WASHINGTON, DC – Today, President Obama nominated Willie R. Stafford to serve as a United States Marshal for the Middle District of North Carolina.  Stafford currently serves as a background investigator for the Greensboro, North Carolina police department.

“Willie Stafford has dedicated his career to the protection of his fellow North Carolinians,” President Obama said.  “He has displayed commendable courage and a selfless commitment to the public good.  I am honored to nominate him today to continue his work on behalf of the people of North Carolina.”

You may recall, back before The Pirate Bay trial in Sweden, a story came out about how the lead police investigator in the case just happened to take a job at Warner Bros. movie studio while The Pirate Bay investigation was still ongoing. This, obviously lead to quite reasonable questions of conflicts of interest, and even corruption. It's hard to see how anyone could justify a police investigator agreeing to a job with a party in a lawsuit that he was currently investigating.

The New York Times has an excellent investigative piece on the small-town judges of New York State. These judges are elected to office, need no legal training, have no oversight (many don't even keep court records), and have the power to imprison people for up to two years (and some accused have been kept in jail for many more years, waiting for a judge to call their cases), and collect millions in (unaudited) fines and penalties.

"We're hoping to get some idea of how the earth relaxes, or releases stress, after an earthquake. This is just one tool to improve our understanding of the mechanisms in earthquakes and volcanoes."— Dr.

35-year old Holly Crawford of Pennsylvania is on trial for the online sale of "goth kittens" with multiple piercings for "hundreds of dollars." An animal cruelty investigator said the ear and neck piercings and crudely docked tails damage the cats' hearing, messes up their ability to balance, and "makes them feel as if they're constantly being bitten."

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Rob sez,

"Documents recently obtained through access to information legislation show that author David Bernans was being spied upon by investigators at Concordia University in Montreal.

"In this first-person narrative, Bernans chronicles his experience dealing with Concordia's security apparatus, and questions the motivations of a university that spies on and censors its students."

Christ, a university with its own private eye squad made up of failed Fed cops?