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Yup, he’s a credit to his race and just the kind of person I would want fronting my organization trying to improve government.

And then there’s everybody’s favorite Congressional moran, Michelle Bachmann, who once again put her foot in her mouth last summer when she said she and her constituents shouldn’t comply with the upcoming census until she realized that meant she might lose her district and seat. Now she’s a census go-getter!

Long arm of law reaches into World of Warcraft – kokomo persepective.com — Was Blizzard right to give the users info to the police?

Two weeks ago, Howard County Sheriff’s Department deputy Matt Roberson tracked down a wanted fugitive through one of the most popular games on the Internet — World of Warcraft. And he got his man.
[...]
“We received information that this guy was a regular player of an online game, which was referred to as ‘some warlock and witches’ game,” said Roberson. “None of that information was sound enough to pursue on its own, but putting everything we had together gave me enough evidence to send a subpoena to Blizzard Entertainment. I knew exactly what he was playing — World of Warcraft. I used to play it. It’s one of the largest online games in the world.”
[...]
“They don’t have to respond to us, and I was under the assumption that they wouldn’t,” said Roberson. “It had been three or four months since I had sent the subpoena. I just put it in the back of my mind and went on to do other things. Then I finally got a response from them. They sent me a package of information. They were very cooperative. It was nice that they were that willing to provide information.”

Blizzard did more than cooperate. It gave Roberson everything he needed to track down Hightower, including his IP address, his account information and history, his billing address, and even his online screen name and preferred server. From there it was a simple matter to zero in on the suspect’s location.

All over the news here in Vegas all day. Guy who lost a lawsuit earlier this year over Social Security benefit cuts went into the Federal Courthouse and opened fire killing a former cop and injuring a deputy U.S. marshal. At least 50 shots fired between him and police as he crossed Las Vegas Blvd. before being killed.

A man who opened fire at a court in Las Vegas – killing one man and wounding another – had been upset about cuts to his social security benefits.

Officials said Johnny Lee Wicks, 66, was killed in a shootout with officers soon after 8am (local time) on Monday.

Court records show Wicks sued the Social Security Administration in 2008 but the case was thrown out and formally closed in September 2009.

Watching the local news at 6pm, many people they’ve interviewed say this sort of thing may happen more in the future around the country as Social Security benefits are cut.

Dear God, In 2009 you took my favorite singer – Michael Jackson, my favorite actress – Farrah Fawcett, my favorite actor – Patrick Swayze, my favorite voice – Neda.
Please, please, don’t forget my favorite politician – Ahmadinejad and my favorite dictator – Khamenei
in the year 2010. Thank you.

And according to the Gateway Pundit blog (which is quite right-wing and religious), this image was being shown for a couple of minutes:

Miami News Blog – Mon., Jan. 4 2010:

This weekend, we noticed these comically well-endowed mannequins in front of a few stores on Lincoln Road. And then, what do you know, they popped up in our Flick pool courtesy of Archturo’s Flickr. What does it mean when every plastic woman on South Beach sports obviously plastic breast enhancements?

One of the biggest drug busts of the year happened today when police announced finding over 100 kilos of cocaine hidden inside bananas on display in Lidl’s supermarkets across Madrid.

“Something went wrong”

Police surrounded Lidl supermarkets across Madrid and sniffer dogs examined the fruit section of every one of the discount supermarkets after a Lidl store worker found packages of cocaine inside the bananas he was putting on display.

Lidl’s said that the discovery was “a shock” and said it was cooperating with police, according to El Mundo newspaper.

It appears that bananas were slit open and small packages of the drug hidden inside the fruit before it left Ecuador.

A Lidl’s store worker told of how “three or four police cars turned up in the carpark and sealed off the fruit section, before sending dogs through; they then put all the fruit on a central table and opened them. Occasionally they would shout out “here’s one!” as they ripped the fruit apart looking for drug bags”.

Crikey! Cops sealing off the fruit section, then ripping open bananas looking for drugs. Does it get any funnier?

Brit Hume turned evangelist on Fox New Sunday, in a segment with panelists predicting the future for Tiger Woods after Woods’ notable “transgressions” (now a 2009 top euphemism, along with “Appalachian Trail,” as a signifier for “mistress.”)

Hume forecasts Woods will recover as a golfer but

…Whether he can recover as a person depends on “his faith. He’s said to be a Buddhist. I don’t think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith. So my message to Tiger would be, “Tiger, turn to the Christian faith and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world…”

Har!

Construction began in 2004, at the height of an economic boom.

Clad in 28,000 glass panels, the tower has 160 floors and more than 500,000 sq m of space for offices and flats.
The tower also lays claim to the highest occupied floor, the tallest service lift, and the world’s highest observation deck – on the 124th floor. The world’s highest mosque and swimming pool will meanwhile be located on the 158th and 76th floors.

Part One:

Frustrated travelers were delayed for hours Sunday night when officials shut down a terminal at Newark Airport after a man walked into a secure area without authorization.

Dozens of flights were grounded, and thousands of passengers waited late into the night to be rescreened at Terminal C .

Homeland Security Department spokeswoman Sari Koshetz said a man was seen walking down a security checkpoint exit lane into the secure area about 5:30 p.m.

Screening was halted in the terminal while authorities looked at surveillance tapes to identify the man, who had not been found.

“If they find the person who did this, he’s going to be in big trouble,” said traveler John Davis.

Passengers in the Continental Airlines terminal were evacuated from the terminal and moved to the open side of the airport to go through screening again.

More …

Montgomery (arrow) partying with now Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons

This is quite an article from Playboy that describes how easy it apparently is to fool the government with numbers and ’science’ into giving you money for crap. And once people caught on that it was crap, egos and career damage won out for too long over fixing it. BTW, Montgomery also claimed he was once abducted by space aliens that gave him “extra knowledge.”

The weeks before Christmas brought no hint of terror. But by the afternoon of December 21, 2003, police stood guard in heavy assault gear on the streets of Manhattan. Fighter jets patrolled the skies. When a gift box was left on Fifth Avenue, it was labeled a suspicious package and 5,000 people in the Metropolitan Museum of Art were herded into the cold.

It was Code Orange. Americans first heard of it at a Sunday press conference in Washington, D.C. Weekend assignment editors sent their crews up Nebraska Avenue to the new Homeland Security offices, where DHS secretary Tom Ridge announced the terror alert. “There’s continued discussion,” he told reporters, “these are from credible sources—about near-term attacks that could either rival or exceed what we experienced on September 11.” The New York Times reported that intelligence sources warned “about some unspecified but spectacular attack.”
[...]
But there were no real intercepts, no new informants, no increase in chatter. And the suspicious package turned out to contain a stuffed snowman. This was, instead, the beginning of a bizarre scam. Behind that terror alert, and a string of contracts and intrigue that continues to this date, there is one unlikely character.

The man’s name is Dennis Montgomery, a self-proclaimed scientist who said he could predict terrorist attacks. Operating with a small software development company, he apparently convinced the Bush White House, the CIA, the Air Force and other agencies that Al Jazeera—the Qatari-owned TV network—was unwittingly transmitting target data to Al Qaeda sleepers.

Found by Gary, The Dangerous Infidel who only reads Playboy for the articles.

Even though Australia’s politicians have cynically delayed implementing their draconian censorship policy until after the next election, Europe and others are already censoring because the RIAA and MPAA put a money noose around their necks. China’s leaders are doing it to hold onto power. Easy to see the problems Iran’s leaders are having because of the Internet. How long before the others (and the US) move to that being the reason as discontent with the state of things grows?

Not wishing to be outdone by Australia when it comes to web censorship, the Chinese government has warned that in 2010 it will crack down harder on websites that it deems unlawful.

The Glorous People’s Republic arrested thousands of its citizens last year for peddling pornography on the web and said it will be increasing enforcement during the coming year.

According to Reuters, China’s Ministry of Public Security warned that in 2010 it will intensify punishments for illegal Internet operations, ramp up information monitoring, and press Internet service providers to use preventive technology.

We guess it just does not want to be outclassed by western democracies that are starting to do much the same things in the name of protecting their entertainment industries.

A 16-year-old Ontario, Canada, boy returned home after two days allegedly spent with a 42-year-old fellow online gamer he called his “soulmate,” police said.

After Andrew Kane met Texas mother of four Lauri Price while playing World of Warcraft, they developed an online relationship, leading to Price flying from Houston to Toronto to meet the boy, The Globe and Mail reported Friday.

Tuesday night Kane had asked his parents to drive him to a nearby hotel where he was to meet Price, and dumbfounded, they refused. He left at 2 a.m. local time and disappeared for two days, leaving his parents pleading with him via computer to return.

Then they started reading his chats with the woman, which had begun more than a year ago. They showed the chats to the police, they said.

“All they had to do was read the chat logs and they were immediately concerned,” Kane said of her son’s relationship with the woman. “He said she was his soulmate.”

Price left a note to his parents when he left, reading, “I don’t know how to explain it to you, but this will show you not only the commitment we have to each other, but also that your fears of her are ill-found.”

Sgt. Robert Allan of the Barrie police said Kane and Price had gone to Orillia, Ontario. Price will not face criminal charges, the newspaper said.

Well, there’s soulmates and then there’s soulmates. Local ordinances apply.

Dolphins have been declared the world’s second most intelligent creatures after humans, with scientists suggesting they are so bright that they should be treated as “non-human persons”.

Studies into dolphin behaviour have highlighted how similar their communications are to those of humans and that they are brighter than chimpanzees. These have been backed up by anatomical research showing that dolphin brains have many key features associated with high intelligence.

The researchers argue that their work shows it is morally unacceptable to keep such intelligent animals in amusement parks or to kill them for food or by accident when fishing. Some 300,000 whales, dolphins and porpoises die in this way each year.

“Many dolphin brains are larger than our own and second in mass only to the human brain when corrected for body size,” said Lori Marino, a zoologist at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, who has used magnetic resonance imaging scans to map the brains of dolphin species and compare them with those of primates.

“The neuroanatomy suggests psychological continuity between humans and dolphins and has profound implications for the ethics of human-dolphin interactions,” she added.