This is an especially moving story for me. This young Army sargeant, Shannon Meehan, is suffering from severe PTSD and TBI and had a similar experience of taking the lives of Iraqi civilians, as my son did, is fighting through the fog to find some meaning in his life. His politics are unclear but I hope he makes it.

Liz Cheney through her ‘Keep America Safe’ political action committee has connected the dots from al Qaeda to her dad, Dick… No wonder Bush ignored the intelligence memo alerting him to the 9/11 attacks! This would be funny if it weren’t for the almost 5,000 Americans killed in Iraq and 30,000 plus wounded

“Republicans and Democrats are like a husband and wife fighting over whether to have a health care bill baby.”

Nevertheless, the House sent the Patriot Act Extension to Obama for signature with just a few minor revisions.

Key provisions of the nation’s primary counterterrorism law would be extended for a year under a bill passed by the House Thursday evening after Democrats retreated from adding new privacy protections.

The House voted 315 to 97 to extend the USA Patriot Act, sending the bill to President Barack Obama. Without the bill, the provisions would expire Sunday.

Rep Earl Blumenaur tweeted yesterday

Voted NO on Patriot Act extension! We must thoughtfully rebalance the scales between safety and essential civil liberties.

According to an earlier tweet from Blumenaur so did Peter DeFazio (Peter does not appear to tweet). Thank them both!

As I have been writing for some time, China controls the rare earth magnet market. With the push for more wind farms and electric vehicles and China’s own growth in these industries, China may stop exporting except within a completed manufactured product.

“Countries and companies that have or plan to develop industries that need rare earth minerals to make products are concerned about China’s growing consumption, which they fear will eliminate China’s exports of rare earths,” said W. David Menzie, chief of the international minerals section at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

China has also encouraged companies that use rare earths to locate their manufacturing facilities in China, Menzie told TechNewsDaily. But some companies fear moving because of concerns about intellectual property protection, he added.

China is fast becoming known, rightly or wrongly, as the king of IP ripoffs and few companies want to take the chance of partnering with them, especially on their own turf. Then, of course, for socially conscientious companies that want to create manufacturing jobs in the US, moving to China is not an option.

There is some pressure on Congress to provide incentives to support the mining of existing rare earth deposits in the US but the technology to process it still lies with the Chinese. Some are speculating the next resource wars will not be held over oil but rare earth metals.

Rare earth neodymium magnets are critical to the wind industry, including the V-LIM, and while there are plans to reopen Mountain Pass in California for rare earth mining, there is no ready solution in sight despite neodymium being a critical part of all weapons guidance systems and homeland security.

As one of the worst polluters on the planet, knowing the future of green energy, homeland security and the weapons and guidance systems on everytank, fighter jet and aircraft carrier relies on foreign relations with China is a bit scary.

The part of the interview that made it to O’Reilly’s show diminishes the scope of the debate Stewart attempted to get the ill informed O’Reilly to engage in. Thankfully, Gawker has broken the entire interview out for posterity here. Watch how a well educated informed short comedian can make a 6′5″ blowhard look silly. Awesome.

Fox News has generously placed the full, unedited conversation between Bill O’Reilly and Jon Stewart online, so we can see precisely how unfairly and deviously Fox edited the interview in order to weaken Stewart’s case: A lot!

Last night on his show—Part Two of a ludicrously overhyped “faceoff” between O’Reilly and Stewart in which Stewart attempted, among other things, to present a critique of Fox as a fear-mongering GOP messaging operation—O’Reilly boasted that his edit of their 42-minute interview for broadcast was “a fair cut” and invited viewers to have a look at the unedited version online to judge for themselves: “Some of these idiots in the press who hate us, ‘O’Reilly cut the interview to make Stewart look’—OK, all of that is bull. It’s a fair cut. And then when you watch the cut and watch the whole interview you’ll see it.”

So we took him up on the offer, and guess what? If by “fair cut” O’Reilly means “cut in a manner that left some of Stewart’s best lines, most effective arguments, and most convincing evidence out of the interview and hidden from the broadcast audience,” then he’s absolutely right.

Despite lackluster support here on the South Coast, the tax equity measures passed by almost 9 points

Campaign ads by supporters highlighted banks and credit card companies and showed images of well-dressed people stepping off private jets. They also hammered on the $10 minimum tax that most corporations have paid since its inception in 1931.

Those messages helped counter warnings by opponents that the taxes would lead to job losses, worsening the state’s 11 percent unemployment rate, and prompt wealthy residents to move elsewhere.

“They did a great job of pounding, ‘It’s only $10,’” said Bob Tiernan, chairman of the state Republican Party. “We got swamped by the union money.”

Supporters spent at least $6.9 million, most of it coming from teacher and public employee unions. Opponents, led by a coalition of business organizations, spent at least $4.6 million, donated by wealthy entrepreneurs such as Nike’s Phil Knight and Columbia Sportswear’s Tim Boyle. Opponents who gathered at the Grand Hotel in Salem were optimistic early, but as the results came in, the mood quickly darkened.

For a county by county analysis, look here