Rush Limbaugh apologizes to law student for ‘slut’ slur - Chicago Sun-Times
“My choice of words was not the best, and in the attempt to be humorous, I created a national stir,” Limbaugh said on his website. “I sincerely apologize to Ms. Fluke for the insulting word choices.”
‘It’s horrible, horrible, horrible’: 2 dead in oil pipeline crash - Chicago Sun-Times
Two men were killed, including a firefighter, and three critically injured early Saturday when their vehicles struck an oil pipeline in New Lenox Township, officials said.
BP reaches $7.8 billion Gulf Spill settlement
BP says the settlement includes $2.3 billion to resolve claims related to the seafood industry affected by the spill and will be paid out of an existing $20 billion trust that was set up to compensate victims.
Democratic lobbyists giving cold shoulder to Obama super-PAC - TheHill.com
Democratic lobbyists who have been barred from fundraising for President Obama’s campaign are showing little interest in donating instead to a super-PAC that supports him.
And how is this not just plain soliciting bribes?
Unlike Obama’s official campaign, the Priorities USA Action super-PAC accepts donations from registered lobbyists. The president gave his blessing to Priorities earlier this month, giving K Street a place to contribute cash to his reelection efforts.
Now, I realize that "Reagan Won The Cold War" is part of the modern conservative Nicene Creed that young conservative children recite before going to bed every night, their parents in the doorway, watching proudly.
No kidding.
The Keystone XL Will Raise Gas Prices : TreeHugger
Here's the leadoff line from a new Bloomberg report: "TransCanada Corp. (TRP)’s Keystone XL oil pipeline, a project backers including Republican Presidential candidate Rick Santorum say will create cheaper U.S. gasoline, instead risks raising prices as much as 20 cents a gallon in the Midwest, Great Plains and Rocky Mountains." As Brad Johnson succinctly puts it, the pipeline would "allow Canadian crude to escape the United States oil market, increasing profits for oil companies and driving up domestic gasoline prices."
That's right. The Keystone XL would raise gas prices.
Six-Legged Giant Finds Secret Hideaway, Hides For 80 Years : Krulwich Wonders... : NPR
The only thing to do was to go back up after dark, with flashlights and cameras, to see if the pooper would be out taking a nighttime walk. Nick Carlile and a local ranger, Dean Hiscox, agreed to make the climb. And with flashlights, they scaled the wall till they reached the plant, and there, spread out on the bushy surface, were two enormous, shiny, black-looking bodies. And below those two, slithering into the muck, were more, and more ... 24 in all. All gathered near this one plant.
Santorum: ‘People 20 years ago couldn’t conceive of a cell phone’ | The Raw Story
Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum says that 20 years ago people couldn’t even imagine cell phones, but now they are commonplace because Americans “recognize the rights God has given every person.”
But now they can.
National Mortgage Settlement Will Give Principal Reductions To Only 5% Of Underwater Loans
How many homeowners will benefit from the $25 billion mortgage settlement that state attorneys general reached with the banks last month? The biggest portion of the deal -- about $17 billion -- is dedicated to reducing the mortgage principal for those who owe more than their homes are worth. Ted Gayer of the Brookings Institution runs the numbers and finds that 500,000 homeowners will get principal reductions -- just 5 percent of underwater mortgages.
Well, maybe they play something else sometimes, but now…
Direct from Ely, Minnesota: Listen Live
Smithsonian Magazine's Annual Photo Contest - In Focus - The Atlantic
(Noted by our Midwest bureau)
It's about six inches, but it's the only snow we've had since early January and it is, as it happens, ideal for making snowmen and forts. Heavy and wet. Snowmen and other artifacts are springing up all over town. It's still snowing a little bit but it's melting faster, so this guy has plenty to be grouchy about. Not that he needs a reason, you understand.
Mitt Romney Super PAC - Campaign Finance and the American Bribery Trap - Esquire
The example of this presidential election is not promising. Not only is Romney capable of buying himself a lead every time a race gets tight, but the cold, hard reality is that, without their personal sugar daddies, both Santorum and Gingrich would long ago have been left by the side of the highway, drinking sad beers in a cafe with Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, who keeps pinching the waitresses, and Jon Huntsman. This is the way we do politics today. This is the way we keep score. And, once the politics are over, and the various 'hos get back to their real jobs, the rot that money brings into the electoral system starts undermining the government itself. When we talk about "campaign finance reform" in isolation, we overlook the really dangerous corruption of the system that comes when the campaigns finally end. People don't stop being for sale just because they're not running anymore. If they're bought, they stay bought. At that point, this stops being about "campaign finance" and starts being about, for all practical purposes, bribery. It will not be long before we've raised an entire generation of elected officials who don't know any other way to do politics than the way we're doing politics right now. How will reform ever come from them? They won't even be able to recognize the concept. Citizens United has created a great trap for the country from which there may be no real escape.
The Sideshow March 2012 Archive
The argument in elite, big-D Democratic circles seems to be that the scary Republicans are scarier than ever before, so scary, with their Tea Party and their conservative media, that they make the Republicans of the late 1990s look reasonable.
So reasonable, in fact, that conservative Republican policies from the late 1990s, policies that are completely at odds with the philosophy of the New Deal, a functioning government, a federal state that doesn't spy on anybody it feels like, and a free and fair market for everybody, policies that reject everything that movement liberals stand for are now considered to be "achievements" when enacted into law by today's centrist Democrats.
The Civil War, Part 1: The Places - In Focus - The Atlantic
Although photography was still in its infancy, war correspondents produced thousands of images, bringing the harsh realities of the frontlines to those on the home front in a new and visceral way.…
UPDATE: Wyoming No Longer Considering Buying an Aircraft Carrier - Lowering the Bar
It appears that, on reflection, the Wyoming House of Representatives has decided the risk of invasion by its neighbors is remote enough that it can do without its own armed forces for now, and in particular does not need to consider whether an aircraft carrier might come in handy.…
Supreme Court appears to back corporations in torture cases - latimes.com
Reporting from Washington—
The Supreme Court's conservative justices said they were inclined to shield multinational corporations as well as political groups such as the Palestine Liberation Organization from being sued in this country for torture or other atrocities around the world.
Class warfare? It’s only just begun | Odd Man Out
How did we sink to where less than 12 percent of workers are represented by unions? To supporting a president who brags of saving the GM and Chrysler but fails to mention autoworkers’ salaries and benefits were cut in half? To the dreary reality of an android named Mitt Romney bragging he would not have saved the auto companies?
WikiLeaks begins publishing 5 million emails from STRATFOR - Pastebin.com
If I'd found this yesterday I could have leaked it.
The whole thing is about WikiLeaks outing the private intelligence company, Stratfor, which has always seemed (and still seems, as far as the revelations provided by the press release noted above) like a perfectly good idea to me. They, according to WikiLeakes, pay their sources bribes, an old-fashioned transgression that disappeared with Citizens United, if it is a transgression at all—commissions might be an equally descriptive word. Or just plain fees.
Mitt Romney scrambles to nail down home state of Michigan - The Boston Globe
“I think I can show I can fight real hard and come from behind,’’ Romney said yesterday on “Fox News Sunday.’’ “I’m planning on winning here in Michigan, and also in Arizona. That’ll be huge, having come from so far behind here in Michigan.’’
Romney "until two weeks ago had a comfortable lead in the polls. Now those polls show a dead heat," says the Globe. So much for coming from "so far behind,"
And the silent movie won. I am officially declaring myself clueless (although judging from the box office receipts I'm not the only guy who hasn't rushed out to see it). Possibly the reason I thought the whole award show was pretty flat is that I've only seen one of the movies, Midnight (and that I liked a lot). I want to see Moneyball and Tinker Tailor, and although I'm not much interested in Margaret Thatcher it's always a pleasure seeing Streep work, so that one too. Otherwise, not so much. And how can a silent movie win an award for music, I'd like to know.
Anyway, all the silent movies were made years ago. Why make more? That's about as pointless as electing one of those R's they've got running around in Michigan—well, until tomorrow, when they'll all go away and infest some other state. Maybe even here. Ah, Mitt, we knew ye plenty well.
Obama pressed to open emergency oil stocks - FT.com
The Obama administration is coming under growing pressure to cool petrol prices by releasing emergency stocks of oil.
However, critics say this would be the wrong response to the wrong problem at the wrong time.
Here's something: If the silent movie wins, I'm turning Republican. Really. Silent movies are un-American. Republican's want to turn back the clock, sure, but not that far. Fifty years, only. Or sixty. Or so. But not that far.
Although the truth is, I sometimes think about becoming a Republican anyway. You can think anything you want to think (freethink!) and it doesn't even have to be true. So anything is possible. What's wrong with colonies on the moon?
Democrats are always worrying about things. Shrimp with no eyes—what does a shrimp need to see anyway? Leaky pipelines—so what, it's Nebraska. Have you ever frigging been to Nebraska? There's nothing there.
What's with these Democrats getting all worked up about the price of oil?
Frack.
FBI Turns Off Thousands of GPS Devices After Supreme Court Ruling - Digits - WSJ
The Supreme Court’s recent ruling overturning the warrantless use of GPS tracking devices has caused a “sea change” inside the U.S. Justice Department, according to FBI General Counsel Andrew Weissmann.
Mr. Weissmann, speaking at a University of San Francisco conference called “Big Brother in the 21st Century” on Friday, said that the court ruling prompted the FBI to turn off about 3,000 GPS tracking devices that were in use.
Emphasis mine.
Ghastly Outdated Party - NYTimes.com
“Republicans being against sex is not good,” the G.O.P. strategist Alex Castellanos told me mournfully. “Sex is popular.”
