Vice President Joe Biden’s daughter Ashley has plunged herself into some seriously hot water. The 27-year-old social worker has a “friend” (and I use that word loosely, because he’s one hell of a friend) who’s shopping around a video of Ashley snorting cocaine at a party. The video appears to be legal as the friend claims Ashley knew she was being taped.

He contacted two lawyers who are helping him sell the footage – originally demanding a whopping $2 million from the New York Post, which refused. They lowered the price to $400,000, but the Post still said no (no word on if that’s due to ethics or cost). They did, however, view the 90 seconds that appears to show Ashley snorting coke.

A “friend” of Vice President Joseph Biden’s daughter, Ashley, is attempting to hawk a videotape that he claims shows her snorting cocaine at a house party this month in Delaware. The anonymous male acquaintance of Ashley took the video, said Thomas Dunlap, a lawyer representing the seller. Dunlap and a man claiming to be a lawyer showed The Post about 90 seconds of 43-minute tape, saying it was legally obtained and that Ashley was aware she was being filmed. The Post refused to pay for the video.

The video, which the shooter initially hoped to sell for $2 million before scaling back his price to $400,000, shows a 20-something woman with light skin and long brown hair taking a red straw from her mouth, bending over a desk, inserting the straw into her nostril and snorting lines of white powder. She then stands up and begins talking with other people in the room. A young man looks on from behind her, facing the camera. The lawyers said he was Ashley’s boyfriend of a few years.

The camera follows the woman from a few feet away, focusing on her as she moves around the room. It appears not to be concealed. At one point she shouts, “Shut the f— up!” The woman appears to resemble Ashley Biden, 27, a social worker for a Delaware child-welfare agency and a visible presence during her father’s campaign for the White House. The dialogue is difficult to discern, but the woman makes repeated references to the drugs, said the lawyers, who said they viewed the tape about 15 times.

“At one point she pretty much complains that the line isn’t big enough,” said the second lawyer, who declined to identify himself. “And she talks about her dad.” Biden has been an outspoken crusader against drugs, coining the term “drug czar” in 1982 while campaigning for a more forceful “war on drugs.” The lawyers declined to name the person who shot the video, but said he knew Ashley well and had attended other parties with her at which there were illegal drugs.

[From the New York Post]

The lawyers say the woman talks about her dad, but from their phrasing it sounds like the Post didn’t see that part. So there’s no way to know what she says, and if it’s anything that identifies him as Joe Biden. Obviously the Post wasn’t able to verify for sure that the woman on the video is Ashley Biden, though they said she looks the same. It seems like they’re trying to put the story out there before someone else beats them to it, while still being cautious about saying it’s clearly Ashley.

If it is her, it’ll probably be a medium-level scandal. The adult daughter of the Vice President isn’t quite as salacious as the guy who took the video probably hoped. Given the nature of her job, she would probably be fired though. More than chastising her it makes me hope she gets some help.

George Clooney got a White House invitation last night. Clooney met with both President Obama and Vice President Biden to discuss the ongoing genocide in Darfur. The Fox News guys are probably hyperventilating right about now. Clooney just got back from a trip to the Sudan-Chad border, where there’s still on-going debate as to his security detail and whether he was traveling officially as a UN Messenger of Peace.

The White House blog has the story up, calling “Eye on Darfur”. Clooney is talking to the press about how Obama will soon appoint a special envoy to Darfur. Honestly, I thought President Bush had already appointed an envoy to Darfur, so, from my perspective, this really isn’t that newsworthy. But it is! Because it involves Clooney and President Obama! Actually, it is interesting – President Obama personally assured Clooney that Darfur would be made a bigger priority in his administration than in the previous administration. The Guardian has more:

Barack Obama to appoint senior Darfur envoy, says campaigner George Clooney. The Hollywood actor hails ‘huge policy step’ on Sudan conflict after conversations with president and Joe Biden.

The Barack administration is preparing to appoint a “full-time, high-level” envoy to address the conflict in Darfur, according to the actor George Clooney, who met the president and Joe Biden in Washington on Monday to lobby them on the issue.

Clooney said Obama and the vice-president had told him the envoy would report directly to the White House, and would be appointed following a foreign policy review currently taking place “at the senior-most levels”. “They assured me, and wanted to assure the rest – whoever else is listening – this is high on their agenda,” he said. “This is a huge policy step for us.”

Clooney has campaigned for several years for greater US activism to end the conflict between rebels and Sudanese authorities in Darfur, which may have claimed 300,000 lives and displaced 2.7 million people, according to United Nations estimates. The international criminal court is due to decide next week whether to issue an arrest warrant for the Sudanese president, Omar al-Bashir, on war crimes charges.

“This isn’t about needing American dollars. I understand that it’s a very difficult time,” Clooney said after his scheduled meeting with Biden and a separate, impromptu encounter with Obama. “It’s not about needing American troops. It’s about needing what we do best – what we have done best since the start of this country – which is good, robust diplomacy all across the world.”

The actor, who missed Sunday night’s Oscars ceremony for his White House appointment, is a UN messenger for peace, although this did not prevent the UN from revoking his security escort on a visit this month to eastern Chad, where he was touring refugee camps in the company of the New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. “If the UN is too craven to protect its own goodwill ambassadors – because they might criticise genocide – it’s not surprising that it and the international community fail to protect hundreds of thousands of voiceless Darfuris,” Kristof wrote.

Elizabeth Alexander, a Biden spokeswoman, said: “The vice-president informed Mr Clooney about the administration’s ongoing review of Sudanese policy and welcomed his observations from his trip, [and] thanked Mr Clooney for his work on this issue, which he believes is an important contribution to the public’s understanding of the conflict in Darfur.”

The actor brought with him to the White House 250,000 postcards signed by Americans urging more US action on Darfur. “I think somehow we should all know that these people are hanging on by the skin of their teeth,” he told CNN.

From The Guardian

I wonder if Clooney’s meeting was just supposed to be with Biden, and Obama just stopped by for a quick grip-and-grin. That’s what it sounds like to me. Even though I doubt Obama really cares about what the hyperventilating right-wing has to say about his relationship to Hollywood, he probably does want to avoid a lot of Hollywood encounters as a general rule. Plus, Clooney takes credit for everything – kind of like Joe Biden, come to think of it. Obama probably already had things covered with the roll-out of his African foreign policy, and Clooney swooped in to announce it. I adore Clooney and Biden, but I bet that meeting was like a war of blabbermouths.

These photos are of Clooney on set in early January and he has since shaved off that mustache.

As Barack Obama prepares to take that long car ride to the inaugural platform, surrounded by hundreds of thousands of people, it will help him to know what kind of audience will be greeting him. Will the audience be full of young, enthusiastic supporters, their faces shining with youth and vigor? Will the audience be full of parents and grandparents, showing their children and grandchildren the beauty of democracy, their lined faces beaming with pride? Or will the people be older, wiser politicos and insiders, their faces frozen, puffy and waxy with cynical, non-Hope-y, pre-inaugural Botox and Restylane injections? Probably thousands from all three categories.

To heck with Champagne, break out the Botox. It’s inauguration party time.

Washington, D.C.-area cosmetic dermatologists, and skin experts in other major cities, say despite the sagging economy, requests for quickie cosmetic fixes, such as Botox and microdermabrasion, have picked up during the last few weeks as people pretty-up for inaugural fetes.

“We have been absolutely swamped since the election with people desiring rejuvenation procedures for the upcoming inauguration,” says Washington, D.C., cosmetic dermatologist Tina Alster.

“My normal load for cosmetic procedures has doubled, except for hyaluronic acid fillers — Perlane and Restylane — which have almost tripled,” reports cosmetic and laser surgeon Hema Sundaram, who runs two offices in the Washington, D.C., area.

Despite a 2008 survey released last week by The American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery that revealed almost 96% of cosmetic surgeons were concerned about the economic downturn and that 79% had already felt its effects, many patients, like interior designer Jan Lynch, 59, says tough times haven’t put the breaks on her preparations.

“My motivation is to look the very best I can for such a historical event. I’ve flown in to D.C. from California for this,” says Lynch, who will attend the swearing-in ceremony as well as a black-tie ball with her husband.

Lynch says she stopped by Sundaram’s office this weekend for cosmetic treatment, which included Botox and hyaluronic acid fillers. Sundaram’s patients include men, but are mostly women over 35 who include Washington socialites, professionals in politics who will work and mingle socially with the Obamas, and others attending satellite inauguration events.

Journalists, politicians, lobbyists and lawyers are among Alster’s clientele. “They have all come in at once,” she says.

The trend isn’t only occurring inside the Beltway, according to skin experts in other cities.
Cosmetic dermatologist Jeffrey Dover, of Chestnut Hill, Mass., a Boston suburb, says inauguration-bound patients have been “queuing up” at his office. “They’re asking for no-downtime procedures to look their best for the festivities.”

Leslie Baumann, director of the Cosmetic Medicine and Research Institute at the University of Miami, in Miami, Fla., says, “We were swamped this week. Some were going to the inauguration in D.C. But I saw many going to inauguration parties in Miami.” Many are men in their 50s and 60s, Baumann says.

New York City cosmetic dermatologist Cheryl Karcher says she’s seen an upswing in inauguration-related business at her Park Avenue practice in recent weeks, too. Karcher says she treated one group of young women planning to travel together. “That was fun. They all got peels, Botox, fillers.”

From USA Today

I don’t understand this at all. Do these people think that Barack Obama will get judgy about some forehead lines? Or do all of these people hope to get some inaugural booty calls, thus they want to look “refreshed”? I found the USA Today link on Wonkette, where they were comically theorizing that Obama was blowing his $170 million inaugural budget on Botox and outdoor toilets. They might not be too far off – have you seen Joe Biden forehead lately? He’s looking… Kidman-esque. I thought he was going to bust something on Oprah as he tried to raise his eyebrows.

Barack Obama and Joe Biden are shown on 10/29/09 at a rally in Sunrise, Florida. Credit: WENN. Other images below credit: Oprah.com

Apparently, Vice President-Elect Joe Biden and his wife Jill are huge Brad Pitt fans. The couple tried desperately to get into The Curious Case of Benjamin Button this Saturday in their home state of Delaware, but were turned away because the show was sold out. Perhaps they could have gone to Marley & Me? Of course not. Because Jill Biden was wandering around telling people that “they really wanted to see Benjamin Button”. Isn’t that sweet? Dollars to donuts, Jill Biden picked the movie as a “date night” with her husband. Here’s a run down of what happened.

He’s a heartbeat away from the presidency, but that apparently didn’t help Joe Biden get a movie ticket Saturday night. Employees at the Regal Brandywine Cinemas say the vice president-elect and his wife, Jill, tried to attend the 7:45 showing of “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” at the theater on Concord Pike but left after they were told the movie was sold out.

There’s been no confirmation from the Biden camp, but the theater employees say they are sure it was him. Inshirah Muhamut, an associate manager, said she closed her box-office line when she saw what appeared to be a Secret Service agent coming her way.

The man asked her about tickets for the movie, which stars Brad Pitt, then left.

A few minutes later, she said, the Bidens came into the lobby. Jill Biden walked up to speak with Muhamut while Joe stood nearby.

“She was asking me about other shows, but they really wanted to see ‘Benjamin Button,’ ” Muhamut said. “He was maybe five feet away, looking at her. He was standing with his other Secret Service men.”

Remarkably, none of the other moviegoers appeared to notice. Employees said nobody mobbed Biden or called his name or asked for an autograph.

“It didn’t seem many people recognized him,” said employee Becky Gingrich, 21. “Honestly, I think people were just too wrapped up in themselves to notice.”

The brush with Biden did give the employees a thrill, though. “I was a little excited — I’m not gonna lie,” said Muhamut, a 21-year-old senior at West Chester University. “The Secret Service guy told me to calm down.”

Muhamut plans to go to the Jan. 20 inauguration, so seeing the Bidens up close was a kick. “I recognized him as soon as he came up,” she said. “He had a black jacket and jeans on. He looked real casual. His wife had on a very stylish jacket.”

Gingrich and Muhamut said the Bidens didn’t ask for special treatment. They simply mulled over their movie options and left. “We’re just so crazy in here tonight [with patrons] that we would have had to go into the theater and move people around,” Gingrich said.

[From Delaware Online]

Why do the Bidens hate Jennifer Aniston? Just kidding! They just love Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett more! But seriously, there isn’t one thing about this report that doesn’t make me love the Bidens even more. From Jill Biden wandering around, talking to normal people, to the associate manager freaking out and the Secret Service agent telling him to calm down, this is the cutest story ever. I hope the Bidens get to see Benjamin Button at some point (I think the Naval Observatory has a screening room), and I sincerely hope that Jill Biden one day gets to meet her super-secret crush Brad Pitt. I bet he would totally give her a kiss on the cheek!

Picture note by JayBird: Here are stock photos of Joe and Jill Biden. Images thanks to Splash.