Asheville, NC--The Citizen-Times of Asheville reported Saturday that a recent city council vote allows city workers to issue $50 fines to residents and business owners who fail to remove snow from their sidewalks. The fines can be issued daily until the sidewalk is cleared up to a maximum of $5,000.

According to Xeni Jardin at Boing Boing: “If granted, those expanded spying powers would make it easier for the government to snoop on email, webmail, Skype, Facebook, even Xboxes.”
if the government trots out “child pornography” as a reason to have these invasive and ever-expanding powers, don’t believe it. They’ve ignored hundreds of cases already.

"East Germany was very, very able to reduce the flow. Now, obviously, other things were involved. We have the capacity to, as a great nation, secure the border. If East Germany could, we could."
The Tea Party-backed candidate, who is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, explained that he once served at the Fulda Gap, a point on the former East-West German border. East Germany's border troops were given orders to shoot anyone trying to flee East Germany.

An American student finds an FBI tracking device on his car. After posting pictures of the device online, the FBI contacts him and asks for the "expensive" device back. (And by ask, I mean they threatened to throw him in a cage indefinitely.)

Black-market cigarettes are costing many states hundreds of millions of dollars a year in lost tax revenue. And the lucrative, illicit trade is attracting violent criminal gangs that can be lethally ruthless.