Between the current interest in America’s founders and a “willingness to believe” the Internet, political misquotes are flying these days, writes David A. Fahrenthold in the Washington Post . A look over the past two years of C-SPAN and the Congressional Record shows that politicians—including congressmen, senators, and the president—…
Continue reading …A North Carolina state lawmaker has received some very personal letters of protest—from his daughter and her third-grade class. GOP Rep. Mike Stone’s daughter asks him to “please put the budget higher, dad” as the state weighs education spending cuts, reports the AP . “Our school doesn’t want to lose”…
Continue reading …The founder of a Jewish human rights organization said today the group has acquired a document by Adolf Hitler believed to contain his first written comments calling Jews a threat that should be removed. Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center the center paid $150,000 to a private…
Continue reading …Cue the conspiracy theories in the land down under: Australian officials say they’ve been unable to locate decades’ worth of UFO records. After Great Britain released thousands of its own ‘X-files’ last year , the Sydney Morning Herald filed a Freedom of Information request for Australia’s version of the records, reports…
Continue reading …Outspoken Syrian-American blogger Amina Araf was grabbed on the street yesterday, someone claiming to be her cousin wrote on her blog. Araf wrote a blog entitled A Gay Girl in Damascus , which had spoken out in favor of the protest movement, according to MSNBC . A post yesterday from a woman…
Continue reading …Scientific American posing a jarring question as headline today: “Will the Internet Stop on June 8?” And the answer is: Er, no. But the Internet will start to grow up a little. Tomorrow is World IPv6 Day, when Google, Facebook, YouTube, and other giants will conduct a 24-hour test of…
Continue reading …Maybe something’s just lost in translation: A poll of 30,000 people in 15 countries found Germany to be the world’s most unfunny country. But we’re not so amusing either: Russia and Turkey came in as the second and third least-funny, while Britain and the US rounded out the top…
Continue reading …There’s a strong argument that politicians in general shouldn’t resign in the wake of sex scandas, writes Steve Kornacki of Salon : “Sure, life is hell for a few days—or even a few weeks—and it seems like the media will never stop covering you, but then … they eventually…
Continue reading …The people of New London, Connecticut, have been letting city officials know exactly what they think of their very, very expensive whale tail fountain … and it’s not pretty. The city was forced to shut off water flowing out of the public fountain—an 8,000-pound bronze sculpture built as…
Continue reading …Homeowners who took out a second mortgage are twice as likely as those who didn’t to be underwater on their mortgages, with a whopping 38% owing more than their homes are worth, according to a CoreLogic report released today. They were also much deeper in the hole, with an average…
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