U.S. Attorney General says the Obama Administration could, technically, kill an American on American soil "in an extraordinary circumstance," but has "no intention of doing so." Well, that's a relief!
Bank of Amerikkka probably hasn't set enough in reserves aside to settle its many pending lawsuits. Why not? Because they're betting on the lawsuits to go more or less their way, and also because the Federal Reserve, which needs to OK bank reserves, has pretty much rubber-stamped banks' reserves lately. What foresight Mr. Obama had in strong-arming all those Senators into confirming Mr. Bernanke for another term as Fed chief -- instead of doing something useful, like strong-arming Senators to pass mortgage cramdown legislation, allegedly one of his priorities.
Texas legislators propose tough mobile-device privacy laws, which would (among other things) require law enforcement to get a warrant before it can get GPS information from your cell phone. Bills at the national level (Mr. Franken's 2011 Senate bill, the just-introduced Lofgren-Poe bill) wouldn't be as tough as Texas's proposed bills. Gov. Perry, who ran a 2012 Presidential campaign we might charitably characterize as "disastrous," doesn't have enough left to lose to veto them -- though I suppose he could wilt under big telecom pressure anyway.
But, as one hand giveth, etc: Peruvian legislators introduce a surveillance bill that tramples on the rights of Peruvian citizens. I don't necessarily mean the rights Peruvians ought to have because they're human beings -- I mean the rights they already have under law. The bill pretty obviously contravenes Peru's own constitution, too.
It's not all bad news, though: a genetically-modified food labeling bill has just passed out of a Vermont House committee, and another one has passed Hawaii's House and moves on its Senate. The Vermont bill does more (Hawaii's only covers imported GMO food), but both states have made progress in doing something 9 out of 10 Americans want done, and something that doesn't actually trample on anyone's rights.