“They actually conducted surveillance. They followed him from his work to his house,” Feldstein says. “They staked out his house. They looked at it for vulnerabilities … [and dicussed] how they could plant poison in his aspirin bottle. They talked about how they could spike his drink and they talked about smearing LSD on his steering wheel so that he would absorb it through his skin and die in a hallucination-crazed auto crash.”

via Nixon’s Failed Attempts At ‘Poisoning The Press’ : NPR.

Mr. Grimes is one of many Tea Party members jolted into action by economic distress. At rallies, gatherings and training sessions in recent months, activists often tell a similar story in interviews: they had lost their jobs, or perhaps watched their homes plummet in value, and they found common cause in the Tea Party’s fight for lower taxes and smaller government.

via With No Jobs, Plenty of Time for Tea Party – NYTimes.com.

His crime was a persistent refusal to give counter-terrorism police the keys to decrypt his computer files.

via UK jails schizophrenic for refusal to decrypt files • The Register.

My only question is, does this prevent them from obtaining it via Steam? Is it only banned in stores / box versions? The internet as a global media distributer may trump all, especially if the “sale” is taking place “out of the farkin’ outback”.

Good Grief.  Read on.

Marijuana Farms Take Root In National Parks : NPR.

Shirtless Biden Washes Trans Am In White House Driveway

As amusing as this (obvious) hidden agenda rally was — mainly due to their correct measure of the people’s gullibility — they missed out on one thing. They could really have screwed with people more by staying at home and starting a twitter account.

The Daily Kos has taken it upon themselves to bait Republicans into thinking that Democrats are going to spend $4 Million on Obama Bobbleheads and another $2 Million on shamwows.

Really?

Yes.

How?

With a twitter account.

The response to this once they realized they’d been duped was initially good, only in the comments does it get hilariously stupid (after the break) (all bold emphasis is mine):

Bryan Myrick
March 31, 2009 at 3:44 pm

I’m sure we all expected that this was happening and I commend you for writing about it. The hypocrisy of the left never ceases to amaze me. They demonize conservatives as fascists and then use the same tactics as fascist, communist and other totalitarian/authoritarian states have used through history to “manage” their opposition.

What they don’t realize is that a sting operation only works in catching people who are doing bad things. If conservatives speak their minds honestly, with conviction, mindful of being reasonable and backing up what we say with facts and evidence, we have nothing to fear.

Sandra Crosnoe
April 1, 2009 at 9:01 am

While I love Eric’s comment and your as always delightful post, Paula, there is a real lesson for us here about the nature of people and the naivete of many of us.

Being naive is a mark of innocence and the days of our innocence as a people and as a nation is sadly over. Way over! There is desperate wickedness moving amongst us and we best be alert and sharp. We need to understand that lying is an art form these days.

Some common sense for fellow life travelers:

Trust but verify routinely
People lie and people tell the truth (trick is to know difference!)
Wickedness prefers darkness
Harmony and unity with evil is well evil
Truth will set you free
Freedom is not free
Owe no man anything except love

Blessings all!

Beyond the crazies playing various games of telephone with quotes, there are quite a few good comments.

Still, people are extremely gullible. It shouldn’t be an issue that you check your facts before you argue with them, but the people who used these bogus twitter facts probably won’t learn if they didn’t happen to also read the Kos articcle.

Venezuela gives back island to US.