Read it.

The Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (MBTA) also named MIT in the 17-page complaint, which seeks unspecified monetary damages for violation of the computer fraud and abuse act, negligent supervision and other causes of action. It also requests a temporary order preventing the students from “publicly stating or indicating that the security or integrity” of the MBTA’s systems has been compromised.

“It’s pretty disappointing,” Anderson told El Reg. “We initially called them to offer them our help in fixing these vulnerabilities. We have no intention of releasing details that would allow someone to replicate the attacks that can be done.”

Memo to those who want to solve a problem: Don’t talk to the government about it.

The Wall Street Journal is just full of happy news today.

Sen. Stevens, 86 years old, has been dogged by a federal investigation into whether he pushed for fishing legislation that also benefited his son, an Alaska lobbyist. Authorities have also scrutinized his ties to a corrupt oil contractor who paid employees to renovate the senator’s home.

Unfortunately there isn’t any way to get back any of the billions of taxpayer dollars he’s wasted over the years. But at least we may see him go to jail. I’d pay money for that.

Read it.

Truly, you can’t make this stuff up.

Read it.

When a bureaucrat’s job depends on him (or her) giving away money, then they’re by God going to find people to which to give money.

On a no-doubt-entirely-unrelated note, the federal deficit for this year appears to be twice what was anticipated. Just sayin’.

Read it.

Forest supervisor Leanne Marten said when approving Savoy’s application that the project wouldn’t significantly harm the environment and the company would be required to keep noise to a minimum.

But the judge ruled the Forest Service didn’t consider how degrading the area could harm tourism, and said the agency did a “woefully inadequate” job of evaluating how the drilling might affect the Kirtland’s warbler, an endangered songbird that nests in the area.

Like $4 gas? Be prepared for $6 gas. And don’t forget, you’re paying these people’s salaries.

Read it.

As George Washington knew from the get-go, the slow pace and individualist nature of the Senate would drive the more action-oriented House of Representatives batty. And it has, regularly and consistently. One of the most battle-tested anecdotes, which I first heard in the 1970s from former Representative Al Swift (D-WA), is about the freshman House member who refers to a member of the other party as “the enemy.” A more senior colleague says, “No, he is just a part of the opposition. The Senate is the enemy.”

George Will nails it.

The semiconductor industry’s problem is entangled with a subject about which the loquacious presidential candidates are reluctant to talk — immigration, specifically that of highly educated people. Concerning whom, U.S. policy should be: A nation cannot have too many such people, so send us your PhDs yearning to be free.

Instead, the majority of our immigrants are semi-literate fruit-pickers and grass-mowers. What a world.

Read it.

Read it.

It’s hard to keep church and state separate when you have government schools.

Read it.

Those who wish to put government in charge of their lives should read & heed.

Read it.

Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence, set out to provide the official foundation for what has become not only a thriving business but, more important, an article of faith among millions of Americans. And in releasing a committee report Thursday, he claimed to have accomplished his mission, though he did not use the L-word.

But if you actually read the report, you find something entirely different.

But dive into Rockefeller’s report, in search of where exactly President Bush lied about what his intelligence agencies were telling him about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein, and you may be surprised by what you find.

In other words, as with many Democrat-run “official” reports, they can’t lie about the evidence, but they can lie about what the evidence shows, in the sure and certain knowledge that nobody who counts will Read The Whole Thing and catch them out.

Who was it said that it’s impossible to underestimate the intelligence of the American people?

Read it.

Note that, when it comes to their own comforts, Congress gives all the socialist rhetoric a pass and goes with what actually works. Would that they felt the same about their nominal constituents.

Read it.

Note that the author has stumbled upon an inconvenient truth — that the state’s case, although nominally about individual cases of abuse, is actually an attempt to persecute a “sect” under color of law.

The only safe place to be any more is working for the government. Better to be the hammer than the nail.

Read it.

A vast government effort to bring oysters back to the Chesapeake Bay has turned out so dismally that it has the ring of a math-class riddle. How do you spend $58 million to get more of something and wind up with less of it?

I’m glad they have nothing more important to do with that money.

Read it.

A public school principal in Texas who arranged for an Islamic instruction presentation for students by an organization whose leaders have been linked to terror groups apparently arranged for that indoctrination after being told not to by her district’s superintendent, parents have told WND.

Read it.

Yet another piece of condescension by an Overclass bureaucrat.

“In other words, upper class people can responsibly choose to smoke a cigar, but poor people need to have choices taken away from them.”

Read it.

Susan Gurley, executive director of the Association of Corporate Travel Executives, an advocacy group for the business-travel industry, tells us that the problem isn’t that Customs can now conduct these searches, but that Customs hasn’t made public its policies regarding how it handles the data it confiscates. For example, Gurley asks, how long will Customs keep a laptop? What happens to data once Customs is finished inspecting them? And how will Customs ensure that confidential information doesn’t leak out?

We tried for a week to get answers to those questions. The closest we came was an assurance from Hollinger that Customs and Border Protection handles all information as required by law.

Our pure-speculation translation: Customs is making this stuff up as it goes along.

Power without policy = arbitrary decisions by some carrot-IQ public employee. Hello, TSA.

Read it.

“The nation is dividing into two classes of workers: those who have government benefits and those who don’t,” USA Today noted in 2007. “The gap is accelerating in every way — pensions, medical benefits, retirement ages.” According to the Congressional Research Service, the pension collected by the average private-sector retiree is worth less than half of what a typical government retiree can expect. If you don’t have your snout in the government trough, you can expect to work ever-longer hours and pay ever-higher taxes and fees to support those who do.

Read it.

Wide Scope = Pork.

But you knew that.

Read it.

More than 20 states have procrastinated in meeting the No Child Left Behind law’s requirement that all students reach grade-level proficiency by 2014 and will be hard-pressed to make needed improvements before the deadline, a report released today shows.

I’m shocked, I tell you, shocked.

Kaus has the goods.

David Friedman asks some obvious questions, which don’t appear to have made it into the dinosaur media.

Having held them in Texas until they had their children on the unsupported, and now concededly false, claim that they were minors, the state is now claiming custody over their infants.

The question, to which someone who knows law better than I do may have an answer, is whether the victims of this abuse of legal process have any legal recourse. On the face of it, the state of Texas either deliberately or negligently violated the rights of both women, holding them prisoner without any legal justification for doing so.

Inside Politics.

Inside the Beltway.

Inside the Ring.

Hans A. Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists Nuclear Information Project has found a hidden Chinese nuclear missile base using commercial satellite photos.

Inside Politics.

Inside the Beltway.

Read it.

“We’re from the government, and we’re here to help. Stick up your hands.”

Inside Politics.

Inside the Beltway.

Read it.

It would seem that there is an IQ test in New York for running for political office — pass, and you’re disqualified.

Read it.

And you’re paying for all this. Be proud.

Inside the Beltway.

Inside Politics.

Read it.

(Is this a trick question?)

Inside the Ring.

Inside the Beltway.

Inside Politics. 

Inside Politics.

Read it.

Mark Sapir got fed up waiting years for immigration officials to act on his citizenship application. So the native of Russia did the most American thing he could think of: He filed a lawsuit.

Sounds like he’s up to speed on this American thing.

Read it.

Robert Novak points out that House Republicans are being their traditional supine selves.

There has been little public Republican protest over the seizure of the appropriating process by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her clique. For the second year, no appropriations bill other than defense is scheduled for passage. Instead, spending details are crafted in the speaker’s office, negating President Bush’s veto strategy. In a little-noticed maneuver on April 23, Pelosi won passage of a bill preventing billions from being saved through Bush administration Medicaid regulations. Despite the GOP leadership’s nominal opposition, House Republicans voted 2 to 1 for higher spending.

No wonder Republican ratings are low.  If people have a choice between a Democrat and a RINO, what incentive do they have to vote for the RINO?

Read it.

Read it.

More than $5 billion in direct payments are made each year to growers of corn, wheat, rice, cotton and a few other crops based on past production, regardless of market conditions or even whether the crops are still grown.

The payments are heavily weighted to the biggest producers, with the top 10 percent getting two-thirds of the subsidies.

Read it.

This is the same House of Representatives in which William Jefferson (D-La.) sits after having $90,000 in bribe money found in his freezer.

Color me unimpressed.

Inside Politics.

Inside the Beltway.

Read it.

“We’re from the governmen, and we’re here to help.” Sure, I believe that.

George Will is on the case.

The two real rationales for laws regulating political activity are incumbent protection and the convenience of government — discouraging the governed from activism. The proclaimed rationale is, however, the prevention of corruption or the appearance thereof. But corruption is understood in terms of quid pro quo transactions — candidates corrupted by contributions. So, there cannot be corruption in ballot issue elections because there are no candidates to corrupt.

Undeterred by this detail, advocates of political regulation say compulsory disclosure of involvement even in ballot issue campaigns — meaning compulsory denial of political privacy — is inherently good because information always is, too. The regulator’s motto is “Dirigo, ergo sum” — I boss people around, therefore I am.

Read it.

From the outset, the program’s rocky path illustrated the collective political power of federal workers.

Whenever politics trumps economics, the taxpayer loses.

Read it.

Boy, the Department of Homeland Stupidity is making me feel more secure by the minute.

Also poorer.

Inside Politics.

Inside the Beltway.

Read it.

Sometimes it is good to be the king.

Read it.

But that trick never works.

David Friedman ponders what everyone else ought to be pondering.

Another interesting quote comes via CNN from Angie Voss, a supervisor for investigation at Texas Child Protective Services, who said that about 130 of the children removed were under the age of 4.

Boys were also removed from the ranch, Voss testified, because “I believe that the boys are groomed to be perpetrators.”

Or in other words, bringing up children in their parents’ religion is itself child abuse, provided that the doctrines of the religion are sufficiently repugnant.

We’re from the government, and we’ re here to help. Put your hands up.

Read it.

Once again, the regressives of the Left Coast lead the nation in statism.

Read it.

But, regardless of Brandon’s track-record, his resignation, reports the editorial board, was a foregone conclusion. Fiduciary duty to Berkshire shareholders required Buffet to avoid a criminal indictment of Gen Re at any cost. And U.S. Attorneys can pressure companies to fire executives as a show of cooperation. Georgetown Law prof John Hasnas says prosecutors rarely if ever tell corporations to fire their target. But all they have to do is to suggest that they are considering whether to indict the corporation, and that the extent of their cooperation will be considered in the decision, and “the message gets across.”

Is anybody surprised?  When merely bringing charges can destroy a company — hello, Arthur Anderson — who is safe from “prosecutorial discretion”?

Read it.

Wouldn’t it be nice to see one of these thieves go to jail?

Of course, they wouldn’t be making a big deal out of it if it were a Democrat, but still — progress.