It’s another week in the Senate, and there’s another battle over earmarks.  Senators Toomey and McCaskill are proposing an amendment to the STOCK Act (“insider trading bill”S. 2038) to permanently ban earmarks in the Senate.  Not surprisingly, there is pushback from Harry Reid…and a number of Republicans as well.

The Democrat’s ‘TEA Party’.

A new report from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute on the United States K-12 state science standards reports that “the majority of the states’ standards remain mediocre to awful.” Several states around the northwest scored F’s, while only seven states scored and A- or higher.

So do Fannie and Freddie actually help homeowners? And why can’t the government force their hand? ...

... The two aims of Fannie and Freddie are continually at odds — policies encouraging refinancing and forgiveness for more mortgage holders can increase costs to the taxpayer-owned companies. While the administration has made relief for homeowners their priority, DeMarco says his agency’s priority is to protect Fannie and Freddie’s profits, aka taxpayers’ assets. Of course, many taxpayers are those same struggling homeowners, and that is at the heart of the dilemma over Fannie and Freddie’s future.

Reported concerns among some U.S. officials that Iran may have essentially freed a group of al Qaeda militants held for almost a decade under house arrest in the Islamic Republic are adding Friday morning to the escalating war-rhetoric pouring out of Washington and Israel.

Google+ Is Growing Much Faster Than Facebook Did In The Early Days

Let’s make sure that the press thinks that this is a great story that deserves weeks of in depth coverage. The more coverage the better.

You may need more of the story here:

O’Keefe and his group Project Veritas most recently made news in January by producing a video during the New Hampshire primary showing how easy it is for someone to commit voter fraud.

“Absolutely,” O’Keefe said, when asked if observers can expect more videos soon from his organization.

He had tough words for the liberal activists who claim he and his operatives broke the law with their New Hampshire video by successfully obtaining ballots in the name of dead voters in the state because there is no voter identification law.

“There is a long tradition of turning people who expose the ineptitude of government into political prisoners,” he said. “But it’s just un-American.”

Spotted salamanders exposed to contaminated roadside ponds are adapting to their toxic environments, according to a Yale paper in Scientific Reports. This study provides the first documented evidence that a vertebrate has adapted to the negative effects of roads apparently by evolving rapidly.

Last week, Human Rights Watch put out a blunt assessment of what the United States has left behind after eight years in Iraq: “Despite U.S. government assurances that it helped create a stable democracy, the reality is that it left behind a budding police state.”

Too true. And a striking example of this downhill slide is the recent arrest of Riyadh al-Adhadh, a Sunni doctor known for helping the poor who was recently jailed on terrorism charges.

French unions promised on Monday to protect the 35-hour working week, with one threatening to stage protests if President Nicolas Sarkozy tries to force through reforms that would effectively end the scheme. 

Sarkozy detailed his strategy on Sunday to boost French competitiveness, including plans to let unions and management reach pay deals at the company level, rather than nationally or by industry sector as required now by law. ...

... At stake is the 35-hour scheme, put in place under Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin in 2000 and which the current conservative government has blamed for widening France’s competitiveness gap with Germany.

Lawyers in Naples taped up their mouths and turned their backs on a government speaker at a solemn ceremony to mark the start of Italy’s judicial year.

The lawyers will follow protests by everybody from pharmacists to taxi drivers against Monti’s attempt to liberalize tightly closed professions and trades and stimulate growth in a country threatened by the euro zone debt crisis.

As part of the SCENICC program, DARPA researchers are working on futuristic contact lenses that will offer a dual purpose. These lenses will allow users to focus on objects that are close up and far away simultaneously, while enhancing normal vision by allowing a wearer to view virtual and augmented reality images.

It’s a well-known fact that spider silk is stronger than steel and tougher than Kevlar, yet flexible enough to be made into a variety of different shapes. A new study has also shown that the material is also smart.

Studying spider silk further could lead to applications in virtual networks, such as the Internet, to allow a local node to be sacrificed and keeping the whole system from breaking down. The protein structure could also give insight on how carbon nanotubes should be strung together to produce combat gear or space elevators.