Morning Swim: New Year’s Eve Edition

"What’s happening in the news?" you ask on this last day of 2008. Take a look:

• The Fed wants to buy $500 billion in mortgage-backed securities by mid ‘09.
   
• McCain’s "friend" Vicki Iseman filed a $27 million defamation lawsuit against the New York Times.
   
• Congress is giving to those that are most needy. Themselves.
   
• The nuclear powered aircraft carrier George H. W. Bush will be commissioned on January 10th.
   
• Israeli official: "There is no intention of stopping the military activity," a ground operation is still "on the table." Cease-fire rejected.
   
• The end is nigh: Utah scientists studying unusual Yellowstone earthquakes.
   
• A federal judge sides with BushCo: U.S. is properly holding two Guantánamo detainees as enemy combatants.
   
• Democrats are under pressure to keep Roland Burris from serving in the Senate.
   
• Six degrees of Kevin Bacon: Bacon burned by Madoff’s scheme.
   

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