Ah, Oregon:

But assembling the video was about as tricky an undertaking as as one can imagine. First, Smith had to sell his colleagues on the joke–which wasn’t as hard as he initially feared. Most of his fellow lawmakers–at the time, the legislature was split evenly, with 30 Democrats and 30 Republicans–knew of Astley’s 1987 hit and understood the basic concept of a “Rick Roll,” he insists. “I pitched the idea to a few members, and they liked it,” he recalls.

But Smith–who developed the concept with his wife, a few colleagues and several friends, one of whom is video editor–had a few rules about the joke. The lines had to be delivered on the House floor during a lawmaker’s regular floor speech–which is, under Oregon law, videotaped for public records purposes. And the lines of the lyrics had to be spread out, so as not to tip off the state House clerk or other observers to what lawmakers were up to.

If the lawmaker who had this idea has a blog, there had better be an awesome post about it.

Who wants to try this with the U.S. House? Any takers?

Read the original article on Yahoo News here.

Glenn Greenwald:

On Friday, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley denounced the conditions of Bradley Manning’s detention as “ridiculous, counterproductive and stupid,” forcing President Obama to address those comments in a Press Conference and defend the treatment of Manning. Today, CNN reports, Crowley has “abruptly resigned” under “pressure from White House officials because of controversial comments he made last week about the Bradley Manning case.” In other words, he was forced to “resign” — i.e., fired.

Boy, we sure did get that change we were looking for in government, didn’t we?

Rev. Joseph Tracy said he’s tired of going to funerals. And now, he suspects he’ll be going to more of them.

“It’s open field day now,” said Tracy, the pastor of Straightway Baptist Church here. “The criminals are going to run wild.”

The pastor voiced his fear of a spike in crime on Friday at a raucous special City Council meeting at which East St. Louis Mayor Alvin Parks announced that the city will lay off 37 employees, including about one-third of its police officers.

In total, 19 of the city’s 62 police officers, 11 firefighters, four public works employees and three administrators will lose their job in the layoffs that take effect Sunday.

At this point, they might as well just build a wall around East St. Louis and be done with it. This is appalling.

There are lots of good people in East St. Louis who have tried very hard to improve the conditions there. It’s a shame they don’t have a government that supports those efforts adequately.

(via St. Louis Post-Dispatch.)