Actually, you probably did miss the news because most major media outlets didn't cover it in a serious way, if at all. Instead, they and their audiences evidently view such information as far less news-, buzz- and tweet-worthy than (among other things) the opening of George W. Bush's library and President Obama's jokes at the White House Correspondents Dinner.

Such an appetite for distraction, no doubt, comes from both those who deny the problem of climate change and those who acknowledge the crisis but nonetheless look away from what feels like an unsolvable mess.

That sense of hopelessness is understandable. After all, some of the most hyped ways to reduce carbon emissions -- electric cars, mass-scale renewable energy power plants, etc. -- require the kind of technological transformations that can seem impossibly unrealistic at a time when Congress can't even pass a budget.

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The report, from the liberal Institute for Policy Studies, finds that between 2009 and 2011, top executives at the 90 publicly held corporate members of the Fix the Debt coalition raked in at least $953 million -- and as much as $1.6 billion -- through the “performance pay” loophole, which counts some executive compensation as a tax-deductible business expense, instead of a salary. Fix the Debt, founded by Alan  Simpson and Erskine Bowles, is one of the many groups tied to Wall Streeter cum policy entrepreneur Pete Peterson, who has spent the last 20 years trying to reduce the debt, in large part through cuts to programs like Social Security and Medicare. The group has attracted some of the largest corporations in the country as sponsors, as well as former lawmakers, giving it serious clout in Washington.

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CNN reports:

While Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre is widely known as the face of the NRA, Keene had an active role in publicity and media appearances, especially in the wake of the Newtown elementary school massacre that left 26 people dead.

Porter has been serving as the NRA's first vice president, and before that he served as the group's second vice president. The presidency, an unpaid position, is the next stop in the NRA's leadership rotation.

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He continued that Mitt Romney in particular was one of those bad candidates. “Mitt Romney appeared like a kid who showed up for his science project and the teacher said, ‘Explain it,’ and Mitt couldn’t do it,” Sessions said. “His ‘dad,’ Paul Ryan, explained it to him, but Mitt didn’t get it. … That’s why we lost the last election.”

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And that’s all the time we should spend forecasting these volatile monthly numbers.  More interesting, I think, is the question of why everyone gets so wrapped up in the monthly numbers when the actual signal-to-noise ratio they yield is not that high.  The 90% confidence interval around the payroll number, for example, is about 100,000, meaning there’s a 90% chance that the actual change in payrolls in a given month is that much higher or lower than the reported change.  So, given last month’s initial print of 88,000, we can’t rule out the possibility we actually lost jobs.

Well, one reason for all the attention, courtesy of GS analysts, is that the jobs report doesn’t just move markets.  It moves markets far more than any other economic indicator.  The figure below plots how equity futures and the yield on the 10-year T-bill respond to upside surprises in the various indicators we all pour over.

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According to a report published by nonprofit online newspaper the Washington Free Beacon, the hacker, possibly using stolen username and password credentials, accessed the National Inventory of Dams (NID) and siezed information not normally available to the public.

The NID database contains comprehensive information about 79,000 dams throughout the US, including the estimated number of deaths there would be if a given dam failed.

“The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is aware that access to the National Inventory of Dams (NID), to include sensitive fields of information not generally available to the public, was given to an unauthorized individual in January 2013 who was subsequently determined to not to have proper level of access for the information,” Army Corps of Engineers spokesperson Pete Pierce told the Washington Free Beacon.

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“This is very serious," said Craig Holman, a government ethics lobbyist at liberal-leaning watchdog group Public Citizen. "It’s not Watergate, or at least not yet, but these are a series of allegations that are each serious on their own, and when you put them all together, this could be a career ender for Michele Bachmann."

Ken Boehm, chairman of the conservative-leaning National Legal and Policy Center, told Salon that we should wait to see what investigators find -- indeed, no wrongdoing has been reported so far -- though he acknowledged the escalating scrutiny could be a major headache for the congresswoman down the line.

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In the exclusive conversation below, Al-Muslimi tells Salon about the drone strikes’ devastating toll on Yemeni civilians and how the current U.S. counterterrorism policy in Yemen is like “reading from a manual '10 Steps on How to Lose a War.'”

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This disappearance was no small thing. Single payer has actually passed both California legislative branches — twice — before being vetoed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. The bill hasn’t exactly been obscure, if only because its initial sponsor was Senator Sheila Kuehl, famous long ago as Zelda on the television show The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. Yet, where Vermont begins the year progressing toward its version of a single payer system and Pennsylvania unveils a study of how much money a similar system might save its people, the largest state in the union has no such legislative vehicle, despite the millions who will remain uncovered by “Obamacare” and reports of drastic health insurance rate increases to come.

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Forty-five percent of voters in Louisiana say they're more likely to support Landrieu following the vote, compared to 25 percent who said they're less likely to support her. For Kay Hagan, 52 percent said they were more likely to support her, compared to 26 percent who said they were less likely.

Conversely, the poll shows, Hagan and Landrieu's Republican colleagues aren't doing as well:

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If the measure is signed by Gov. Martin O'Malley, it will make Maryland the 18th state in the nation to do away with the death penalty.

A repeal bill won final passage from the House of Delegates on Friday. It already had been approved by the Senate.

The House advanced the legislation this week after delegates rejected nearly 20 amendments, mostly from Republicans, aimed at keeping capital punishment for the most heinous crimes.

If passed, life without the possibility of parole would be the most severe sentence in the state.

Supporters of repeal argue that the death penalty is costly, error-prone, racially biased and a poor deterrent of crime. But opponents say it is a necessary tool to punish lawbreakers who commit the most egregious crimes.

Maryland has five men on death row. The measure would not apply to them retroactively, but the legislation makes clear that the governor can commute their sentences to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

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On Thursday in the Daily Beast, writer Jonathan Rauch called Flake's "deal-breaker" misguided -- and a GOP "suicide mission" (emphasis mine):

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Time has the details, but the top line is:

When given a choice, 61 percent of Americans say they are more concerned about the government enacting new anti-terrorism policies that restrict civil liberties, compared to 31 percent who say they are more concerned about the government failing to enact strong new anti-terrorism policies.

Only 32 percent of Americans believe that the U.S. government can prevent all major attacks, down from an average of 40 percent in 2011 and 41 percent in 2006. And by contrast with polls taken in the wake of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bombing, when only 23 percent of voters polled showed reluctance to give up civil liberties to protect terrorism, 49 percent said they were not willing to give up such rights, as opposed to 40 percent who were.

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From the poll:

Ms. Clinton would get 65 percent of Democratic votes compared to 13 percent for Vice President Joe Biden, 4 percent for New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and 1 percent or less for Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley and Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University poll finds. If Clinton is not in the race, Biden would get 45 percent, with 15 percent for Gov. Cuomo, 6 percent for, Gov. Patrick, 3 percent O'Malley and 2 percent for Warner.

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Bae, also known as Pae Jun Ho, is accused of attempting to "topple" North Korea, according to state-run media. He has supposedly admitted the charges.

"The Supreme Court sentenced him to 15 years of compulsory labour for this crime," North Korea's official news agency announced Thursday.

Bae, 44, was detained in the northeast city of Rason on Nov. 3 after entering North Korea on a tourist visa.

According to reports, he is a Korean-American who runs a travel company and was in the country to lead a tour group. A devout Christian, he had made several previous trips to North Korea to do humanitarian work, friends told the Associated Press.

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In a report that was almost 100 pages, the Bureau sharply criticized the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp., created in 2011 by Walker and the state legislature, and called for much more oversight.

From the Associated Press:

The audit faulted WEDC for not having sufficient policies to administer its $520 million worth of grant, loan and tax credit programs effectively, including some policies required by law. It awarded $80 million in its first year.

The agency did not consistently follow the law or existing policies when making awards, and had no policies for determining how to handle delinquent loan amounts, the audit said.

It lacked invoices or other contractually required documentation showing authorized costs for seven of 29 grants reviewed, the audit said. Four contracts gave $906,000 total in tax credits for job creation and employee training that had already occurred, the audit said. Twelve of 14 recipients of grant and loan contracts worth at least $100,000 did not submit verified financial statements as required by law, the audit found.

"This audit dates back to 2011 and largely reflects information that WEDC has known for some time," a Walker spokesman said in a statement. "This new agency has taken proactive and positive measures to address its issues, and Governor Walker is confident in the direction of WEDC as an agency that aims to promote job creation and economic growth for Wisconsin."

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Carcano decided to tell her story publicly for the first time after reading here about the Peace Corps Equity Act, introduced by Sen. Frank Lautenberg last week, which would modify the current policy by extending Peace Corps health coverage to abortions in case of rape. Carcano, who majored in human biology at the University of Texas and is now working as a research assistant on HIV/AIDS, says she wasn't particularly educated about the politics of abortion. But then, in the months after her ordeal, the headlines were full of politicians talking about abortion, "legitimate rape" and doubting rape victims could even become pregnant. "I came back to my country and I felt like other Americans were against me or against my choices," she says.

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As the number of suspected attacks grows, U.S. officials said intelligence agencies are seeing signs that Syrian opposition forces may be distancing themselves from the al-Qaida-linked group there — chipping away at one of the key arguments against giving lethal aid to the rebels. Yet, at the same time, the fighters associated with the extremist group are among the most effective against the regime. Assad displayed new confidence, going on the offensive in the hopes of taking advantage of ill will against the extremist group.

Officials insisted Wednesday that no decisions have been made but said arming the rebels is seen as more likely and preferable than any other military option. One U.S. official described a new "reconsideration" within the administration of the military options. The officials, who all spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss publicly the options under consideration, said most U.S. leaders prefer that the Syrians determine their own fate, so arming the opposition is more palatable than direct U.S. intervention.

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But new evidence reveals the nation’s largest banks have apparently continued to fabricate documents, rip off customers and illegally kick people out of their homes, even after inking a series of settlements over the same abuses. And the worst part of it all is that the main settlement over foreclosure fraud was so weakly written that it actually allows such criminal conduct to occur, at least up to a certain threshold. Potentially hundreds of thousands of homes could be effectively stolen by the big banks without any sanctions.

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Original post: 
Howard Kurtz had a bad day yesterday. He wrote this whole column calling out Jason Collins, the NBA player who this week came out as gay, breaking a major American sports barrier and quickly becoming a widely celebrated and admired figure, for not telling readers of his Sports Illustrated piece that he once had a (female) fiancée. Except, one little problem with the entire concept of the piece: Collins explicitly wrote that he'd once been engaged in his Sports Illustrated piece. It took a few minutes for the Internet to point out this titanic error. Then, the the column was altered, without a correction, to say that Collins "downplayed one detail" instead of "left one little part out." Finally, a proper correction was appended.

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