Blog Heap of Links for the day 26 August 2011

Now, with nearly everything this president has touched lying in shambles, a shrunken Obama whines from town to town, transported in a taxpayer-purchased bus that resembles a big, fat hearse — the perfect symbol for the harbinger of economic death that Obama's presidency has become. [h/t Chrissy at PoliNation]

Federal agents swooped in on Gibson Guitar Wednesday, raiding factories and offices in Memphis and Nashville, seizing several pallets of wood, electronic files and guitars. The Feds are keeping mum, but in a statement yesterday Gibson's chairman and CEO, Henry Juszkiewicz, defended his company's manufacturing policies, accusing the Justice Department of bullying the company. "The wood the government seized Wednesday is from a Forest Stewardship Council certified supplier," he said, suggesting the Feds are using the aggressive enforcement of overly broad laws to make the company cry uncle. It isn't the first time that agents of the Fish and Wildlife Service have come knocking at the storied maker of such iconic instruments as the Les Paul electric guitar, the J-160E acoustic-electric John Lennon played, and essential jazz-boxes such as Charlie Christian's ES-150. In 2009 the Feds seized several guitars and pallets of wood from a Gibson factory, and both sides have been wrangling over the goods in a case with the delightful name "United States of America v. Ebony Wood in Various Forms." ... If you are the lucky owner of a 1920s Martin guitar, it may well be made, in part, of Brazilian rosewood. Cross an international border with an instrument made of that now-restricted wood, and you better have correct and complete documentation proving the age of the instrument. Otherwise, you could lose it to a zealous customs agent—not to mention face fines and prosecution.

[In the song] Cobwebs by… Loudon Wainwright III… Maynard G. Krebs… is blamed for starting the vogue of using the word 'like' as a quotative.

…racing around a tiny star in our galactic backyard. The new planet is far denser than any other known so far and consists largely of carbon. Because it is so dense, scientists calculate the carbon must be crystalline, so a large part of this strange world will effectively be diamond.

The earthquake Tuesday in the Eastern United States was felt at 13 locations with nuclear power plants, from North Carolina to Michigan, but reactors shut down at only one, North Anna in Virginia, 10 miles from the epicenter. There was no damage to nuclear systems at any of the sites, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. [And we believe them! They're from the government!]

The Federal Communications Commission says it is looking into the failures of cell phone service that occurred Tuesday afternoon after the East Coast earthquake. For as long as an hour after the quake, wireless customers in Washington and elsewhere reported being unable to get calls through. Jamie Barnett, chief of the FCC's Public Safety & Homeland Security Bureau, said that when the cell phone networks get overloaded by call volume, crucial calls might fail to go through. "We were very concerned with the fact that 9-1-1 calls were also congested," he said. "We want to make sure that people who need emergency help are able to get it."

Shortly after the rare 5.8 earthquake in Virginia rattled Washington D.C. Tuesday, a Park Service spokesman said there was "absolutely no damage" to the Washington Monument. A more thorough assessment discovered a crack in the landmark. Not long after, additional damage was found, including three or four "significant" cracks. The monument has been closed indefinitely for further inspection and repairs, which will take at least a few weeks

An unmanned Russian cargo ship carrying tons of supplies for astronauts on the International Space Station suffered a major malfunction after launching today and ultimately crashed back to Eart ... Ship was hauling 2.9 tons of food, fuel and supplies to space station; 2nd Russian spacecraft to be lost during launch in six days

Here is Rick Perry on the campaign trail recently, responding brusquely to an Iowa college student who asked him a well-researched question about his debt accumulation record in Texas. ... Perry pokes the student in the chest with his index finger and then gives him the complete brush-off telling him … "You obviously don't know what you're talking about, brother."

A renowned political cartoonist whose drawings expressed Syrians' frustrated hopes for change was grabbed after he left his studio early Thursday and beaten by masked gunmen who broke his hands and dumped him on a road outside Damascus. One of Syria's most famous artists, Ali Ferzat, 60, earned international recognition and the respect of many Arabs with stinging caricatures that infuriated dictators including Iraq's Saddam Hussein, Libya's Moammar Gadhafi and, particularly in recent months, Syria's autocratic Assad family. He lay badly bruised in a hospital bed Thursday evening with his hands swathed in bandages, a stark reminder that no Syrian remains immune to a brutal crackdown on a five-month anti-government uprising. Ferzat remembers the gunmen telling him that "this is just a warning,"