It's really thrilling to see the kinds of things made by these young kids in these science competitions. And this young lady came up with something with immediate practical applications:

An 18-year-old science student has made an astonishing breakthrough that will enable mobile phones and other batteries to be charged within seconds rather than the hours it takes today’s devices to power back up.

Saratoga, Calif. resident Eesha Khare made the breakthrough by creating a small supercapacitor that can fit inside a cell phone battery and enable ultra-fast electricity transfer and storage, delivering a full charge in 20-30 seconds instead of several hours.

The nano-tech device Khare created can supposedly withstand up to 100,000 charges, a 100-fold increase over current technology, and it’s flexible enough to be used in clothing or displays on any non-flat surface.

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Leaving aside the fact that this is yet another installment of It's 1939 And The Next Hitler Is About To Invade Poland silliness, Grassley's historical revisionism is remarkable.

In fact, the United States in 1939 had a foreign policy under FDR, one that was increasingly at odds with Chuck Grassley's Republican Party. After Hitler invaded Poland, Roosevelt urged Congress to repeal the Neutrality Act embargo provisions. They finally got around to it a couple months later, over the objections of isolationist Republicans.

Shortly after, isolationist Republicans also tried to block FDR's Lend Lease Act, which supplied our future allies in the war. Most Republicans nationally were against Lend Lease.

The American position was to help the British but not enter the war. In early February 1941 a Gallup poll revealed that 54 percent of Americans were unqualifiedly in favor of Lend-Lease. A further 15 percent were in favor with qualifications such as: "If it doesn't get us into war," or "If the British can give us some security for what we give them." Only 22 percent were unqualifiedly against the President's proposal. When poll participants were asked their party affiliation, the poll revealed a sharp political divide: 69 percent of Democrats were unqualifiedly in favor of Lend-Lease, whereas only 38 percent of Republicans favored the bill without qualification. A poll spokesperson also noted that, "approximately twice as many Republicans" gave "qualified answers as ... Democrats."

Opposition to the Lend-Lease bill was strongest among isolationist Republicans in Congress, who feared that the measure would be "the longest single step this nation has yet taken toward direct involvement in the war abroad." When the House of Representatives finally took a roll call vote on February 9, 1941, the 260 to 165 vote fell largely along party lines. Democrats voted 238 to 25 in favor and Republicans 24 in favor and 135 against.

More proof Republicans might want to knock off the "It's 1939 - Hitler!" stuff -- they were on the wrong side of that debate.

(h/t Heather)

After news came out that Holder's DOJ seized two months of telephone records of AP reporters it sent a shock wave through the Beltway media and mostly left-wing bloggers. The fact that it's happening under a Democratic president is even worse, because the left has always stood for freedom of the press. Even though President Obama says he wasn't involved with this investigation and is now offering up a new push to pass federal shield laws, it's still a chilling example of judicial overreach with respects to said freedom of the press. I'd be just as furious over this if Dick Cheney had favorite henchman David Addington pull the trigger.

Now we get the news today that Fox News reporter James Rosen has been tracked by the DOJ since 2010.

Yahoo News:

The Justice Department spied extensively on Fox News reporter James Rosen in 2010, collecting his telephone records, tracking his movements in and out of the State Department and seizing two days of Rosen’s personal emails, the Washington Post reported on Monday. In a chilling move sure to rile defenders of civil liberties, an FBI agent also accused Rosen of breaking anti-espionage laws with behavior that—as described in the agent's own affidavit—falls well inside the bounds of traditional news reporting. (Disclosure: This reporter counts Rosen among his friends.)

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This is not a rhetorical question: Are the deficit hawks consciously trying to kill people? Do they begrudge even this minimal help? All the money in the world for war, but not to feed people? When you have so many people hanging by a thread, cutting the program that's putting food on their table seems like a recipe for a major crisis -- or a revolution:

A heated battle is brewing on Capitol Hill over cuts to the food stamp program, with lawmakers quoting Bible verses at each other and benefits for millions of people hanging in the balance.

Nearly 47 million people – one in seven Americans –  rely on food stamps for some or all of their daily sustenance, according to the Department of Agriculture, a number that has grown nearly 70 percent since the financial collapse of 2008.

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The day may come when the worst nightmare a crooked banker or compromised regulator can have begins with the words, "You have a letter from Senator Warren."

But before we get to that, here's an experience that may seem familiar: You're at a party or family get-together - a Sunday barbecue, perhaps - and someone says something like, "We need less government regulation." Next thing you know you're having an argument.Here's some advice for the next social event: There's no need to get into an argument. You can just ask, "How do you figure?"

With every unreasonable assertion you can ask a reality-based question like, "Where's the study that says that?" Once in a while they may cite a shallow white paper from sine right-wing foundation, but more often than that they won't even get that far. Soon the conversation will peter out with a "Well, uh ..."We can never go wrong asking questions. We only go wrong when we don't ask questions.

That's what makes this letter from Sen. Elizabeth Warren so important. For five years we've watched the Justice Department ignore overwhelming evidence of bank crime, on grounds that Attorney General Eric Holder made explicit only last March when he said that "the size of some of these institutions becomes so large that it does become difficult for us to prosecute them when we are hit with indications that if you do prosecute... it will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy."

The Securities and Exchange Commission, which has responsibility for pursuing civil bank fraud, has taken the same approach. So has the Federal Reserve, which has regulatory responsibility for the banking industry. They've all been saying pretty much the same thing: That criminal prosecution would destabilize the financial sector and put the world's economy at risk.

With this letter, Sen. Warren is asking these agencies a very simple question: "How do you figure?"

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Judge Jack Roach is a District Court Judge in Collin County (Fort Worth).

He has up and decided that lesbians are unfit mothers. It appears that he has had no help coming to this decision. You know, like scientific studies or child advocates. Judge Jack Roach thinks children would be better off living with a convicted felon father who really doesn’t want them than a lesbian mother in a stable relation who adores them.

A Republican Texas Judge has ordered a lesbian couple to live apart or give up custody of their children. According to Think Progress, Judge John Roach of McKinney, Texas has given Page Price 30 days to move out of the home she shares with Carolyn Compton and Compton’s two children from a previous marriage because he does not approve of Compton and Price’s “lifestyle.”

Compton cannot have anyone in her home past 9:00 pm unless she is related to them “by blood or marriage.” Gay marriage is illegal in Texas.

I guess that means her kids can’t have sleepovers and New Year’s Eve is gonna be mighty lonely for those kids.

Judge Roach calls himself a conservative. I thought conservatives wanted government out of our lives. I guess that doesn’t apply to the s-e-x part.

They want to stand there and watch that.

Juanita Jean blogs at the World's Most Dangerous Beauty Salon, Inc.

(Spoiler Alert: I will be recapping this episode so don't read on if you haven't seen it yet.)

Sunday's episode helped propel season three onward to its climax in a couple of weeks, but did so with much less action and spent much more time in fewer locations. I enjoy the complexity of GOT, but it's not easy recapping a show that has over twenty main characters inhabiting Seven Kingdoms, the Wall, the Free Cities and many other locations so it's much appreciated when the story gets concentrated a bit. Anyway....

Arya and the Hound

Arya wakes up to see the Hound (Sandor Clegane) is still sleeping so she picks up a rock and approaches him to bash his brains out.

I will give you one try, girl. Kill me and you're free, but if I live, I'll break both your hands. Go on hit me. Hit me hard.

She wisely gives up the attempt and while riding together soon after, Sandor tells her that she's lucky she's with him and not alone in the world. He's not a really bad man after all, not like those child rapers and such. Heck, he even saved her sister from being killed. You're lying, she says. The Hound then turns her world upside down when he tells her he's not taking her to King's Landing, but to the Twins to sell her to her mother and brother who will be there for this really big wedding. Everyone one is yapping about it. For the first time her rage has been rendered speechless. It's something she doesn't know quite how to handle either.
Things are starting to look up for Arya finally---at the hands of all people, the Hound

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Brilliant at Breakfast: What decade is this?

Echidne of the Snakes: For alas, we have sinned.

Texas Observer: The road to 500 executions.

PressThink: ABC's Jon Karl got played.

Guest post by Batocchio. Email tips to mbru AT crooksandliars DOT com.

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If we've done anything successfully in the last nine years, C&L has proven without a shadow of a doubt the conservative projection phenomena. Anything that conservatives accuse the other side of doing is because they themselves are guilty of it. So Freedomworks-funded Rush Limbaugh can accuse liberals of taking Soros' paychecks (still waiting for mine, George) without even the slightest evidence of cognitive dissonance. Or you can hear every single Republican parrot talking points crafted by Heritage and Grover Norquist on the Sunday news shows.

Sadly or not, depending on your point of view, there isn't this kind of infrastructure on the liberal side. But that doesn't stop openly partisan hack Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post from dismissing Take Action News' David Shuster bringing facts to the coordinated 'outrage' with the accusation that he is merely saying "Media Matters talking points".

SHUSTER: The overall Republican point here that the Obama administration was trying to protect the State Department. The Obama administration trying to protect the State Department and that the White House was somehow trying to characterize the talking points or change the talking points in order to minimize political damage.

That Republican -- that Republican idea is just flat out wrong. This turns out to be a boring set of e-mails where simply CIA and State Department officials are --

RUBIN: All right, you had your speech coming out of the administration.

KURTZ: David, Jennifer --

RUBIN: Very nice to have the Media Matters talking points recited out of David's lips.

SHUSTER: What are you talking? What are you talking about, Jane?

RUBIN: Howard. If you want to hear me, fine.

(CROSSTALK)

SHUSTER: Let somebody from Media Matters --

KURTZ: Let's assume that everybody is giving their own views and you may disagree with them.

RUBIN: No, they're actually on Media Matters. These exact comments are coming out of Media Matters. Absolutely.

KURTZ: OK.

SHUSTER: Well, I don't talk to Media Matters. Jennifer, that's an unfair accusation for you to make. But the bottom line is, the Republican argument in all of this is flat out wrong --

Does Bill O'Reilly know that Rubin is stealing his shtick? It's so pathetic that Rubin actually asks Kurtz to "mute" Shuster.

And of course, it needs not be said that Rubin is doing nothing more than distracting from the real scandal for partisan advantage. Jonathan Karl was absolutely wrong because he failed at the most basic of journalistic skills. All he did was take the word of a Republican operative and regurgitate it without even a bit of fact checking or confirmation. They tried the same thing with Major Garrett and Jake Tapper, who were able to see through it. But this is kind of lazy journalism that Karl does regularly.

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This Week with George Stephanopoulos notes the deaths of service members killed in Afghanistan.

US Army SFC Trenton L Rhea, 33, Oakley, KS
US Army SFC Jeffrey C Baker, 29, Hesperia, CA
US Army SPC Mitchell K Daehling, 24, Dalton, MA
US Amry SPC William J Gilbert, 24, Hacienda Heights, CA

According to iCasualties, the total number of service members killed in Afghanistan is now 3,315.

In addition, the following notable names lost their lives this week:

Russian politician Sergei Alexeyev, 88
Psychologist and television personality Joyce Brothers, 85
WA state politician Margaret Rayburn, 86
Argentinian president Jorge Rafael Videla, 87
Singer/songwriter Alan O'Day, 72