“Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R) announced late Wednesday that he will grant an early release from prison to two sisters serving unusually long sentences for armed robbery. Gladys and Jamie Scott have each served 16 years of a life sentence. Their case had become a cause celebre among civil rights groups, including the NAACP, which mounted a national campaign to free the women.” [WaPo]

Geraldine Hoff Doyle, who as a young woman was the model for the Rosie the Riveter image of WWII, died on Sunday from complications of arthritis.  She was a 17-year-old metal-presser at a factory outside of Detroit when an Associated Press photographer took a picture of her at work.

She quit two weeks after the photo was taken, as she was a cellist and didn’t want her hands crushed like another woman’s were in a factory accident. She took a job at a soda fountain, where she met her husband. They had 5 children and were married 66 years.

A few liberties were taken with the image by a graphic designer (she wasn’t flexing her guns in the photo), and was used by Westinghouse as part of a campaign to deter strikes. In the mid-70s it was embraced by the feminist movement.

[WaPo and NYT]

We alluded to this yesterday, but we thought we’d trot it out for a closer look:

“Conservationists write me these nasty letters because I support an industry like this,” the former vice presidential candidate said, after taking a chainsaw to an Evergreen Timber tree. “They write me these nasty letters using their pretty little pencils on their pretty little stationery not realizing. Where do you think your pencil and your piece of paper came from, people? It came from a tree that was harvested.”

It all falls apart upon inspection, of course. Who, besides your mother, writes letters these days? And who even owns a pencil, much less writes hatemail with it? (We prefer crayon when addressing screeds to Shrub, but that’s because he has a habit of ignoring printed material.) And if you’re going to write hatemail, you’re probably not going to use the flowery stationery. Unless it has a prominent Recycled symbol at the bottom, just so your target knows you care about the medium of your invective.

But forget about all that, and just admire the economy of Palin’s straw man: With a few quick dashes, she’s created a world, a universe of paranoid fantasy.

And nobody credits Palin for the quality of her work. At least, until a Lesser Wingnut tries to cop her moves, only to discover that only Jordan can fly:

Read more »

“Federal authorities have opened a criminal investigation of Delaware Republican Christine O’Donnell to determine if the former Senate candidate broke the law by using campaign money to pay personal expenses, according to a person with knowledge of the investigation.” [AP/Boston Herald]

Do you ever wish that your next-generation cutting-edge envy-inducing iGadget wasn’t so damn quiet? Do you miss the thrill of keeping everyone within fifty feet of you awake all damn night? Well, wait no more!

The USBTypewriter™ is a new and groundbreaking innovation in the field of obsolescence. Lovers of the look, feel, and quality of old fashioned manual typewriters can now use them as keyboards for any USB-capable computer, such as a PC, Mac, or even iPad!

Model as shown: $849. Or you can roll (or solder) your own for only $69!

USB Typewriter [via Tom Tomorrow]

If we were a Blog of Record, we would feel obligated to post the latest Talibunny Trivia — OMG Sarah Palin actually said “refudiate” on the teevee! And everybody in Alaska hates her! And she lies about environmentalists! — but since our Official Editorial Mandate is “Publish whatever the hell amuses/interests/disgusts/horrifies/baffles you, or short of that, whatever crap you can scrape together on deadline and pretend like you meant it,” we are pleased to bring to your attention the Anchorage Daily News 2011 Alaska Moose Calendar, which happily validates every stereotype we’ve held about Alaskans from the moment we learned at a frightfully young age that our mother grew up in Juneau.