Jailed for more than six years for Fraud, Conrad Black is "working", even if it's for gratis, for Tina Brown's web venture The Daily Beast.

The disgraced businessman has taken to giving John McCain advice ("President Bush did his best to manage the financial crisis in a way that would have enabled John McCain to turn it to his advantage, but the candidate missed his great chance. His hare-brained week, starting with the Herbert Hoover quote that the economy is "fundamentally sound," ranks among America's greatest attempts at political suicide) and on FDR

So how did this happen? As Steve Johnson at the Chicago Tribune seems to suggest, it's all happening with the approval of the prison authorities. Some prisons allow e-mail access for inmates-text only-which is how Black, 64, likely filed the article, said Traci Billingsley, spokeswoman for the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Like many writers for even prominent, well-funded Web sites, Black is doing it gratis. 'Inmates aren't allowed to conduct a business at all,' Billingsley said.

You can't keep an ego like that down for too long.