Another message from the Anonymous collective. This time, they want war.

To the Citizens of the United States and the United States Government.
We are Anonymous.

In the past few months, our collective has been organizing the operation known as Operation Blackout. Part of the operation's purpose was to alert the people of the coming bill that was to be called the Stop Online Piracy Act.

This Act would give Congress the power to censor any internet website they wish without consent from the Citizens of the United States. This act would've also had the power to jail any person who infringed on its new copyright law for an equivalence of five years. This copyright law would've had the power to destroy social networking sites such as Facebook and YouTube. Video gameplay and free movies would cease to exist.

However, Operation Blackout was a success. As a collective, we've managed to spread the word and alert the masses. Internet giants such as Google, Wikipedia, and Reddit became hand-in-hand with us as we all managed to make an impact on the decisions of our, "free government". But as we've seen with Megaupload, the government may not need a bill to be passed to get their way. Other operations we've conducted over this time period have awaken the people to the nightmare that is the United States Government. Sections 1031 and 1032 of the National Defense Authorization Act have been ratified. Yet we face new threats.

The United States Government is seeking to pass the Cyber Security Act of 2012. This act is as Orwellian as it sounds; it will endanger our collective and we will not stand by and watch while this government of lies prepares to take away our freedoms. The National Security Agency insists on labeling us as a leaderless, terrorist organization. The question is, "who do we terrorize?". Can it possibly be that the United States government is truly scared of us? Nevertheless, The time for action is now.

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In what was yet another lie-filled, robotic speech following his primary victories in Michigan and Arizona this Tuesday evening, Mitt Romney decided to dust off a right-wing attack on President Obama that Politico reported on in December of last year following his appearance on 60 Minutes -- that uppity black president of ours dared to claim that he is the "4th best president" of the United States.

Except of course that's not exactly what he said during a web exclusive interview with the crew of 60 Minutes that the right decided to go on the attack over. From the Politico article, here's what he actually said:

The issue here is not going be a list of accomplishments. As you said yourself, Steve, you know, I would put our legislative and foreign policy accomplishments in our first two years against any president — with the possible exceptions of Johnson, F.D.R., and Lincoln — just in terms of what we’ve gotten done in modern history. But, you know, but when it comes to the economy, we’ve got a lot more work to do.

Touting legislative accomplishments and saying that you're the "4th best president" are not synonymous. While criticism of President Obama and taking issue with his policies are completely fair, and I've got a long list myself of areas where I'm in disagreement with this administration on everything from foreign policy, to not going after Wall Street and the banks for wrecking our economy, to not wanting to "look backward" and go after the Bush administration for their crimes along with a lot of other issues too long to list here, taking his words out of context and twisting them are not.

What you cannot fairly say as Romney did here, is that the Obama administration and the Democrats in Congress did not get a record amount of legislation passed despite the unprecedented obstruction from Republicans and having to deal with the likes of Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson and their ilk mucking up the works whenever humanly possible. And it's just a shame that we had a record number of bills that passed through the House which would have helped our economy get back on track and helped to dig us out of the recession Bush left us that sat and died a slow death in the Senate.

Sadly Mitt Romney would rather resort to partisan attacks on President Obama and parrot the likes of Andrew Breitbart and The Gateway Pundit during his victory speech this week. The so-called "moderate" Mitt Romney has done nothing but prove himself to be every bit the right-wing flame thrower out there right in line with the likes of the Rush Limbaugh's and his ilk on the right and their rhetoric.

I keep hearing the Republican talking heads on cable pretending that Romney is somehow going to be able to walk all of this back should he win the nomination this year once we get into the general election where he's got to appeal to middle of the road and independent voters. I say good luck with that since they all seem to be ignoring that fact that we've got these things called recording devices these days and this stuff can be played back for the public.

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Monkee Davy Jones died today of a heart attack at 66. Here's to the "little, short English one", as bandmate Mickey Dolenz described him. R.I.P.

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This news follows word that Rupert Murdoch returned to the UK to run operations that included the launch of the Sunday edition of The Sun.

Amid speculation that James has now been banished from the Murdoch empire and that Rupert, upset over James insistence to shut News Of The World, got back in the drivers seat and assumed control thus making James no longer heir apparent to the Empire.

Of course, no one is out of the woods yet. There is still the looming investigation of phone hacking and bribery extending over to these shores, which has yet to become an actual case. Meanwhile, there are still some 6,000 (yes, six THOUSAND) outstanding phone hacking cases pending, which should keep everyone busy for the foreseeable future.

Here are two reports - the first from BBC Radio 4's PM Program and the second via The Six O'Clock News.

As they say, stay tuned.

I had sworn never to do another Rush Limbaugh post. Never say never. Here is the coward called Rush Limbaugh attacking law student Sandra Fluke for testifying about the cost of contraception. And here is what that lowlife scum had to say about her:

LIMBAUGH: What does it say about the college coed Susan [sic] Fluke, who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex? What does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex.

She's having so much sex she can't afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex. What does that make us? We're the pimps.

The johns, that's right. We would be the johns -- no! We're not the johns. Well -- yeah, that's right. Pimp's not the right word.

OK, so, she's not a slut. She's round-heeled. I take it back.

Rick Santorum's SuperPAC, funded largely by that good ole boy Foster Friess, jumped right on it. They actually sent a mailer out quoting Limbaugh to raise money. Just. Wow.

For the record, here is what she actually said about the cost:

Without insurance coverage, contraception can cost a woman over $3,000 during law school. For a lot of students who, like me, are on public interest scholarships, that’s practically an entire summer’s salary. Forty percent of female students at Georgetown Law report struggling financially as a result of this policy. One told us of how embarrassed and powerless she felt when she was standing at the pharmacy counter, learning for the first time that contraception wasn’t covered, and had to walk away because she couldn’t afford it. Women like her have no choice but to go without contraception. Just last week, a married female student told me she had to stop using contraception because she couldn’t afford it any longer. Women employed in low wage jobs without contraceptive coverage face the same choice.

House Democrats are calling on Republicans to condemn his remarks. If Santorum is any indication, they won't.

Please feel free to rant on my behalf. He has made me so angry I can't even find the words to say much that would be safe for work.

They should have expected them.

Interpol's website crashed for a short time yesterday due to an "Anonymous cyber-attack" after the international police agency announced they had arrested 25 suspected members of the hacktivist group in Europe and South America.The arrests in Argentina, Colombia, and Spain were nabbed by national law enforcers working under Interpol’s Latin American Working Group of Experts on Information Technology Crime.

Via The Guardian:

The website went down briefly on Tuesday as supporters of Anonymous made online claims that it had been targeted following the arrests in Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Spain. It was quickly back up and running but was loading slowly.

Interpol announced that the arrests had been made under the umbrella of Operation Unmask, which it said was launched in mid-February in the wake of a series of coordinated cyber-attacks originating from the four countries against targets including the Colombian defence ministry and presidential websites, a Chilean electricity company and Chile's national library.

It added that the operation was carried out by authorities in the four countries under the aegis of Interpol's Latin American Working Group of Experts on Information Technology (IT) Crime, which facilitates the sharing of intelligence between the states involved.

Around 250 items of IT equipment and mobile phones were also seized during searches of 40 premises across 15 cities, Interpol said. Payment cards and cash had also been seized as part of the investigation into the funding of illegal activities carried out by the suspected hackers, aged 17 to 40.

The executive director of police services for Interpol, Bernd Rossbach, said "This operation shows that crime in the virtual world does have real consequences for those involved, and that the internet cannot be seen as a safe haven for criminal activity, no matter where it originates or where it is targeted."

And then they went offline.

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Rick Santorum's attack of JFK's great speech about the separation of church and state in 1960 caused a stir around pundit-land. It was so off the wall it led to Billo's opening segment on Monday night called JFK, Ronald Reagan and Rick Santorum. When in a pickle Conservatives always turn to Ronnie. Billo tried to find a way to soften the blow against Rick as much as possible since Rick loves the Catholic church as much as he does. After the Talking Points Memo, Brit Hume comes on to do his usual pundit duties. But as Brit Hume was offering up analysis on the two candidates and their religious beliefs, Billo shut down Hume's commentary of Romney's Mormon faith very, very quickly. It was quite a revealing moment if you didn't miss it.

Hume: (Romney) ...as far as we know hews very much to his own fate. He ties a huge amount of money to his church, there's been no indication that he's not a man who lives his faith. And yet, he's not discussing that all the time.

O'Reilly: Well, he can't. Mormonism is so controversial that he just couldn't, but Santorum...

Hume: I understand that, I understand that but remember there used to be...

O'Reilly: Let's look at Santorum from another light. Santorum's big challenge to Romney is now on the backs of the evangelical..

Frank Bruni of the NY Times asked why Rommey never mentions his Mormon faith and got attacked for it. Well, O'Reilly reveals what many of his viewers believe: Mormonism is a problem for Mitt to openly discuss because of some of its controversial practices and many from the religious right are not fans so he avoids it at all times and Bill wouldn't even let Brit Hume broach the topic on his show. It explains in part why Santorum has been rising in the national polls for the GOP.

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President Clinton was hosting a Media Summit on the subject of Sex & Violence on TV with much political hay being harvested in the way of the proposed Telecommunications Reform Bill. The topic was a popular one with everyone agreeing things were getting just a bit out of hand.

Elsewhere, FBI Regulators decided not to sue First Lady Hillary Clinton over the alleged Whitewater affair. Meanwhile, the House narrowly refused Government subsidies to expire for Sugar and Peanuts, but did vote to end Dairy subsidies.

On the GOP Primary front - Steve Forbes was making news on this day. He was given the okay to appear on the New York Primary ballot while some in the GOP accused Forbes of "buying" his Arizona Primary win. The Candidates were heading South this day, to get ready for the next batch of Primaries and the final debate being held in Columbia South Carolina later on in the day.

40 people were arrested and 4 gangs were said to be involved in a rash of warehouse robberies and the kidnapping of High-Tech industry executives in California's Silicone Valley. the robberies were said to net a low-ball figure of $500,000 per heist and a high-ball figure of $10 million per. Nothing to sneeze at. And drug-trafficking was muddled in there too.

The Cuban exile group "Brothers To The Rescue" were discovered to be aligned with not only the Cuban Government but also the FBI, playing both ends of the equation.

A judge refused to throw out Assisted Suicide charges against Dr. Jack Kevorkian - again.

And singer Alanis Morissette scored huge at the Grammy's, winning for her multi-multi-platinum Jagged Little Pill debut. Quick: Name a tune.

And that's how it went for February 29, 1996 as told to the curious among us by The CBS World News Roundup.

This morning, I read this - and then I read this Krugman post. I believe they're related. Our official intellectual publications take great pains to feature the opinions of Serious Manly Men, and by that I mean those who understand how important it is to impose pain via bombs on brown people in faraway lands. (And, of course, the women who parrot them.) Krugman rejected that path to power, and thus was scorned by the establishment -even as his popularity among ordinary people grew.

So Paul, The Shrill One, you scifi-loving, cat-petting geek, here's to you and intellectual honesty:

Early on in my tenure at the Times, I felt I had no choice but to point out the inconvenient truth that the official line of the commentariat was all wrong. George W. Bush was not a nice, blunt, honest guy who happened to be a conservative; he was a serial liar pursuing a hard-line agenda, who among other things deliberately misled America into war.

For this I was labeled “shrill”.

More than that: throughout these past ten-plus years, it has been considered ill-mannered and uncouth, not to mention unacceptably partisan, to suggest that the parties aren’t symmetric — that, for example, the reluctance of Democrats to cut Social Security and Medicare is not equivalent to the GOP’s consistent pursuit of huge unfunded tax cuts, that the occasional desire of Democrats to put evidence in a more favorable light is not equivalent to the constant, raw dishonesty emanating from the right. And pundits in good standing have been expected to make calls for bipartisanship that involve pretending that Republican politicians are actually the kind of statesmen the party used to contain, but no longer does.

So now we see a primary struggle in which the choice is between a series of not-Romneys whose political and policy views are stark raving mad, on one side, and the not-not-Romney who is, maybe, just pretending to share those views. How did that happen?

The answer, as Brad suggests, is that it happened a long time ago. The GOP isn’t just spectacularly unlucky in its menu of candidates; this is what the party has been for decades. Rick Santorum isn’t someone out of left field; he’s always been what you see now, and he was a central figure in his Senate days.

All that has happened now is that the mannerisms have finally gotten to the point that the pretense of a reasonable party is no longer sustainable.

But you weren’t supposed to notice until just about now.

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Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney on Wednesday calmed the fears of a supporter who worried that the candidate was going prevent gun owners from protecting themselves from a "tyrannical government."

"I have a concealed carry permit," the man, who identified himself as William Phillips, told Romney at an event in Bexley, Ohio. "There are over 9 million of us in that voting block, and I just wonder what you're going to do"

"Are you going to allow me to keep my gun and protect myself and my family and my home and not come and get my gun?" the man asked. "Because I want to keep it to protect myself and my wife and my family -- and against a tyrannical government, which I think we are approaching and we are in very close."

"I believe in the Second Amendment," Romney assured Phillips. "I'll protect the Second Amendment. I have guns myself. I'm not going to tell you where they are. Don't have them on myself either."

"We have the right in this country to bear arms," he added. "I know that there are some people in this country that think that should change and they keep looking for laws for a way to stop awful things from happening. And there are awful things that happen. But there are already laws that are designed to protect people. And, unfortunately, the people violate the laws."