We’ll be liveblogging the Senate hearings on the bailout of the big three American automakers. We’ll sift through the oft-dull C-Span coverage so you don’t have to. Follow along after the jump.

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A man named Anthony Michaels is trying to get traction on a class action lawsuit against Classmates.com because of this message on their website: “Your former classmates are trying to contact you! Upgrade now to see their messages!”

After he ponied up the $15 membership fee, he realized that the alert from Classmates was just a sales line. Michaels then lawyered up and sued the company for making false statements. There has been no comment from the company, but my money in on a quick settlement and a revision of the message.

[Wired] Classmates.com User Sues; Schoolmates Weren’t Really Looking for Him

Aluminum smelter Alcoa has announced that it will be firing 660 at its Rockdale plant. Company flack Kevin Lower blamed the problem on Luminant, Alcoa’s power company:

“When you’re running an aluminum smelter, power needs to be online for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, for 50 years… But it would be offline, then online, then offline, then online. It was like a yo-yo.”

Luminant accepted a small amount of responsibility, but also blasted Alcoa’s claim to pieces in this prepared statement:

“We had some outages, but we made several alternative arrangements to get them reasonably priced power, and they didn’t take advantage of that… We believe Alcoa has a history of using layoffs like this as a vehicle for managing costs and driving the company’s profitability. Alcoa should acknowledge its independent decisions instead of blaming power supply issues and unspecified ‘market conditions”

Find out more: Houston Chronicle

Napster, which has slid to a paltry $65 million market cap (about equal to their cash-on-hand), is making it no secret that they are looking to be sold. The problem for them is — who the hell wants to buy it?

After getting busted last week by the Better Business Bureau for lying about its partnership with U.S. Bank, MyGallons.com has suspended accepting membership fees for its service. The company also gloats on its website that the South Florida BBB removed its rating of “F” and replaced it with “No Rating.” Awesome job, guys.

When the news that 63 guards at a facility for sex offenders came out, news organizations around Minnesota piled on. Fourty-five separate news sources covered the story. Reporters from the Associated Press got quotes from from several lawmakers and the headlines became: “Security hospital layoffs worry lawmakers.” The fact that the layoffs were at a facility for sex offenders helped the news of the firings to become mainstream.

The layoff outcry is well meaning (I guess), but where was the concern/outrage/investigation when twenty-seven administrators and teachers were laid off from a Minnesota school district? That happened two weeks ago, and since then the story has only appeared in one tiny news source.

If sex maniacs start breaking out from the security hospital, I’ll take this back, but until then it would be nice for newspapers and politicians would at least pretend to care about education.

A press release issued by Ted Nugent to promote his new song, I Am The NRA can now be streamed from his website or downloaded from the NRA website for a hefty $2.00 tax.

My favorite line: “I always celebrate self-evident truths.”

Here’s a self evident truth for Ted: Hey dumbass, next time, promote your agenda with a free song.

It’s always front-page news when sycophant site TechCrunch gets an email that editor/owner Michael Arrington feels isn’t nice enough. Cry me a river.  The damn email wasn’t even mean spirited — just curt.

Read the whole lame story here

We’re always pleased when the troublemakers from Valleywag find a party to crash, but the three articles in a row detailing Google executive Marissa Mayer’s Sex and the City party was a bit much.

First: the party is announced.

Second: a few lame pictures and some drooling over a high-heeled Google lady.

Third: a riveting expose about cupcakes flown in from New York.

Are we done yet? Good.