First we’ll start with a definition of Emoluments. Basically it means compensation.

Next, the Emoluments clause of the Constitution. It’s in Article I, section 6:

No Senator or Representative shall, during the Time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil Office under the Authority of the United States, which shall have been created, or the Emoluments whereof shall have been encreased during such time.

Basically, it prohibits sitting members of congress from creating a sweet government job (or upping the pay for an existing job) and then stepping into it. Seeing as how this was included in the actual text of the Constitution, as opposed to being just a regular old law, I would guess that kind of shenanigan was commonplace under the old British system.

Now, why it matters (or actually doesn’t):

George Bush signed an executive order that upped the pay for the Secretary of State. This action happened while Hillary Clinton was a Senator.

So, a very literal reading of the Emoluments clause would find that because Ms. Clinton was a Senator, and during the time she was elected the emoluments of the civil office that she would be appointed to (SOS) increased (or encreased, if you will), then the appointment of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State would be unconstitutional.

Now, before you start getting huffy, I have not heard this case seriously argued, and I seriously doubt that any legitimate source would do so. The commentary I’ve seen has all been from a “hmmm, that’s interesting” perspective.

Obviously, the fact that Clinton herself did not vote to increase the SOS salary and the fact that the salary is not a major consideration in her decision whether or not to take the job makes clear that her appointment would not be in violation of the spirit of the law.

But, I find it interesting nonetheless.

Actually, I’m reasonably certain that George Bush knew how the election was going to turn out (because Halliburton told him), so he gave Condoleezza Rice a raise to prevent Hillary Clinton’s enevitable appointment. Obviously.

Source: The Volokh Conspiracy

So the title of this post was supposed to be “Google Flu – not a computer virus” but I decided to make it be a warning for Kalena to not read this post because I’d rather she didn’t spend 24 hours a day seeing if MN’s flu risk has changed… so, baby, go read LOLCats instead, please.

So Google has developed a site tracking nation wide flu trends. They claim to be 2 weeks ahead of the CDC. Basically, they are just tracking search terms that tend to indicate people have the flu and then are compiling the data. It’s really quite genius, though Lemm and I agree, now that they have made the information public, it could suffer from Heisenberg principle.

At the moment, Virginia and Kentucky are at moderate risk, and the rest of the nation is at low or lower.

Source – Lemm and Google-flu

Yes, the Presidential residence in Argentina is called The Pink House. Or actually, Casa Rosada, since they speak Spanish.

It’s really pink.

The current resident of the Pink House is Cristina Elizabeth Fernández de Kirchner. Before she was President she was the First Lady. The Constitution of Argentina requires term limits, but allows a previous President to run again after sitting out for 4 years. So when her husband reached the end of his term, he just ran his wife instead. He’ll probably run again next time.

I should point out that she was a Senator in addition to being First Lady, so maybe she won on her own merits, but the more you dig in to this scenario the more it starts to smell.

Unlike the last female world leader that I wrote about, I won’t be so effusive with praise on this one. The photographic evidence is much less clear cut, and sometimes contradictory. Specifically, what’s up with the 3rd pic? Anyway, you be the judge.

Source: Here’s an article for reference

Airline Flight Crews may only work 30 hours every 7 days, and no more than 100 hours a month. Time spent waiting on the tarmac counts.

So, if the flight crew on your flight previously had a long delay, and working your flight would put them over their hours, the airline may just cancel the flight.

Source: Nerdular Nerdance

I don’t know if the animal was named after the trait, or the trait named after the animal, but the fact remains that the perception of Sloths (the animals) is that they are lazy.

Turns out that’s not so true.

Wild sloths only sleep for 10 hours a day, which is waaaaaaay less than The Wife^®‘s cat¹ does. Sloths in captivity, however, sleep for 16 hours a day.

The difference: food. The captive sloths don’t have to search for food, so they can just chill. Those in the wild have to get their own food, since there are no fast food joints in the wild. Therefore, they sleep less.

Source: Nerdular Nerdance

¹After the Cat learned how to open the screen door, she learned how to climb the fence in the backyard. So for the time being, she is firmly The Wife^®‘s cat.

Yeah, yeah, I know it’s in the Constitution. But, as I’ve already explained, I went to public schools. We didn’t learn about frivolous things like the Constitution.

Article 1, Section 5 of the US Constitution:

“Each House shall be the Judge of the Elections, Returns, and Qualifications of it’s own Members…”

This means that the Senate has the ability to contest the results of an election, and, in extreme cases, refuse to seat the Senator.

In 1926, they actually reversed the election results and gave the seat to the challenger. In 1974 they asked the state to redo the election, when the final result was within 2 votes.

The Senate also has the power to seat someone temporarily if the election results are not settled by the time the Senate convenes for a new term. This was done as recently as 1997.

Hopefully, the drama in MN will be settled by January. If not, it should at least be interesting to watch.

Source: MSNBC via True North

And I’m talking just the city of Minneapolis. The City of Lakes, Crime, and Terrible Mayors has 372,833 residents. Iceland has 304,367.

The two entities are tied on extremely eccentric music stars at one a piece (Prince and Bjork, respectively). Iceland wins on cool accents.

Iceland is having a little trouble at the moment. Since their economy isn’t all that big, their banks were pretty aggressive with investments in other countries. That didn’t work out so well. Now the government has seized the three largest banks, the currency (the krona) is imploding, and citizens are marching on the capitol.

Estimate are that at least one third of the citizenry is in danger of losing their homes and life savings. Ugh. At least there are several layers between R.T. and the economy at large.

Source: This article started it all. Wiki gave me the Minneapolis population, and my favoritist site on the whole world wide web, The CIA World Fact Book, gave me the rest.

Tom Cruise has a new flop of a movie coming out, called Valkyrie. It’s based, most likely loosely, on a saga surrounding a plan that the German Government had during WWII called Operation Valkyrie. The plan was for the continuation of government in case of a major meltdown due to Allied bombings or uprising of prisoners.

A few hundred ineffective and, I suppose, well-intentioned operatives within the government used the planning of Operation Valkyrie to secretly develop a plan to assassinate Hitler. Basically, they were developing the plans for a brand new government under the auspices of developing a continuation plan for the existing government. Hitler knew all about Operation Valkyrie, he just didn’t know about the secret part of the plan that involved someone killing him.

However, there were a few problems with their assassination plan. One, it failed miserably. Two, they put it in motion in July of 1944. You know, after the war had been going on for several years already, and only after the tide starting turning against Germany. The war was over less than a year later. Oh, and did I mention that it failed miserably?

The assassin put a bomb under a conference table, and then left the room. The bomb blew up, but no one bothered to make sure Hitler was dead before they started half-ass attempts to try to put Valkyrie into motion. One guy went in to arrest a high ranking Nazi official, and found him talking to Hitler on the phone when he got there. He was subsequently shot.

And since the war was basically lost by the time they got around to acting, Hitler had plenty of time to focus on tracking down all of the co-conspirators (a few hundred in all) and their families and seeking his revenge (you know, since he didn’t need to bother with war planning anymore).

But for the shining example of how feckless a group these guys were- several of them even botched their own suicides. One of them tried to shoot himself in the head, and missed twice. He was a high ranking member of the military, and was being given the option to end it himself as a matter of courtesy. Eventually a low ranking soldier in the room had to finish him off.

Another shot himself in the chest – twice – but failed to finish the job. The police had come to the door to arrest him, and he ran to his study to grab his gun. He was arrested, nursed back to health, then tortured.

There were several other stories of these guys being unable to seal the deal. It’s rather sad, actually.

So the lesson here- if you are going to plan an assassination, make sure the guy actually dies. Oh, and save your money on Valkyrie. Who wants to watch a movie about a bunch of losers who failed to take down a brutal dictator. And it’s not like they were motivated out of outrage over war atrocities. They were upset they were losing the game and wanted to replace the coach. It’s not even a good story.

Source: The History Channel

People make jewelry boxes out of Ostrich Eggs.

A particularly ornate example is pictured here.

I watched a woman do it on How It’s Made. It was awesome. You drain the egg through a hole in the bottom, then cut it in half, paint it, and decorate.

Source: How It’s Made on The Science Channel.

I got this news from a forward, which I immediately Snopes’d. It is actually listed as false, but there is some truth to it. The scenario is that you are alone and having a heart attack; what do you do? Well, you make yourself cough! Actually, that method can help you, and has been used as treatment with medical professionals around. What makes it false on Snopes is that it isn’t an approved method of treatment (which is says it is in the forward) and it isn’t approved because if you are having a heart attack that doesn’t result in cardiac arrest, it can cause more damage then good. So – causing yourself to cough while having a heart attack may help, but probably don’t try it unless you are instructed by a medical professional.

Source: some e-mail forward and Snopes