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UPDATE: Also, be careful when you 'wiretap' (record) your spouse in Nebraska, or probably anywhere else in the U.S. Read arstechnica.com, Modern divorce: Wiretapped teddy bears, $120,000 in fines.
And read the federal court order to understand why.
UPDATE: My, my, it seems that it's a case of the pot calling the kettle black. "Representative Peter T. King, whose committee is holding hearings on the radicalization of American Muslims, once fervently supported a terrorist group, the Irish Republican Army." Read The New York Times, For Lawmaker Examining Terror, a Pro-I.R.A. Past.
Republi-cons have no shame.
UPDATE: Of course, it is important to understand that the Industrial Revolution and "the overwhelming automation of the business of providing us with calories, warmth, and dryness has not left us short of things to do, and not feeling as though we have suffered status degradation." Read Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality with All Ten Tentacles, Did the Singularity Already Happen?
UPDATE: Democratic state legislators are also fleeing the party in record numbers."The 2010 election was devastating for Democrats across the country, but the South was at the epicenter of the destruction. . .
Since the election, things have gone from bad to worse for Democrats in the South. In Louisiana, the state's attorney general and five state legislators - all Democrats - have switched to the Republican side since the 2010 midterms.
The Republican consolidation of the South over the past two years is hard to dispute. But is it a permanent reality or simply the latest swing of the political pendulum in the region? Not surprisingly, the two parties offer vastly different assessments."
Read the Washington Post, Will the South stay solidly Republican?
UPDATE: Unconstitutional, but still enforceable, if the government appeals the original ruling "within seven days and [seeks] an expedited review at the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals." Read the Wall Street Journal, Judge Says Health-Care Overhaul Can Roll Out While Government Appeals, which includes a link to check the status of "the 22 cases challenging the health-care law" at the Kaiser Health News scoreboard.
To read the order potentially staying his find that the health care law is unconstitutional, click here.
To read some of the other recent court documents, click here.
UPDATE II: Chief Justice "Roberts called 'startling and dangerous' the government's argument that the value of certain categories of speech should be weighed against their societal costs when protecting free speech." Justice Alito would disagree. Read the Washington Post, Alito stands alone on Supreme Court's First Amendment cases.
UPDATE: Free speech means all of it, at least so long as the speech is on matters of public concern, the relationship between speaker and subject was not a private grudge, and speech is said from a place where the speaker has the right to be. Read the New York Times, Justices Rule for Protesters at Military Funerals, or read the Supreme Court opinion.
According to Northwestern University spokesman Alan Cubbage:
"Northwestern University faculty members engage in teaching and research on a wide variety of topics, some of them controversial and some of at the leading edge of their respective disciplines, The University supports the efforts of its faculty to further the advancement of knowledge."
"'It is probably something I will remember the rest of my life,' said senior Justin Smith, 21, one of the students who stuck around voluntarily after class when students were told about what they were about to see.
'I can't say that about my Econ 202 class and the material that I learned there,' Smith told The Chicago Tribune."
The NoBullU New Year's Resolution;
Follow-up to fact-free fantasies: TBD;
Local and regional: BREAKING NEWS, unconstitutional, but still enforceable, if at first Boeing doesn't succeed . . . change the rules, more state Republi-CON fiscal conservative hypocrisy, Republi-CONs, and their mutually beneficial relationship with Louisiana corporate overlords, and remember days gone by, watch this 1964 Pensacola tourism film;
National and international: I'm waiting, where's the balanced budget, don't hold you breath because the Republi-CONs Con the Tea Party, there'll be no $100 billion budget cut, but the budget battles continue, free speech, is it all or nothing?, union busting, part of the Republi-CON war on the middle class, budget gamesmanship and tough decisions, the Republi-CON Double Dip Recession, not a new ice cream, but it'll make you scream, and they're off and running, reports are that former speaker of the House Gingrich will become the first major Republican candidate to enter the 2012 Presidential race, America's obsession with sex, but not violence, a former car thief and arsonist, who is he now?, Hedgehog News protects its investment in Republi-CONs, a Facebook revolution?, new score in the health care lawsuit: US 3 - VA 1 and FL , the reason for repeal -- the health care industry bottomline, Republi-CON fear, anger, hatred whatever the subject, time flies, we just finished the runt month, no class like this at my school, and 'The Great Stagnation' and our broken political system;
Fun stuff: test your power of observation; what Dads do when Moms are not home, America's Funniest Grandmother and Mission Impossible, Squirrel Edition, Escapa;
and
Donate to a good cause: help the friends of a former instructor at the Naval EOD school at Eglin Air Force Base, Gunnery Sgt. John Hayes, who was detachment company gunnery sergeant from June 2007 to June 2010 and taught several courses and was recently wounded in Afghanistan.
UPDATE II: "Future historians will long puzzle over how the self-immolation of a Tunisian street vendor, Mohamed Bouazizi, in protest over the confiscation of his fruit stand, managed to trigger popular uprisings across the Arab/Muslim world. We know the big causes — tyranny, rising food prices, youth unemployment and social media. But since being in Egypt, I’ve been putting together my own back-of-the-envelope guess list of what I’d call the 'not-so-obvious forces' that fed this mass revolt." Read about those 'not-so-obvious forces' at The New York Times, This Is Just the Start.
UPDATE: So far, the Middle East revolution "movements that have appeared so suddenly and proved so powerful have shunned the two central tenets of the Qaeda credo: murderous violence and religious fanaticism. The demonstrators have used force defensively, treated Islam as an afterthought and embraced democracy, which is anathema to Osama bin Laden and his followers." Read The New York Times, As Regimes Fall in Arab World, Al Qaeda Sees History Fly By.
Reaffirming what I said for many years, violence favors the terrorists.
In the meantime, follow the Middle East protests, country-by-country.
