Blog Heap of Links for the day 13 January 2016

…U.S. District Judge Edward Korman in Brooklyn reduced the 40-year racketeering sentence being served by Gregory Scarpa Jr. as he blasted prosecutors and the FBI for their handling of the reduction request. The 10-year reduction means Scarpa could be eligible for release in 2025, though the judge said he could die before that because of cancer and generally poor health.

In a written ruling, the judge said that the son of an infamous Colombo crime family enforcer reached out to the government in 2005 while Scarpa and Terry Nichols were serving time together. The judge noted that Scarpa told the FBI Nichols had told him there was a secret cache of explosives in the house where he lived at the time of the Oklahoma City bombing.

An FBI agent interviewed Scarpa, and a polygraph examination was conducted, but the FBI did not conduct the search until it was prodded to do so by a congressman who was contacted by a private forensic investigator Scarpa had contacted, the judge said.…

My humble thesis tonight is that the entire 20th Century was a giant mistake.

And that you can put the blame for this monumental error squarely on Thomas Woodrow Wilson — a megalomaniacal madman who was the very worst President in American history… well, except for the last two.

His unforgiveable error was to put the United States into the Great War for utterly no good reason of national interest. …

“Prayer is not a machine. It is not magic. It is not advice offered to God. Our act, when we pray, must not, any more than all our other acts, be separated from the continuous act of God Himself, in which alone all finite causes operate.

It would be even worse to think those who get what they pray for as sort of court favorites, people who have influence with the throne. The refused prayer of Christ in Gethsemane is answer enough to that. And I dare no leave out the hard saying which I once heard from an experienced Christian: ‘I have seen many striking answers to prayer and more than one that I thought miraculous. But they usually come at the beginning: before conversion, or soon after it. As the Christian life proceeds, they tend to be rarer. The refusals, too, are not only more frequent; they become more unmistakable, more emphatic.’ …"

…They should do a mash-up of Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys and call it "The Nancy Boys." …

CBS Entertainment’s reboot of the classic series Nancy Drew will feature a “diverse” actress in the lead role, an executive for the network said Thursday. CBS is reportedly not considering white actresses for the part.…

Last night, after a LEGIDA walk and demonstration in Leipzig, a group of protesters broke off from the larger demo and attacked businesses owned by immigrants, including kebab shops. The mayor of Leipzig condemned the violence and promised that the perpetrators would be severely prosecuted.

In other news, two patrol boats of the U.S. Navy have been detained by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in the Persian Gulf. Iran said that crewmembers from the vessels would be promptly released.…

…On this day in 1910 the first public radio broadcast took place. It was a live performance of the opera Cavalleria rusticana sent out over the airwaves from the Metropolitan Opera House in New York, New York. …