Perhaps you haven’t heard, but in Washington, President Obama urged Congress to pass his stimulus bill, and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was hospitalized with pancreatic cancer. In sports and entertainment, Michael Phelps lost his sponsorship with Kellogg’s after being photographed smoking cannabis, while Etta James threatened to beat up Beyoncé after the latter performed “At Last” at a presidential inauguration ball. The economy is, well…still tanking. Oh, and a man in Florida was arrested after being caught fondling a couple of blow-up dolls in a supermarket parking lot.

These are just a few of the multitude of diverse stories accessible through the Drudge Report, a news aggregation Web site owned and operated by one of the media’s most likable villains, Matt Drudge. He’s a former 7-Eleven employee (a job for which he says he was well-qualified, having graduated 341st out of 355 in his high school class) who was at one point arrested for making prank phone calls and eventually sent to a psychiatric institution. Isn’t it rather ironic, then, that this son of Jewish liberal Democrats has gone on to become one of the most powerful forces for conservatism in America today?

For Drudge, there’s no trade-off between quality and quantity. As for what’s on the page, well, the answer is everything. Just look in the left and middle columns, after the actual stories, and you’ll see what’s got to be at least 200 potential contributors to the Drudge Report, sources representing both the news we need to hear (such as the Associated Press and Reuters) and the news we like to hear (like the Smoking Gun). From the plethora of options available, Drudge carefully (at least it seems) selects between about 25 and 50 and posts the links. There’s always an eclectic mix of subjects, and thus a salient story no matter what you’re after.

What makes the Drudge Report truly different, though, are the headlines. With the (supposedly) unbiased CNN or The New York Times, you’re likely to have a pretty good idea of what you’ll get if you click on the link, but good old Mr. Drudge doesn’t much care what you think—as long as you read what he’s got to say. My personal favorite from the past year would have to be George Stephanopoulos’ report about Joe Biden discussing the dire situation with the economy (“Biden: U.S. Economy in Danger of ‘Absolutely Tanking’”). Drudge kept the headline for sure, only he decided to add one little word to the beginning (hint: think miserly Charles Dickens’ characters), so as to elucidate his personal views on the then vice president-elect. It was certainly funny, but what’s more important is that it enticed me to read the actual article.

Of course, Drudge’s style isn’t for everyone. To Keith Olbermann he’s “an idiot with a modem,” and Newsweek writer and Washington University graduate Michael Isikoff (whose story revealing the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal launched the Drudge Report to national prominence) called Drudge “a menace to honest, responsible journalism.” There have been occasions on which he’s erred—mainly stories that turned out to be hoaxes—but on the whole Drudge has had many more hits than he has had misses. So if you’re tired of all the “conventional” news sites or just have some time to kill, check out the Drudge Report. You won’t regret it.