor “unfit to serve.”
