It’s Al Gore in town again with his global warming alarmism. 
King has re-introduced the so-called "Camera Phone Predator Alert Act," which was actually first introduced in 2007 but went nowhere at the time.
The bill, as the name not-so-subtly suggests, aims to prevent folks from taking cameraphone pictures without others people's knowledge by forcing the phones to make a sound that's "audible within a reasonable radius" and not able to be disabled.
Interestingly, the bill will not apply to digital cameras. Many small digital cameras are just as capable of taking “spy photos” as cameraphones.
Isn’t this a lot like the people who have been saying that silent electric cars should be made to sound like gas powered cars?
Interestingly, if cameras and cars had always been silent this would not be an issue.
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Among 43 subpoenas released by the Blagojevich administration Friday, one from Dec. 8 seeks notes, calendars, correspondence and any other data that relate to Axelrod, Jarrett and 32 other people and organizations.
Get the popcorn ready - this show could get very interesting.
Gov. Blagojevich will probably be impeached due to current Illinois law. However, he is a fighter and he is shrewd so you can bet he will go down swinging. He will take down or damage as many as he can on his way down.
Don’t ya love the blank, innocent look on his face? He looks a lot like a Cabbage Patch doll.
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The Chinese New Year, which marks the start of the Spring Festival, is the country's most important holiday. It is generally celebrated with lavish spending on elaborate meals and exchanges of "hong bao," or red envelopes stuffed with money.
But at the capital's legendary Quanjude Peking Duck Restaurant, marketing manager Yang Jing said the financial downturn is already having an effect on traditional feasting.
The country's economic outlook for 2009 has been dampened by the deepening global financial crisis, with China's 2008 annual growth down to a seven-year low of 9 percent. Thousands of factories have closed in China's export-driven southeast, and estimates of job losses exceed 2 million.
China is not so bullish as the Year of the Ox begins.
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"I have Muslim members of my family. I have lived in Muslim countries," Obama said, according to a White House transcript. "My job to the Muslim world is to communicate that the Americans are not your enemy."
These are the people who danced in the streets when they heard the news that 3,000 Americans perished during the World Trade Center bombings carried out by Muslims.
George Walker Bush told the Muslim world in 2001: "You are either with us, or you are against us." In 2009 Barack Hussein Obama said "I am one of you."
Following are a few paraphrased comments from Lucianne:
Obama previously denied his Muslim ancestry and the adoring media in America believed him.
In Obama’s book, The Audacity of Hope, he said when the political winds blow ill, he would side with the Muslims - another fact largely ignored by the media in their efforts to elect this man.
It seems they were right when they claimed Obama only pretended to be a Christian when he joined a racist church for political reasons.
Someday very soon Americans must look themselves in the mirror and ask why they voted for this man. Well, maybe not all Americans: just the 53% of Americans who voted for him.
He is a new US President casting blame on past American efforts in the Middle East -- efforts that kept America safe.
Joe Biden knew what he was talking about when he guaranteed that if elected, Sen. Barack Obama will be tested by an international crisis within his first six months in power as reported here.
The Al-Arabiya interview story is here. Obama stating he is a Muslim on camera is here.
Thirty-nine-year-old Shelly Koontz was arrested Thursday night on a fifth-degree theft charge. She is accused of keeping "The Freedom Writers Diary," which she checked out from the public library in nearby Jesup in April.
The book, valued at $13.95, is about a high school teacher's effort to inspire students to write.
Court records show library employees tried repeatedly to contact Koontz by phone and mail. A police officer even visited her home last September.
Officials at the Buchanan County jail say Koontz was released after posting $250 bond.
It is seen as a paradigm shift away from Microsoft's Windows operating system, which runs inside most of the world's computers, in favor of "cloud computing", where the processing and storage is done thousands of miles away in remote data centers.
Many PC users are already using web-based services such as Hotmail and Gmail for e-mail and Flickr and Piasca for digital photo storage.
The loss of a laptop or crash of a hard drive does not jeopardize the data because it is regularly saved in "the cloud" and can be accessed via the web from any machine.
The PC would be a simpler, cheaper device acting as a portal to the web, perhaps via an adaptation of Google's operating system for mobile phones, Android. Users would think of their computer as software rather than hardware.
However, it should matter to you that someone can see all your data!
It also should matter that Google could be subpoenaed at any time to hand over all your data to the United States government and possibly without your knowledge!
The head of product and marketing for Google Enterprise, said: There's a clear direction ... away from people thinking, 'This is my PC, this is my hard drive,' to 'This is how I interact with information, this is how I interact with the web.'
A White House-wide e-mail breakdown had Obama’s aides distributing information on … well … paper. Imagine that!
He tells “Good Morning America” that the idea of nominating the talk show host came to him as he explored potential candidates for the job that federal prosecutors allege he tried to sell to the highest bidder.
Blagojevich says “she was obviously someone with a much broader bully pulpit than other senators.”
The governor says he worried that the appointment of Winfrey might come across as a gimmick and the talk show host was unlikely to accept.
Mr. Blagojevich was probably right on both counts.
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Gallup’s initial job approval ratings were President John F. Kennedy, 72 percent; Dwight Eisenhower, 68 percent; Jimmy Carter, 66 percent; Richard Nixon, 59 percent; Bill Clinton, 58 percent; George W. Bush, 57 percent; and Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, 51 percent.
The troubled Seattle coffee company slashed more than 2,000 jobs last year.Another big round of layoffs is expected at Starbucks, possibly 1,000 people — a third of its headquarters employees — and some district managers and field employees.
"The cuts might be next week or in February," wrote Diane Daggatt, a managing director at McAdams Wright Ragen in Seattle.
No barista jobs are in jeopardy which will be a relief to dispirited workers who have begun to question changes at the store level since Howard Schultz reclaimed the CEO spot one year ago this month.
At first inspired by Schultz's return to the helm, they wonder now where Starbucks is headed. Many fear for their jobs as the coffee chain's sales continue to slide, forcing Starbucks to close 616 U.S. stores and trim employees' hours.
A Saudi man who was released from Guantánamo after spending six years inside the U.S. prison camp has joined al-Qaida's branch in Yemen and is now the terror group's No. 2 in the country, according to a purported Internet statement from al-Qaida.
Gov. Paterson was completely underwhelmed with Caroline Kennedy from their first conversation about Hillary Clinton's Senate seat, a source close to the governor said.
Paterson's thinking has become clearer in the two days since Kennedy withdrew her name for the Senate seat that Friday went to upstate Rep. Kirsten GillibrandPaterson was turned off when Kennedy first called him and asked if she "could" be considered for the seat.
By asking if she could, rather than saying she wanted to be considered, Paterson immediately felt she wasn't really interested, the source said.
She had no firmly held views and little idea about why she wanted the job, the source said.
This reinforces the opinion held by some that Caroline just thought she might like to have a Senate seat to play with.
In meetings, the governor and his aides decided she had no political depth, the source said.
Two men tried to steal a Mazda car in Kwara State, with one suspect transforming himself into a goat as vigilantes cornered him.The paper quoted police spokesman Tunde Mohammed as saying that while one suspect escaped, the other transformed into a goat as he was about to be apprehended.
The newspaper reported that police paraded the goat before journalists, and published a picture of the animal.
Police in the state couldn't immediately be reached for comment.
Belief in black magic is widespread in Nigeria, particularly in far-flung rural areas.
A picture of my cave
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