Sometimes I think I should just stop reading the news. I don't get upset when I look at the watered down stuff on CNN, but when I go to the independent sites, the stuff they look into can be quite disturbing. I also try to stay away from the extreme stuff. There are a lot of organisations that say they are fair, but it is obvious they slant their content. When I say slant, I mean they only report things that support an agenda they have.

Anyway, I like Slate, they have some interesting in depth stuff. They try to stay away from the mainstream wire though, so the content is a little thin. What they do have seems to have some depth to it, which is nice because I get tired of the series of bullets on CNN that passes for news pieces. On Slate recently they did stories on the stuff going on at the DOJ, and the global organ market. They also have a column that lists links to stories in the papers that are interesting. From those I found a story about a private contractor in Iraq called Triple Canopy. I hope the employee highlighted, one Jacob C. Washbourne, is not the norm among guards hired by these companies. Still, one small bit of information I found interesting was that they pay these people $500 a day to run around Iraq with guns. That could be wrong, that is certainly a lot of money, but according to the article this is what this guy makes, maybe because he's a team leader. But the gist of the article is he is under investigation for basically random unjustified shootings at civilians.

Then there is the organ market. People in some of the poorer nations have taken to selling the organs they can live without, mainly kidneys of course. Countries have taken to outlawing the practice, but people that need the organs will ignore the laws, or go somewhere else.

Back to the DOJ. Monica Goodling has resigned, and the behind her spreading all over the Internet. She graduated from Regent Law school in Virginia Beach, a school founded by Pat Robertson. From the few pieces I've read, the school gained accreditation in the 90s, is ranked low as far as law schools go, and no less than 150 graduates have found their way into the DOJ. It has been suggested that Ms Goodling played a big part in that, and some are calling it a conspiracy theory.

Speaking of schools, student loans are so lucrative there have been scandalous activities in that realm as well. I didn't know this, but if a student gets a government student loan, the government pays the interest until the student graduates. I thought the interest was just deferred. And, if the student defaults, the government pays. So banks are clamoring for the business, going so far as to provide kick backs to school officials to steer students their way.

There's more, but I have work to do.