Sweden’s Pirate Party captures Euro seat

By Veronica Ek
For Reuters
Click here for the original article

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – Sweden’s Pirate Party, striking a chord with voters who want more free content on the Internet, won a seat in the European Parliament, early results showed on Sunday.

The Pirate Party captured 7.1 percent of votes in Sweden in the Europe-wide ballot, enough to give it a single seat. The party wants to deregulate copyright, abolish the patent system and reduce surveillance on the Internet.

“This is fantastic!” Christian Engstrom, the party’s top candidate, told Reuters. “This shows that there are a lot of people who think that personal integrity is important and that it matters that we deal with the Internet and the new information society in the right way.”

Previously an obscure group of single-issue activists, the party enjoyed a jump in popularity after the conviction in April of four men behind The Pirate Bay, one of the world’s biggest free file-sharing website…

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Your “Mark-to-Market” Cheat Sheet

By Matthew Philips
For Newsweek.com

To most people, it’s an arcane accounting rule. But to bankers, it’s the whole ballgame: “mark to market” pricing is the practice of requiring banks to value their assets based on their current market value. Not what banks paid for those assets yesterday. Not what they could get for them in, say, a year or two when the financial industry has settled down. What they could get right now. Which is basically bubkes. Banks have been pleading for this requirement to be lifted since the credit crisis began, and last week they got their wish. Confused? Here are four things you need to know about “mark to market” in order to sound smart at a cocktail party…

The Top 10 Highest Paid Politicians

From TimesOnline.co.uk…

1. Lee Hsien Loong – Singapore

Salary in dollars – $2.47 million

Salary in local currency – S$3.76 million

2. Donald Tsang Yum-Kuen – Hong Kong

Salary in dollars – $516,000

Salary in local currency – HK$4 million

3. Barack Obama – United States

Salary in dollars – $400,000

4. Brian Cowen – Ireland

Salary in dollars – $341,000

Salary in local currency – €257,000

5. Nicolas Sarkozy – France

Salary in dollars – $318,000

Salary in local currency – €240,000

6. Angela Merkel – Germany

Salary in dollars – $303,000

Salary in local currency – €228,000

7. Gordon Brown – UK

Salary in dollars – $279,000

Salary in local currency – £194,250

8. Stephen Harper – Canada

Salary in dollars – $246,000

Salary in local currency – C$311,000

9. Taro Aso – Japan

Salary in dollars – $243,000

Salary in local currency – Y24 million

10. Kevin Rudd – Australia

Salary in dollars – $229,000

Salary in local currency – A$330,000

Obama faces Notre Dame backlask

From NBC’s Christopher Wilson…

As reported here on First Read Friday, President Obama will be speaking at the University of Notre Dame commencement ceremony on May 17th. While the president will also be speaking at the Naval Academy and Arizona State, those appearances haven’t caused as much uproar as his trip to South Bend, Ind.

In today’s edition of the student newspaper, The Observer, letters to the editor, which are usually reserved for debates over the color of The Shirt or whether it’s proper to chant “Sucks” at sporting events — was expanded to cover a lively debate over whether Obama should be speaking.

“Obama choice unacceptable,” read one headline, and “Obama a disgrace” shouted another.

The point of contention? The president’s record on issues related to abortion, the majority of which clash with the strict anti-abortion stance of the Catholic Church. An online petition has sprung up urging people to voice their complaints to Father John Jenkins, president of the university.

Jenkins said in an interview with the student paper Monday that while there are clear differences between the president and the Catholic church on some issues (abortion and embryonic stem cell research), it was a great honor to have the president accept the university’s offer and that he had no plans to rescind the offer…

Bloggers and unions form PAC to push Democrats to the left

By Jim Rutenburg
International Herald Tribune
Click here for the original article

…Organizers of the new group, to be called Accountability Now, said their intention is to enable Obama to seek more liberal policies without fear of losing support from the more conservative members of his party serving in Congress. But they did not rule out occasional friction with Obama, as well.

“We’re going to be about targeting incumbents to make space for Obama to be more progressive,” said Glen Greenwald, a liberal blogger with Salon who is part of the effort. “There may be other times when the Democratic Party, as led by Obama, is being unresponsive, so yeah, we have the potential to push back against that, as well…”

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The beginning or end of petro-czardom? (or are we stuck in the middle?)

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, seen here in 2003, just won a referendum in his country that ends presidential term limits. Ultimately, he could end up in power longer than Fidel Castro of Cuba has been in power to date.

Click on the above photo to read an article from the Christian Science-Monitor about Chavez’s recent success in shaping the advance the Bolivarian Revolution. Also check out this article from Newsweek about the rise and fall of three “Petro-Czars”— Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, and Vladimir Putin of Russia. It references Daniel Yergin, a highly respected energy expert and author of one of my favorite books, “The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power” available at Amazon.com. It won the Pulitzer Prize and is widely considered THE definitive book on oil and world power!

Senate Judiciary Chairman Pat Leahy (D-VT): Don’t Prosecute Michael Phelps

By Ryan Grim
HuffingtonPost.com
Click here for the original article

Michael Phelps might feel like the entire world is coming after him for taking the bong hit seen around world. His sponsor Kellogg Co. is dropping him, the local sheriff is threatening to prosecute him, and USA Swimming has suspended him for three months.

But at least one cooler head on Capitol Hill isn’t going to join the mob. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, is a former prosecutor and said that if a sheriff had brought a case like Phelps’ to his office, he would have used his discretion and not prosecuted it.

“When I was a prosecutor, I was far more interested in going after armed robbers, murderers and rapists rather than trying to go after some kid for smoking marijuana,” said Leahy.

Photo of Phelps smoking bong unites ‘legalizistas’

From CNN American Morning…

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more about “The Raw Story | Photo of Phelps smoki…“, posted with vodpod

What’s wrong with this headline?

I am a big Obama supporter, that’s pretty obvious. But I take issue with the following headline on HuffingtonPost.com:

Bad taste… Ought we measure our Commanders-in-Chief through this lens?

The constitution-free zone of the US

Image from the ACLU