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Think what Google could do with $6 billion. Think of the research that would spawn new products, advance innovation, and create who knows how many thousands of good jobs up and down the technology food chain. Instead, that money is going to buy patents.Worse, not only will those jobs not be created, existing jobs will be lost as the patent arms race goes nuclear and more and more companies are acquired for their patent portfolios and then discarded — along with their employees.

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The Catholic archdiocese of Dublin is close to a "state of financial collapse", according to a leaked consultation document from its Council of Priests.

The document blames a decrease in collections and declining participation at mass.

It also cites the cost of settlements made to clerical abuse victims.

Let’s just call that “both direct and indirect costs of the clerical abuse”.

The document proposed the possibility of a parish based levy on Catholic families, which could raise up to 3m euros (£2.6m) a year.

And let’s just call that a way to accelerate the decline in participation.

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"A substantial number of scientists [have] manipulated data to keep the money rolling in," New Hampshire Union Leader editorial page editor Drew Cline quoted Perry saying on the stump in a tweet. Before that, Cline quoted Perry saying, "I do believe the issue of global warming has been politicized."

Right.

Let’s talk about money rolling in, shall we?

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Perry has also shown an eagerness to do the bidding of his major supporters. Most notably, his second-biggest all-time donor, Harold Simmons, owns a nuclear waste dump. Perry led the charge in 2010, while Simmons gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to Perry’s re-election campaign, to allow Simmons to import nuclear waste from thirty-eight states. On June 27 of this year, ten days after Perry signed the legislation, Simmons gave $100,000 to Americans for Rick Perry. Tom Smith, director of Public Citizen’s Texas office, estimates that the rule change will bring upward of $2 billion for Simmons. “If you put money in Perry’s purse, he’ll create policies you need,” says Smith.

How’s that for a pot calling a kettle black?

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A whistleblower claims that over the past two decades, the agency has destroyed records of thousands of investigations, whitewashing the files of some of the nation’s worst financial criminals.

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For these parents, the child welfare system has become an alternate system of justice, with legal standards on marijuana that appear to be tougher than those of criminal courts or, to some extent, of society at large. In interviews, lawyers from the three legal services groups that the city hires to defend parents said they saw hundreds of marijuana cases each year, most involving recreational users.

The lawyers said they currently had more than a dozen cases on their dockets involving parents who had never faced neglect allegations and whose children were placed in foster care because of marijuana allegations.

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Most reasonable people would agree that the RIAA’s incredibly high statutory fees for infringement are ridiculous. Of course, this is why reasonable people aren’t allowed anywhere near the royalty collecting process. BMI, on the other hand, is right in the middle of the royalty racket and has just wrapped up a successful lawsuit against Fosters, a North Carolina restaurant. For all its hard work “protecting songwriters,” BMI will be receiving $30,450 for four “illegally played songs.” In addition, Fosters has been ordered to pay $10,700 in legal fees.

Say, nice restaurant you have there. Would really be a shame if something happened to it. Do I hear music playing?

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Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the ACLU of Indiana and the national ACLU yesterday asked a federal court to block an Indiana city’s plan to use public funds in support of a religious school.

The South Bend Common Council voted 5-4 to spend $1.2 million to buy property that will be transferred to the Catholic Diocese of Ft. Wayne-South Bend for $1. The land will be used by St. Joseph’s High School to build a football stadium.

Such public funding of a religious school violates the church-state separation provisions of the U.S. and Indiana constitutions, the lawsuit charges.

Said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, Americans United executive director, “Taxpayers should never be forced to support religion. If South Bend council members want to make a million-dollar donation to a religious school, they ought to dig into their own pockets, not those of the taxpayers. This action is just plain wrong.”

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First, Google sparked a furor by banning pseudonyms from Google+ under its “Real Names” policy. Its next row, now warming up in Australia, is the banning of real names that happen to lie outside the programmers’ assumptions.