TV News LIES

Drones could soon be entering the airspace above you — and privacy-minded state lawmakers, banding together in an unusual left-right political alliance, are in a dogfight with law enforcement groups across the country as they move to put protections in place for those on the ground.

Sen. Rand Paul, a leading critic of drones, recently helped drive them into the national debate with his 13-hour filibuster on the issue and a later comment that it would be OK if a drone were used by police in the U.S. to kill an armed robber at a liquor store. That comment infuriated some of Paul’s libertarian followers and sent the Kentucky Republican and possible 2016 candidate into full damage control mode.

The real capabilities and behavior of the US surveillance state are almost entirely unknown to the American public because, like most things of significance done by the US government, it operates behind an impenetrable wall of secrecy. But a seemingly spontaneous admission this week by a former FBI counterterrorism agent provides a rather startling acknowledgment of just how vast and invasive these surveillance activities are.

Over the past couple days, cable news tabloid shows such as CNN's Out Front with Erin Burnett have been excitingly focused on the possible involvement in the Boston Marathon attack of Katherine Russell, the 24-year-old American widow of the deceased suspect, Tamerlan Tsarnaev.

The Roman Catholic priest at the center of a public furor enveloping Newark Archbishop John J. Myers has resigned from ministry, a spokesman for the archdiocese said tonight.

The Rev. Michael Fugee, who attended youth retreats and heard confessions from minors in defiance of a lifetime ban on such behavior, submitted his request to leave ministry this afternoon, said the spokesman, Jim Goodness. Myers promptly accepted the resignation, Goodness said.

A federal judge in New York approved a $2.43 billion settlement to end claims Bank of America misled shareholder when it purchased Merrill Lynch & Co.

Bank of America closed on the purchase of Merrill Lynch in January 2008, having announced it had reached a deal to buy the financial giant in September 2008, one day before Lehman Brothers announced it was bankrupt, The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday.

The Justice Department has acknowledged flaws in forensic testimony by the FBI that helped convict a man in the 1992 slayings of two Mississippi State University students, and federal officials have now offered to retest the DNA in the case.

The extraordinary admission and offer come just days before the man is scheduled to die by lethal injection on Tuesday and present a quandary for Mississippi officials about whether to stop the execution of Willie Jerome Manning, 44.

On the eve of the National Rifle Association's annual meeting, in which up to 70,000 people with guns gather in Houston, Texas, under the slogan "Stand and Fight," the gun group has announced a new president who is more extreme than the old president. Jim Porter, whose father was also an NRA president, will begin his two-year term on Monday, after the party.

For some insight into how dealing with the gun lobby in the near future will be, please refer to this 2012 speech from Porter, in which he calls Barack Obama a "fake president."