In the race to see which would be discounted more quickly, Cheney’s freedom won out over cheap Chinese toys at Christmas season: the final price for Cheney’s freedom is $35 million.

• I still think Lucy’s going to show up.
• Halliburton forks over $35M for Dick.
• Shorter Lindsey Graham: Wah!
• Haley Barbour flip-flops on hate groups.
• But…but…Al Gore is fat.
• Damn purists, dragging the President down.

John Wesley was apparently a communist dupe, a century too early.

Suburban Housewife Suzy Jenkins — A Mother Effin’ Christmas Story. Directed, Performed and Written by comedian Sally Brooks.

This solstice, let us make wishes for ourselves, for our neighborhoods, cities, states, and countries. . . and the world.

According to the Congressional Oversight Panel, over 29,000 Americans in “trial” HAMP modifications with servicers have been stuck in this limbo for over a year. The HAMP rules dictate that trial modifications last only 3 months. But for (at least) 29,000, those trial mods have lasted four times as long, with no end in sight.

You see, it’s okay for the telecoms to block or throttle wireless access, because the openness of the Android operating system will magically cancel out any closedness of the spectrum. Awesome!

Judge Vaugn Walker has issued an extremely significant decision in the illegal wiretapping case of al-Haramain v. Bush/Obama. He has awarded damages and attorney fees to the plaintiffs on their claims of illegal and unconstitutional surveillance by the US government.

In other words: Combatant Status Review Tribunals/Administrative Review Boards 2.0: Now With Lawyers. And that means the executive is going to have to come up with another series of rules, from scratch, to govern this review process. The courts have accepted — to the dismay of civil libertarians — wide prerogative for the executive in detention. But they’ve taken a dim view of ad-hoc solutions.

The FCC officially approved rules that reportedly provide net neutrality protections to wireline Internet but not wireless services, and which include a host of loopholes for both types of service.