We discovered under the paint that the clapboards on my old house are oak, though, which was a very nice surprise and explains why they're in such good shape overall.  The previous paint job, though, not so much.  The previous owners apparently used no primer and just slapped cheap paint on.  Plus they had crummy-looking decorative shutters at all the windows and lots of big heavy old (ugly) shrubs right up against the house, so the paint has been peeling prematurely from all the trapped moisture.  The shutters are now languishing in the barn and I took out the very sickly lilacs and other shrubs.

Shore Bancshares Inc., the Easton-based holding company of three banks on the Eastern Shore, said Wednesday that it repaid $25 million to the federal bank bailout program, buying back 25,000 preferred shares it had sold to the U.S. Treasury. The lender also paid accrued dividends of $208,333, according to a prepared statement. The company filed a notice last month with the Treasury to repay the Troubled Asset Relief Program funds. The company said then that the terms of TARP had changed and that the public wrongly views banks as weak if they accept public funds. Other banks also have returned funds.

Bloomberg News

The Justice Department has invoked the state secrets privilege in a bid to get a California federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit against National Security Agency electronic surveillance.

Department lawyers filed a memorandum to U.S. District Judge Vaughn R. Walker last Friday urging him to dismiss the lawsuit, Jewel v. NSA. It argued that litigating the case would require disclosure of classified information protected by the privilege.

The plaintiffs in the case, represented by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, are alleging that the NSA has surveilled not only the communications of suspected terrorists, but the telephone calls and emails of millions of Americans.

But the Justice Department -- buttressed by public and classfied declarations from Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair and NSA Chief of Staff Deborah A. Bonnani -- said the case shouldn't proceed

"Attempting to demonstrate that the (Terrorist Surveillance Program) was not the content dragnet plaintiffs allege, or that the NSA has not otherwise engaged in the alleged content dragnet, would require the disclosure of highly classified NSA intelligence sources and methods about the TSP and other NSA activities," the Justice Department told Walker.

Link

In my neck of the woods, (upstate New York around the capital), I have a hard time imagining a law enforcement officer getting suspended (even with pay) for this.

Aside from the embarrassment factor for the department, and the insensitivity factor for the victim's survivors...

Does this surprise anyone else?

The National Security Agency intercepted private e-mail messages and phone calls of Americans in recent months on a scale that went beyond the broad legal limits established by Congress last year, according to government officials.

Several intelligence officials, as well as lawyers briefed about the matter, said the N.S.A. had been engaged in "over-collection" of domestic communications of Americans. They described the practice as significant and systemic, although one official said it was believed to be unintentional.

[snip]

The overcollection problems appear to have been uncovered as part of a twice-annual certification that the Justice Department and the director of national intelligence are required to give to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on the protocols that the N.S.A. is using in wiretapping. That review, officials said, began in the waning days of the Bush administration and was continued by the Obama administration. It led intelligence officials to realize that the N.S.A. was improperly capturing information involving significant amounts of American traffic.