SPACE: Mars rover Opportunity finds sign of ‘water you could drink.’

PRIMATES: Apes and Human Babies Use Similar Gestures.

OH, GOOD GRIEF: Hayward school to sponsor toy gun exchange. “If we want older kids to not think guns are cool, we need to start early.” But wait, there’s more: After the kids surrender their toy guns, they’ll be fingerprinted and photographed. This is what happens when your schools are controlled by fanatical cultists.

UPDATE: First link was bad before. Fixed now. Sorry!

MASSACHUSETTS PUSHBACK: Bay State Dems dispute Obama’s data claims. “Massachusetts lawmakers say they had no idea the feds are collecting millions of phone records from ordinary Americans — pushing back against President Obama’s claims that all congressional members knew about the domestic spy program.”

GLENN DERENE: Why the NSA Prism Program Could Kill U.S. Tech Companies. “Spying on foreigners could create a terrible blowback to the U.S. economy. Has it really come to this? . . . If you lived in Japan, India, Australia, Mexico, or Brazil, and you used Gmail, or synced your photos through iCloud, or chatted via Skype, how would you feel about that? Let’s say you ran a business in those countries that relied upon information services from a U.S. company. Don’t these revelations make using such a service a business liability? In fact, doesn’t this news make it a national security risk for pretty much any other country to use information services from companies based in the U.S.? How should we expect the rest of the world to react? Here’s a pretty good guess: Other countries will start routing around the U.S. information economy by developing, or even mandating, their own competing services.”

UPDATE: A reader emails: “I’ve been wondering why nobody that I’ve read has connected this to Obama’s high tech campaign that won the election. Who could forget the picture of the crazy looking guy with the big hair,glasses and earrings who worked for Obama?”

MORE: Another reader writes:

I thought I was the only thinking such thoughts. The difference is I have been thinking them since the election and my first thought when I heard about the data sweep was the election. Here is why: The turnouts still make no sense to me. How does someone vote for McCain and not for Romney? I can’t get past that basic question. Since the election we have learned of the high tech wizardry of the Obama campaign, we know there was election fraud, we know Obama was effective in shaping Romney’s image using TV and early ads but I still can’t get past that basic question. So what if in addition to all I have just listed the wizardry was not solely used to predict the election and turn out the vote for Obama? What if data (from NSA or Google or Facebook or Apple) was used to reduce Romney’s turnout by identifying lukewarm voters and shaping social network messages with the intent of getting them to stay home? Not switching them, but just getting them to stay home. If you had enough of the right data for large enough of a population you could swing an election.

But wait there is more: Charles Martin wrote about this a bit, but I also was a volunteer for Romney’s high tech effort to get out the vote called Project Orca . It was such a disaster I have long believed there were several Obama moles on the Orca team and that they sabotaged it. Ok, I didn’t really believe that, but it was the best explanation I could come up with. The revelations in the last week have caused me to reassess and I now believe Orca was hacked. IE cyber sabotage. Which is the simplest explanation for the problems that I know about.

Well, it’s certainly nothing you can dismiss out of hand, at this point.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Chris Jefferson writes:

Please don’t let a former Romney operative blame the NSA or Google for the bill of goods that was sold to the hapless Mitt Romney by a school of K-Street sharks. They never even tested that thing to make sure that it worked.

But they all got paid! With money looted from faithful Romney contributors all over the country.

Orca was a disaster from the word “go”!

Well, that is certainly true.

AN UPDATE TO THE Rutgers-Camden Law story.

IOWAHAWK: Govt has to scrape all your phone calls and emails because govt forgot to enforce immigration law on 20 expired visas in 2001.

TAXPROF: A Month Of IRS Scandal: Day 30.

SCIENCE: Top Science Journal Rebukes Harvard’s Top Nutritionist.

BUT WE ARE GOING TO NEED A FIREWALL TO KEEP YOU FROM READING THOSE SUBVERSIVE BRITISH NEWSPAPERS: Obama rejects comparisons between Chinese cyber-spying and NSA programs.

A GOLD MEDAL IN THE HYPOCRISY OLYMPICS: Obama Tells Fatcat Donors Democrats Favor Free-Market Solutions and Less Government Regulation.

“IT DOESN’T STOP IN CINCINNATI:” Cleta Mitchell on how to investigate the IRS.

Ms. Mitchell says she learned this week that the IRS even intervened in the business dealings of a donor to conservative causes. “There were two public companies that were in the process of trying to do a merger and somehow the IRS stepped in and demanded all this information and said, ‘If you don’t give it to us we’ll stop this merger,’ ” she says. “But I cannot get [the donor] to come forward . . . ‘Look I’ve been through this hassle with the IRS. I don’t need any more.’ People are really afraid and the donors are the most afraid.”

See, it’s the IRS that should be afraid here, not its victims.

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Illinois Continues Its Sad, Slow Slide.

The Illinois pension saga just keeps getting worse. In response to the state legislature’s failure to pass a pension reform bill before adjourning, Fitch downgraded Illinois’s bonds from A to A- earlier this week. On Thursday Moody’s joined the party, lowering the state’s rating from A2 to A3. S&P is now the only agency not to have downgraded the state, but it is issuing its own dire warnings. As Reuters notes, Illinois now has the lowest credit rating of any state in the country even without the S&P downgrade, and the worst rating in its history.

The higher borrowing costs that accompany credit downgrades are bad news for a state already struggling with its finances. This fact is not lost on Governor Pat Quinn, who has called lawmakers back to Springfield for a special session to get something passed before the state is hit with another downgrade.

The Governor is right to be anxious for a budget fix. Illinois has allowed this problem to drag on far too long; each day of delay is costing taxpayers. Unfortunately, there’s still no reason to be optimistic that the special session will succeed where past efforts failed. The legislature has been trying to get a bill through for well more than a year now. Three different plans have come up for a vote in the last 12 months alone. If there’s a compromise solution out there somewhere, it has hidden itself very well.

Maybe that explains why House Speaker Michael Madigan isn’t answering his phone.

Would you?

NBC NEWS: Officials: NSA mistakenly intercepted emails, phone calls of innocent Americans.

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: Pakistan Summons U.S. Envoy Over Drone Strike That Kills 7.

WHEN BIG GOVERNMENT LOOKS BAD, THERE’S A NEGATIVE-HALO EFFECT: GOP Sen. Slams Immigration Bill, Citing NSA Controversy: Why Would That ‘Work Out Any Better?’ You can trust ’em like you can trust the IRS.

Related: Manchin: Obama Should Stop Broad-Based Surveillance Program.

AT AMAZON, up to 55% off on select DeWalt power tools.

Also, today only: Roku LT Streaming Player, $39.00 (22% off). I paid a lot more than that for my older-model Roku, and regard it as money well spent.

And, at the same link, a Lightning Deal good only for the next couple of hours: “Bond 50: The Complete 22 Film Collection” on Blu-ray, $129.99 (57% off).

PETER WEHNER: Obama Can’t Be Trusted With Power.