The original:

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Studies show that Massachusetts ranks 12th in the nation in terms of the debt graduating college seniors carry, with an average obligation of $25,541.

In better times, that’s a hefty burden with which to start on a career path. In the middle of the worst economic crisis in more than a generation, it is cruel and unusual punishment.

Unless a graduate has a specialized degree (in, say, engineering, computer science, or nursing) the odds of a finding a job are long. Even those lucky enough to get work are often underemployed — pulling espresso or working part-time.

Brown, together with his Republican colleagues, voted to make a bad situation even worse.

Why?

Because the Democrats’ plan to pay for extending the loan subsidies would have closed a tax loophole often exploited by well-off investors.

In other words, Brown sold out the interests of the poor, the working class, and middle-income families in order to lick the boots of Wall Street, which contributes mightily to his re-election campaign.

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A well-known, openly gay supporter of Mitt Romney in New York has decided to withdraw his support for Romney and back President Barack Obama instead.

The clincher: Romney’s stance on same-sex marriage.

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When Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker met with a billionaire campaign donor a month before he launched his attack on the collective-bargaining rights of public-sector workers and public-school teachers, he engaged in a detailed discussion about undermining unions as part of a broader strategy of strengthening the position of his Republican party.

After he initiated those attacks, Governor Walker testified under oath to a Congressional committee. He was asked during the April 2011 hearing to specifically address the question of whether he set out to weaken unions—which traditionally back Democrats and which are expected to play a major role in President Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign—for political purposes. Walker replied: “It’s not about that for me.”

During the same hearing, Walker was asked whether he “ever had a conversation with respect to your actions in Wisconsin and using them to punish members of the opposition party and their [union] donor base?”

Walker replied, not once but twice, that the answer was “no.”

So, did the governor of Wisconsin lie, under oath, to Congress? The videotape of Walker talking with Diane Hendricks, the Beloit, Wisconsin, billionaire who would eventually give his campaign more than $500,000, surfaced late last week. Captured in January 2011 by a documentary filmmaker who was trailing Hendricks, the conversation provides rare insight into the governor’s long-term strategy for dividing Wisconsin. And the focus of the conversation and the strategy is by all evidence a political one.

In the video, Walker is shown meeting with Hendricks before an economic development session at the headquarters of a firm Hendricks owns, ABC Supply Inc., in Beloit. After Walker kisses Henricks, she asks: “Any chance we’ll ever get to be a completely red state and work on these unions?”

“Oh, yeah!” says Walker.

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“It is an obvious conflict of interest for Jamie Dimon, the CEO of the largest bank in America, to serve on the New York Fed’s board of directors,” Sanders said yesterday in an e- mailed statement. “This is a clear example of the fox guarding the henhouse.”

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A Nigerian man used the identity of the victim in an unsolved murder to hide his status as an illegal immigrant while working undetected for two decades as a security guard and then a security supervisor at one of the United States’ busiest airports, authorities said Monday in announcing his arrest.

The arrest of Bimbo Olumuyiwa Oyewole came on the day a federal report found the Transportation Security Administration’s handling of security breaches at the airport, Newark Liberty International, deficient.