TV News LIES

We've become a nation of fleeting snits and hissy fits.

We nurse along so many hurt feelings that we all get emergency Red Cross parcels, plus the thanks from a grateful nation, for our extensive enmity-nursing skills.  Our spending on pets last year was $61 billion -- and that's not even counting what we're willing to pay to keep our pet peeves alive.  We have so many kinds of hairy grudges, it's surprising none of them ever showed up in Dr. Suess books, all raspberry and lime.

But, none of these petty issues includes the stuff that really ignites us in some way, really toasts our scalps, like we've just grabbed hold of some stripped-bare 220 cables long enough to have Tilt or Free Game show up on our foreheads, or to start spitting little lightning bolts, in a sudden show of Looney Tunes solidarity.

A Pennsylvania judge on Friday loosened a court injunction restricting the movements of Vera Scroggins, who was banned from setting foot on property owned by or leased to Cabot Oil & Gas Co. in Susquehanna County — and therefore unable to shop at her favorite grocery store, go to the nearby hospital, or visit some of her friends.

Scroggins has been lauded by environmentalists — and has become notorious among oil and gas operators — after years of giving fellow activists, local residents and even celebrities tours of local hydraulic fracturing operations.

Lawyers for suspected Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on Friday said his older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev was the mastermind behind the incident that killed three people, and he was asked to be an informant for the FBI.

The lawyers said Tamerlan Tsarnaev had been encouraged by the FBI to observe and report on the Chechen and Muslim community and asked for the release of documents proving their assertion.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney says if he had to make the same decisions and actions regarding the waterboarding of prisoners, he would.

Cheney was speaking to students at American University in Washington, D.C. when he said he had no regrets about the U.S. use of enhanced interrogation techniques such as waterboarding on terrorism suspects.

For more than a century, federal scientists have worked on Pivers Island near the historic town of Beaufort, N.C., and the beaches of Emerald Isle studying the ocean, and the fish, turtles and dolphins of its sea grass estuaries and rocky reefs.

Surrounded by three university labs, it’s one of a handful of oceanography hubs in the nation and the only government research center between New Jersey and Miami studying Atlantic fish populations.

Everyone's heard the one where Life, after closing one door, opens a window.  After doing two of the most dangerous things in America that one can do -- reading and thinking -- I have to take exception to that one.

This is especially true as it often seems Life is intent on demonstrating that other insightful discovery:  that, when you die, your soul goes up on the roof of the garage, and is stuck there, with the Frisbees.  As soon as I have read something and thought about it some, this is often what happens to my own consciousness.

Carbon dioxide is the gas most discussed in relation to manmade climate change. But there are other gases responsible for the greenhouse effect that climate scientists blame for global warming.

Scientists say the presence of one of those gases, methane, can be expected to rise rapidly, should the planet continue to warm. That's bad news, since methane -- already the third most abundant greenhouse gas -- has roughly 30 times the heat-trapping potency of CO2.

Scientists have known for some time that methane is a byproduct of biological activity in the world's freshwater ecosystems. Microorganisms in freshwater lakes, rivers, ponds, and streams produce methane as they digest organic materials.

The UN has delivered a withering verdict on the US's human rights record, raising concerns on a series of issues including torture, drone strikes, the failure to close Guantánamo Bay and the NSA's bulk collection of personal data.

The report was delivered by the UN's human rights committee in an assessment of how the US is complying with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights [ICCPR], which has been in force since the mid 1970s.

The committee, which is chaired by the British law professor Sir Nigel Rodley, catalogued a string of human rights concerns, notably on the mass surveillance exposed by the whistleblower Edward Snowden.