Blog Heap of Links for the day 5 May 2009

President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden took a short—but wholly noticeable—motorcade ride from the White House to Virginia and pulled into a small, independent burger joint called Ray's Hell Burger. The two leaders went right up to the counter where the meat was being grilled and ordered.

The $328,835 snapshots of an Air Force One backup plane buzzing lower Manhattan last week will not be shown to the public, the White House said yesterday. "We have no plans to release them,"

The same Homeland Security Department office that categorized veterans as potential terrorists issued an earlier report that defined dozens of "extremists" ranging from black power activists to abortion foes. The report was nixed within hours and recalled from state and local law enforcement officials. Whites and blacks, Christians and Jews, Cubans and Mexicans, along with tax-hating Americans were among several political leanings listed in the "Domestic Extremism Lexicon" that came out of the Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A) in late March.

Without defining what "most important" and "faith moment" mean, U.S. News & World Report clearly shows its thesis and thrust in the column with this sentence: "Barack Obama has embraced faith in a more visible way than any other president in recent memory." With a statement like that, the top 10 list must be rock-solid faith stimulators, right? You decide. Here is its list of 10 and my thoughts on each. --Chuck Norris

The leader of a pro-family organization says families across the nation need to contact their U.S. senators now to try to derail a legislative plan that already has passed the U.S. House and is being awaited by President Obama — after a Democrat confirmed it would protect "all 547 forms of sexual deviancy or 'paraphilias' listed by the American Psychiatric Association."

A man was caught in Tampa Tuesday for allegedly throwing his ex-girlfriend's 4-month-old baby out of a car window, killing the child.

Caroline Kennedy ditched her bid for a U.S. Senate seat in New York because her children were alarmed at the person she had become, a family friend said. "...told her that if she was getting this worked up just getting the job, they didn't want to see what she would be like in the trenches of a political campaign or a fight in Washington,"

A man was stoned to death in Iran for adultery but the woman involved in the case repented, the judiciary said on Tuesday, suggesting her life was spared. The Islamic Republic has been heavily criticized by the European Union, rights groups and the United Nations for stoning convicted criminals and there are official Iranian recommendations the practice should not occur.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have confirmed a case of swine flu in Oklahoma, and testing is being done in Atlanta on four other suspected cases. ... a Pontotoc County woman....

A 16-year-old homeschooled boy from North Carolina was taken away from his home in handcuffs two months ago and has been held by the FBI in Indiana ever since, a victim, his mother claims, of the Patriot Act spun out of control. ... His mother, however, told Raleigh's WRAL-TV that she argued with the authorities, claiming someone must have hacked into her son's IP address and used it to make crank calls. The agents' search, she claims, also failed to uncover any trace of bomb-making materials....

A Southwest Oklahoma man is all smiles after a horse he found won the Kentucky Derby. Frederick native Ralph Kinder finds race horses for a living--potential winners that no one has discovered yet. And Kinder sure found one. He found Mine that Bird last fall during a trip to Canada. He then bought the horse for the Double Eagle Ranch in New Mexico.

Two identical twin brothers have married two identical twin sisters in a joint wedding ceremony in China. The two couples, from Binhai town, look so much alike that members of their own family struggle to tell them apart. ... "We really can't distinguish who's who, so we ask them to name themselves before speaking," said Zhang Shengzhong, the father of the twin sisters. And the grandmother of the twin brothers admitted: "If I can't tell the difference, I just answer them with a smile without speaking."

changing the "canon" -- events and characters that shape "Star Trek" lore -- could leave legions of old "Trekkies" thinking Abrams had done something "highly illogical...."

the face of the earliest known modern European - a man or woman who hunted deer and gathered fruit and herbs in ancient forests more than 35,000 years ago. It was created by Richard Neave, one of Britain's leading forensic scientists, using fossilised fragments of skull and jawbone found in a cave seven years ago.

Kent State: A Requiem written by J. Gregory Payne, is a dramatic and factual examination of the events of May 4 from the perspective of Mrs. Florence Schroeder, whose son Bill was one of the 4 students killed.

involved the shooting of unarmed college students by members of the Ohio National Guard on Monday, May 4, 1970. The guardsmen fired 67 rounds over a period of 13 seconds, killing four students and wounding nine others, one of whom suffered permanent paralysis.

Guess what! Google is going to buy Twitter! No, Facebook's going to buy it! Or Yahoo--oh, wait, they can't afford it anymore. The latest and most absurd rumor, floated by Valleywag, suggests that Apple has been looking at buying Twitter, too.

A Swedish couple from Åre in northern Sweden have taken their fight to name their son Q to the Supreme Administrative Court. The court will rule if current legislation permits the use of a single letter as a first name.....parents insist... the decision was ... a last minute one when "Q" was born.

The isolation of a gene for anger helps explain why some fly into a rage at the slightest provocation, while others can remaining irritatingly calm.

Six Democratic members of Congress are urging the Department of Justice to investigate the Five Tribes of Oklahoma, alleging that the Oklahoma tribes have illegally barred the descendants of slaves from their membership rolls.