National News

Fresno Bee | Police say two officers from the Riverside County-based task force evacuated the building early Thursday after arriving for work and smelling a strong odor.

Long Street | LIFE Magazine issued a wake-up call of sorts to its readership in their 2 March 1942 issue.  I say “of sorts” because even though this hard article (entitled “Now the U.S. Must Fight for Its Life”) must have sorely sobered some of its readers, it started on page 15, following big ads for Listerine, Matrix (women’s shoes, Bell Telephone, Modess, Clapp’s Baby Food, Dot Snap Fasteners, Goodrich Tires, White Horse Scotch, Pompeian Massage (for shaving), Jack Benny/Carole Lombard’s “To Be or Not To Be”, Colgate, Yardley powder and  Mimeograph, and a few interspersed puff pieces—and a Ginger Rogers cover photo.

Courant.com | A Hartford man serving a 30-month prison sentence for burglarizing U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd's Hartford office died Thursday at the University of Connecticut Health Center in Farmington.  Gilbert Soto, 50, had been taken to the UConn Health Center after being found suffering from a head injury in the shower area of the medical wing of the Garner Correctional Center in Newtown.

New York Times | The eight women found dead were all from Jefferson Davis Parish, were aged 17 to 30 and had succumbed to drugs and prostitution: clockwise from top left, Loretta Lynn C. Lewis, Ernestine D. Patterson, Kristen G. Lopez, Whitnei C. Dubois, Laconia S. Brown, Crystal Benoit Zeno, Brittney Gary and Necole J. Guillory.

Christian Science Monitor | FBI's latest crime report, for the first half of 2009, shows America is a less violent place even though ownership of guns has surged. Deterrent effect may have a role, but others see no correlation.

Inquisitr | Kimberly, a 6-year-old in the custody of her grandparents, is facing eviction by local law enforcement because her grandparents live in a retirement community. TThe child's mother is unable to care for her due to unspecified drug problems.   She has lived there her whole life.

Oklahoman | Feed The Children is seeking both actual and punitive damages in its countersuit against its former president, Larry Jones. He used his position to benefit himself at the expense of Feed The Children, the charity’s attorneys allege. The countersuit was filed Monday in Oklahoma County District Court.

Wikipedia | Copper Green is reported by American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh to be one of several code names for a U.S. black ops program, according to an article in the May 24, 2004 issue of The New Yorker. According to Hersh, the task force was formed with the direct approval of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld during the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, and run by Deputy Undersecretary Stephen Cambone.

Yahoo Finance | Through most of the decade Florida was one of the fastest growing states. But the sunny clime -- and 6 others -- lost more residents than they gained in the year ended July 1.

The Guardian | Breckenridge is boasting that it has become the Amsterdam of the Rockies.  It's already being dubbed "the Amsterdam of the Rockies" and an après-ski spliff is likely to become almost as common as a beer when cannabis possession is legalized in the hip mountain town of Breckenridge, Colorado, on 1 January.

Buffalo News | A 10-year-old girl in New York has been suspended for bringing peppermint oil to her middle school and distributing it to other students.

CBS | Oakland police are looking for the growers of at least 1,000 marijuana plants found after a small fire at a one-time Oakland fortune cookie factory.

Reuters | Convicted swindler Bernard Madoff was moved last week to the medical center within a federal prison for undisclosed reasons, a spokeswoman for the Federal Bureau of Prisons said on Wednesday.

The Nation | ICE agents regularly impersonate civilians--OSHA inspectors, insurance agents, religious workers--in order to arrest longtime US residents who have no criminal history. Jacqueline Stevens has reported a web-exclusive companion piece on ICE agents' ruse operations.

White House Press Release | AMENDING EXECUTIVE ORDER 12425 DESIGNATING INTERPOL
AS A PUBLIC INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION ENTITLED TO ENJOY CERTAIN PRIVILEGES, EXEMPTIONS, AND IMMUNITIES

Denver Business Journal | The federal Bureau of Land Management has agreed to Noble Energy’s plan to drill 79 natural-gas wells in western Colorado near the site of an underground nuclear blast 40 years ago, according to a news report Monday.

Washington Post | The Obama administration will abandon a Dec. 31 deadline for states to tighten security requirements for driver's licenses, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced Friday.

Information Liberation | Nine city workers who were assigned to clean up blight in Northeast Philadelphia instead acted like a "band of brigands" by illegally entering homes and ransacking them of cash, jewelry, TVs and guns, District Attorney Lynne Abraham said yesterday.

Antiwar.com | As the single largest expense of the 2010 foreign aid budget, President Obama approved $2.775 billion in military aid to Israel, the first payment in a decade-long commitment that will reach at least $30 billion.

DC Dave | In his January 17, 1995, letter of resignation to the head of the Office of the Independent Counsel, Kenneth Starr, lead investigator, Miquel Rodriguez, expressed his frustration at not being permitted to pursue tantalizing leads in his investigation of the gunshot death of Bill Clinton's Deputy White House Counsel, Vincent W. Foster, Jr.  

Daily Beast | The left's anger over the public option and the anti-Obama revolt is long overdue, says Ralph Nader. Benjamin Sarlin talks to the self-professed "pioneer" of the current progressive rage.

New York Times | In February, a Department of Homeland Security intelligence official wrote a “threat assessment” for the police in Wisconsin about a demonstration involving local pro- and anti-abortion rights groups.

Project Censored | The Obama and McCain campaigns jointly negotiated a detailed secret contract dictating the terms of the 2008 debates. This included who got to participate, what topics were to be raised, and the structure of the debate formats.  Since 1987, a private corporation created by and for the Republican and Democratic parties called the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) has sponsored the US Presidential debates and implemented debate contracts. In order to shield the major party candidates from criticism, CPD has refused to release debate contract information to the public.

Huffington Post | Officially, Detroit's unemployment rate is just under 30 percent. But the city's mayor and local leaders are suggesting a far more disturbing figure -- the actual jobless rate, they say, is closer to 50 percent.

Glenn Greenwald | The Obama administration announced today that it will create a new "supermax" facility in Thomson, Illinois, and will transfer to it many of the detainees currently held at Guantanamo.  Critically, none of those moved to Thomson will receive a trial in a real American court, and some will not be charged with any crime at all

Washington Post | The federal government quietly agreed to forgo billions of dollars in potential tax payments from Citigroup as part of the deal announced this week to wean the company from the massive taxpayer bailout that helped it survive the financial crisis.

LA Times | The petition drive, which was run by a professional signature-gathering firm, collected more than 680,000 signatures, 57% more than the 433,971 valid signatures needed to put it on the ballot, said Richard Lee, the measure's main proponent.

Detroit News | City students took the National Assessment of Educational Progress test this year, and 69 percent of fourth-graders scored below the basic level in math and 77 percent of eighth-graders scored below basic.

Nola | An employee of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives was arrested on charges of disabling the fire alarm system and damaging property in his Metairie hotel room, according to a Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office arrest report.

Philly.com | Zhihua Tian traveled thousands of miles from his native China earlier this year to profit from the treasures of the American education system.

Washington Post | The Cuban government has arrested an American citizen working on contract for the U.S. Agency for International Development who was distributing cellphones and laptop computers to Cuban activists, State Department officials and congressional sources said Saturday.

Wired | The congressmen are outraged that sites like Cryptome and Wikileaks republished the manual after it was posted online by a government contractor working for the Transportation Security Administration. The manual was posted last March on a government procurement site and was discovered Sunday by a blogger.

LA Times | Officer Kenneth Aragon, 47, spent several hours celebrating at an unofficial but regular 'payday Wednesday' gathering. A police official says he had a blood-alcohol level well over the legal limit.

LA Times | Aging computer system holds up unemployment checks to 117,000 Californians

9 News | If you're caught walking around the University of Colorado at Boulder with a Nerf gun, you could be arrested. Notices have been posted around the campus' dorm buildings, warning students that Nerf gun sightings will be treated like real gun sightings.

San Francisco Gate | A Sacramento County trucker, who spent his murder trial cracking jokes and proudly admitting that he had killed his sister and her husband in their El Cerrito home, celebrated his birthday Tuesday by being sentenced to die by lethal injection.

BBC | The Cobell case, filed in 1996, alleged the government had mismanaged billions of dollars in income from natural resources on Native American land.

Trentonian | Windswept flames 50 feet high yesterday destroyed the local barn where computer programming first flourished, beneath an imported stage that was first used at the New York Worlds Fair of 1964.

Philadelphia Inquirer | At the very moment President Obama is looking to thrust the United States ever more into global affairs, the American public is turning more isolationist and unilateralist than it has at any time in decades, a survey released yesterday said.

Interview | There is an event coming in the very near-term future that is going to effect the USA to its very soul, former Kansas State Trooper Greg Everson of The Heartland USA and former host of Republic Broadcasting Voices from the Heartland told host Steve Quayle in a special two hour Survive 2 Thrive broadcast Thursday.

Restore the Republic | Sherry was one of the stars of Aaron Russo's America: Freedom to Fascism. She was the former IRS agent who cried out, "SHOW ME THE LAW!". Right now she deserves the support of the entire Freedom Movement.

Canada Free Press | After visits from the Secret  and months of rejection by the courts, Commander Walter Fitzpatrick may get his day in court.  On Tuesday December 1st 2009, Retired Navy Commander Walter Fitzpatrick III will present the evidence behind his treason complaint against Obama/Soetoro to all thirteen members of a Tennessee Grand Jury in Monroe County Tennessee.

ABC News | Arcade Joseph Comeaux Jr., 49, is serving a life sentence for several charges  including indecency with a child  and was en route from the Estelle Unit in Huntsville, Texas, to the Stiles Unit in Beaumont, Texas, when he escaped just after 9 a.m.

LA Times | Interactive graphic for learning about the war in the foreign sense.  The War on Drugs as a domestic pursuit is a horrific reality waiting to be understood.  Its about mass private prisons housing the users and movers of the drugs that are brought in.  The prisons receive money from the government for every inmate, corruption is often commonly found.

WikiLeaks | On October 30, 2009, the Washington Post wrote about a leaked Congressional ethics investigation status document which named many Congress persons. The Post's coverage received significant attention, however the paper, without explanation, did not release the document itself. WikiLeaks believes that such politically influential documents must enter into the historical record so they can be assessed by all. The document contains more information than presented by the Post.

New York Times | The ethanol industry, once the darling of corn growers, environmentalists and the auto industry, has fallen on hard times. Producers spent this year caught between falling ethanol prices and rising corn costs, causing many to go bankrupt. In response, they are pushing the Environmental Protection Agency to increase the amount of ethanol they can blend into gasoline to 15 percent, up from the current 10 percent. Allowing this, however, would only double down on a discredited environmental policy without solving the industry’s fundamental economic problem.

MSNBC |  Authorities were searching Sunday for a gunman who walked into a coffee shop and shot and killed four police officers in what sheriff's officials described as a targeted "execution."  The gunman, who fled on foot, may have been wounded by return fire from one of the officers.

Raw Story | Ten students at a Naples, Florida, middle school have been given one-day, in-school suspensions for participating in "Kick a Jew Day," in which Jewish students were targeted for assault, according to news reports in the local media.

nine MSN | The father told ninemsn he put the advertisement of his daughter on a popular buy-and-sell website on Thursday afternoon.  The listing, with a selling price of $0, has eight photographs of the girl, including one in her school uniform and another in a karate outfit.  He described his daughter in the listing as "very smart can be realy [sic] cute but can also be very hard work".

True/Slant | Here’s a new research finding to chew on over the holidays: food waste per person in the United States has increased 50 percent since 1974. That’s 1400 calories of equivalent food waste every day, which adds up to 150 trillion calories a year.