What's wrong with this picture?

President Barack Obama held an off-the-record meeting with top White House reporters…

Politico

Mystery cults

Of all the various Washington mystery cults, the one at that end of Pennsylvania Avenue is the most impenetrable. This is why the argument many liberals are making -- that the drone program is acceptable both morally and as a matter of practical politics because of the faith you have in the guy who happens to be presiding over it at the moment -- is criminally naive, intellectually empty, and as false as blue money to the future.

Pierce

Outing Snively

Doesn't Snively sound like a great villain name? Especially one that represents big corporate interests?

Chocolate Chip Mint

And nobody cares about carburetors anymore

Parts, a photo by Ted Compton on Flickr.

And then they're coming after you

In a typical fair and balanced panel, Fox News warned on Wednesday that Al Jazeera is set to “infiltrate” the United States amid dire warnings about “sleeper cells” in the Muslim suburbs of Detroit.

ThinkProgress

Some people just don't know when to go away

Former Republican Senator Alan Simpson and former Clinton White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles will release a new plan today…

ThinkProgress

Cylons or BSOD?

NASA says it lost communication with the International Space Station at 9:45AM ET this morning while flight controllers in Houston were working on updating the software for the station's flight computerS. [sic]

The Verge

(BSOD: Blue Screen of Death)

Notes from a newer world

Many pilots initially dismissed drones as nothing more than video games. But today, the Air Force trains more drone pilots than fighter or bomber pilots, and drone strikes have killed scores of terrorists, according to the Obama administration.

…Last year, drones flew more combat hours than manned aircraft.

Business Insider

Regulators lizzied

WASHINGTON -- Bank regulators got a sense Thursday of how their lives will be slightly different now that Elizabeth Warren sits on a Senate committee overseeing their agencies.

Huffington Post (with video)

Jump

iPhone photo: Phil Compton

Orwell would be proud

As early as this April, Yale plans to welcome a training center for interrogators to its campus.

The center’s primary goal would be to coach U.S. Special Forces on interviewing tactics designed to detect lies. Charles Morgan III, a professor of psychiatry who will head the project, calls these tactics “people skills.” 

Yale Daily News

Buckeyes busted in Tennessee

“What are you doing with a marijuana sticker on your bumper?” one of the cops asked Jonas-Boggioni.

UNDERNEWS

Running away from home – to South Carolina?

HILTON HEAD ISLAND, S.C. — It’s not easy running for Congress in conservative South Carolina when you’re liberal media mogul Ted Turner’s kid. 

Just ask his son Teddy.

He’s been trashing his dad every chance he gets to show voters of the 1st Congressional District he’s not some tree-hugging lefty — or worse yet, Jane Fonda’s son. 

Politico

All whoppers do not come with fries

"When you say something like this, particularly at this late date, you’re exposing yourself as one of two things: dumb or deceptive. Pick your poison (emphasis mine):

This idea - that our problems were caused by a government that was too small - it’s just not true. In fact, a major cause of our recent downturn was a housing crisis created by reckless government policies

The straight-news press does a poor job of pointing out Rubio’s giant whopper. Actually, it does no job at all."

More from Columbia Journalism Review

There's always an angle

Finally, after a 12-year delay caused by opponents of genetically modified foods, so-called “golden rice” with vitamin A will be grown in the Philippines. Over those 12 years, about 8 million children worldwide died from vitamin A deficiency. Are anti-GM advocates not partly responsible?

Slate

Bunnies attack!

The furry creatures are wreaking havoc on cars parked at Denver International Airport by eating spark plug cables and other wiring.

Monitor

Bunnies! Run!

Speaking of bunnies, this TV commercial (Note: YouTube) really cracks me up.

And who's going to stick their finger in that one?

The long-delayed cleanup of the nation's most contaminated nuclear site became the subject of more bad news Friday, when Washington Gov. Jay Inslee announced that a radioactive waste tank there is leaking.

Monitor

Now now, let's try to be supportive here

“I don’t think we need to be in Brooklyn,” said Marie Labropoulos…

Ok, that's progress.

But

Today, the United States has less equality of opportunity than almost any other advanced industrial country. Study after study has exposed the myth that America is a land of opportunity. This is especially tragic: While Americans may differ on the desirability of equality of outcomes, there is near-universal consensus that inequality of opportunity is indefensible. The Pew Research Center has found that some 90 percent of Americans believe that the government should do everything it can to ensure equality of opportunity.

Writing in the Times yesterday Steiglitz follows this observation by arguing for more and better education, may be a good idea and maybe not so much. He seems to favor, for example, making that period after high school we now call higher education public and free (probably good) and also shoving the kiddies sooner into more rigorous schools (most likely not so good).

No doubt we will just have to wait and see. But it occurs to me that those who argue for more education as a solution to all societies ills are themselves highly educated and well off (they assume) because of it. And yes I know that last sentence is a little bit ambiguous: Deal with it.