> A top House Democrat said Tuesday that tax increases will eventually be necessary to address the nation’s mounting debt, raising a difficult election-year issue as Democrats fight retain control of Congress. > > In the near term, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer raised the possibility that Congress will only temporarily extend middle-class tax cuts set to expire at the end of the year. He pointedly suggested that making them permanent would be too costly. via [sfgate.com](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2010/06/22/national/…

> Roughly multiply that revenue by 50 states, and you quickly get an idea why red-light cameras designed by companies like Arizona’s Redlfex Group and American Traffic Solutions (ATS) are an increasingly attractive crutch for America’s cash-strapped cities. But they’re unsafe short-cuts, because they haven’t necessarily proven very effective at anything other than generating ticket revenue — and accidents, lots of accidents. In fact, [studies have repeatedly shown](http://techdirt.com/articles/20080410/011257809.shtml) that red-light cameras can cause more accidents, not less. via [alternet.org](http:…

So it looks like an atheist group is challenging a new Irish law that gives the government the power to enforce a much older law against blasphemy. http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/04/new-irish-blasphemy-law-broken/?p… Seriously? We haven’t had enough trouble with religious nut jobs in recent years to realize that religion is the problem, not the solution? This quote from Michael Nugent, co-founder of Atheist Ireland says it well: “medieval religious laws have no place in a modern secular republic, where the criminal law should protect…