Blog Heap of Links for the day 16 June 2009

The inspector general fired last week by President Obama appeared confused, disoriented and unable to answer questions at a late May board meeting of the Corporation for National and Community Service, according to a White House letter delivered to lawmakers... In response, Walpin said Tuesday night that "This is nonsense to rely on a supposed single meeting which makes no sense whatsoever and is just grasping at straws...."

A CIA spokesman is sharply downplaying Director Leon Panetta 's recent comments that appear to question whether former Vice President Dick Cheney is hoping for another terrorist attack against the United States.... "The Director does not believe the former Vice President wants an attack...."

wove a tale for two months about being an unmarried mother who chose to carry her child who is now terminally ill to term rather than have an abortion because of her deep Christian faith... posted her story on a blog that got nearly a million hits until one of her followers exposed the lie last week....

Police arrested a woman at a Target store in Oklahoma City after an employee said he saw her stuff nearly $1,000 worth of Blu-ray discs in her pants.... she bit and clawed at them when they confronted her....

tracked a suspected bank robber through his mobile phone

There was a time when American capitalists would have strongly protested totalitarian censorship, but that was before they became complicit in it. Moral indignation once again loses out to global profits... The best I found was a Dell spokesman saying they were "reviewing" the issue... When the Chinese people show themselves to love freedom more than American CEOs, there clearly is a problem. And it isn't in China....

Iranian authorities are restricting all journalists working for foreign media from firsthand reporting on the streets.

The youngest son — and reportedly heir apparent — of North Korea's ailing leader Kim Jong Il secretly visited China last week and was urged by President Hu Jintao to have the North halt additional nuclear tests....

A plea deal that sent an ex-convict accused of raping a 4-year-old girl to jail for only a year has prompted outrage across Oklahoma, where lawmakers are calling for the removal of the judge who approved the deal and the attorney general is investigating a new set of abuse allegations.

Wheat farmers in Oklahoma say the crop has taken a beating -- but is showing some positive signs.

A small company that prints the letters WWJD a common acronym for the question What would Jesus do? on its correspondence has been sued by the president of a competing company, who claims the reference is abusive and harassing…. claiming the motto violates the federal Debt Collection Practices Act…. use of "WWJD" invokes shame or guilt in the letter's recipient, portraying the debtor "as a sinner who is going to hell…." [It must be asked… WWJD?]

after suffering decades of pain he found it had never actually healed... "Everyone tells me that having a broken leg for nearly 30 years is unheard of...." He will now have a metal Ilazarov frame fitted around his leg and foot to stretch the bone 1mm each day for seven to nine months. Then he will be in plaster for a further three months.

About 3 hours later at home, Jack started exhibiting, well, strange symptoms. "His eyes were kind of glossed over, very out of touch, I mean, he didn't seem to recognize me at first.... When he was trying to walk, he was looking at his paw, and then looking at the ground and then trying to get his paw to reach the ground, but was unsuccessful." Concern for Jack turned to relief when she heard the vet's diagnosis: Jack had swallowed a large amount of dried, harvested marijuana....

Until Steven's disappearance, child kidnapping was unheard of,

Sources would not disclose why the Michigan man believes he is the long-missing boy

On Tuesday, Opera released Opera Unite, a technical preview of a service that turns the Opera browser into a Web server for file sharing and streaming.

British sculptor Willard Wigan creates micro-sculptures that fit in the eye of a needle.

Posters depicting the symbolic genitals of 100 artists have been deemed unsuitable by the Venice Biennale authorities.

Thousands of bloggers who operate behind the cloak of anonymity have no right to keep their identities secret, the High Court ruled today... [OMG! Imagine Britain ruling this on print during the Revolution!]

National Digital Newspaper Program celebrates the first 1 million pages posted on a free, government-funded Web site.

looked in the La Bamba bag and found two bundles of cash totaling $5,000, along with a bank deposit slip. The money had been dropped accidentally by a La Bamba manager who had meant to take it to the bank…. She told the driver what she had found… she said the cabdriver began acting strangely, insisting that the money should be taken to a cab stand, and drove Narsete around and around, running up the fare. "He wouldn't let me out of the car…."

President Barack Obama announced the appointment Monday of Kimberly Teehee, a member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, as his senior policy adviser on American Indian issues.

Letterman said he had no idea Palin was at the Yankees game with her 14-year-old daughter, Willow, when he joked about her getting "knocked up" by player Alex Rodriguez last week. [Oh, Dave, that makes you SO much less of a smelly old man!]