AERIAL PHOTOGRAPHS of U.S. Intelligence Agencies.

PERSECUTION: Rodrigo Sermeño: ‘No Christian Is Exempt’: Persecution Worldwide Still Rampant, Congress Told.

BRYAN PRESTON: Battleground Texas, the Texas Media, and Wendy’s Choice.

James O’Keefe and his Project Veritas captured Battleground Texas organizer Jennifer Langoria admitting that the group uses its voter registration drives as data-mining operations for their political operations. Whatever one thinks of Project Veritas, it did not put words into Battleground Texas’ mouth.

“So every time we register someone to vote we keep their name and number,” Langoria says.

According to Texas election law, it is unlawful to transcribe, copy, or otherwise record a telephone number furnished on a voter registration application.

Battleground Texas has, therefore, been caught in what appears to be election fraud.

It’s not the first time. Earlier this year, Project Veritas captured a Battleground Texas volunteer discussing forging a signature on official voting documents. “It happens all the time,” she said.

It’s also illegal. Project Veritas did not put those words into the mouth of that Battleground Texas volunteer.

Texas Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst and state Sen. Ken Paxton, candidate for attorney general, are calling for the group to be investigated.

The media in Texas have done their dead-level best to ignore both of Project Veritas’ videos as long as they possibly could. When the media here do cover them, they have tended to downplay the videos’ potential significance. The Texas Tribune even interviewed a Democrat election lawyer — but not a Republican one — to defend Battleground Texas’ actions seen in the Veritas video. The prevailing media opinion seems to be that, because leftwing outfits have often criticized Project Veritas, every story that it unearths is worthless or worse.

Leftwing outfits are often created expressly to attack Republicans and to defend Democrats and their allies. The media ignore that, too. Media often cite these leftwing groups as if they are non-partisan watchdogs, while either joining criticism of Project Veritas or downplaying what the group finds. This is neither fair nor balanced journalism.

Nope, but they’re not journalists, they’re Democratic operatives with bylines.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Why your cable bills are so high, and what you can do.

SCIENCE: The only three groups who significantly tend to view astrology as less scientific are conservative Republicans, Republicans, and conservatives.

AT AMAZON, coupons galore in Grocery & Gourmet Food.

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HMM: Apocalypse soon: Ukrainian president reportedly flees Kiev. Will “Eastern Ukraine” secede, become a Soviet satrapy? “All the makings of civil war are present, in other words, from powerful national sponsors to ethnic tensions between Russian descendants living in the country and native Ukrainians.”

SO I SPOKE ON THE HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE AT A CATO SHINDIG LAST NIGHT, and whoever chose the wine must have read my book:

I’VE ALWAYS THOUGHT DIET MATTERED MORE THAN EXERCISE FOR WEIGHT CONTROL, BUT THERE’S THIS: Average obese woman gets just 1 hour of exercise a year.

A new study suggests that obese women get just one hour of vigorous exercise a year, while obese men don’t do much better at fewer than four hours.

The findings startled the researchers, whose main focus was finding better ways to measure how much exercise people get.

“They’re living their lives from one chair to another,” said Edward Archer, a research fellow with the Nutrition Obesity Research Center at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. “We didn’t realize we were that sedentary. There are some people who are vigorously active, but it’s offset by the huge number of individuals who are inactive.”

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than one in three people in the United States is obese, a step above being overweight. Obesity boosts the risk of cardiovascular problems such as heart disease and stroke, diabetes and some cancers.

Even if you didn’t lose any weight, doing even an hour a week of vigorous exercise would do you a lot of good.

LIKE MARIE ANTOINETTE’S SHEPHERDESS ROUTINE: Minnesota Lawmakers Mock Poor with ‘Minimum Wage Challenge.’

GIRD YOUR LOINS: Viking apocalypse ‘Ragnarok’ due to arrive on February 22.

SIZE MATTERS: The case for (and against) a mini-er Mac Mini.

BENCHSLAP: Judge rips feds in Sherrod-Breitbart lawsuit. “A federal judge delivered a severe tongue-lashing to a Justice Department lawyer Thursday, slamming the Obama Administration for its handling of demands for government records in the libel lawsuit fired Agriculture Department employee Shirley Sherrod filed against conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart.”

I believe I said when this suit was filed that the discovery was likely to be interesting. If DOJ is stonewalling, it must be.

A SMALL VICTORY FOR FREEDOM: FCC throws out plan to question reporters about news coverage.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Harvard Survey of Big Law: What Courses Should Students Take?

AT AMAZON, coupons galore in Lawn, Patio & Garden. Summer is coming.

Plus, outlet deals on cell phones.

THIS IS FINE WITH ME: Why Your Car Won’t Get Remote Software Updates Anytime Soon.

Software is rapidly taking over not only the entertainment console in cars, but also basic functions such as steering, braking, and acceleration, as more cars come with features such as adaptive cruise control and automated parallel parking. This can make it easier to diagnose and fix problems, but it also increases the risk for software bugs or even malicious attacks that might cause serious injury. . . .

esearchers have shown that existing wireless connections can allow them to hack into cars and take control of car locks and brakes; and this summer hackers demonstrated how to take over a car and steer it, slam on the brakes, or tell drivers that a nearly empty gas tank is full. Charlie Miller, a computer security expert for Twitter, is one of the hackers who took control of two cars this summer to uncover vulnerabilities. He says that remote updates will add a new target for hackers. But he downplays the risk, noting that no malicious hackers have taken over cars, in part because there’s no economic reason to do so. And he says remote updating systems can be made secure—“It’s possible to screw it up. But it’s certainly possible to do it right,” he says.

That take seems quite optimistic to me.

WHY THERE ARE huge chunks of ice falling from One World Trade Center.

MICHAEL LEDEEN: What If We Were Winning But Nobody Noticed?

NATURAL INTELLIGENCE ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: A Review of Her By Ray Kurzweil.

ABOVE THE LAW: Tamara Tabo: Wendy Wants It Both Ways: Wendy Davis And Double Standards.

WOW: “Ikea uses a whopping one percent of the world’s wood supply.”

REMY: Working 9 to 5 (ObamaCare Remix.)

MITT ROMNEY, comeback kid?

ORWELLIAN: FCC TO “MONITOR” NEWS. What’s next, a Political Officer at each station?

Related: Howard Kurtz: The FCC Should Butt Out of America’s Newsrooms.