Record prices have prompted a slew of bills to curtail the role of investors, but traders say they could backfire:

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Fed up with soaring oil prices and a chorus of people blaming Wall Street speculators, Congress is considering a host of rules aimed at limiting the inflow of investor money into oil contracts.

But oil traders urge caution. While more disclosure is a good thing, they say making it harder for speculators to invest in oil futures could have the opposite effect intended, and send prices higher.

In light of oil’s phenomenal climb from under $50 a barrel to nearly $140 in less than 18 months - and the public belief that Wall Street traders were behind the rise - Congress is awash in bills that attempt to limit the role of speculators. Several have bipartisan support and could soon become law.

“In two days, the price of oil rose $16,” said Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., at a joint hearing of two Senate panels on oil speculation Tuesday. “Did I miss something, was there some war in the Middle East?”

Read More…

http://dcist.com/…

This is pretty good: Fox 5’s Tom Fitzgerald decided to do a report on the ongoing harassment of photographers inside D.C.’s busy Union Station, a topic we’ve written about and heard about from our own Flickr contributors many times before. While he was there interviewing Amtrak’s spokesperson on the subject, who in fact told the reporter that photography is absolutely allowed inside the Amtrak portion of the station, a security guard came up to the Fox 5 crew and told them turn their cameras off. You can watch the report here. Interestingly enough, the company that owns the mall area of Union Station never got back to Fox 5 to clarify their policy.

If we can get the photography protesters to be consistent and persistent we could reverse this. It’s more likely to get this than the bikers.

http://www.cnn.com/…

The state of Texas should not have removed more than 400 children it took from a polygamist sect’s ranch, an appeals court ruled Thursday.

Earlier this year, authorities raided the Yearning for Zion ranch in Eldorado, Texas, after they received reports of child abuse.

About 460 children were taken from the ranch, which is run by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a polygamist sect linked to the jailed “prophet” Warren Steed Jeffs.

Parents have denied the claims of abuse and have been fighting to get their children back.

This is a great turn of events. Just in the past days I’ve heard that another court in Texas hearing some part of this case told the mothers that if they wanted their children back they’d have to repudiate their religion. As I understand it that’s an unforgivable sin, blasphemy. If true that’s absolutely disgusting. Effectively asking them to choose between eternal damnation or their child. In any case this ruling is the first positive thing to come out of this travesty. Hopefully it continues on this new path. Unfortunately even if nothing is ever found likely no one from the State will be held responsible for this. No charges will be brought or if they are nothing will come from it. No restitution. The Nuremberg defense will be used and at worst maybe a reprimand or a bureaucrat or two will loose their job. Nothing however to change the likely pre-existing belief the FLDS had that the modern world was controlled by Satan. They have no doubt now.

It bugs me that as much as the MSM talks about this case they still don’t really mention that the original call was a fake. That the whole operation was completely unfounded. That several if not dozens of the women are over the age of 18 yet kept in custody as children. Likely they prefer to stay with the younger ones but it’s still disgusting.

Update:

Here is the AP version:

A state appellate court has ruled that child welfare officials had no right to seize more than 400 children living at a polygamist sect’s ranch.The Third Court of Appeals in Austin ruled that the grounds for removing the children were “legally and factually insufficient” under Texas law. They did not immediately order the return of the children.

Child welfare officials removed the children on the grounds that the sect pushed underage girls into marriage and sex and trained boys to become future perpetrators.

The appellate court ruled the chaotic hearing held last month did not demonstrate the children were in any immediate danger, the only measure of taking children from their homes without court proceedings.

http://abcnews.go.com/…

A half-dozen police officers kicked and beat three men pulled from a car during a traffic stop as a TV helicopter taped the confrontation.The video, shot by WTXF-TV, shows three police cars stopping a car Monday, two days after a city officer was shot to death responding to a bank robbery.

The tape shows about a dozen officers gathering around the vehicle. About a half-dozen officers hold two of the men on the ground. Both are kicked repeatedly, while one is seen being punched; one also appears to be struck with a baton.

The third man is also kicked and ends up on the ground.

“On the surface it certainly does not look good in terms of the amount of force that was used,” Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey said. “But we don’t want to rush to judgment.”

No need to rush to judgment… seems to me all the evidence necessary is right here. Five of these officers are off the street now… just not in a jail where they belong.

http://www.airforcetimes.com/…

Republicans receive the largest slice of presidential campaign contributions made by military members and their spouses, but leading anti-war candidates are getting a substantial cut, too, according to an independent analysis of political contributions.

From January 2007 through March of this year, service members or civilian employees of the military donated at least $766,000 to presidential candidates, according to data made available April 20 and provided by the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit research group in Washington.

The analysis included donations of at least $200 made by individuals who listed their employer as one of the four branches of the military - Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps - or the Coast Guard, National Guard, Army Air Force Exchange Service, armed forces or military.

These donors gave the largest amounts to Rep. Ron Paul, the long-shot Republican candidate from Texas who has acknowledged defeat in the nomination process but continues to campaign, and Sen. Barack Obama, the Democrat from Illinois.

During the reporting period, Paul - a former Air Force surgeon who broke with his party to vote against the Iraq war - received the most military contributions, with $201,271.

That’s significantly more than the presumptive Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain from Arizona, who received $132,133 from military donors, according to CRP.

“I think that our fighting men and women want to protect America, defend our Constitution and defend our borders,” said Jesse Benton, a spokesman for Rep. Paul’s campaign. “I think they’re sick and tired of being sent overseas on these police actions and getting caught in the middle of these civil wars, and want someone like Ron Paul speaking sense.

“They signed up to defend our country, not police the world,” Benton said, “and I think they’re hungry for leaders who do that.”

Obama, meanwhile, whose opposition to invading Iraq has been a centerpiece of his campaign, has received $178,456 in military contributions, compared to Sen. Hillary Clinton’s $85,000, the analysis shows.

“To see two anti-war candidates getting more money from the people fighting the war or providing support for the war effort was surprising to us,” said Massie Ritsch, communications director for the Center for Responsive Politics.

However, the donations cannot be considered representative of military employees’ political preferences as a whole because the analysis does not include donations of less than $200, the point at which campaign finance law requires campaigns to disclose the name of a donor and contribution amount. Thus, individuals who give less than $200 aren’t counted.

“The picture could be completely different if you were able to look at smaller donors,” Ritsch said. “You’re looking at a tiny slice of the military who have enough disposable income to donate to a candidate.”

Overall, military donors still favor Republicans to Democrats, 62 percent to 38 percent, according to CRP. But Ritsch said at the beginning of the war, three-quarters of military donors favored GOP candidates.

And you can bet this won’t get much MSM coverage.