Poor Mojo's Newswire

Here’s how it works: friends send you an e-mail message (or, on Facebook, “tag” you in a note posted to their profile) with 25 heartfelt observations about themselves — like “I named my son after a man I’ve never met” or “I once paid good money to see Whitesnake in concert” — along with instructions for you to follow suit. You are then expected to gin up your own clever list and foist it upon 25 people, including the friend who asked for it in the first place. Unlike the chain letters of yesteryear, no money changes hands and no one is threatened with apocalyptic bad luck for refusing to comply. Yet the practice has spread so far and so fast that a Google search for “25 Random Things About Me” yields 35,700 pages of results, almost all of which seem to have been created in the last two weeks.

Almost unanimously, the House of Representatives adopted a bill late Tuesday night aiming to help people remove themselves from the flawed US "terror watch list." The bill, sponsored by Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-NY), passed 413-3. The bill requires Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to establish a "timely and fair" appeal process and provide relief for those wrongly delayed or prevented from boarding a flight. Its passage reflects a widespread belief that the list has caused undue difficulty for thousands of travelers -- many of whom were prevented from traveling simply because their names shared similarities with suspects.

Joining Maddow to discuss the issue was Scott Horton, a contributing editor with Harper's magazine. After the Times report on continued renditions, Horton went on a tear, saying the paper "just got punked" in a story titled, "Renditions Buffoonery." "The earlier renditions program regularly involved snatching and removing targets for purposes of bringing them to justice by delivering them to a criminal justice system," he wrote. "It did not involve the operation of long-term detention facilities and it did not involve torture. There are legal and policy issues with the renditions program, but they are not in the same league as those surrounding extraordinary rendition. Moreover, Obama committed to shut down the extraordinary renditions program, and continuously made clear that this did not apply to the renditions program. "In the course of the last week we’ve seen a steady stream of efforts designed to show that Obama is continuing the counterterrorism programs that he previously labeled as abusive and promised to shut down. These stories are regularly sourced to unnamed current or former CIA officials and have largely run in right-wing media outlets. However, now we see that even the Los Angeles Times can be taken for a ride."

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — South Carolina authorities in the county where Michael Phelps was spotted smoking from a marijuana pipe say they are considering a criminal charge against the Olympic superstar. Lt. Chris Cowan said Tuesday that Richland County sheriff's investigators are gathering more information about the photo, which showed the swimmer inhaling from a marijuana pipe. Cowan did not specify what charge was being considered and declined to discuss details of the investigation. The photograph was first shown in a British tabloid Sunday. News of the World said the picture was taken during a November house party while Phelps was visiting the University of South Carolina. Phelps and his advisers did not dispute the photo's authenticity. He has issued a public apology.

Immigration attorneys from Cohen & Grigsby explains how they assist employers in running classified ads with the goal of NOT finding any qualified applicants, and the steps they go through to disqualify even the most qualified Americans in order to secure green cards for H-1b workers. ... Microsoft, Oracle, Hewlett-Packard, and thousands of other companies are running fake ads in Sunday newspapers across the country each week.