In Italy, the Age of Consent is 14

This and other appalling facts about Italy can be found in The New Yorker's very thorough rundown of the Burliosconi affair(s)

Yikes.

(H/t The Awl)

Citizen's United Paradox

Love this:

If human beings can make direct campaign contributions... and if, in Citizens United’s interpretation... corporations and human beings are entitled to equal political speech rights, then corporations must also be able to contribute within (the federal) limits.

So... If I go the other direction on this and say either individuals are allowed to make unlimited political donations - or corporations are limited to the individual limits.  Which is it?

Blarrrgh.

The SEAL's Dog Was Named Cairo

...one of the tidbits of info in the AP's account of the Bin Laden raid.

The Black Hawks were specially engineered to muffle the tail rotor and engine sound, two officials said. The added weight of the stealth technology meant cargo was calculated to the ounce, with weather factored in. The night of the mission, it was hotter than expected.
The Black Hawks were to drop the SEALs and depart in less than two minutes, in hopes locals would assume they were Pakistani aircraft visiting the nearby military academy.

One Black Hawk was to hover above the compound, with SEALs sliding down ropes into the open courtyard.

The second was to hover above the roof to drop SEALs there, then land more SEALs outside — plus an interpreter and the dog, who would track anyone who tried to escape and to alert SEALs to any approaching Pakistani security forces.

If troops appeared, the plan was to hunker down in the compound, avoiding armed confrontation with the Pakistanis while officials in Washington negotiated their passage out.

Ensign's Other Shoe Drops

(Via TPM)

BREAKING: Senate Ethics committee actually does something. Gives its report on frm. Sen. Ensign to the Dept. of Justice for criminal investigation.

It's still too early to cheer, but most times you wouldn't even get this much out of the Senate.

And seriously, read the report. Here's a sample:

Mr. Hampton found out about the affair on December 23, 2007, while he and his wife were on the way to the airport to pick up their son for the holidays. Senator Ensign was in a separate car on the way to the airport to greet the Hamptons son as well. While waiting in his car as Ms. Hampton went to pick up their son s girlfriend from her home on the way to the airport, Mr. Hampton saw that his wife left her cell phone in the car and he viewed a text message from Senator Ensign to Ms. Hampton that made clear an affair was occurring. Press reports indicate the text message stated “How wonderful it is ... Scared, but excited.”

When Ms. Hampton came back to the car, Mr. Hampton stated “I know what you and John are doing.” Mr. Hampton then called Senator Ensign and said that he knew what was happening. Senator Ensign did not inform Darlene Ensign at the time. When the cars were parked in the airport parking lot, Mr. Hampton jumped out of his car and chased Senator Ensign in the airport parking lot. Ms. Hampton went into the airport and sat there for “hours.” Ms. Hampton later took a taxi back to her home. Once she was home, Mr. Hampton sought to get the couples together to talk about what occurred.

On December 24, 2007, the Hamptons went to the Ensigns’ home, and the four adults met in Senator Ensign s home office. Both Senator Ensign and Ms. Hampton stated that the affair would stop, and Senator Ensign wept and apologized. The Ensigns and Hamptons then had a meeting with their children. The families then celebrated Christmas together. According to Ms. Hampton, had Senator Ensign stopped pursuing her at that time, as he had committed to do before both families, the affair would have ended at that time.

In January 2008, Senator Ensign began texting Ms. Hampton again, and the affair resumed. Ms. Hampton was very despondent during this time frame. Senator Ensign gave Ms. Hampton $3,000 in cash to purchase items for herself and to use for hotel rooms in Las Vegas that Ms. Hampton reserved in her name at his request for their clandestine meetings, because “it always had to be under my name, it could never be under his name.” 

Owch.

So, When Does Your Home Purchase Pay Off?

The NYT has an outstanding calculator for determining if renting is better than buying.

Kinda makes me wish I'd seen it before I'd bought.

Scrub With Precision

The NYT posted a number of iPhone tips, most of which were kinda...whatever, but I did appreciate this one:

FORWARD AND REWIND When listening to audio or watching video, you probably know that you can move through the song/movie by sliding your finger left and right across the progress bar. But if you slide your finger down and then across, you can move at different speeds, allowing you to advance or rewind with increasingly fine control.

Solid! I'm tired of scrubbing past the good bits.

Why Explore?

XKCD's got your answer:

The universe is probably littered with the one-planet graves of cultures which made the sensible economic decision that there's no good reason to go into space--each discovered, studied, and remembered by the ones who made the irrational decision.

(H/t Bad Astronomy)

Mission Accomplished

So we got him.

ABC is showing pics of a bloody bedroom scene that suggests at least a couple of the four people killed in the raid were killed there. 1am local time. Stands to reason that somebody might have been sleeping.

I'd make four observations.

• Obviously, a huge win for our side. No way you're going to convince me that this hasn't been forefront in the minds of our intelligence arm for nine plus years. Statements by our political class saying this guy wasn't important were just because we weren't finding him. Rather like saying Saddam wasn't important - until we got him.
• Pakistan military = total liars, in more ways than one. Whether its the "We had no idea he was here" bunk we're hearing now - or the "We don't help the Americans" they tell their own citizenry - there's just way too much in plain sight to believe either.
• Nothing against those people dancing at Ground Zero, or in front of the White House - and while I'm certainly pleased that Bin Laden is dead, I have to think that even if I lived right next to those places, I wouldn't find myself going out to dance in celebration of UBL's death.
  
  Once you get a few yells out, what do you do? Are there pro-death chants?? Weird.
  
• -and then there's this

Check out this guy's windows:

Dude's the most wanted man in the world and he's got swankier windows than I do.