Rahm’s race is back on: The Illinois Supreme Court has granted a stay and instructed the state election board to put Rahm Emanuel’s name on the ballot. He was removed from the ballot on Monday after an appeals court said he failed to meet eligibility requirements. Despite the stay, the Illinois Supreme Court still needs to decide whether Rahm's name will ultimately be on the ballot.

It won't just be members of Congress reaching across the aisle tonight. In his State of the Union address, President Obama will call for a ban on earmarks and propose a five-year freeze on federal discretionary spending—with an exception for security. The White House hopes to win the support of the new crop of Republicans in Congress. According to estimates, the two moves might save $450 billion—a sum that might help convince Congress to agree to the spending on education and infrastructure that Obama will request in the speech.

• Howard Kurtz: Obama's SOTU Sand Traps
• SOTU Live Chat with Howard Kurtz, Mark McKinnon, and More
• Ben Adler: How Paul Ryan Will Help Dems

Violent waves of protest and demonstrations continue to cause chaos in Egypt. Rioters congregated in front of the parliament building Tuesday, where police with shields, tear gas, and water cannons attempted to thwart protesters throwing rocks at the building. The events in Cairo were organized via Facebook, where tens of thousands of supporters announced on a protester page inspired by the uprising in Tunisia that they would take part in a "day of revolt." Demonstrators attacked a police water cannon vehicle in Tahrir Square and officers used batons to beat back protesters, according to the Associated Press. One rioter, 43-year-old lawyer Tareq el-Shabasi, said: "I came here today willing to die, I have nothing to fear." Egypt has many of the same social and political problems that caused unrest in Tunisia, including rising food costs, high unemployment rates, and anger at political corruption.

• Mike Giglio: Will the Revolution Go to Egypt?
• Real-time updates on Facebook

And the Oscar nominees are out! The King’s Speech leads the pack with 12 nominations, including Best Picture, Best Actor for Colin Firth, and Best Supporting Actor for Geoffrey Rush. True Grit got a total of 10 and The Social Network scored eight. The nominees for Best Picture are Black Swan, The Fighter, Winter's Bone, Toy Story 3, 127 Hours, The Social Network, Inception, The Kids Are All Right, True Grit, and The King's Speech. For Best Actress: Annette Bening for The Kids Are All Right, Natalie Portman for Black Swan, Nicole Kidman for Rabbit Hole, Jennifer Lawrence for Winter's Bone, and Michelle Williams for Blue Valentine. For Best Actor: Colin Firth for The King's Speech, Jesse Eisenberg for The Social Network, Javier Bardem for Biutiful, Jeff Bridges for True Grit, and James Franco for 127 Hours. The Oscars will be presented live on February 27 in Los Angeles.

• See all of the Oscar nominees
• Watch the Oscar announcement

Score one for the civilian court system. Despite a bumpy trial and acquittals on more than 280 charges, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani will serve a life sentence without the possibility of parole for his role in the 1998 bombings on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 and wounded thousands. The trial is seen as a major test of the U.S. civilian court system’s ability to try terrorism suspects. After the bombings, Ghailani served as a bodyguard to Osama bin Laden before his arrest in Pakistan in 2004.

The Michael Jackson saga isn't even close to being over. During an arraignment in Los Angeles Tuesday, the singer's doctor, Conrad Murray, pleaded not guilty to a charge of involuntary manslaughter. He's charged with providing the drugs on which Jackson overdosed in June 2009. The troubled physician's lawyers say they're confident a trial will give Murray a chance to beat the rap.

They may not find the “guidos” so charming there: The fourth season of Jersey Shore will shoot in Italy, MTV has confirmed. TMZ was the first to report that crew members are preparing to scout potential locations and began working on getting visas for the cast two months ago. The Italy-based season will film in the spring and is scheduled to include appearances from cast member Vinny Guadagnino’s first-generation Italian relatives. "While the stateside Jersey Shore locales have become iconic for our audience, it’s really the constantly evolving dynamic amongst the cast that keeps them coming back each season, and Europe is a fresh spin on a show that continues to reach new heights for us," an MTV exec revealed. "The cast is headed to the birthplace of the culture they love and live by. We can’t wait to see what erupts as a result." Season four of Jersey Shore is slated to air later this year.

• The Jersey Shore Dictionary: Volume 2
• The 11 Best Moments of Jersey TV

Farm life is in for a big change: Facebook is mandating that all game apps, like FarmVille, use its in-house Facebook Credits as currency—a blow to gaming companies like Zynga and Playdom, which will now have to give Facebook a cut of their transactions. While games will still be able to sell their own currencies, those currencies will have to be purchased with Facebook Credits rather than cash. Why the move? Facebook takes a 30 percent cut of all Facebook Credit transactions.

A fascinating example of how the rich spend their money: Harper’s Bazaar has a photo shoot of Barbra Streisand’s basement, which she has organized as an old-fashioned village with various “shops.” There’s a “sweet shop,” a “doll shop,” a “gift shop,” and an “antique shop.” "Instead of just storing my things in the basement, I can make a street of shops and display them," Streisand says.

In an effort to better understand that man behind the music, researchers have discovered that Fredric Chopin suffered from temporal lobe epilepsy. The wild-eyed composer often saw a "cohort of phantoms" and ghosts, but it was dismissed as possible bipolar disorder. Chopin was always ill--he was already dying from lung disease at 39 and took a drug called laudanum to help with another ailment but it wouldn't produce such hallucinations. Researchers looked through Chopin's correspondence with friends and family to investigate his behavior. In a letter to George Sand's daughter, Chopin writes that he had to leave the stage during a 1848 performance because he saw creatures coming from the piano.

It's time to become a vegetarian. An Alabama law firm is filing a class action lawsuit against Taco Bell after discovering that the “meat” used in their dishes isn't really meat at all, at least not according to the USDA. The "taco meat filling" as it's written on their containers has only 36 percent real beef; the rest is a combination of chemicals and odd-ball ingredients like 'cocoa powder'. The USDA defines "meat taco filling" as having at least 40 percent fresh meat. Taco Bell spokesman Rob Poetsch issued a statement that read, "Taco Bell prides itself on serving high quality Mexican inspired food with great value. We're happy that the millions of customers we serve every week agree. We deny our advertising is misleading in any way and we intend to vigorously defend the suit."

This really puts a dent in some people’s hopes to extradite and prosecute Julian Assange: NBC News reports that military investigators have been unable to link Bradley Manning to Julian Assange in the WikiLeaks investigation. While they’ve determined that Manning illegally downloaded tens of thousands of classified documents and passed them off to an unauthorized person, he doesn’t seem to have ever had any contact with Assange, who has denied knowing Manning. "That's not how our technology works, that's not how our organization works," Assange has said. "I never heard of the name of Bradley Manning before it appeared in the media."

Could this interfere with the administration’s plans to make nice with big business? President Obama’s bipartisan Financial Crisis Commission has concluded that several industry figures have broken the law, and it has referred these cases to federal and state authorities for possible prosecution. The panel has been investigating the causes of the financial crisis for 20 months and will reveal its findings on Thursday; it appears though that there will be no consensus, as the panel is actually prepared to issue three reports along partisan lines. The report from six Democrats, including chairman Phil Angelides, will focus on Wall Street greed, regulation failures, and “shadow banking.” Republican Pete Wallison will issue his own report focusing on “big government” housing policies, while the three other Republicans will issue a report downplaying the big banks’ responsibility and instead blaming the crisis on global trends.

Work is unbecoming for a future queen, no? Kate Middleton has quit her job in order to prepare for her wedding to Prince William, says the London Evening Standard. She had been working at her parents’ online party-supply store, Party Pieces. She’s currently living with William at their cottage near the air-force base where he works as a helicopter pilot.

You can’t keep Keith Olbermann quiet for long. The former Countdown host broke his three-day silence Monday, taking to Twitter to thank his friends for their support. “My humble thanks to all the Friends of Keith for the many kind words,” he wrote. “The reports of the death of my career are greatly exaggerated.” Meanwhile, Olbermann’s nemesis at Fox News, Glenn Beck, said he wasn’t surprised by the news. Beck called Olbermann “impossible to work with,” and predicted the left-leaning network would go in a new direction without him. “You can handle mediocre ratings if the guy’s not a total pain in the ass … but from every indication, Keith Olbermann is the biggest pain in the ass in the world.” Olbermann’s exit contract bars him from returning to television for at least six months, but his Twitter post suggested he is considering a comeback—something Beck said he looked forward to.

• The Daily Beast’s Howard Kurtz: Keith Olbermann’s Righteous Rage
• Watch Keith Olbermann’s Best Moments
• The Daily Beast’s John Avlon: The End of Wingnuts?

The Hezbollah-backed candidate for Lebanon’s prime minister, Najib Miqati, is poised to take over the country’s government, sparking widespread protests throughout the country. The new leader could prove a problem to the U.S., which had supported the government of current leader Saad Hariri. Although Miqati, a billionaire and former prime minister, said he’d form a conciliatory government, many are opposed to the idea of Hezbollah picking the next leader. Angry protests swept Beirut, Tripoli, and other cities, with newspapers calling the day a “day of rage.” Hezbollah’s rise to power followed the 2007 assassination of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, father of the current leader. Although Hezbollah has denied any role in the killing, its own members were accused of it last week.

First condoms, now Facebook—what will Pope Benedict endorse next? The 83-year-old pontiff said Monday that he supports the use of social networks, but urged people not to substitute virtual contact for actual contact. In an address titled “Truth, proclamation and authenticity of life in the digital age,” the pope did not mention any social networking site by name, but used the phrases “friend,” “sharing” and “profiles.” "In the search for sharing, for 'friends,’ there is the challenge to be authentic and faithful, and not give in to the illusion of constructing an artificial public profile for oneself,” the pope said. Although the pope himself does not have a Facebook page, the Vatican launched a website in 2009 called www.pope2you.net, with an application called “the Pope meets you on Facebook.”

A step up from Levi Johnston, perhaps? Bristol Palin has a new boyfriend, reportedly a 20-year-old Alaskan pipeline worker. Palin, who was a runner-up on last season’s Dancing With the Stars, said she’s “thrilled” to be in a new relationship, new house, and new town. Palin said she “wrote a check” to purchase a five-bedroom house in Maricopa, Arizona—and added that the new house “made Dancing With the Stars worth it.” Palin said her 2-year-old son, Tripp, is happy right now, but she wants to change his last name from Johnston to Palin. Palin said Johnston has seen Tripp “at the most, three times” since she was on Dancing With the Stars.

Another casualty of the White House makeover: The Obama administration has announced that energy adviser Carol Browner will be leaving her post in the coming weeks. Browner, whose official title is assistant to the president for energy and climate change, was the face of the Obama administration’s response to last year’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill, often appearing calm and reassuring on television. Browner, who was an EPA administrator for eight years under President Clinton, is still undecided about her future plans. But she leaves without realizing her chief goal: to pass a comprehensive energy bill.

• Chat live with The Daily Beast’s Howard Kurtz during the State of the Union address.

Even for a king, this seems a bit excessive: Page Six says King Abdullah left New York City for Saudi Arabia with “at least a dozen” tractor trailers filled with luggage. He showed up with his own army of contractors to conduct his security screening, then set off with his entourage in six private jets (with separate ones for his two wives who accompanied him). The contractors were hired because the TSA was unable to handle Abdullah’s large entourage and its volume of luggage. King Abdullah stayed for two months in New York while recovering from back surgery, renting whole floors of the Plaza and Waldorf-Astoria hotels.

Reducing deficits will be a theme of President Obama’s State of the Union address on Tuesday, but he will not call to cut spending with Social Security cuts or a raise in the retirement age. Liberals cheered the news and are hoping to draw a contrast with Rep. Paul Ryan, the Wisconsin Republican chosen to respond to Obama’s address who has advocated deep cuts in Social Security. Raising the retirement age was a suggestion in Obama’s bipartisian deficit commission’s plan; he’ll urge Congress to adopt some of the panel’s other recommendations.

• SOTU live chat with Howard Kurtz, Mark McKinnon, and more, starting at 8:45 p.m. ET.
• Howard Kurtz: Obama's SOTU Sand Trap
• Mapping the SOTU

There may be a few empty seats around the Supreme Court justices at Tuesday's State of the Union address. One year after a much-publicized incident in which President Obama took a swipe at the court's Citizens United decision and Justice Samuel Alito mouthed, "Not true," there figures to be few conservative justices in attendance. Alito said last year that he would not attend this year's address. Justices Scalia and Thomas, who rarely attend (and did not attend last year), are not expected this year either. So now attention turns to Chief Justice John Roberts, who has complained that the speech is a "political pep rally." Court watchers say the absences may be mostly an indication of a recent trend toward extreme polarization between the liberal and conservative justices on the land's highest court.

• Howard Kurtz: Obama's SOTU Sand Traps
• SOTU live chat with Howard Kurtz, Mark McKinnon, and more, starting at 8:45 p.m. ET.

Next on Apple’s hit list: Visa, Mastercard, and American Express? Next-generation iPhones and iPads will be able to function essentially as credit cards, says Bloomberg News, thanks to a new technology that can beam and receive information at a distance of up to four inches. Such a feature could be used to tap into bank accounts directly, which would save Apple from having to pay credit-card company processing fees. Apple would neither confirm nor deny whether it’s working on this feature, which has long been rumored.

Tuesday’s biggest White House scandal belongs to the last guy who lived there: President Bush illegally spent taxpayer money on political campaigns, according to a new report by the Office of Special Counsel. The report says Bush's Office of Political Affairs was essentially an extension of the RNC. The office was overseen by Karl Rove and created a “target list” of Congressional races, organized briefings, and sent Cabinet officials out to campaign, especially during the 2006 mid-term election. The investigation, which took three years to complete, shows that the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal employees from political activity, was violated, but the Office of Special Counsel says it won't file charges since Bush is no longer in office. However a Justice Department official declined to comment whether they will press charges based on the report.