Saturday link dump

[tangaroa]

• U.S. President Barack Obama gave the annual State of the Union address on Wednesday.
• Four Republican operatives were caught trying to tap the telephones of Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu.
• The Republican Party is campaigning against the basic principles of law and order in calling for the denial of legal defense rights for persons accused of crimes related to terrorism.
• U.S. historian Howard Zinn, author of the People's History of the United States, died this week.
• A poll finds the U.S. public belives Fox News to be the most trustworthy news source.
• Dozens of British students have left the country to join al-Shabaab. Also, al-Shabaab is actively recruiting in Sweden and the New York Times profiles al-Shabaab officer Omar Hammami.
• The P.L.O. paid the Lancet to blame the Jews for Arab violence against women.
• Jordanian investigators suspect collaboration between Iran and al-Qaeda in an attack on an Israeli diplomatic convoy.
• David Hirsh speaks out against the overwhelming racism in the British University and College Union.
• Cryptome has leaked documents from the secret Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement negotiations.
• Two New York men were jailed for a few days after police mistook their coconut candy for cocaine.
• A school district in Menifee, California banned dictionaries from its classrooms because they contain definitions of sexual terms.
• Left-wing anti-semitism is driving the Jews out of Sweden.
• U.S. lawyer Alan Dershowitz has published a long criticism of the Goldstone Report.
• The technocrat consortium Communia has released a manifesto to promote the Public Domain of free information.
• Two British children's show hosts were stopped by London police for having a play gun fight with hair dryers.
• An Iowa school student was suspended for bringing spent blank shotgun shells to school.
• A Nevada man who called police to report a burglary at his office was handcuffed by the police for owning a weapons permit.