BREVITAS

JUST POLITICS

NY Daily News - Hillary Clinton says running for office isn't on her "radar," but she still has an eight-person political team and sports two overflowing campaign war chests. Her team transformed the former Democratic White House contender's massive campaign debts into a $3 million mountain of political cash, according to federal fund-raising records through the end of June. . . The former First Lady paid eight staffers nearly $100,000 in the second quarter of the year to tend to the remains of her political empire.
She officially pulled out of the political arena in January when she became secretary of state. But Clinton's campaign Web site continues to accept contributions.. . . By comparison, Sen. Chuck Schumer, who is up for reelection next year, had just three people on staff last quarter.

Wonkette phrased the question precisely: What's the point of a 60-vote majority if it votes the same way as the 40-vote minority?

SCIENCE & HEALTH

Strange maps - The first tv images of World War II are about to hit Aldebaran star system, 65 light years away. If there's anybody out there alive and with eyes to see it, the barrage of actual and dramatized footage of WW2 will keep them shocked and/or entertained for decades to come. Which is just as well, for they'll have to wait quite a few years to catch the first episodes of such seminal series as The Twilight Zone and Bonanza (both 1959), just about now hitting the (putative) extraterrestrial biological entities of the Mu Arae area. The Cosby Show, Miami Vice and Night Court (all 1984) should be all the rage on Fomalhaut. Meanwhile, the sentient, tv-watching creatures near Alpha Centauri, our closest extra-solar star, are just recovering from the infamous "wardrobe malfunction" during Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake's halftime show during the 2004 Super Bowl.

FREEDOM & JUSTICE

Florida police caught on videotape in crash coverup

ECO CLIPS

Jan Colley, Press Association, UK - A group who blame their disabilities on their mothers' exposure to toxic materials before their birth won a legal action against a council it blames for their condition. The 18 young people claimed their birth defects were due to their mothers being exposed to an "atmospheric soup of toxic materials". Corby Borough Council, which was responsible for the reclamation of a former steelworks, was found liable at London's High Court. The Northamptonshire council had denied that it was negligent during the works at Corby's former British Steel plant between 1985 and 1999, and that there was a link between the removal of waste to a quarry north of the site and deformities affecting hands and feet.

ARTS & CULTURE

Washington Post - President Obama has nominated David S. Ferriero, chief executive of the research libraries at the New York Public Library, to be the archivist of the United States, a post that includes making sure highly sensitive presidential papers and electronic records are open and available to the public. Before his New York job, Ferriero had been Duke University's librarian and had worked for 31 years before that in Massachusetts Institute of Technology libraries. He succeeds Allen Weinstein, who resigned in December for health reasons. The archivist job has become something of a lightning rod for controversy, particularly as various agencies and administrations press for keeping their records secret for decades despite strong pressures from historians and the public to declassify as much information as soon as possible.

MEDIA

The amazing math of Bill O'Reilly