As the old saying goes, if you give them an inch, they will take a mile.  Case in point, these pigs want to blow my house down:

The Michigan State Police have started using handheld machines called “extraction devices” to download personal information from motorists they pull over, even if they’re not suspected of any crime. Naturally, the ACLU has a problem with this. More »

NPR examines how many companies sidestep corporate taxes by funneling profits through foreign accounts:

The top corporate income tax level in the United States is 35 percent. In the United Kingdom, it’s 28 percent. But in Ireland, it’s only 12.5 percent and in Bermuda there’s no corporate income tax at all. That means multinational companies that shift their earnings through Ireland or Bermuda can save billions of dollars in taxes each year. More »

The effects of decades of neglect were all too visible at the nine far-flung campuses. Roofs leaked. Furniture was decrepit. Seismic protections were outdated.

In 2001, leaders of the Los Angeles Community College District decided to take action. With support from construction companies and labor unions, they persuaded voters to pass a series of bond measures over the next seven years that raised $5.7 billion to rebuild every campus. More »

Yeah, way to blast those stereotypes:

After a three-week trial and one hour of deliberations, an upstate New York jury on Monday found Muzzammil “Mo” Hassan guilty of second-degree murder for beheading his wife.

In February 2009, Hassan, who founded a TV network aimed at countering Muslim stereotypes, went to a police station in the Buffalo, New York, suburb of Orchard Park and told officers his wife was dead, police have said. More »

The revolutionary protests in Egypt have become increasingly more violent after President Mubarak’s declaration that he will not seek re-election but will remain in power for the remainder of his term.  Protesters have asserted that this concession is not enough and have continued to press for Mubarak’s immediate resignation. More »

What can we learn from this story?

1. Learn to drive
2. Open your eyes when you drive
3. Don’t hit pedestrians
4. Don’t drive through Hawthorne

A fatal hit-and-run in Hawthorne left one man dead, a good Samaritan injured by another car when she attempted to help, and the motorist who stopped to check on her after allegedly striking her beaten and robbed by a mob of bystanders. More »

The sad decline of the college education, both as a losing financial investment, and now an academic and intellectual wasteland in the first half:

Nearly half of the nation’s undergraduates show almost no gains in learning in their first two years of college, in large part because colleges don’t make academics a priority, a new report shows. More »

Say it with me: “EPIC!”

Law professor Glenn Reynolds writes in the Wall Street Journal:

Shortly after November’s electoral defeat for the Democrats, pollster Mark Penn appeared on Chris Matthews’s TV show and remarked that what President Obama needed to reconnect with the American people was another Oklahoma City bombing. To judge from the reaction to Saturday’s tragic shootings in Arizona, many on the left (and in the press) agree, and for a while hoped that Jared Lee Loughner’s killing spree might fill the bill. More »

Barnes & Nobel sees a payoff from its digital reader while rival Borders teeters on the brink of destruction:

The digital divide has created a chasm between the nation’s two biggest bookstore chains: While Borders is trying to hold off bankruptcy, Barnes & Noble announced Thursday its best holiday sales season in more than a decade. More »