TV News LIES

Children: They bring you untold joy and hope for the future. They also cost $234,900 each to raise. And that doesn't include college. Kids are an increasingly expensive proposition, with expenses up 3.5 percent last year from 2010, according to an annual report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

As an aside, it's kind of strange that a government agency that usually concerns itself with the price of corn and salmonella outbreaks has studied child-rearing costs since 1960. But the numbers are key to courts and state governments, which use them to determine child support guidelines and foster care payments.

Rajat Gupta, a consummate business insider who once sat on the board of Goldman Sachs Group Inc, was convicted on Friday of leaking secrets about the investment bank at the height of the financial crisis, a major victory for prosecutors seeking to root out illicit trading on Wall Street.

A Manhattan federal court jury delivered the verdict on its second day of deliberations, finding Gupta fed stock tips to his hedge fund manager friend Raj Rajaratnam gleaned from confidential Goldman board meetings. He was found guilty of four of six criminal counts and could face a prison term of up to 25 years.

Governor Mitch Daniels, a Republican, has authorized changes to a 2006 legislation that legalizes the use of deadly force on a public servant — including an officer of the law — in cases of “unlawful intrusion.” Proponents of both the Second and Fourth Amendments — those that allow for the ownership of firearms and the security against unlawful searches, respectively — are celebrating the update by saying it ensures that residents are protected from authorities that abuse the powers of the badge.

Alabama became the first state to adopt a tough law protecting private property and due process by prohibiting any government involvement with or participation in a controversial United Nations scheme known as Agenda 21. Activists from across the political spectrum celebrated the measure’s approval as a significant victory against the UN “sustainability” plot, expressing hope that similar sovereignty-preserving measures would be adopted in other states as the nationwide battle heats up.

The Supreme Court said today that Secret Service agents cannot be sued over a 2006 arrest of a man who had heckled then-Vice President Dick Cheney. In a unanimous ruling, the justices said the law on alleged retaliatory arrests is too vague to permit a lawsuit to go forward.

The narrow ruling would appear to affect only this case stemming from a 2006 incident in Beaver Creek, Colorado.

A gay teenager who pulled a stun gun on students he said bullied him has been expelled from his Indianapolis high school until January.

Darnell "Dynasty" Young's mother sent her 17-year-old son to school with a stun gun because, she said, administrators didn't do enough to stop the bullying against him.

His mother, Chelisa Grimes, sent her son to school with the stun gun after he said he was taunted and bullied for months.