Weekly Standard – by Michael Warren

In the early days of the Obama administration, “smart power” was all the rage—and not just on the foreign policy scene. In April 2009, National Public Radio reported how one Allentown, Pennsylvania, mother was saving more than a hundred dollars each month on her electric bill. Tammy Yeakel’s power company, PPL Energy, had helpfully installed a “smart meter” on her home that could monitor her power usage in real time. The meter uploaded that information to PPL’s website, so she could identify peak usage times during the day.   Continue reading “Illinois Electricity Customers Forced to Get ‘Smart Meters’ or Pay Fine”

Crooks and Liars

Dan Rutherford, an Illinois republican who is hoping to be the state’s next governor, is being sued for sexual harassment by a former employee. “That’s not news,” you say? That happens all the time? They’re politicians, after all…right? Well, this time is a little different.

For some time Rutherford has denied that his behavior is “sexually inappropriate” with staffers, and of course that pesky little rumor about him being gay that just won’t go away. So when Rutherford’s director of community affairs and marketing, Ed Michalowski, filed charges in federal court, we here at AATTP ran for the lawn chairs and buckets of popcorn.   Continue reading “‘Not Gay’ Republican Candidate For Illinois Governor Accused Of Sexually Harassing Male Staffers”

Sniper Ammunition 250 Sniper Ammunition: Homeland Security Revives The PurchasesPrepper Podcast Radio Network- by James Smith

“My first shot at a hog with an AMAX out of the 300 SAUM was spectacular. Hit in the neck at 258 yards and there was only a little piece of fur holding the body together at that point. Good terminal performance.” – Mark Swab’s appraisal of the Hornady .308 AMAX sniper ammunition round   Continue reading “Sniper Ammunition: Homeland Security Revives The Purchases”

Play videoAccuWeather- by Brian Lada

A snow and ice storm will continue to severely impact travelers and residents from northern Alabama to the Carolinas into Wednesday night.

The event could be the worst ice storm for parts of the South in more than 10 years.

One batch of snow, sleet, rain and freezing rain affected the South Monday into Tuesday and caused hundreds of flight delays in the region.   Continue reading “Historic Ice Storm Immobilizes Ground, Air Travel in the South”

Signs of the Times – by Alastair Jamieson and Daniel Arkin, NBC News

An army of emergency crews were gearing up for battle Wednesday with a vicious ice storm in Georgia that had already cut off power for tens of thousands of people across a long arm of the Southeast and left the streets of Atlanta looking like a sci-fi wasteland.    Continue reading “U.S. Bone-chilling winter blast wipes out power to 300,000 in southern states”

coal slurry west virginiaSigns of the Times

The coal slurry spill in West Virginia Tuesday morning wasn’t nearly as bad as this one in Inez, Kentucky, 11 years ago, but the risk is always there, especially when regulators don’t regulate. Officials of the state’s Department of Environmental Protection don’t yet know how much coal slurry has leaked from a facility in Kanawha County, West Virginia. But a DEP spokesman characterized it as “significant.”

It has already blackened Fields Creek not far from where it empties into the Kanawha River. State officials and those at West Virginia American Water say the spill is no threat to drinking water supplies. Indeed, Jimmy Gianato, the director of the Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management at the state’s Department of Military Affairs and Public Safety, said: “I don’t think there’s really anything to it. It turned out to be much of nothing.”    Continue reading “‘Significant’ spill of coal slurry taints creek in West Virginia”

I just took a leaflet out of my mailbox, informing me that I can have sex at 66.

I’m so happy, because I live at number 76.

So it’s not too far to walk home afterwards.

And it’s the same side of the street.

I don’t even have to cross the road!

Zero Hedge – by Tyler Durden

Much has been said about the January Non-farm payrolls number, which rose by 113K on expectations of a 180K increase, most of which has been focused on the US atmospheric conditions during the winter. There is a problem with those numbers: they don’t really exist (as for the non-impact of “the weather” on jobs we showed previously that the number of people “not at work due to weather” as calculated by the BLS itself. this winter was lower than 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012 – so much for historic winter weather).   Continue reading “About Those 2.9 Million Jobs Lost In January…”

Image: Hannity Leaving NY After All? House on Market for $3.6 MillionNewsMax -by Greg Richter

Sean Hannity may be making plans to leave New York after all. He has put his Long Island estate up for sale, asking $3.6 million, Newsday reports.

Hannity said on Jan. 20 he would leave his home state after Gov. Andrew Cuomo said on  a radio program that Republicans who are “right-to-life, pro-assault weapons, anti-gay … have no place in the state of New York because that’s not who New Yorkers are.”   Continue reading “Hannity Leaving NY After All? House on Market for $3.6 Million”

Image: Snowden Used Simple Web Tool to Devastate NSANewsMax – by Elliot Jager

Edward Snowden used an inexpensive, readily available, Web crawler tool — also known as a spider — to methodically browse and index through a treasure trove of secret NSA files, The New York Times reported. 

The implication is that he didn’t personally search, sequentially or randomly, for the files he purloined. He appeared to have been interested in select material and used specific search terms— which focused in large part on U.S. military capabilities — in vacuuming secrets from the agency’s database.    Continue reading “Snowden Used Simple Web Tool to Devastate NSA”

Bloomberg – by Kathleen Miller

The Pentagon is exploring the development of implantable probes that may one day help reverse some memory loss caused by brain injury.

The goal of the project, still in early stages, is to treat some of the more than 280,000 troops who have suffered brain injuries since 2000, including in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.   Continue reading “Brain Implants Hold Promise Restoring Combat Memory Loss”

coal ashAl Jazeera – by Wilson Dizard

The power company responsible for a North Carolina coal ash spill that has continued leak arsenic and mercury-laced burnt coal waste into a river used for drinking water pledged Friday to clean up the mess and apologized to communities affected by the crisis.

It’s not clear yet how the power company plans to fix the problem, or if it plans to remove the coal ash pond, amid charges by environmental activists that the river’s levels of arsenic are now far too high in the spill’s aftermath.   Continue reading “North Carolina coal ash spill continues; Duke Energy promises clean up”