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Courtesy of the Cronybus(sic) last minute passage, government was provided a quid-pro-quo $1.1 trillion spending allowance with Wall Street's blessing in exchange for assuring banks that taxpayers would be on the hook for yet another bailout, as a result of the swaps push-out provision, after incorporating explicit Citigroup language that allows financial institutions to trade certain financial derivatives from subsidiaries that are insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp, explicitly putting taxpayers on the hook for losses caused by these contracts. Recall: (more at link)

A Knoxville photographer has captured a police officer on camera using what looks like excessive and unnecessary force on a college student. The sequence of photographs show the young man complying with Knox County deputies as they lead him to a police van at the University of Tennessee, before an officer uses two hands to choke the student until he is unconscious. The young man was arrested during a wild college party celebrating after a week of finals that spilled out onto the street on Saturday night. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2614386/Tennessee-police-photographed-choking-unresisting-college-student-passes-out.html#ixzz307zEGIog Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

Can You Guess Who I Am I? Shocker

Virginia Heffernan, Y! News: Thanks everyone for weighing in. These are crucial issues. I'll speak for myself: [snip] When I hear about violence, like in Newtown, I feel unsafe and worry that my kids are unsafe, but my mind doesn't go to arming myself or people at my son's school. It goes to the blind terror I feel around guns, especially in the hands of maniacs, but even when I see them on the hip of an NYPD cop. It goes to how lethal they are. And it goes to how I wish guns would disappear. So they and their...

MESQUITE, Texas (CBS HOUSTON) – A North Texas woman has been arrested after being accused of posting Facebook photos of an undercover policeman who testified against her friend in court. Mesquite police arrested Melissa Walthall, 30, for allegedly posting the photo of the officer, who authorities say recently testified in a drug case against her friend. Her Facebook post identified the person as an undercover officer, according to a federal affidavit. After a caller tipped off Mesquite police to Walthall’s Facebook post about a week ago, an investigator found that it posed a “viable threat to that officer’s safety,” the...

ABERDEEN TOWNSHIP, N.J. (AP) — More than 900 students at a New Jersey middle school have been told no more hugging. The district says Matawan-Aberdeen Middle School Principal Tyler Blackmore made an announcement that students were in a "no hugging school" following some "incidents of unsuitable, physical interactions."

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration is leaving open the possibility of giving Moscow certain secret data on U.S. interceptor missiles due to help protect Europe from any Iranian missile strike. A deal is being sought by Washington that could include classified data exchange because it is in the U.S. interest to enlist Russia and its radar stations in the missile-defense effort, a Pentagon spokeswoman said Tuesday in written replies to Reuters. No decision has been made yet on whether the United States would offer data about the interceptors' "velocity at burnout," or VBO, said Air Force Lieutenant Colonel April...

Worried about juggling your Christmas baking, gift-giving and party-going with the possible zombie apocalypse? This brief instructional video from Team Unicorn has all the information you need to safely and happily enjoy the season without turning into one of the walking dead.

[...] Mark Moody said he was taking his usual nicotine break on the window ledge of his Peck Slip home on a hot August day with a cigarette in one hand and a cellphone in the other, a scant 12 feet off the ground. He was shocked when a police car rolled up and two cops jumped out. "Are you about to commit suicide?" one cop asked. "If I was going to commit suicide, this would be a pretty dumb place to do it," the 40-year-old trial lawyer scoffed. "If I jumped from here, I'd just sprain my ankle." [...]...

WASHINGTON – A computer failure caused a break in communication with 50 nuclear missiles at Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming over the weekend, military officials said Tuesday. The officials said the break occurred Saturday and lasted about 45 minutes. The White House was briefed about the failure Tuesday morning.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Two U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission enforcement lawyers are under investigation by federal criminal authorities for allegedly using insider information to trade stocks, a report by the SEC's internal watchdog said. The Federal Bureau of Investigation and U.S. Attorney's Office are conducting an investigation of possible criminal and civil violations, the SEC's inspector general David Kotz said in a March 3 letter to SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro. (snip) The report redacts the names of the enforcement lawyers. Both the report and letter were made available on Friday. (snip) But the two lawyers did trade in the financial...

The mathematical technique called factor analysis was invented by psychologists specifically to answer the age old question, "Is there more than one kind of intelligence?" We now know that there are two: one called fluid g, measured by culture fair tests such as the Raven Progressive Matrices or the LAIT, and another called crystallized g, measured by culture loaded tests like the Concept Mastery Test or the Miller Analogies Test. What we call g has been defined as the ability to "educe relations and correlates," or in more everyday terms, the abilities for inductive ("relations") and deductive ("correlates") reasoning. Culture...

LA PAZ (Reuters) – Emboldened by a new leftist constitution, Bolivia President Evo Morales on Saturday handed over ownership of farmland seized by the state from wealthy estate holders to poor indigenous people. Morales handed out around 94,000 acres of lands recently confiscated from five big ranches in Bolivia's wealthy eastern lowlands, a stronghold of his conservative political opponents. The ranchers have been accused of employing workers in conditions of semi-slavery. [...] "It is not that these lands were not in production, but that they were the site of human rights violations against the Guarani, who will now be their...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. cities are vulnerable to an attack like the gun-and-grenade assault that terrorized Mumbai for three days and killed 179 people, the White House homeland security adviser said on Wednesday. Ken Wainstein told a Washington think tank that the Mumbai attacks in November showed the effectiveness of a low-technology coordinated assault on an open city.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – A man laid off recently from his job in Silicon Valley shot and killed three people, believed to be former co-workers, at an office park on Friday, police in the ailing U.S. technology hub said. The 47-year-old suspect, identified by police as Jing Wu, was still at large after gunning down two men and a woman shortly before 4 p.m. local time (0000 GMT), Santa Clara, California, police told local media.

Spitzer is apparently in violation of the Mann act, which prohibits transportation of women across state lines "for an immoral purpose." Apparently the justification of this law comes from the interstate commerce clause. But when it comes to guns, federal laws are enacted to prohibit or require something for guns "which have ever traveled in or affect" interstate commerce, which is essentially all of them. (Unless you mine the iron, make the steel, and then make the gun all in one state, apparently.) Most girls "have ever traveled in or affect" interstate commerce, but this isn't good enough for the...

I have a mortgage on my Colorado primary residence with Bank of America, which is apparently a California company. The enforcement section of the CA FTB has sent me an enforcement letter, We received information that you made martgage payments to B of A, N.A. during 2006. The mortagage interest you paid indicates that you may have sufficient income to have a filing requirement for the 2006 tax year. We checked our records and are unable to locate your 2006 California income tax return. ... FYI I am a COLORADO resident, (employed in Colorado, living in Colorado, paid in Colorado,...

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Tech support in the time of the Gutenburg Bible. http://www.boreme.com/boreme/funny-2007/introducing-the-book-p1.php

The news that the Utah mall shooter Suleman (1) was Muslim and (2) was yelling "Allahu Akbar" as he went down has gradually came out. The police are "mystified" at a possible motive for the crime. I would like to compile a resource thread of Muslim attacks on US soil: names, dates, links, victims, etc., depicting a reality that the mass media will never admit: that Islamic terrorism is here, not just on 9-11. Maybe some of these crimes are random acts of violence (that is, not ideologically driven, the guy just flipped out), but then again, maybe they aren't....