First things first! I ought to spend some time thanking my neighbors in St. Johns—who, deep into the night, tirelessly expressed their freedom to drive to Vancouver and bring back illegal fireworks, putting on an ersatz show at least as good and as loud as the one everyone choked into downtown to see. Not that it was all fun and games.
Congress is back at it today, jawboning over whether or not to implode the United States' economy by cutting off cash for our debt payments. Anyone want to guess what $1 trillion in spending cuts would look like?
Because half-assed attempts to depose dictators rarely are easy, NATO is growing a bit weary now that months of bombardments have failed to persuade Libya's Moammar Qaddafi to step down. Or have they failed? A Russian newspaper says the strongman is mulling over a transfer of power.
The parents of a missing girl in Britain saw messages being deleted from their daughter's cell phone and thought she might still be alive. The girl was dead. And the messages were being deleted by reporters for a tabloid newspaper, in one of the worst revelations yet in the News of the World's phone-hacking scandal.
After muttering for years that he could have been emperor, Otto Habsburg-Lothringen, the oldest son of the last emperor of Austria-Hungary, died at age 98.
In a danger to toilet bowls all across Europe, the sprout seeds blamed for the continent's recent E. Coli outbreak have spread more widely than previously thought and, in some cases, remain available for sale.
Why did prosecutors first embrace rape charges against the socialist Frenchman who once led the IMF? Never mind his accuser's "credibility issues," this counselor's report she gave after the alleged assault is some serious shit.
Hackers reportedly managed to penetrate Apple's fierce security, but not far enough that they got credit card info for the company's 200 million iTunes subscribers—essentially half of the Western world.
A Portland man arrested on suspicion of murder, an announcement trumped by the accidental police shooting of a mentally ill man, was set free after it was determined he wasn't the guy.
Proving he has readers in high places, cranky Portland blogger Jack Bogdanski has the feds on his ass after he published floor plans for a planned South Waterfront immigration jail.
HOW DO YOU FEEL THIS MORNING? THIS IS HOW I FEEL. IT IS AN EXCELLENT WAY TO FEEL. IN FACT, YOU SHOULD ALL FEEL THIS WAY. RIGHT NOW.
