Hot off the Press: Raise our tuition and we attack your house edition

Incriminating text messages between lovers are being used as evidence in divorce cases as proof of adultery: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/09/us/09text.html?ref=us.

Here's a piece about a very curious Supreme Court trial regarding anticorruption cases: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/09/us/09scotus.html?ref=us.

Lead: "Most dropouts leave college because they have trouble going to school while working to support themselves": http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/10/education/10graduate.html?_r=1&ref=us. The bitch from the Gates Foundation, quoted at the end, is fucking clueless:

“If you try to leave a cellphone system, they almost won’t let you leave, and I just wonder if there’s something we need to think about in higher education,” she said. “We need a system where, if someone is struggling, if professors notice that somebody is missing a lot of classes, if someone doesn’t early register, they immediately go to student-life services, and someone reaches out.”

Good idea, but what public college has the money to support this kind of vigilance? (Maybe the Gates Foundation can help fund that.) Attending classes, early registration, and student-life services can't help pay the bills if that's what the problem is. (Maybe the Gates Foundation can help with that, too.)

Many are looking at the VAT tax scheme as a solution to ballooning deficit and better option than cutting spending and taxing the rich (coughwhynotfuckthoseassholes?cough): http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/11/business/11vat.html?_r=1&hp. I think this is, basically, how companies and corporations do things under the radar now. Every time they are taxed for a product, they automatically add the tax to the price of the good so they, essentially, don't pay a tax — the costumers pay it for them. With VAT, though, it seems like the burden will, ideally, be shifted where it was supposed to be in the first place.

The former Que Bar (RIP) location has changed hands and become a new bar featuring a 24-beer tap lineup: http://www.press-citizen.com/article/20091211/NEWS01/912110302/1079. Without the pool tables, though, it will never be the same. We want pool! We want pool!

General craziness is going on in Arizona with "America's toughest sheriff": http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-na-joe-arpaio12-2009dec12,0,2123666.story.

LAT editorial regarding Facebook's recent "privacy" overhaul and how its business interests trump those of its users: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-facebook12-2009dec12,0,4419776.story. Facebook is not your friend, yet we all still have accounts.

UC students took their protest against budget cuts and tuition increases to the house of the UC Berkeley president on Friday night: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-berkeley13-2009dec13,0,7427385.story. More power to them. Keep up the civil disobedience.

Religious activists in Ashville, North Carolina want to take the city to court because an atheist city councilman violates state law by not believing in God: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/13/us/13northcarolina.html?_r=1&ref=us.

A bill currently in debt in Congress aims to curb loud TV commercials: http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-na-loud-commercials14-2009dec14,0,4886590.story. Of course, the bill has it's detractors, and Joe Barton, a representative from Texas feels there are better things to worry about:

"In this spirit of things that annoy us, I'd like Congresswoman Eshoo to introduce a bill soon to repeal the excessive-celebration rule in sports. It just really irritates me when my team scores a touchdown and they get penalized because they hold the football up."