Disgusting. Treasonous. Just plain evil.

Since 1997, Harold Nicholson has been locked in a federal prison in Oregon, the highest-ranking officer of the Central Intelligence Agency ever convicted of espionage.

But even as federal inmate No. 49535-083, Mr. Nicholson never really retired as a Russian spy, federal prosecutors say. In an indictment unsealed Thursday, Mr. Nicholson and his 24-year-old son, Nathan, were charged with using jailhouse visits, coded letters and clandestine overseas meetings to sell more secrets to the Russians over the last three years, in a scheme Mr. Nicholson hatched from his prison cell.

“You have been brave enough to step into this new unseen world that is sometimes dangerous but always fascinating,” Harold Nicholson wrote to his son last July, the indictment says, in what was apparently an reference to the scheme.

The Nicholsons pleaded not guilty on Thursday in federal court in Portland, Ore., and the public defenderÂ’s office was appointed to represent them.

The elder Mr. Nicholson pleaded guilty in 1997 to selling the Russians identities of fellow C.I.A. officers. Prosecutors said he “trained and tasked” his son in spycraft from his cell beginning in 2006, and helped the son meet Russian handlers in Mexico, Peru and Cyprus to pass on information intended to help Russian agents evade detection, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors said Nathan Nicholson, a former Army paratrooper, had returned from his visits with the Russians with at least $35,000 in cash, some of it in a PlayStation video game case. The money was intended in part to settle a “pension” that Harold Nicholson said was owed him from his days as a C.I.A. spy for the Russians before his arrest in 1996, the prosecutors said.

The elder Nicholson should have gotten a life sentence the first time around, not a plea bargain that netted him only 23 years. The time is here now to lock both father and son in the deepest, darkest hole in the US prison system (if not Gitmo) forever. Too bad we canÂ’t apply the Rosenberg treatment to them, as I believe should be done with all Americans who betray the US by engaging in espionage against our country.

And may I make a special note for those who have speciously accused me of anti-Semitism for opposing a pardon for the spy Jonathon Pollard – I apply the exact same standard to these two Christian traitors who sold-out to Russia as I apply to the Jewish traitor Pollard who sold-out to Israel.

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That would be my reaction to this sign.

It is real – the result of hackers.

Transportation officials in Texas are scrambling to prevent hackers from changing messages on digital road signs after one sign in Austin was altered to read, "Zombies Ahead."

Chris Lippincott, director of media relations for the Texas Department of Transportation, confirmed that a portable traffic sign at Lamar Boulevard and West 15th Street, near the University of Texas at Austin, was hacked into during the early hours of Jan. 19.

"It was clever, kind of cute, but not what it was intended for," said Lippincott, who saw the sign during his morning commute. "Those signs are deployed for a reason — to improve traffic conditions, let folks know there's a road closure."
"It's sort of amusing, but not at all helpful," he told FOXNews.com.

So yes, it was a hoax – not the herd of Hope’N’Change addicts in search of the Obamessiah.

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Over the weekend, I made my first purchase from Circuit City in over three years. The prices were OK – but not the sort of bargains that so many folks seem to be expecting. I bought a camera for my computer at just a couple bucks less than what I would have paid across the street, and a game program that was enough of a bargain that I was willing to drop some cash on it. But otherwise, my wife and I simply walked away feeling the same way described in this article.

As Circuit City fades into history, the electronics chain is teaching shoppers that a liquidation sale does not necessarily translate to bargains.
ThereÂ’s no question the shelves are emptying, but some shoppers have been walking out empty-handed.

“I wanted to see what the sales were like,” said David Woods, a power plant operator, who left the Galleria-area store without buying anything. The discounts, mostly 10 percent to 30 percent off, didn’t impress him.
“You can get that online,” he said.

The problem, in my book, is that Circuit City rarely had prices that were competitive with the other places I shop. Therefore the discounts just are not that impressive.

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You know, I love a good burger -- but this might just be taking the idea a little bit too far.

An 8,000 calorie burger? My arteries are hardening just considering the concept! Still, let's be honest -- it does look REALLY good.

So, if you ever find yourself in Chandler, Arizona, this might just be the place to drop in for a bite.

(And are there any restaurant entrepreneurs interested in bringing this concept to Houston?)

H/T Debbie Schlussel

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And it has appeared in various publications worldwide today.

Clinically Depressed Poodle Mauls Former French President Chirac

I have a vision of Chirac writhng on the floor screaming out France's national motto -- "Je capitule à vous!"

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I don't know that my words can add anything to this photo of the aftermath of US Airways Flight 1549.

All passengers and crew present and accounted for -- alive.

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From today's Houston Chronicle homepage comes this headline:

Elevator accidents has workers in Houston tower using stairs

Shouldn't that be "have"? Good thing these folks don't write for a living. Oh, yeah -- they do.

Wonder if they will sweep the error down the memory hole.

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Here in Harris County, pretty bad.

Hurricane Ike damaged almost half the homes in Harris County and left more than 18,000 dwellings uninhabitable, according to a detailed assessment by the Harris County Housing Authority.

Hardest hit was the small Galveston Bay community of Shoreacres, an all-residential town where 58.6 percent of the homes were destroyed or suffered greater than 50 percent damage, according to the assessment provided to the Houston Chronicle Tuesday.

The report, based on inspections of 774,000 of the countyÂ’s 994,000 residential units from Sept. 23 through Nov. 13, is the most comprehensive assessment to date of the destruction caused by Ike, although itÂ’s limited to residential damage in Harris County.

As someone still out of my house due to the storm, I know how true this really is. My house stayed in the “minor damage” category – but that means that we were less than 50% damaged by the storm. Put my home at about 40-45% damaged – but a good number of my neighbors were not as lucky.

El Lago, a southeast Harris County town of about 4,100 people, was a distant second to Shoreacres in major damage, with 12.6 percent of its homes destroyed or sustaining greater than 50 percent damage. Next were Seabrook, 11.4 percent, and Nassau Bay, 10.1 percent.

I see that every day as I go by the house to check out the progress of my contractor on getting us back in – hopefully about 5 weeks from now. And since we share a zip code with El Lago, you can imagine what the damage to the area is really like. But the recurrent theme you hear around the area is "we will be back, better than ever."

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I wonder if this will clue him in that there are folks who hate the US and every American just because we are.

Iranian demonstrators burned photographs of Barack Obama today as they protested against AmericaÂ’s inaction over Gaza.

Dozens of people gathered in Tehran waving Palestinian flags and defacing and setting fire to images of the President-elect.

Iranian demonstrators have often burned effigies or pictures of US presidents in the past but this appeared to be the first time Mr ObamaÂ’s picture had been defaced, a week before his inauguration as president.

Yo, Barry, you had better get used to this reality – YOU have become the face of the Great Satan. You are the enemy now – and America’s implacable foes aren’t going to buy into any Hopey-Changey agenda.

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DonÂ’t we constantly hear that sexual orientation (and the associated sexual behavior) is an immutable quality and not a choice? If that is so, then explain this.

If the lipstick lesbian was the gay icon of the nineties, these days she’s been replaced by her more controversial counterpart, the hasbian: a woman who used to date women but now dates men. Though Anne Heche is the most prominent example, many hasbians (sometimes called LUGS: lesbians until graduation) are by-products of nineties liberal-arts educations. Caught up in the gay scene at school, they came out at 20 or 21 and now, five or ten years later, are finding themselves in the odd position of coming out all over again—as heterosexuals.

Some hasbians identify as bisexual, while others say theyÂ’re straight and describe their lesbianism as a meaningful but finite phase of their lives. . . .

Just a phase? Really? No wonder such women are considered such a threat by the gay community – their very existence undermines a major argument that is made to justify a host of legal and social changes. But if sexual orientation is fluid rather than hard-wired, doesn’t the main line of offense for gay rights activists weaken significantly as the issue becomes one of choice and conduct rather than immutable status?

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Why did five pirates making off with the ransom for their hijacked tanker die?

Because they were trying to avoid having the ransom taken by other pirates!

"Other pirates on the shore wanted a tip from the pirates on the Sirius Star, so they started to fire in the air as our people approached the land," Libaan Jaama told CNN. "When our pirates heard the shots, they thought they would be robbed, so they tried to return to the tanker. In that quick turn the boat capsized."

What? ThereÂ’s no honor among thieves? Shocking!

H/T Jawa Report

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When the biggest thing an NAACP chapter has to complain about is a racially diverse group of young women wearing vaguely antebellum hoop skirts with sun hats, then the organization needs to close up shop and go out of business.

They're part of a long standing tradition that will soon become a part of Presidential history.

The head of the Alabama NAACP, however, wants Mobile's Azalea Trail Maids to stay home on Inauguration Day, claiming the group reminds him of slavery.

"These are not just regular costumes. These are the costumes that remind someone of the plantation in Gone with the Wind," Edward Vaughn said in a phone interview.

Now I think the group looks rather silly – but not because of a connection to slavery, but rather because the outfits are almost a parody of what women actually wore in the mid-1800s. That said, I don’t see a need for them to consigned to the dust-bin of history.

Besides, what more modern icon would Vaughn have them replaced with? Perhaps a crew of idiocy-spewing race hustlers like himself – which I would argue demonstrates a shameful present much more offensive than anything that the Maids might represent of a “shameful past”?

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Don’t call them “fish”. Call them “sea kittens”.

RADICAL international animal rights group PETA has launched its most bizarre campaign yet, demanding fish be renamed "sea kittens".
PETA - People For The Ethical Treatment of Animals - believes calling fish sea kittens will make sea food less appealing.

It wants to change the image of fish as slimy and slithery creatures by claiming they are similar to cuter, more popular animals. "Would people think twice about ordering fish sticks if they were called sea kitten sticks?" PETA asked on its website.

Of course, it doesn’t matter to the ideologues (or is that “idiot-logues”) at PETA that fish really are slimy and slippery – they are so opposed to the consumption of anything with a spinal column that they are willing to engage in absurd word tricks and shameless stunts (and sometimes acts of violence) to force others to conform to their standards.

In a related story, the leaders of Hamas, Hezbollah, al-Qaeda and the Taliban are seeking to replace the word “terrorist”. On their website they ask the question “Would people think twice about opposing the world domination of radical Islam and the murder of Jews, Christians and other infidels if our noble jihadis were called sand kittens?”

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But we can apparently hear space roaring!

Space is typically thought of as a very quiet place. But one team of astronomers has found a strange cosmic noise that booms six times louder than expected.

The roar is from the distant cosmos. Nobody knows what causes it.

I don’t know about you, but I have my guess as to the cause of this roar – it is the dying screams of the trillions of souls whose planets have been destroyed by Galactus!

(What the heck – it seems as good as any explanation in the article!)

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After all, he is seeking to medically endanger (or financially bankrupt) his estranged wife in order to get a more favorable divorce settlement.

A Long Island surgeon embroiled in a nearly four-year divorce proceeding wants his estranged wife to return the kidney he donated to her, although he says heÂ’ll settle for $1.5 million in compensation.

Dr. Richard Batista, a surgeon at Nassau University Medical Center, told reporters at his lawyerÂ’s Long Island office Wednesday that he decided to go public with his demand for kidney compensation because he has grown frustrated with the negotiations with his estranged wife. Â…

He said he gave his kidney to Dawnell Batista, now 44, in June 2001. She filed for divorce in July 2005, although he claims she began having an extramarital affair 18 months to two years after receiving the kidney transplant, his attorney, Dominick Barbara said.

As a physician, DOCTOR Richard Batista knows that to repossess the kidney he DONATED would be to cause Dawnell Batista irreparable physical harm – possibly including her death. So much for his Hyppocratic Oath!

And there is this minor detail, noted by Hot AirÂ’s Ed Morrissey.

We have plenty of experience with transplants. The First Mate has had four transplants (three kidneys and a pancreas), two of which came from live donors. For the first, I planned on donating one of my kidneys, but a cadaver donor became available before I finished my tests. During the planning, it was made clear that this gift was non-refundable and non-negotiable, and in fact I signed paperwork acknowledging that, as did the two friends who later did donate live kidneys to the FM over the last five years.

Dr. Batista would have had to sign similar forms as well – so he knows that this demand is not merely unethical but also unenforceable. And then there is the minor detail that he is effectively asking for payment of $1.5 million for the organ – a violation of American law which makes the sale of human organs for transplantation illegal. Perhaps the loss of his medical license is not the only thing that needs to happen here – perhaps he needs a bit of jail time as well.

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It isn’t that an additional interstate in Texas is a bad idea – but the project was frightfully flawed from the beginning.

The ambitious proposal to create the Trans-Texas Corridor network has been dropped in response to public outcry and will be replaced with a plan to carry out road projects at an incremental, modest pace, state officials said Tuesday.

"The Trans-Texas Corridor, as a single-project concept, is not the choice of Texans, so we decided to put the name to rest," said Amadeo Saenz Jr., executive director of the Texas Department of Transportation, at the agency's annual Texas Transportation Forum in Austin. "To be clear, the Trans-Texas Corridor as it is known, no longer exists."

The state will move forward with a series of individual projects that had been considered part of the Trans-Texas Corridor plan, he said. Among those is the Interstate 69 project, which, as proposed, would run from Texarkana to Laredo or the Rio Grande Valley.

Saenz said overwhelming public response was a key factor in the agency's decision to abandon the plan, and he pledged that the agency would rely heavily on input from Texans through more town hall meetings and an updated Web site.

"One practical lesson we've taken away from this experience is, we need to do a better job of communicating," he said. "We need to do a better job of listening."

And listening was the problem – Texans woke up one day to find that the state had approved a massive highway project that would involve the use of eminent domain for a for-profit highway that would benefit a foreign company, but not the Texas taxpayer. What’s more, the access to the highway would be so limited that the highway would essentially bypass the cities and towns of Texas – vehicles would essentially get on at the border with Mexico and exit at the northern border of the state, with few exits or entrances in between.

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Want to know what makes their food taste good? Salt and fat.

THE woman given the job of promoting McDonald's has revealed the secret of the fast-food chain's success – salt and fat.

In what some might see as a slightly-too-honest appraisal of her company's products, Jill McDonald, chief marketing officer for McDonald's UK, admitted that if the firm removed unhealthy ingredients, consumers would vote with their feet and eat elsewhere.

* * *

Ms McDonald said the core market remained burgers because that was what the public wanted – along with the salt and fat which came with them.

"Although we are very clear we are a burger business – that is why primarily people come to us – our customers are more aware of the need to follow a balanced diet and we needed to move in line with what customers wanted," she said.

"But fat and salt makes food taste good. There is no point taking all the fat and salt out of your food because people won't like it and they will eat with someone else. We have to make small steps to help people improve their diet."

Let's be honest -- she's right. Salt helps bring out the flavor of food -- that is the reason it is such a common ingredient in the foods we buy. And the fat in meat we eat provides both texture and flavor -- what do you think is the major component of that juice in that oozes from a juicy burger or steak. Eliminate the fat and salt and you get a dry, tasteless piece of meat with the texture and flavor of a hockey puck.

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