WASHINGTON (AP) -- Tests performed before the deadly blowout of BP's oil well in the Gulf of Mexico should have raised doubts about the cement used to seal the well, but the company and its cementing contractor used it anyway, investigators with the president's oil spill commission said Thursday.
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BP and Halliburton decided to use a foam slurry created by injecting nitrogen into cement to secure the bottom of the well, a decision outside experts have criticized.

The panel said that of four tests done in February and April by Halliburton, only one -- the last -- showed the mix would hold. But the results of that single successful test were not shared with BP, and may not have reached Halliburton, before the cement was pumped, according to a letter sent to commissioners Thursday by chief investigative counsel Fred H. Bartlit Jr.

BP had in hand at the time of the blowout the results of only one of the tests -- a February analysis sent to BP by Halliburton in a March 8 e-mail that indicated the cement could fail. The slurry tested in that case was a slightly different blend, and assumed a slightly different well design, but there is no indication that Halliburton flagged the problem for BP, or that BP had concerns, the letter said.

"quiet, behind-the-scenes effort to help draft and pass Arizona Senate Bill 1070 by an industry that stands to benefit from it: the private prison industry."

SAO PAULO (AP) -- A Brazilian court ruled this week that McDonald's must pay a former franchise manager $17,500 because he gained 65 pounds (30 kilograms) while working there for a dozen years.

The 32-year-old man said he felt forced to sample the food each day to ensure quality standards remained high, because McDonald's hired "mystery clients" to randomly visit restaurants and report on the food, service and cleanliness.

The principal of a Cincinnati Catholic school has apologized to parents after Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-Ohio) discussed abortion during a speech to kids as young as 6. HuffPo

The 2010 election will be the most expensive non-presidential contest, and spending might reach $4 billion by Election Day, a Washington research group said.

The Center for Responsive Politics reported today that federal candidates, parties and outside groups have spent more than $2.8 billion, matching the figure from the 2006 midterm elections with a week to go in the campaign.

If the center's projection of a $4 billion election holds, it would be the third most expensive ever, trailing only the 2004 and 2008 presidential contests. Bloomberg

October 27, 2010 - Washington Ledge

The upshot of the 130-page report is that a Seattle-based political consultant allegedly shuffled campaign donations through several Political Action Committees (PACs) in an effort to conceal the backers - labor unions and trial lawyers - of a stealth "attack from the right" on Senator Jean Berkey during last August's primary election.

Dem backers posing as a conservative outfit sponsored a Get Out The Republican Vote mailer and robo-calls program in an effort to deny one particular (D) candidate enough primary votes for a place in a top-two election.  Since the democrat in question came up about 122 votes short of the republican candidate, the ruse appears to have been successful.  But now the previously concealed identities of the backers and the disclosure camoflage methods are being revealed.

Tuesday is going to be that kind of election, folks.

(CNN) - Former President Bill Clinton says he talked to Rep. Kendrick Meek about ending his bid for Senate twice, but that he never discussed the issue with the White House.

"He was trying to determine what was the best thing for him to do," Clinton said in an interview with CNN's Susan Candiotti Thursday. "I knew it was being discussed, people had discussed it on and off... it was no secret."

Clinton said Meek did not have enough money to break through in the polls.

"He was trying to think about what was the best thing for Florida," Clinton said.

Media Post  reports a horrible story about a mother who allegedly killed her baby for interrupting her playtime in the Facebook game, FarmVille.

Alexandra V. Tobias entered a guilty plea in court this week for the January murder of her infant son Dylan Lee Edmondson. The 22-year-old Jacksonville, Florida mother lost her temper when her child began crying while she was playing FarmVille on Facebook, according to the report. Enraged, she shook the baby once, smoked a cigarette, and then shook the baby again.

Personal political ideology could be shaped by a combination of factors, including the number of friends one has during adolescence and whether or not a person posses a specific dopamine receptor gene.

A trio of University of California, San Diego researchers, in conjunction with a Harvard University participant, examined the subject in a research paper entitled Friendships Moderate an Association between a Dopamine Gene Variant and Political Ideology.

You're likely to think that political leanings are influenced by parental units, but these researchers claim that evidence from recent studies indicate that "the mechanism by which parents pass their ideology to their children may in part be due to heredity, and that political attitudes themselves are genetically influenced."

The researchers explain:

   ... we hypothesize that the combination of an innate desire for novel experience and many friends may contribute to the activation of a liberal ideology. People who have many friends may nonetheless remain uninterested in their friends' point of view. Alternatively, people who crave new experiences may not get them from their social context if they have only a few friends.