This is where the bits and pieces of America’s space program came to die.
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“I’m for trees, too, but not when they impede on businesses.” –Jeff Garner, senior vice president of real estate for Clear Channel Outdoor

Billboard owners would be able to clear-cut trees on Georgia’s roadsides to make it easier to see their signs if legislators approve new rules. Read more »

The FBI repeatedly failed to follow the strict guidelines of the Patriot Act when its agents took advantage of a new provision allowing the FBI to obtain phone and financial records without a court order, according to a report to be made public Friday by the Justice Department’s Inspector General.
Full story from ABC here.

Hat tip to TO: here

‘Everything just seems funny in the Army.’ — military THC test subject
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I am a little conflicted here as I detest Helvetica in all its forms, but, still, a movie about a typeface is right up there with Alias. Nonetheless, Times New Roman would very definitely have made a better story. You could make Memogate the motor of the plot. I wonder who would play Thomas Phinney and me? See The Digital Dish for explanation.

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A former top American diplomat says the US deliberately resisted calls for a immediate ceasefire during the conflict in Lebanon in the summer of 2006.Former ambassador to the UN John Bolton told the BBC that before any ceasefire Washington wanted Israel to eliminate Hezbollah’s military capability.

Mr Bolton said an early ceasefire would have been “dangerous and misguided.”

He said the US decided to join efforts to end the conflict only when it was clear Israel’s campaign wasn’t working.

Go to original.

WASHINGTON (AFP) – As of October 2006 US forces had still not secured all of the unguarded munition sites in Iraq, allowing thieves to keep stealing war material and stoke the country’s violence, the General Accounting Office reported.

“The widespread looting occurred because DOD (the Department of Defense) had insufficient troop levels to secure conventional munitions storage sites,” it said, citing war reports and defense officials.

“We’re doing our best to try and find them but, given the expanse of the country and all the other tasks that the military is trying to carry out there, it’s a huge task,” Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said.

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WASHINGTON, March 20 (UPI) — The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is setting up its new HQ in a former lunatic asylum. The $3 billion move will begin in 2011, according to a plan prepared by the DHS, once a new building is ready in the grounds of the former mental hospital, St. Elizabeth’s.

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• Cub was ignored by mother, so zookeepers raised him themselves
• Activist: “Feeding by hand is … gross violation of animal protection laws”
• Bear’s story sparks controversy among politicians, animal activists

BERLIN, Germany (AP) — Berlin Zoo’s abandoned polar bear cub Knut looks cute, cuddly and has become a front-page media darling, but an animal rights activist insisted Monday he would have been better off dead than raised by humans.

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Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the United States attorney in Chicago who recently led the successful prosecution of I. Lewis Libby Jr., who was a top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, was on a list of prosecutors whose performance was ranked as “not distinguished” on a list Mr. Sampson sent to the White House in March 2005, Justice Department officials say.

Go to original by DAVID JOHNSTON and JOHN M. BRODER in the New York Times

Police cited Broward Circuit Judge Lawrence Korda — one of two who made decisions recently in the Anna Nicole Smith case — for smoking marijuana in a park Sunday afternoon, a police spokesman said on Monday.

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ISLAMABAD (AP) The lawyer for a man convicted of killing Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl said Sunday he will file an appeal using an al-Qaida lieutenant’s recent confession that he beheaded the reporter.Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who has claimed that he planned the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, claimed at a U.S. military hearing at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, that he personally beheaded Pearl for being an Israeli intelligence agent.

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“The religion of Hell is patriotism.”
–James Branch Cabell Jurgen, a Comedy of Justice