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With Target already reeling from a massive hack that left up to 40 million credit and debit cards compromised, The New York Times now reports that all that data has been pouring into the black market since the break-in. With the breach taking place between Black Friday and December 15th, criminals on hundreds of illicit card-selling markets have likely had access to consumer information for weeks to date. "Guests will not be held responsible for fraud" Security experts, including security blogger Brian Krebs, say that criminals sell stolen credit cards in bulk, with individual cards going for as little as...

A unpublished report says New York is writing tax credit refund checks to film and television studios that far exceed the amount of taxes they owe the state. The report, prepared for a tax reform commission appointed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo, suggests the program should be scaled back. "The growth in the industry comes at the expense of higher taxes for other taxpayers or lower spending on state services and investments, possibly reducing activity in other sectors of the economy," the report concludes. It's a 137-page addendum to a study by the tax commission co-chaired by former state Comptroller H....

Obama canceled plans to attend summits in Indonesia and Brunei on Thursday, the White House said in a statement... will no longer visits to Malaysia and the Philippines... //snip// http://english.cri.cn/index.htm Chinese Premier to Attend East Asia Leaders Meetings, Visit Brunei, Thailand, Vietnam

George Zimmerman has been taken into custody in Central Florida after an incident involving a gun with another person. Lake Mary police say they were called to a house on Sprucewood Road Monday afternoon after a report that Zimmerman was involved in an altercation with another person with a threat involved. No other details were immediately available.

Should Gov. Scott Walker have pulled Portage native Scott Inglett's nomination as a student regent at the University of Wisconsin because Inglett signed a petition in 2011 to recall the Governor from office?

At a pre-trial hearing on May 28, the attorney for accused murderer George Zimmerman, Mark O'Mara, slipped a time bomb into the public record that no one in the major media seemed to notice. It had to do with a homeless man, and the relationship between that man and the victim of Zimmerman's alleged crime, Trayvon Martin. O'Mara's allusion had particular resonance in this case because Zimmerman first surfaced publicly in Sanford, Florida, in a case involving a homeless man. As it happened, in December 2010, a police lieutenant's son named Justin Collison sucker-punched a black homeless man named Sherman...

President Obama was heckled during his national security speech today: "Why don't you sit down," the president told the heckler. "You should let me finish my sentence. Code Pink's Medea Benjamin. video, c/o Drudge

The noise in the hen house this morning is the flutter and cackle of the chickens from Benghazi, scuttling home to roost. The House committee opening hearings Wednesday on what happened there is likely to serve up chicken surprise. The four whistleblowing witnesses scheduled to testify to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee are said to be eager to tell a story far different from the various accounts, all confused and all contradictory, peddled by the Obama administration. Someone at the White House should have remembered that old Washington chestnut, as true now as ever,

In response to Gawker’s controversial decision to publish the names of every registered handgun owner in New York City on Tuesday afternoon, Fox’s The Five retaliated by publishing the phone number and email address of Gawker founder Nick Denton for its audience. Give the dude a ring and give him a piece of your mind. 646-470-4295 nick@gawker.com

The taxes Israel collected for the Palestinian Authority but did not pass on should go to Israel anyway to cover the PA’s debts, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said Tuesday, speaking at a Hanukkah event for Yisrael Beytenu party activists. “I hear they’re saying that Israel froze the Palestinians’ tax money. We didn’t freeze any Palestinian money,” he said. “To this point we paid 700 million shekels advance salaries for PA workers and we paid another 900 million when we absorbed the cost of water and electricity that the Palestinians were supposed to pay for but did not… What we’re doing...

I have an uncle in Wisconsin. He's slightly mentally handicapped and lives in subsidized housing because of his income level. In tribute to my Grandma (who's been gone a number of years and of whom I still miss), I send my uncle a check every month. The check is only $30.00. I believe he uses it for living expenses that aren't covered by assistance. I rarely get an acknowledgement/thank you from him - unless of course, I'm late in mailing it out. My uncle voted for Obama. Normally, I say "Live and let live" and let it go at that....

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The federal government has denied Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin's request for individual assistance to help homeowners hit by a June 29 windstorm, Tomblin said Thursday night.

President Barack Obama’s former auto industry adviser and two former Treasury Department officials cracked at the last minute before a House oversight committee subcommittee hearing and agreed to stop stonewalling an investigation into alleged union favoritism during the administration’s General Motors bailout. Ron Bloom, Obama’s former auto czar, and former Treasury officials Matt Feldman and Harry Wilson have refused to give interviews to the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP) about their roles in topping up pensions for union workers while non-union workers lost nearly their entire pensions. The Treasury Department’s actions during the auto bailout...

The Supreme Court says a union must give nonmembers an immediate chance to object to unexpected fee increases that all workers are required to pay in closed-shop situations. The court on Thursday ruled for Dianne Knox and other nonmembers of the Service Employees International Union's Local 1000, who wanted to object and opt out of a $12 million special assessment the union required from its California public sector members. Knox and others said the union did not give them a legally required notice that the increase was coming.

Houston Gets Lame Space Shuttle Replica Delivered In Lamest Way Possible The deliveries of the real Space Shuttles to their final resting places were grand events that created amazing images. Houston, which deserved a real d@mn shuttle, is getting a replica. And just in case Houstonians didn't know they were getting shortchanged, it was delivered on a plane but instead on a d@mn barge. Thanks, NASA. I'm not going to get into all the reasons why Houston didn't get a Space Shuttle as it might be mistaken as saying someone else doesn't deserve one. Clearly, both D.C. and Los Angeles...

Say, isn’t this starting to resemble a certain reality-game show on television? Or would I be fired for pointing that out? Last night, reports surfaced that casino and real-estate tycoon Donald Trump would endorse Newt Gingrich in Nevada today, just two days before the binding caucuses. This morning, both CNN and ABC say that Trump will now endorse … Mitt Romney: Mitt Romney will receive Donald Trump’s presidential endorsement Thursday, sources with knowledge of the endorsement told CNN. Trump will make the announcement in Las Vegas, two days before the Nevada caucuses. ABC is a little more specific about its...

Obama’s National Labor Relations Board has put out another new rule that just happens to have potential benefits for Big Labor. The National Labor Relations Board has approved a new rule that requires private employers to display posters that tell workers about their right to form a union.The rule requires businesses to prominently display the new posters that explain the right to bargain collectively, distribute union literature and engage in other union activities without reprisal.Union advocates say the rule gives workers information they should know about their legal rights. But business groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, say the...

The Justice Department is investigating whether the nation’s largest credit ratings agency, Standard & Poor’s, improperly rated dozens of mortgage securities in the years leading up to the financial crisis, according to two people interviewed by the government and another briefed on such interviews. The investigation began before Standard & Poor’s cut the United States’ AAA credit rating this month, but it is likely to add fuel to the political firestorm that has surrounded that action. Lawmakers and some administration officials have since questioned the agency’s secretive process, its credibility and the competence of its analysts, claiming to have found...

U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan's open defiance of Speaker John Boehner's efforts to solve the debt-ceiling crisis could cost the Urbana Republican his safe seat in next year's election. Two Republican sources deeply involved in configuring new Ohio congressional districts confirmed to The Dispatch today that Jordan's disloyalty to Boehner has put him in jeopardy of being zeroed out of a district.

As Hugo Chávez graces the big screen in a rowdy city center bar in Caracas, Santiago Valledare stands up and salutes, with no hint of irony. After a completely uncharacteristic three-week silence, his president is about to announce that he has received treatment for a tumor while in Cuba. After watching the president’s subdued statement, Valledare stands firm: “My Comandante doesn't have cancer. It’s not true,” he says, still standing. “He is the best president we have ever had.... [He is] a strong man. He is not ill.” Think you know Latin America? Take our geography quiz. Other so-called Chavistas...