A renegade group of Republicans tasked with investigating the causes of the financial crisis plan to break away from the bipartisan committee and release a report blaming the meltdown on the Democrats, the Huffington Post reports. Instead of working with the five Democrats (and one Independent) on the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, the four GOPers are expected to conclude that the government was responsible for creating the housing bubble by inflating prices and encouraging Americans to buy homes. Led by former House Ways and Means Committee chairman Bill Thomas, the Wall Street-friendly report is also likely to downplay banks' role in the crisis. "During a private commission meeting last week," HuffPost's Shahien Nasiripour writes, "all four Republicans voted in favor of banning the phrases 'Wall Street' and 'shadow banking' and the words 'interconnection' and 'deregulation' from the panel's final report." Speaking to HuffPost, Democratic commissioner Brooksley Born said that the panel had gotten increasingly partisan in recent weeks, despite initial consensus among the 10 commissioners. "Certainly, it's hard to imagine Wall Street wasn't involved" in the crash, she said.
Fox News Fans Are Most Misinformed
Left-leaning media outlets are acting like kids on Christmas morning in response to a new University of Maryland study that concludes that Fox News aficionados are the most uninformed news consumers in the country. "Misinformation and the 2010 Election" examined "variations in misinformation by exposure to news sources," specifically evaluating newspapers and news magazines, network news, NPR and PBS, Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN. Fox viewers were the most likely to believe false statements like "Most scientists do not agree that climate change is occurring," "The stimulus legislation did not include any tax cuts," "Income taxes have gone up," "The auto bailout only occurred under Obama," and "When TARP came up for a vote, most Republicans opposed it." Nobody's surprised, TPM sniffs. "Those who work for Fox News are not working for a journalistic enterprise", Andrew Sullivan sighs. "They are working for the communications department of a political party."
Big Pharma to Get Guidelines for Online Advertising
Pharmaceutical companies follow tight regulations when advertising in print or on TV, but things are a little looser in the wild world of social media, where Big Pharma can ply its products online without having to discuss their risks. But that's about to change. This month, the Food and Drug Administration is set to unveil new rules about how drugmakers sell themselves on Facebook, Twitter, and Google, roughly a year after authorites sent out letters warning 14 companies against "misleading" online advertising. Curiously, the push for regulation isn't coming from the government, Time Magazine notes, but from drug companies themselves, who want to distinguish themselves from rogue Internet pharmacies and are often reluctant to get into social media without knowing the rules. With more and more of the $4 billion spent annually on pharmaceutical advertising moving online, drugmakers are starting to realize that "if they can't fully participate in the social-media conversation, they get marginalized," says John Mack, publisher of Pharma Marketing Blog
Los Angeles Schools Look for Corporate Sponsorship
Soon, Los Angeles school children may be scampering across playfields branded by major corporations, according to the Los Angeles Times. The L.A. Unified Board of Education voted on Tuesday to look to corporate sponsors for money to plug gaping budget deficits. Under the plan, sponsors could sign agreements up to $500,000 for the chance to brand auditoriums, athletic fields, and even marching band drums. "I'm uncomfortable with this," said board member Steve Zimmer. He pointed out, however, that the board has little alternative aside from laying off teachers. "The reality is public funding is not funding public education." School board members hope that the plan—which includes the possibility of placing branded food samples and corporate logos in cafeterias—could drum up as much as $18 million for schools, reports the New York Times.
French Couples Say "Oui" to Civil Unions
It started out as a measure to protect gay rights. Now, France's 1999 civil unions system is all the rage with straight couples, reports the New York Times. The year after the system was instituted, more than 75 percent of civil unions were between a man and a woman. By 2009, that number had jumped to 95 percent. For couples disillusioned by matrimony, the civil union presents an appealing alternative. It allows couples tax benefits, residency permits, and eschews the pomp of marriage for a hassle-free appearance before a judge. Best of all, perhaps, it can be annulled by a single registered letter. While the popularity of "getting PACSed" (pacte civil de solidarité) soars, marriage in the country is all but moribund. In some parts of Paris, the number of couples opting for PACSs already outnumbers those choosing wedding bells. Nationwide, there are two civil unions for every three marriages. Sociologist Wilfried Rault says the French are eager to get away from an institution with heavy religious overtones. "Marriage bears the traces of a religious imprint," he said. "It's really an ideological slant, saying, 'No one is going to tell me what I have to do.' "
Border Patrol Agent Killed in Arizona
A Border Patrol officer working along the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona was gunned down Tuesday in a firefight between several American agents and border bandits. Agent Brian Terry, 40, was killed. Officials have arrested four bandits and are still seeking a fifth. Border bandits, considered "the lowest of the low among criminals operating along the border," rob migrants and drug smugglers as they try to make their way through the deserts of Arizona. "This is the biggest scum that you are going to run up against," another agent said. Given that about 80 percent of the weapons used by Mexican cartels originated in the U.S., there's an excellent possibility that the gun that killed Terry was American-made. But the day after he was shot, the Washington Post published an in-depth investigation of the political power of the National Rife Association, concluding that "the gun issue is so incendiary and fear of the NRA so great" that federal attempts to stem the flow of guns from the U.S. to Mexico have "languished for months."
Please Return Mr. Smith to the Check-Out Desk In 30 Minutes
What with the printed word going the way of cuneiform, libraries in Toronto are trying to shake things up a bit. They've stocked their shelves with something new: people. Yonge Street's Paul Gallant describes a recent visit to a Tornoto library, in which he chatted with a 19-year-old with cerebral palsy: "I used my library card to check him out of the Bloor/Gladstone branch," he explains. "I have to 'return' himin a half-hour so another library user can check him out; you can't just pay a fine for the late return of a human book." The young man was a participant in the Human Library project, which brings together strangers of different backgrounds for presumably eye-opening conversations. The library acknowledges that this is a somewhat counterintuitive way to go about updating. "That kind of storytelling, from person to person, does harken back to centuries and centuries ago when a story was the only way to learn," a library spokeswoman said. "It's an old technology." But it works - the library's first event drew 200 patrons, "who checked out the likes of a police officer, a comedian, a sex-worker-turned-club-owner, a model and a survivor of cancer, homelessness and poverty." According to Gallant, "the library is considering make the program long-term, so a supply of human books will be regularly available to readers."
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