Courtesy cnbc

Women Are Moving into a Male Domain: Robbing Banks

A woman dressed for success in a pink blouse, brown skirt and heels got an undisclosed amount of cash from a teller at a Charter One bank In Toledo, Ohio, on Tuesday. The robber, armed with handguns, drove off in her own getaway car.

The “Bad Hair Bandit”—named for her unattractive wigs—hit a Spokane, Wash., bank on May 9 and may have been involved in up to a dozen heists in Washington State, sheriff’s spokesman Dave Reagan said in a press release.

A more fashionable ring of at least six little old ladies has earned the nickname of “Mad Hatters” for the head gear they wear while robbing banks, picking pockets and using stolen credit cards. One bank alone estimated it had lost at least $200,000 at the hands of the hatters.

“It’s not an epidemic, but it’s definitely a trend,” says Rosemary Erickson, a forensic sociologist in Florida. She sees the trend as tied to the weak economy, and thinks women often resort to robbery because they need the money for practical purposes, whereas some men may commit the crime for the thrill.

“It’s a safe robbery for women. There’s a sense that no physical harm will occur. You pass a note, maybe you menace that a gun is present, the teller slides back money and off you go,” he said.

Now there’s a statistic not often used as a metric in economic trends – women bank robbers up 5.4 percent in 2003 to 7.08 percent last year.

Courtesy Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images By Permission

Can they stay with you?

A bitterly divided Supreme Court today upheld a lower court ruling that California must reduce its prison population by at least 30,000 to alleviate overcrowding.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, joined by the four liberal members of the court, acknowledged that the order is “unprecedented” in its “sweep and extent” but said that the crowded conditions amounted to violations of prisoners’ constitutional rights against cruel and unusual treatment and must be remedied.

Kennedy said that the state could ask for an extension of the original two-year deadline to five years, but that the state should begin to devise a system to select prisoners “least likely to jeopardize public safety.”

The four conservative justices issued two separate dissents. Justice Antonin Scalia, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, read his dissent from the bench, saying the majority’s decision, “affirms what is perhaps the most radical injunction issued by a court in our nation’s history.” The order “ignores bedrock limitations on the power” of judges and “takes federal courts wildly beyond their institutional capacity.”

Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts wrote, “The Constitution does not give federal judges the authority to run state penal systems.” Alito said that the three-judge order would lead to the premature release of criminals, the number of which is “equivalent of three Army divisions.”

The GAO put the number of illegal aliens in California state prisons at about 27,000 in 2008, or about 10% of the inmate population. The Feds don’t want them deported to stand trial. Those 27,000 would satisfy 90% of the Supreme’s ruling.

Courtesy humint

Surprise!

No one will receive the $25 million reward for the capture of Osama bin Laden, say U.S. officials, because the raid that killed the al Qaeda leader in Pakistan on May 2 was the result of electronic intelligence, not human informants.

The reason is simple, say officials involved in or knowledgeable about the hunt for the world’s most wanted man: the CIA and the military never had an al Qaeda operative as an informer willing to give him up. Instead, what killed bin Laden was electronic surveillance, and an operational mistake by one of his closest associates.

In previous manhunts, such as the capture of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein or the killing of his two sons, U.S. intelligence and military commandos had the help of insiders and human sources. In each case, someone received millions of dollars in reward money for their efforts.

During all the years the trail went cold, the CIA had been unable to develop a human source inside al Qaeda or inside their support network. Several former intelligence officials involved in the hunt for bin Laden said developing a spy inside bin Laden’s inner circle was never very likely because of the level of commitment his followers possessed.

No informants? Sure you don’t want to step forward and claim that prize? OK, great! We need to make that down payment on a new chopper anyway. According to CNN, the Reward for Justice program has paid out more than $100 million to over 60 people since its creation in 1984.

Courtesy buzzpal

Who’s fired?

After a roller-coaster flirtation with a presidential bid, Donald Trump bowed out of the 2012 contest in true Trump fashion on Monday, saying that while he would not be a candidate this year, if he had run, he would have been able to win the primary and the general election too.

“I maintain the strong conviction that if I were to run, I would be able to win the primary and ultimately, the general election,” Trump said in a statement on Monday. “I have spent the past several months unofficially campaigning and recognize that running for public office cannot be done half heartedly. Ultimately, however, business is my greatest passion and I am not ready to leave the private sector.”

“This decision does not come easily or without regret; especially when my potential candidacy continues to be validated by ranking at the top of the Republican contenders in polls across the country,” Trump said in the statement.

In the end, however, his decision almost certainly had more to do with his lucrative NBC television contract for his “Apprentice” franchise than anything else. Trump was running out of time to decide whether he would sign on for another season of the “Celebrity Apprentice.”

The momentum for a Trump campaign started to wane earlier this month when Trump’s views on President Obama’s birth certificate, and his refusal to release his tax returns, began to draw a barrage of popular criticism — even mockery — from opponents.

Perhaps he’s smarter than he seems. Did careful thought overcome an ego the size of a small planet? And how thick is his skin? Trump, who says he’s a billionaire, is suing the author of a book in which three unnamed sources said Trump’s net worth is between $150 million and $250 million. The Donald claims it was malicious, and it hurt his business. It might be fun to speculate on the changes such a man would attempt to make in our government.

Courtesy Lisa

A new meaning for “thumb drive”

A stash of pornography was found among the trove of evidence seized from Osama bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound by U.S. Navy SEALs, according to a report confirmed by ABC News.

The existence of the pornography stash, which one U.S. official told ABC News was “huge,” was first reported by Reuters. The official said the pornographic material was found in a wooden box in bin Laden’s bedroom and included electronically recorded videos.

The discovery of the pornographic videos is just the latest in a steady stream of information gleaned from evidence obtained by the SEALs during the mission that killed bin Laden nearly two weeks ago, from invaluable intelligence on al Qaeda operations to embarrassing personal revelations about the terror leader. Officials are analyzing one million pages of data recovered and said they’ve learned more about al Qaeda in the past ten days than in the last ten years combined.

How long before that thumb drive collection shows up on E-Bay? Hey baby, show me some neck!!

Courtesy The Onion

Afraid of Google? Really?

For the past few days, a mystery has been unfolding in Silicon Valley. Somebody, it seems, hired Burson-Marsteller, a top public-relations firm, to pitch anti-Google stories to newspapers, urging them to investigate claims that Google was invading people’s privacy. Burson even offered to help an influential blogger write a Google-bashing op-ed, which it promised it could place in outlets like The Washington Post, Politico, and The Huffington Post.

Also from Burson: “The American people must be made aware of the now immediate intrusions into their deeply personal lives Google is cataloging and broadcasting every minute of every day—without their permission.”

But who was the mysterious unnamed client? While fingers pointed at Apple and Microsoft, The Daily Beast discovered that it’s a company nobody suspected—Facebook.

Confronted with evidence, a Facebook spokesman last night confirmed that Facebook hired Burson, citing two reasons: first, it believes Google is doing some things in social networking that raise privacy concerns; second, and perhaps more important, Facebook resents Google’s attempts to use Facebook data in its own social-networking service.

The mess, seemingly worthy of a Nixon reelection campaign, is embarrassing for Facebook, which has struggled at times to brand itself as trustworthy. But even more so for Burson-Marsteller, a huge PR firm that has represented lots of blue-chip corporate clients in its 58-year history. Mark Penn, Burson’s CEO, has been a political consultant for Bill Clinton, and is best known as the chief strategist in HIllary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign.

Zuckerberg’s college-kid style reinforces the doubts of those who see the decision to keep Facebook independent as a lapse in judgment. After this sorry, clumsy episode, Facebook no longer seems so invincible. In fact, they almost seem a little bit afraid.

Courtesy CNN

It’s been 10 long years…

The mastermind of the worst terrorist attack on American soil is dead, almost 10 years after the attacks that killed more than 3,000 people.

President Obama announced the stunning development during an address to the nation late Sunday night from the White House. “Tonight, I can report to the American people and to the world that the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda.”

Osama bin Laden — the longtime leader of al Qaeda — was killed by U.S. forces in a mansion outside the Pakistani capital of Islamabad along with other family members, a senior U.S. official told CNN.

U.S. officials have taken custody of bin Laden’s body, Obama said. No Americans were harmed in the operation, he added.

Hundreds of people arrived at the White House late Sunday night and chanted, “USA! USA!” They then chanted, “Hey, hey, goodbye!” in reference to the demise of bin Laden and then spontaneously sang the national anthem.

“This welcome news is a credit to our intelligence efforts and brings to justice the architect of the attacks on our country that killed nearly 3,000 people on September 11, 2001,” said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, the ranking Republican on the Homeland Security Committee, in a statement issued Sunday night.

Do you remember where you were September 11, 2001? May 1, 2011 is another day we’ll not likely forget.

It remains to be seen what effects this will have on relations with Pakistan and other Middle Eastern countries. Up-to-the-minute updates from CNN can be found here.

Credit and Copyright Andy Cook

No signal since the Wow transmission

Now more than ever, one imagines that we should intensify our search for life out there. Life down here has become difficult. And how else can we maintain American supremacy, if not by muscling in on outer space?

It seems, though, that economics is putting a difficult hue on our quest. According to the San Jose Mercury News, the SETI (Search For Terrestrial Intelligence) Institute has announced that it is setting aside some of its telescopes, as it cannot afford to run them.

Indeed, 42 radio dishes, named the Allen Telescope Array, are being silenced until someone can come up with the cash for them to keep on scanning for otherworldly beings.

“There is a huge irony that a time when we discover so many planets to look at, we don’t have the operating funds to listen,” SETI director Jill Tarter told the Mercury News. NASA’s Kepler telescope has managed to sniff out 1,235 planets that might have some life on them, of which 68 are more or less the size of Earth.

There is some hope that the U.S. Air Force might offer some funds, but currently no one seems terribly optimistic that the telescopes will soon restart their search.

The chances of a discovery are extremely small, but if a message is detected and verified…

Kenneth Pike

Medical ethics?

Convicted rapist Kenneth Pike, of Auburn, N.Y., is expected to undergo a life-saving heart transplant that could cost up to $800,000 — a price that will be paid courtesy of New York state taxpayers.

The expense has outraged many crime victim advocates and community members, who say they cannot understand how the justice system can provide big-tag services for convicted felons arguably at the expense of innocent patients.

And the question of whether prisoners should receive equal, if not better, health care than law-abiding citizens has been the heart of a decades-long debate among medical ethicists.

In 1976, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that prisoners were entitled to the same medical and dental treatment as everyone else in their community. Prisons that withhold necessary care from inmates can be held liable for violating constitutional bans against cruel and unusual punishment.

“We are constitutionally obligated to provide health care services to any inmate,” said Peter Cutler, citing the 8th Amendment of the Constutition. “We’re a state agency doing our job.”

Perhaps the taxpayers could convince the state that a penectomy is also in order.

Courtesy Houston Chronical

Enough $100 bills to fill 22 Astrodomes

News accounts on the latest federal budget deal gave the numbers in a vacuum, e.g., “The deal cuts $38 billion from last year’s budget. It’s being called the largest domestic spending cut in U.S. history” (source). How can an individual voter make sense of quantities that are ordinarily written in scientific notation? I think the easiest way is to divide everything by 100,000,000 (10^8).

Let’s start with federal spending. The FY 2011 federal budget is approximately $3.82 trillion (3.82×10^12). Of that, approximately $2.17 trillion will be paid for by taxes collected and the remaining $1.65 trillion will be borrowed from our grandchildren. If we divide everything by 100 million, the numbers begin to make more sense.

We have a family that is spending $38,200 per year. The family’s income is $21,700 per year. The family adds $16,500 in credit card debt every year in order to pay its bills. After a long and difficult debate among family members, keeping in mind that it was not going to be possible to borrow $16,500 every year forever, the parents and children agreed that a $380/year premium cable subscription could be terminated. So now the family will have to borrow only $16,120 per year.

Click to enlarge.

LGM

Flying saucer sightings? Reports of three-foot-tall aliens? Secret memos about suspicious objects recovered near Roswell, N.M.?

They’re all included in the thousands of declassified government documents posted to the FBI’s new online “Vault.”

Among the so-called “X-files” are once-classified reports dating back to the 1940s and 1950s detailing Air Force investigations into “flying discs” and the “bodies of human shape” discovered inside them.

In one report from March 1950, Guy Hottel, a special agent with the FBI, said he received information from an Air Force investigator about flying saucers found in New Mexico. “They were described as being circular in shape with raised centers, approximately 50-feet in diameter,” he wrote. “Each one was occupied by three bodies of human shape but only 3 feet tall, dressed in a metallic cloth of a very fine texture. Each body was bandaged in a manner very similar to the blackout suits used by speed flyers and test pilots.”

“The disc is hexagonal in shape and was suspended from a balloon by cable,” the document said. “The object found resembles a high-altitude weather balloon with a radar reflector.”

Maybe Barney and Betty Hill are in there somewhere.

Get the shovels ready

If you ever felt like invading the Republic of Georgia–this is something that several Russians have contemplated over the years–I may have stumbled upon a way to knock out most of the whole country’s Internet service.

My ruse might also work in several other countries of the world. You see, all you have to do is send out one elderly woman and tell her to look for scrap metal with gay abandon.

The AFP is reporting that a 75-year-old lady in Ksani, somewhat north of the fine capital of Tbilisi, was, indeed, in search of scrap metal when she accidentally (or not) put most of Georgia’s (and Armenia’s) Internet into complete non-function.

Georgian interior ministry spokesman Zura Gvenetadze told the AFP: “She found the cable while collecting scrap metal and cut it with a view to stealing it.”

It must be very fine cable.

Most Georgians and Armenians apparently lost their Internet for up to 12 hours and Giorgi Ionatamishvili, the head of Georgian Railway Telecom’s marketing department–Georgian Railway Telecom being the cable’s owners–seemed bemused by the woman’s power, audacity and sheer sleuthiness.

What was she using to dig, a trowel? GRT must really protect that cable well.

 
Just the thing for lawmakers.
 

Jefferson Smith loves a good political joke.

Early last year, the then-freshman Oregon House member from Portland was getting ready for bed when he and his wife, Katy, began bantering back and forth about what might be the ultimate political prank, something that could lighten the increasingly divisive political mood among his colleagues.

As Smith recalls, the idea came almost instantly. “What if we were to Rick Roll the legislature without anybody noticing?” he wondered.

And that was the seed for what may ultimately prove to be one of the most elaborate political jokes of all time: A nearly two-minute long video of members of the Oregon House of Representatives saying the lyrics of Rick Astley’s ubiquitous ’80s pop ballad, “Never Gonna Give You Up,” literally one word or phrase at a time while in session.

In the end, it took a year and two months to assemble the video–which Smith pointedly notes was carried out “with no taxpayer funds.”

No taxpayer funds? Washington has spent millions on programs of less worth.