Last Call: Roll The Tape

And the strange tale of Who Recorded Mitch The Turtle's Meeting continues...and takes a right turn straight into Insaneoville.

A secret recording of a campaign strategy session between U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell and his advisors was taped by leaders of the Progress Kentucky super PAC, says a longtime local Democratic operative.

Mother Jones Magazine released the tape this week. The meeting itself took place on Feb. 2.

Jacob Conway, who is on the executive committee of the Jefferson County Democratic Party, says that day, Shawn Reilly and Curtis Morrison, who founded and volunteered for Progress Kentucky, respectively, bragged to him about how they recorded the meeting.

Oh yes lawd, the same Wonder Twins who took a big flying crap on everything "progressive" in Kentucky (making my job ever so much harder) by tweeting at best stupid and at worst racist crap about Mitch McConnell's wife are apparently the braintrust behind giving McConnell everything he needs to assume the air of aggrieved victim for the entire rest of the campaign.

Oh, and it gets worse.

Shortly after WFPL broke the story on Thursday afternoon, Conway told Fox News Channel's Megyn Kelly that he didn't want the actions by Reilly and Morrison to inflict damage on Democrats in Kentucky.

"The only reason that I came forward with what I knew was I was trying to protect the Democratic Party," Conway said. "I believe in our party's values, and I was doing what I thought was best for the party because I did not want their bad behavior, their poor mistakes — I shouldn't say "bad behavior" — their mistakes, their lack of judgment to hurt our party's efforts here in the state Kentucky and in Jefferson County, here in Louisville."

And worse...

The county Democratic Party official who outed two Democratic super PAC operatives in the Mitch McConnell secret tape case has been contacted by the FBI.

Jacob Conway, who sits on the executive committee of the Jefferson County, Ky. Democratic Party, told TPM on Thursday that he was going in to be interviewed at the bureau's Louisville, Ky. office.

And even worse...

The treasurer of Progress Kentucky, a liberal group accused of recording a private campaign strategy session held by aides of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, resigned soon after Mother Jones published the audio on Tuesday.

"At this time based on advice of both friends and counsel, I will be not be making a public statement available until everything has been reviewed by an attorney at this time," Douglas L. Davis told NBC News on Thursday. "I have resigned my position as treasurer and did not and do not condone any allegations of illegal activity that might have taken place."

And if possible, even worse.

In October 2003, Louisville was shaken to its core when 20-year-old Zachary Scarpellini was gunned down outside his Highlands apartment. The tony and quiet neighborhood of victorian mansions – home to residents like Ambassador Matthew Barzun and prominent businessman-turned-politician Bruce Lunsford – was rattled awake by gunfire, left terrified and in shock over such a violent crime.

The only witness at the scene other than the alleged gunman was Scarpellini’s roommate, Shawn Reilly, now Executive Director of Progress Kentucky. Reilly’s claim at the time of the crime was that he and Scarpellini were merely following someone they thought was breaking into cars. According to a report in the Bellarmine University (where Scarpellini was a student) newspaper, The Concord, investigators believed the shooting was random and the victim did not know his killer.

And even worse than that...

Thru atty, @progressky Shawn Reilly denies taping McConnell meeting, at most a witness, says if anyone's responsible it's Curtis Morrison
— Joe Arnold (@joearnoldreport) April 11, 2013

And God help me, even worse.

Atty for @progressky's Shawn Reilly: Reilly went to US attorney when Mother Jones broke tape & has been cooperating in federal investigation
— Joe Arnold (@joearnoldreport) April 11, 2013

It's...crazy.  Shaw Reilly is now throwing his friend and Progress KY co-founder directly to the Feds at near light speed.  More tomorrow...

Air Farce, Or Into The Wild Blue Slander

The USAF general who unilaterally overturned a lieutenant's conviction for sexual assault last year is speaking out about the case, and frankly, yeah he's just as awful as you could imagine.

Lt. Gen. Craig Franklin drew headlines and outrage in March for overturning Lt. Col. James Wilkerson’s sexual assault conviction, nullifying his remaining prison sentence and returning him to service in the Air Force. In his letter to Air Force Secretary Michael Donley defending his decision, Franklin explained that he was acting fully in compliance with the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and that he would be “entirely remiss in [his] sworn military duty and responsibility” if he had not overturned the jury’s findings.

Franklin’s memo listed 18 points of contention he saw in the evidence presented during Wilkerson’s court-martial, including several points that either were ruled inadmissible in court or specifically shifted the blame of any assault on the victim.

Yeah, because the victim deserved it, so he had to overturn a conviction by jury.  Among the general's reasons:

• The victim turned down three offers of a ride and seemed to have differing reasons why she wanted to stay.
• The victim had trouble identifying and describing parts of the house, didn’t remember the attacker’s mustache and didn’t correctly describe her path out of the house.
• Wilkerson’s wife’s account of the events differed in some details from her husband’s, but Franklin said the conflicts suggested that the two didn’t collude on a manufactured story.


• Testimony from the friend who took the alleged victim to the hospital the next day was not admissible in court, but Franklin said it indicated there could be a reason the woman might be less than candid.

Yeah.  His mustache.  That must be totally exculpatory evidence.  Luckily, Chuck Hagel is fixing this idiocy:

Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel on Tuesday proposed a change in the current law that would strip the convening authority of their ability to overturn verdicts in most cases as the first step in correcting the military’s sexual assault problem. Currently an estimated 19,000 instances of military sexual trauma take place in the U.S. armed services every year, the vast majority of which go unreported for fear of reprisal or scorn. 

US Air Farce strikes again, but all the armed services need a long, hard serious look at sexual harassment policies.

Death By A Thousand Budget Cuts

Let me point out the obvious:  Republicans plan to make sure Obamacare can't work by cutting funding for it, and then blaming the President.  Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands if not millions of Americans will find themselves in limbo with no health insurance, and at the tender of mercies of GOP governors slashing Medicare.

Don't get sick, America.  It could kill you.

The landmark health law may have survived the Supreme Court, countless repeal efforts and a presidential election — but none of that required Republicans to shower money on Obamacare. And with at least 33 states refusing to build the critical health insurance exchanges, the federal government is unexpectedly on the hook to set them up — and short of money to do so.

The White House requested $1.5 billion more for the health law implementation in its budget Wednesday, but health officials know they’re not likely to get it.

As past funding requests have been spurned, Health and Human Services officials contend they’ve been able to cobble together the funds and won’t miss the Oct. 1 start of open enrollment in exchanges. Any big delay, or major hitches would be a huge blow to Obamacare and reopen the law to political warfare before the 2014 mid-term elections.

“The Supreme Court has ruled, there has been an election, we intend to implement the law,” HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told reporters Wednesday. She acknowledged that without an infusion of new money, she’s probably going to have to keep juggling and scrambling to keep it all on track.

HHS to date hadn’t been very specific about how it’s been moving ahead — even when lawmakers asked. But Sebelius told reporters that the department hadn’t yet spent the full $1 billion that was initially allocated for implementation — a figure that was decided on long before the states balked at exchange-building. Sebelius said the department had been “judicious” in spending it, and officials said approximately $235 million is left in that fund.

Nice.  Meanwhile, let's keep giving $4 billion a year to oil companies who are making tens of billions in profit and keep screaming how we can't afford to make government work.

Assholes.

StupidiNews!

• Japanese automakers, led by Toyota and Honda, are recalling 3.4 million cars due to airbag inflation problems.
• A gunman in Atlanta who held four firefighters hostage was shot and killed by police late Wednesday afternoon.
• New government figures show as much as $5 billion are stolen yearly by identity thieves through false tax returns.
• The Boston Red Sox's record of consecutive sell-outs at Fenway Park came to an end this week at 794 games.
• Microsoft is working on a new 7-inch version of its Surface tablet to compete with the Google Nexus 7 and the iPad Mini.

Last Call: Randsplaining 101

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul!  Storied and famous traditionally black college Howard University!  What happens when you put the two together?

Randsplaining 101!  Benjy Sarlin documents the atrocities...

As Rand Paul told it, the biggest problem keeping African Americans from voting Republican is that they didn’t know Republicans have long been leaders on abolition and civil rights. As students at Howard University heard it, the problem was that Paul was condescending, misleading, and removed from the issues facing their community.


Paul devoted almost none of his speech Wednesday at the historically black college in Washington, D.C., to explaining the GOP’s thorny relationship with black voters over the last fifty years, and most of it arguing that “the Republican Party has always been the party of civil rights and voting rights.” His history lecture focused almost entirely on the period before 1964, when the GOP began to champion the states rights arguments of southern whites. Echoing a popular conservative talking point, Paul repeatedly reminded the audience that Democrats passed Jim Crow laws in the south and that Abraham Lincoln was a Republican, as were the first black legislators and the founders of the NAACP.

“Would everyone know here they were all Republicans?” he said at one point, referring to the NAACP’s founders.

“Yes!” came the booming response from nearly the entire audience, who appeared offended Paul would even raise the question. 

And on it went from there, as Rand Paul discovered that a roomful of college students at one of the most prestigious universities in the country (historically black or otherwise) actually do know something about American history.  You know, more than Rand Paul did.

In a way, I'm hoping that this was a humbling experience for the Junior Senator from the Commonwealth, but the odds of that are miniscule at best.  Transcript of the speech is, of course, at Reason Magazine's website.  My fav paragraph:

I come to Howard today, not to preach, or prescribe some special formula for you but to say I want a government that leaves you alone, that encourages you to write the book that becomes your unique future.

Yeah, and on that book was "Died from neglect."

I'm Just A Bill, Just A Lonely Ol' Bill

But I want to become a law so badly I'll blackmail an Oklahoma state Senator in order to win, is that how the song goes?

A co-founder of the Sooner Tea Party was charged Tuesday with blackmail over an email that he admits sending to a state senator.

Al Gerhart, 54, of Oklahoma City, also was charged with violating the Oklahoma Computer Crimes Act.

Both counts are felonies.

Gerhart, a carpenter, denied any wrongdoing after coming under investigation last week. He had not been arrested yet Tuesday evening.

Gerhart sent the email March 26 to Sen. Cliff Branan, promising to make the senator a laughing stock unless the Senate Energy and Environment Committee passed a bill dealing with a United Nations plan.

Branan, R-Oklahoma City, is chairman of the committee. The senator turned the email over to the Oklahoma Highway Patrol.

Misspelling one word, Gerhart wrote: “Branan, Get that bill heard or I will make sure you regret not doing it. I will make you the laughing stock of the Senate if I don't hear that this bill will be heard and passed. We will dig into your past, yoru family, your associates and once we start on you there will be no end to it. This is a promise.”

Yeah, that's how the FREEDOM and LIBERTY party rolls, yo.  You do their bidding or they destroy you and move on to the next state lawmaker.  And hell, this guy was going to crush him over some tinfoil nonsense dealing with sustainability. 

We'll crush all dissent unless you stop this bill that might mean the end of our ability to dissent, if you squint at it just right!

Idiots...but dangerous.  And increasingly, they're running YOUR state government.

StupidiNews!

• South Korea continues to be on high alert as North Korean mobile missiles have been moved into a test launch position, according to US officials.
• A Georgia state GOP lawmaker who supported drug testing for welfare recipients in the state has been arrested and charged with his second DUI offense in 4 years.
• New inteligence information reveals the Obama administration has targeted lower-level Pakistani militants with drone strikes, and not just Al Qaeda operatives.
• President Obama's budget proposal released today will include new rules to protect taxpayers from identity theft through tax return information.
• Microsoft Windows XP enters its final year of extended support from Redmond, while 38% of internet users still use the OS.

Last Call

Maybe, just maybe, the Republicans in the Senate are going to lose this gun violence legislation battle after all, especially if somebody doesn't shut GOP Sen. James Inhofe up fast.

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) said Tuesday that the gun control debate doesn't have anything to do with the families of the Newtown, Conn., shooting victims, and that the only reason those families think it does is because President Barack Obama told them it did.

Eleven family members of Newtown victims were in Washington on Tuesday, meeting privately with senators to urge them to support a forthcoming gun package that would impose tighter background checks, crack down on gun trafficking and enhance school safety measures. Speaking to a handful of reporters, Inhofe said he feels bad for those families because they're being used as pawns in a political fight.

"See, I think it's so unfair of the administration to hurt these families, to make them think this has something to do with them when, in fact, it doesn't," Inhofe said.

When it was suggested that the families of Newtown victims actually believe the gun debate pertains to them, Inhofe said, "Well, that's because they've been told that by the president."

My main argument Saturday was that Republicans weren't going to pay a political price for opposing background checks.  It's entirely conceivable that Inhofe's idiotic statement here may just have changed the calculus on that, big time.

To recap, a sitting US Senator just told the families of the victims of a bloody massacre of six-year-olds that they have nothing to do with the gun violence debate, and that they are nothing more than pawns.  Even if Inhofe believes this, to actually say something that unrelentingly cold to reporters is a pretty awful thing to do.

Suddenly, the villain in this kabuki play isn't the caricature of Tyrant Obama, but Inhofe's own words.  That's a pretty big shift, potentially.

Still virtually no chance of this getting through the House.  But the Senate, well...there's light at the end of that tunnel.

The Senate will hold a preliminary vote on gun control legislation to break the Republican filibuster on Thursday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced, after the Democrats pulled together enough votes from Republicans.

“We’re going to vote Thursday,” Reid said. “I’m going to file cloture on the bill tonight.”

Though Democrats do have the numbers to break the filibuster, they still might not have enough votes to overcome other procedural hurdles and hold an up-or-down vote.

They will after Inhofe's story gets wide play.  Cowardly Dems will have nowhere to hide on this one and neither will a number of Republicans.  If the point of President Obama's push on gun legislation was giving the GOP enough rope to hang themselves, Inhofe jumped at the chance to go first.

Ashley, Alison, And The Turtle, Part 5

MoJo's David Corn has yet another blockbuster tape, this time of a recording of Old-Age Mutant Nimrod Turtle's opposition research meeting on Ashley Judd.  It reveals that McConnell was going to spare no expense to go after Ashley Judd with brutal personal attacks.

On February 2, Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the US Senate, opened up his 2014 reelection campaign headquarters in Louisville, Kentucky, and in front of several dozen supporters vowed to "point out" the weaknesses of any opponent fielded by the Democrats. "They want to fight? We're ready," he declared. McConnell was serious: Later that day, he was huddling with aides in a private meeting to discuss how to attack his possible Democratic foes, including actor/activist Ashley Judd, who was then contemplating challenging the minority leader. During this strategy session—a recording of which was obtained by Mother Jones—McConnell and his aides considered assaulting Judd for her past struggles with depression and for her religious views.

The meeting was truly vile stuff.

For much of the Judd discussion, McConnell was silent as aides reviewed the initial oppo research they had collected on Judd and weighed all the ways they could pummel her. The recording was provided to Mother Jones last week by a source who requested anonymity. (The recording can be found here; a transcript is here.) McConnell's Senate office and his campaign office did not respond to requests for comment.

The aide who led the meeting began his presentation with a touch of glee: "I refer to [Judd] as sort of the oppo research situation where there's a haystack of needles, just because truly, there’s such a wealth of material." He ran through the obvious: Judd was a prominent supporter of President Barack Obama, Obamacare, abortion rights, gay marriage, and climate change action. He pointed out that she is "anti-coal."

But the McConnell gang explored going far beyond Judd's politics and policy preferences. This included her mental health.

And they were going to just paint her a hippie weirdo flake.  They were fully prepared to destroy her personally as well as politically and professionally.  And yet this career politician, who has used his office to enrich himself by tens of millions of dollars, is the good guy here.

Now the McConnell campaign is demanding a full FBI investigation, claiming President Obama authorized "Watergate style tactics" of bugging the meeting, and promising anyone involved will be fully prosecuted...when of course McConnell ran into that ugly incident where his campaign left a recording device at the debate podium of opponent Bruce Lunsford in 2008.

The GOP is accusing Mother Jones and David Corn of bugging the meeting.

Mitch has got to go, folks. 

Bobby's World Is Falling Apart

No state was willing to go the route of full-blown GOP austerity for the 99% like Bobby Jindal's Louisiana.  His tax plan was the logical endpoint of Grover Norquist's wet dreams: the elimination of the state's income and corporate taxes, replaced by a massive hike in the state's sales tax.  And that would of course mean huge additional budget cuts in a state that had already made deep and damaging cuts to education through a voucher scheme to privatize schools and even shutting down a number of parish libraries.

But the people of Louisiana have finally had enough.  His tax plan to put the burden of the state's revenues on the poorest souls in a scheme that would almost certainly require even steeper sales tax hikes or more likely, massive new health care and education cuts in a state where both have been slashed by hundreds of millions of dollars already, all to give the state's richest a $25,000 tax cut each?

Dead on arrival.

Governor Bobby Jindal (R-LA), considered a leading presidential contender in 2016, is suffering a political meltdown in his home state. His approval rating plummeted to 38 percent in a poll last week by the non-partisan Southern Media Opinion & Research, down from 60 percent just a year ago. In an ominous sign for national Republicans, the immediate cause is a sweeping economic agenda with strong parallels to the House GOP’s latest budget.

On Monday, Jindal scrapped his own proposal to eliminate the state’s income and corporate taxes and replace them with a statewide tax on sales and business services. His retreat was a concession to the reality that the proposal was headed towards a humiliating defeat — and taking Jindal down with it along the way. Jindal said in a speech to lawmakers that the backlash against his plan “certainly wasn’t the reaction I was hoping to hear,” but that he would respect the public’s wishes and start again. 

Those ideas are now opposed by a majority of  Louisiana Republicans, because the math is brutal.  Jacking up the state sales tax from 4 to 7% on everything, including "business services" was going to take a huge chunk out of the hides of small businesses, and big corporations didn't have loopholes to hide behind anymore.  Meanwhile, the poorest Louisianans would have seen their taxes jump by hundreds of dollars, and the middle-class would have seen an even bigger tax hike.  Meanwhile, the richest state citizens could simply avoid paying any state taxes altogether by buying over the border in Texas, Arkansas, or Mississippi.  The resulting tax gap would have left the state short by billions, meaning more cuts or more hikes.

The left, right, and middle have revolted as a result, and Bobby Jindal's political career is, for the moment, as dead as his tax scam.

StupidiNews!

• Original Mouseketeer and film star Annette Funicello died Monday at the age of 70 after complications due to multiple sclerosis.
• Maryland will become the 20th US state to legalize medical marijuana after a bill passed the state Senate with an overwhelming 42-4 vote and Gov. Martin O'Malley will sign it.
• Secretary of State John Kerry has confirmed a new effort to restart stalled Mideast peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.
• Louisville men's basketball coach Rick Pitino becomes the first coach to win titles at two different schools as the Cardinals defeated Michigan in last night's championship game, 82-76.
• Wall Street pegs the cost of Google Fiber's rollout nationally at a staggering $11 billion, that would only capture 15% of the nation's broadband market.

Last Call

Look guys, I know this is rapidly turning into the "Stupid Crap The Rand Paul Says That Should Disqualify Him From Ever Being President" blog, but the guy is my Senator, so I feel compelled to document the atrocities.  Regardless, I gotta live with him representing me now.

Anyway, the documenting part, right.  Here's part of that CBN interview he did last week, getting some much-needed attention.

Where marriage is adjudicated, whether it’s at the federal level or at the state level, we’ve always had marriage certificates and we’ve had them at the state level. If we keep it that way, maybe we can still have the discussion go on without make the decision go all the way one way or all the way the other way.

I think right now if we say we’re only going to have a federally mandated one-man, one-woman marriage, we’re going to lose that battle because the country is going the other way right now. If we were to say each state can decide, I think a good 25, 30 states still do believe in traditional marriage, and maybe we allow that debate to go on for another couple of decades and see if we can still win back the hearts and minds of people.

Substitute "slavery" for "traditional marriage" in that sentence (and 15 for the number of states backing it) and this asshole would fit in perfectly in proto-Confederate 1853 South.  It's the same damn argument, and used for the same damn purposes it was used for 160 years ago.

Same damn party it seems, too.

A Pimm's Cup For Posterity

Former British PM (and Baroness) Margaret Thatcher died this morning after suffering a stroke, and as with Reagan, the hagiography has already begun.  It's good then to remind everyone that today's GOP would have thrown The Iron Lady out of the party, and that she would have been attacked as a BIG GUBMENT Socialist.

She supported socialized medicine. The modern-day GOP is so obsessed with trying to repeal Obamacare that they’ve held nearly 40 votes to do so. But Obamacare is actually a much more conservative health care policy than the socialized National Health Service, which Thatcher lauded as an accomplishment of the United Kingdom. “I believed that the NHS was a service of which we could genuinely be proud,” she wrote in her book, “It delivered a high quality of care — especially when it came to acute illnesses — and at a reasonably modest unit cost, at least compared with some insurance-based systems.”

She increased taxes. Spending actually rose during Thatcher’s first seven years in office, as the New York Times reports, and taxes took up a larger percentage as share of gross domestic product. Indeed, even by the end of her time in office taxes were still a higher percentage of GDP than they were when she arrived:

Thatcher also increased the Value Added Tax (VAT), which Newt Gingrich described as “European socialism” during the 2012 election cycle.

She believed in climate change. Thatcher was an early adherent to climate science, and once warned, “The danger of global warming is as yet unseen but real enough for us to make changes and sacrifices so that we do not live at the expense of future generations.”

She recognized that gun laws can limit gun violence. After a deadly shooting rampage in England, Thatcher said, “If [gun laws] need to be tightened up, or if we think that it could prevent anything more like this, then of course that will be considered.” A year later, the government passed the Firearms (Amendment) Act 1988, which outlawed semi-automatic weapons, changed requirements on registering guns, allowed police to refuse a weapon to anyone they saw unfit, and allowed the Home Secretary to add other guns to the list of banned firearms.

So no, Maggie Thatcher would have, much like Reagan, been thrown out of today's ultra-conservative GOP.  Something to keep in mind. 

Rand Paul And The Dudebro Vote

The Austerity Bombermen have so far had decent success in starving out the 99%, other than what awesome victories the Democrats handed them on sequestration and whatnot.  Still, let’s be honest about the reason for the “recent GOP soul-searching” here, it’s cold political calculus on how to inflict maximum austerity and move the remaining 20% of the country’s wealth into the hands of the elite.  “Austerity Because God Said So” hasn’t worked, in fact it’s backfired into that whole “care about the poor” thing.  “Austerity Because The Math Demands It” has worked a bit better, but not as well as it could have, the Math got us the bank disaster and people actually have noticed (mainly because all-new people got to join the ranks of the poor).

That brings us to Austerity revision 3.0:  Austerity Because Don’t Tread On Me.  Enter Sen. Rand Paul, the new poster child of the VSP complete with feature article from WIN THE MORNING.

Led by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), libertarians hope to become a dominant wing of the GOP by tapping into a potent mix of war weariness, economic anxiety and frustration with federal overreach in the fifth year of Barack Obama’s presidency.

The country’s continuing fixation on fiscal issues, especially spending and debt, allows them to emphasize areas of agreement with conservative allies who are looking for ways to connect with Republicans who aren’t passionate about abortion or same-sex marriage. A Democratic administration ensures consensus on the right that states should get as much power as possible.

It’s not just socially moderate Republicans (i.e. the non-batshit crazy bigots) Paul is trying to pick up, but the disaffected younger Obama voters who have gotten around to realizing that governance is kinda hard, and that the Obama coalition is composed of folks other than young white guys.  Peeling off minorities isn’t working too well, not with the GOP reminding us daily just how much they hate us.  Same goes for women, who if anything have been pushed further into the Obama camp with gun control issues after the Newtown and Aurora massacres.

But Dudebros, well…there’s an untapped electoral gold (weed end the Fed) mine there if Rand can motivate enough of them to break away from Left.  As long as Paul can frame the current administration in zero-sum terms where the advancement of women and minorities must come at the expense of white guys, there’s a chance that the guy may be able to convert that into votes going forward.  Dudebros gotta dudebro, after all.  Rand Paul’s their guy.  If they get to keep the privilege while getting credit for “moderating” the GOP, it’s total bonus time.

Thinking Rand Paul was a sick joke meant he ended up Senator when Democrats refused to back Jack Conway enough to shut the guy down in 2010.  Now he’s going to be unleashed upon the entire country unless we start admitting the forces promoting this guy as the future of the GOP are a problem that needs to be taken seriously.

StupidiNews!

• Five Americans, including a 25-year old US diplomatic officer, were killed over the weekend by an Afghan suicide bomber who struck their convoy as they were delivering books to schools.
• Activists in Arkansas have posted video evidence that last month's residential tar sands pipeline oil spill in Mayflower has reached nearby Lake Conway and protected wetlands.
• Israeli government websites have come under attack by pro-Palestinian hackers in a coordinated move on Sunday.
• Tea Party state legislation to legalize gold and silver bullion as legal tender is gaining popularity in red states, with proponents claiming the dollar will soon be worthless.
• A new National Highway Traffic Safety Association poll reveals that laws banning texting while driving hasn't reduced mobile device use while behind the wheel.