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The 18 Senators Who Approve Breaking The Internet To Protect Hollywood from the not-cool dept Last fall, we noted that the Senate Judiciary Committee had unanimously voted to approve COICA, a bill for censoring the internet as a favor to the entertainment industry. Thankfully, Senator Ron Wyden stepped up and blocked COICA from progressing. This year, COICA has been replaced by the PROTECT IP Act, which fixes some of the problems of COICA, but introduces significant other problems as well. A wide cross section of people who actually understand technology and innovation have come out against PROTECT IP as written...

Cameramen cover a protest in front of Albania's Central Election Commission in Tirana, May 21 2011. The opposition said its victory in the Tirana mayor's race has been overturned by the counting of so-called stray and misplaced ballots while the CEC says it is living up to its duty to count every vote. [Reuters] Socialist Party supporters shout slogans as police stand guard during a protest in front of Albania's Central Election Commission in Tirana, May 21 2011. [Reuters] Opposition Socialist Party lawmaker Namik Dokle, centre, shouts slogans in front of police during a protest at Albania's Central Election...

A mentally impaired Oklahoma City man was held down and shocked in the genitals with a stun gun April 17 while his attackers forcibly tattooed the word “RAPEST” on his forehead, police reported. Stetson Johnson said he was kidnapped, beaten and had the word "rapest" tattooed to his forehead and "I like little boys" tattooed on his chest. He then had a bar code tattoed on his forehead to cover the earlier tattoo. The attackers also forcibly tattooed “I like little boys” on the man's chest, police reported. “It hurt,” Stetson Johnson, 18, recalled Tuesday. “I was, like, ‘Why is...

WikiLeaks: al-Qaeda leader put jihad before a sex life One of the most senior members of al-Qaeda held at Guantánamo took injections “to promote impotence” to avoid being “distracted” by women, according to evidence uncovered by investigators. By Holly Watt 10:31PM BST 26 Apr 2011 Abd al-Rahim Hussein Muhammad Abdah al-Nashiri, a Saudi Arabian, was said to have reported directly to Osama bin Laden. His interrogators reported: “Detainee is so dedicated to jihad that he reportedly received injections to promote impotence and recommended the injections to others.” He received the injections “so more time could be spent on jihad –...

Minnesota Senator Al Franken has called out Apple after reports emerged that the company's products were keeping detailed records of the location data of their users. In a two-page letter sent to Apple CEO Steve Jobs, Franken discusses what he calls the "worrisome" existence of data that presents the user's location in such detail. But the biggest risk, he says, is what can happen if that data, much of which is unencrypted, falls into the wrong hands. "Anyone who gains access to this single file could likely determine the location of a user's home, the business he frequents, the doctors...

Tina Fey, the former Saturday Night Live writer and creator of the hit show “30 Rock,” had a profanity-laced story to tell Tuesday about Sen. Al Franken’s courtship during the 2008 campaign. Fey, who is promoting her new book “Bossypants,” told a Philadelphia audience that Franken, a former SNL colleague, wanted her to contribute to his Senate campaign, the Philadelphia Daily News reported. She didn’t donate. After Franken won the election, Fey said she texted Franken: “See, you didn’t need my $4,000 to win after all.” Franken shot back a two-word response that began with an F-bomb.

AUSTIN, Texas — Sen. Al Franken claimed Monday that big corporations are "hoping to destroy" the Internet and issued a call to arms to several hundred tech-savvy South by Southwest attendees to preserve net neutrality. "I came here to warn you, the party may be over," Franken said. "They're coming after the Internet hoping to destroy the very thing that makes it such an important [medium] for independent artists and entrepreneurs: its openness and freedom.”

Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., is the lead player in a legislative effort, already endorsed by a handful of other senators, that would spend $60 million to develop a program that would charge consumers for the costs of installing drunk-driving interlock devices in vehicles. The proposal, S.510, was introduced this week in the U.S. Senate by Udall, who was joined by Sens. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, Bob Corker, R-Tenn., Al Franken, D-Minn., Amy Klobuchar D-Minn., West John D. Rockefeller, D-W.Va., Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. and Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I. The legislation actually doesn't call for the technology to be installed in...

David G. Stanco was sentenced Friday to serve seven years in prison for sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy. Stanco, 57, a former religious instructor, will also serve 25 years on probation and will be registered as a sex offender for 10 years. As further terms of his sentencing, he was ordered to undergo treatment for substance abuse and sexual abuse. The longtime choir director at United Methodist Church in Watertown, Stanco was initially charged with breach of peace and trespassing after he was found semiconscious in his truck at the Mount Olivet Cemetery in Watertown near a family plot. He...

Scientists believe a spider could lead to a breakthrough in sexual health after finding a single bite can cause a four hour erection. Researchers at the Medical College of Georgia believe the venom of the Brazilian wandering spider could lead to a new cure for erectile dysfunction. Dr Kenia Nunes, a physiologist at the college, said it works in a different way to Viagra, reports the Daily Mail, "This is good because we know that some patients don't respond to the conventional therapy. This could be an optional treatment for them," she said. Her study, published in the Journal of...

"A man deputies found with crack in his buttocks was arrested after a drug sniffing dog noted a 'narcotic odor coming from his rear,' according to a recently released St. Lucie County Sheriff's Office report. . . . "The deputy believed he felt something tube-like in Colbert's caboose. A drug sniffing dog was brought in, and the deputy got a 'positive alert for the presence of narcotic odor coming from his rear,' a report states. "A deputy extracted the tube from the 'crack of Colbert's buttocks' and found 12 crack cocaine rocks. Deputies also found $145 on Colbert.

Is the Pentagon trying to control Sen. Al Franken's mind? While mind games might not be involved, an article in Rolling Stone magazine has alleged that the military ordered a team of soldiers fluent in psychological operations to manipulate Franken and other senators into supporting more funding and troops for the war in Afghanistan. The story prompted Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, to order an investigation Thursday into whether the "psy-ops" team in Kabul directed by Lt. Gen. William Caldwell improperly targeted U.S. officials. "My job in psy-ops is to play with people's heads, to get the...

First evidence of gene transfer from human host to bacterial pathogen offers new view of evolution, diseaseCHICAGO --- If a human cell and a bacterial cell met at a speed-dating event, they would never be expected to exchange phone numbers, much less genetic material. In more scientific terms, a direct transfer of DNA has never been recorded from humans to bacteria. Until now. Northwestern Medicine researchers have discovered the first evidence of a human DNA fragment in a bacterial genome – in this case, Neisseria gonorrhoeae, the bacterium that causes gonorrhea. Further research showed the gene transfer appears to be...

(CBS) A French man is suing global pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline, claiming that Requip (ropinirole), a drug he was taking to treat Parkinson's disease, turned him into a gambling and gay sex addict, according to a report.

Ancient stone faces carved into the walls of a well-known limestone cave in East Timor have been discovered by a team searching for fossils of extinct giant rats.The team of archaeologists and palaeontologists were working in Lene Hara Cave on the northeast tip of East Timor. “Looking up from the cave floor at a colleague sitting on a ledge, my head torch shone on what seemed to be a weathered carving,” CSIRO’s Dr Ken Aplin said. “I shone the torch around and saw a whole panel of engraved prehistoric human faces on the wall of the cave. “The local landowners...

It would appear that a rather unexpected friendship has bloomed in our nation’s capital: Sen. Al Franken, a member of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, has found something of a kindred spirit in Kentucky’s Rand Paul, the freshman senator who has plans to form a Senate Tea Party Caucus. The two men get along so well, in fact, that Paul has asked Franken to act as his Democratic mentor. Franken spoke to Politico about the first time the two spoke:

PC Air, which has yet to take to the skies, selected three "Ladyboys" in its first round of hiring this week to promote equal opportunities for what is dubbed the "third sex" in Thailand. Peter Chan, the new airline's boss, is enthusiastic about his groundbreaking move because of the opportunities it would afford transsexuals. "I think these people can have many careers – not just in the entertainment business – and many of them have a dream to be an air hostess," he said. "I just made their dream come true. Our society has changed. It's evolution. I'm a pioneer...

Octomom stars in a fetish video, in which she whips a grown man wearing a baby diaper and a bonnet ... TMZ has learned. The video was shot recently in her L.A. area home. The video shows Nadya Suleman, dressed in a black corset, black leggings and her body is kinda smokin'. Octo whips the dude in the diaper, so much so he has welts on his back. The video is being shopped for sale. We're told both Nadya and the dude have signed the model release so it can be sold.

Vandals egg hallways, leave porno for elementary kidsLess than two weeks after a man was arrested for spreading x-rated material near a Kendall elementary school, police are investigating pornography and vandalism at a Miami Beach elementary school. Officers were called to South Pointe Elementary School at 1050 4th St. early Tuesday after porno magazines were found plastered on the school's walls and in glass cases in hallways and the cafeteria. Police say vandals also egged parts of the school, which includes students in grades kindergarten through 6th grade. Officers were seen taking photos and collecting evidence early Tuesday before students...

Hundreds of paroled sex offenders are winning reprieves from a ban against their living near schools or parks as they flood local courts with constitutional challenges to the most controversial part of Jessica's Law. Judges in Contra Costa and elsewhere have routinely issued stays permitting sex offender parolees to ignore the ban on their living within 2,000 feet of a school or park where children "regularly gather," pending rulings in their cases. The slow pace of those challenges means the stays could last until their parole terms expire and the restrictions no longer affect them. In the East Bay, at...