TV News LIES

The cable news networks rushed to report on the high court's ruling on the Affordable Care Act, but initially got the news wrong; UPDATE: CNN then issues a formal correction.

The cable news networks reported that the Supreme Court had struck down the individual mandate at the center of the Affordable Care Act, the formal name for what has become to be known as Obamacare, the president's stab at universal healthcare and the signature policy accomplishment in his first term. Both on air and online, CNN ran graphics and headlines that read that the court had invalidated the mandate. Fox also ran a headline on the air saying the mandate was invalidated.

The Supreme Court upheld President Obama's health care law today in a splintered, complex opinion that gives Obama a major election-year victory.
Basically. the justices said that the individual mandate -- the requirement that most Americans buy health insurance or pay a fine -- is constitutional as a tax.

Chief Justice John Roberts -- a conservative appointed by President George W. Bush -- provided the key vote to preserve the landmark health care law, which figures to be a major issue in Obama's re-election bid against Republican opponent Mitt Romney.

New Zealand's High Court has ruled that the police raid on Kim Dotcom’s house was unlawful along with seizure of the hard drives that were later cloned and illegally taken from New Zealand to the US by the FBI.

­The warrants issued to search Dotcom’s mansion were general and did not clearly describe the offences they stipulated, ruled Justice Helen Winkelmann.

The FBI has arrested six suspected British hackers accused of masterminding a global network of online fraudsters trading in stolen bank and credit card information.

They were among 24 suspects snared yesterday following a painstaking two-year undercover sting spanning four continents, described as the biggest of its kind against financial cyber-crooks.

Okay, so the Associated Press (AP) just reported that "Barclays and its subsidiaries have agreed to pay more than $450 million to settle charges that it tried to manipulate key global interest rates."

That might seem like a lot of money, but remember that this is basically the shareholders of the bank footing the bill for criminal actions of the bank officers. According to the AP:

• The rates affect the costs of hundreds of trillions of dollars in loans and investments such as bonds, auto loans and derivatives.
• The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission said Wednesday that the incidents occurred between 2005 and 2009 and sometimes took place daily.
• The CFTC said Barclays senior management and multiple traders were involved and that they coordinated with traders at other banks to make false submissions.

In the first investigation of its kind, a team of nine senior legal figures examined how Palestinians as young as 12 were treated when arrested. Their shocking report Children in Military Custody details claims that youngsters are dragged from their beds in the middle of the night, have their wrists bound behind their backs, and are blindfolded and made to kneel or lie face down in military vehicles.

Los Angeles officials have voted unanimously to approve stricter enforcement of the federal Clean Air Act, including a provision that requires coal-fired plants to reduce mercury and other toxic air pollution.

Environmental groups applauded the decision, saying ending the use of coal will improve health and bring clean energy jobs to the region.

In the annals of impossible assignments, Dave Voth's ranked high. In 2009 the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives promoted Voth to lead Phoenix Group VII, one of seven new ATF groups along the Southwest border tasked with stopping guns from being trafficked into Mexico's vicious drug war.

Some call it the "parade of ants"; others the "river of iron." The Mexican government has estimated that 2,000 weapons are smuggled daily from the U.S. into Mexico. The ATF is hobbled in its effort to stop this flow. No federal statute outlaws firearms trafficking, so agents must build cases using a patchwork of often toothless laws.