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8th grade student finds video camera taping boy's washroom at his school, removes it, takes it as evidence to his mother. He's then suspended from school for "stealing school property" because the principal was the one who put it there, citing a "pressing need" to watch little boys urinate so he can find out who is vandalising the bathroom.

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Despite all the whining about how all the damn sek-you-lar-usts are ruining Christmas, most of the huge "evangelical" churches in Kentucky will be closed on Christmas

(P.S. It's not that they don't like the word "Christmas". It's that there all all kinds of holidays all happening at the same time, all coming from the same root, and rather than change all the signs and scripts every few days or resort to five-minute-long Eid/Christmas/Kwanzaa/Yule/Hannukah/Saturnalia/Joe's Favourite Sunday greetings, it's a lot easier to just say "happy holy days" and be done with it.)

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A giant straw goat erected every year in a Swedish town to mark the festive season has been burned down - again.

Police in the town of Gavle said the 13-metre (43 ft) high billy goat has been set on fire so often it has almost become a Christmas ritual. It was the 22nd time it has gone up in smoke since the town, north of Stockholm, began the tradition in 1966.

Two men were seen running from the blaze, one of whom was disguised as Father Christmas.

Also:
More Narnia trailers, including a nine-minute "supertrailer" showing, well, the whole movie. Thar there be spoilers.

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US Government Accountability Office report clearly details how the voting system in the USA was deliberately built to be defraudable.

An excerpt from one of the books written on the subject, detailing the main points, is available here from the Huffington Post.

While I'm at it,
Kidnapped German citizen released from American custody after five months of wrongful imprisonment, inhumane conditions, death threats, and torture.

Masri said his cell in Afghanistan was cold, dirty and in a cellar, with no light and one dirty cover for warmth. The first night he said he was kicked and beaten and warned by an interrogator: "You are here in a country where no one knows about you, in a country where there is no law. If you die, we will bury you, and no one will know."

Back at the CTC, Masri's passport was given to the Office of Technical Services to analyze. By March, OTS had concluded the passport was genuine. The CIA had imprisoned the wrong man.

At the CIA, the question was: Now what? Some officials wanted to go directly to the German government; others did not. Someone suggested a reverse rendition: Return Masri to Macedonia and release him. "There wouldn't be a trace. No airplane tickets. Nothing. No one would believe him," one former official said. "There would be a bump in the press, but then it would be over." Once the mistake reached Tenet, he laid out the options to his counterparts, including the idea of not telling the Germans. Condoleezza Rice, then Bush's national security adviser, and Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage argued they had to be told, a position Tenet took, according to one former intelligence official.

The CIA argued for minimal disclosure of information. The State Department insisted on a truthful, complete statement. The two agencies quibbled over whether it should include an apology, according to officials. Meanwhile, Masri was growing desperate. There were rumors that a prisoner had died under torture. Masri could not answer most questions put to him. He said he steadied himself by talking with other prisoners and reading the Koran.

A week before his release in late May 2004, Masri said he was visited in prison by a German man with a goatee who called himself Sam. Sam told Masri he was going to be released soon but that he would not receive any documents or papers confirming his ordeal. The Americans would never admit they had taken him prisoner, Sam added, according to Masri.

On the day of his release, the prison's director, who Masri believed was an American, told Masri that he had been held because he "had a suspicious name"

Meanwhile, a German prosecutor continues to work Masri's case. A Macedonia bus driver has confirmed that Masri was taken away by border guards on the date he gave investigators. A forensic analysis of Masri's hair showed he was malnourished during the period he says he was in the prison. Flight logs show a plane registered to a CIA front company flew out of Macedonia on the day Masri says he went to Afghanistan.

Masri can find few words to explain his ordeal. "I have very bad feelings" about the United States, he said. "I think it's just like in the Arab countries: arresting people, treating them inhumanly and less than that, and with no rights and no laws."

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Five years ago, could you imagine that *really* being the opinion of the free world on the USA?

(torrain has been known to lament that during Bush's regime, the quintessential American symbol stopped being Captain America and starting being Invader Zim.)

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Circuit City to offer new "wiping your ass for you and tying your shoes" service.

The dangers of computer-generated "context" advertising.