Saturday, Nov 01st
Last update08:10:46 AM GMT
Domestic Glance
The Supreme Court on Monday gave police more leeway to break into residences in search of illegal drugs. The justices in an 8-1 decision said officers who loudly knock on a door and then hear sounds suggesting evidence is being destroyed may break down the door and enter without a search warrant.
Residents who "attempt to destroy evidence have only themselves to blame" when police burst in, said Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.
The federal government’s largest housing construction program for the poor has squandered hundreds of millions of dollars on stalled or abandoned projects and routinely failed to crack down on derelict developers or the local housing agencies that funded them.
Nationwide, nearly 700 projects awarded $400 million have been idling for years, a Washington Post investigation found. Some have languished for a decade or longer even as much of the country struggles with record-high foreclosures and a dramatic loss of affordable housing.
A conservative billionaire who opposes government meddling in business has bought a rare commodity: the right to interfere in faculty hiring at a publicly funded university.
A foundation bankrolled by Libertarian businessman Charles G. Koch has pledged $1.5 million for positions in Florida State University's economics department. In return, his representatives get to screen and sign off on any hires for a new program promoting "political economy and free enterprise."
Does an Al Qaeda anthrax operative own four pharmacies in New York City? That frightening possibility is raised in one of the 700-plus Guantanamo detainee assessments released recently by WikiLeaks and other sources.
The documents detail the history and threat potential of terrorist suspects detained at Gitmo. Recently, a blogger sent me an email pointing out that one of these assessments contains a particularly chilling section. It says that a detainee captured by the CIA in 2003 possessed a diary that contained contact information for a "possible al-Qaida anthrax operative" who then was living in New York City and who owned several pharmarcies there.
Fewer than half of American eighth graders knew the purpose of the Bill of Rights on the most recent national civics examination, and only one in 10 demonstrated acceptable knowledge of the checks and balances among the legislative, executive and judicial branches, according to test results released on Wednesday
high school seniors who took the test, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, were unable to demonstrate skills like identifying the effect of United States foreign policy on other nations or naming a power granted to Congress by the Constitution.
Big Brother -- Your Local Store Manager -- is Watching You
After entering a rent-to-own contract on the laptop in early 2010, the couple completed their last payment in October 2010, a month ahead of schedule. But Mr. Byrd fortuitously made a mistake in his payment submission resulting in Aaron's never logging it as received.
California lawmakers are the latest to weigh joining efforts in other states to gain control over a controversial national program that automatically checks the immigration status of arrestees.
The Golden State accounts for more than a third of the deportations under the Immigration and Customs Enforcement program, and some local officials are saying they were misled by the federal government about the program's extent.
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