Cody Taylor

Under criticism for its oversight of the federal bailout program, the Treasury Department plans to examine more closely whether institutions that receive money use it to boost lending.

If you like Comedy Central shows but always wished you could clearly see each and every pore on Cartmans face, you’ll be pleased to learn that a high-definition version of the network is hitting TVs today.COMEDY CENTRAL HD will offer close to 200 hours of programming innative high definition, including almost 30 past episodes of the Emmy®and Peabod

coondoggie writes “The Federal Trade Commission said a group of telephone scammers will pay out nearly million to settle charges they deceived over a million people in a bank information fraud scheme. As is unfortunately the situation in many of these case, the million restitution, while substantial, is dwarfed by the almost 2 million the FTC says Suntasia Marketing bilked out of its victims.” The company used “negative option” programs, including memberships in discount buyer’s and travel clubs, to keep dinging victims’ bank accounts. The FTC said the eight interrelated companies running the scam employed more than 1,000 people.

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The United States spent at least $US52 billion ( billion) on nuclear-related programs last year, most of it to maintain and refurbish its arsenal of nuclear weapons, a report has said.

heybus writes “Economist Dean Baker, best known for calling the housing bust and warning of the ensuing economic collapse, has just published his recommendations for how to allocate President-elect Obama’s estimated 0 billion economic stimulus plan. Among other things, Baker calls for juicing the economy with billion worth of government spending to support the development of free and open source software. Baker’s idea is similar to the New Deal federal arts and writers’ projects: the government would fund projects as long as they produce freely available code. In addition to employing programmers, ‘the savings [to consumers] in the United States alone could easily exceed the cost of supporting software development.'”

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The TiVo senior programmer from San Jose spent a week modifying his 25-year-old washing machine to send a message to Twitter when his laundry is ready.

Discussing the wiretapping program on Bill Bennett’s radio show today, Vice President Cheney called the program “important,” adding that it “always aggravated” him that the Times was rewarded for its reporting.