A Massachusetts employment organization has canceled its annual job fair because not enough companies have come forward to offer jobs.

Richard Shafer, chairman of the Taunton Employment Task Force, says 20 to 25 employers are needed for the fair scheduled for April 6, but just 10 tables had been reserved. One table was reserved by a nonprofit that offers human services to job seekers, and three by temporary employment agencies.

President Obama said he stands by General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt as the head of his jobs council, despite revelations last week that GE didn't pay any corporate taxes last year. "Americans, I'm sure, who read that story and heard about it, are wondering how this could be," said White House Press Secretary Jay Carney. "And one of the reasons why it could be...is part of the problem of the corporate tax structure." link

I'll throw a dart at the wall and guess at somewhere between $750k and $1M up front before counsel lifts a finger.  When one gets down to figuring out how many hours are spent on case management conferences, motion hearings, and then trial preparation and trial, on a complicated case I could see 500 hours easily being spent before a single juror was seated and 1000 hours without a doubt before the jury got it.  Maybe even 1500 hours b/c there are so many charges.  I would think that during trial, 80 hours a week is pretty much a given, per lawyer.

And all that assumes the lead lawyer is doing all the work.  If I were defending such a case, I would want a pair of lawyers (one lead and a second-chair to deal with all the reasearch and such that would come up), so even at a lower rate for the second-chair, a million is easily needed.

The White House and Democratic lawmakers, with less than two weeks left to avoid a government shutdown, are assembling a proposal for roughly $20 billion in additional spending cuts that could soon be offered to Republicans, according to people close to the budget talks.

That would come on top of $10 billion in cuts that Congress has already enacted and would represent a deeper reduction than the Obama administration and Senate Democrats had offered previously in negotiations. But it isn't clear that would be enough to satisfy Republicans, who initially sought $61 billion in spending cuts and face pressure from tea-party activists not to compromise. link

After several kabuki performances,

Will the Budget Process End Where the House Leadership Started?

It's beginning to look like the 2011 federal budget process could degenerate into a passive compromise that ends up precisely where the House Republican leadership started out nearly two months ago. That would be a very strange outcome for the Senate Democrats and the president to allow.

How U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan murdered innocent civilians and mutilated their corpses - and how their officers failed to stop them. Plus: An exclusive look at the war crime photos censored by the Pentagon

prepare for horrific images and videos.  they repeat a little trick I have heard from my friends who were in VietNam:

Another photo of Afghan children. According to one soldier, members of 3rd Platoon also talked about a scenario in which they "would throw candy out in front and in the rear of the Stryker; the Stryker would then run the children over."

this was a new twist:

The photos collected by soldiers included many shots of local children, often filed alongside images of bloody casualties. At one point, soldiers in 3rd Platoon talked about throwing candy out of a Stryker vehicle as they drove through a village and shooting the children who came running to pick up the sweets.