The recession is hitting the U.S. Postal Service, the nation's third-largest employer. From holiday cards to credit card offers, mail volume is down. Stephen Kearney, senior vice president of customer relations for the Postal Service, says the drop in mail volume "accelerated throughout the year ... Our mail volume had its greatest decline since the Great Depression." In the fiscal year that ended in September, mail carriers delivered 9.5 billion fewer letters and packages than the year before. Kearney says the Postal Service made aggressive cuts and still lost $2.8 billion. For now, Kearney says the Postal Service is adjusting routes to reflect the reduced mail volume, offering early retirement to employees and changing operations at sorting facilities from 24 to 18 hours per day. There haven't been any layoffs, but through the trims, the Postal Service has cut the equivalent of more than 20,000 jobs. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99027132

Significant dates in postal history
1775 - Benjamin Franklin appointed first Postmaster General by the Continental Congress
1847 - U.S. postage stamps issued
1855 - Prepayment of postage required
1860 - Pony Express began
1863 - Free city delivery began
1873 - U.S. postal cards issued
1874 - General Postal Union (now Universal Postal Union) established
1893 - First commemorative stamps issued
1896 - Rural free delivery began
1913 - Parcel Post® began
1918 - Scheduled airmail service began
1950 - Residential deliveries reduced to one a day
1957 - Citizens' Stamp Advisory Committee established
1963 - ZIP Code inaugurated
1970 - Express Mail® began experimentally
1971 - United States Postal Service® began operations
1971 - Labor contract negotiated through collective bargaining, a federal government "first"
1974 - Self-adhesive stamps tested
1982 - Last year Postal Service™ accepted public service subsidy
1983 - ZIP+4® Code began
1992 - Self-adhesive stamps introduced nationwide
1993 - National Postal Museum opened
1994 - Postal Service launched public Internet site
1998 - U.S. semipostal stamp issued
2006 - Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act signed
2007 - “Forever” stamp issued
2008 - Competitive pricing for expedited mail began
http://www.usps.com/postalhistory/significant_dates_in_postal_history.htm?from=postalhistory&page=significantdates

Q. What is a semipostal stamp?
A. Semipostal stamps are stamps that are sold for a price that exceeds the postage value of the stamp. The difference between the price and postage value of semipostal stamps, also known as the differential, less an offset for reasonable costs, as determined by the Postal Service, consists of a contribution to fund causes determined by the Postal Service to be in the national public interest and appropriate.
http://law.justia.com/us/cfr/title39/39-1.0.1.7.44.html

Legal research site, including U.S. District Court cases and over a thousand law blogs (blawgs). http://www.justia.com/

About Justia, an alternative to Westlaw and Lexis: Justia is focused on making legal information, resources and services easy to find on the Internet. The company provides Internet users with free case law, codes, regulations, legal articles and legal blog databases, as well as community resources. http://company.justia.com/about.html

EPA Issues Interim Drinking Water Health Advisory for Perchlorate
Follow up to previous postings on perchlorate contamination of drinking water, EPA has issued an interim health advisory to assist state and local officials in addressing local contamination of perchlorate in drinking water. The interim health advisory level of 15 micrograms per liter (µg/L), or parts per billion (ppb), is based on the reference dose recommended by the National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). The Agency is also seeking advice from the NAS before making a final regulatory determination on whether to issue a national regulation for perchlorate in drinking water.
Interim Drinking Water Health Advisory for Perchlorate (49 pages, PDF), December 2008, EPA 822-R-08-25 Questions and Answers

GAO Report: Framework for Crafting and Assessing Proposals to Modernize the Outdated U.S. Financial Regulatory System
Financial Regulation: A Framework for Crafting and Assessing Proposals to Modernize the Outdated U.S. Financial Regulatory System, GAO-09-216, January 08, 2009
"To help policymakers better understand existing problems with the financial regulatory system and craft and evaluate reform proposals, this report (1) describes the origins of the current financial regulatory system, (2) describes various market developments and changes that have created challenges for the current system, and (3) presents an evaluation framework that can be used by Congress and others to shape potential regulatory reform efforts." Related postings on financial system

span-new (span-noo, -nyoo) adjective: brand-new.
From Middle English spannewe, from Old Norse spannyr, from spann (chip of wood) + nyr (new). Ultimately from the Indo-European root newo- (new) that also gave us new, neo-, neon, novice, novel, novelty, innovate, and renovate. The same term appears in the phrase spick-and-span-new which was later shortened into spick-and-span. A spick is a spike; a spick-and-span-new ship referred to a brand new ship, one that is made up of new nails and new wood. A.Word.A.Day

On January 10, 1776 an anonymous pamphlet was published, 46 pages long, in Philadelphia. The pamphlet was called "Common Sense." It explained why the American colonies should declare independence from Great Britain. It was easy to understand, it was popular, and it rallied many people for the revolutionary cause who had not been involved before they read it. It was written by a man who had been born and raised in England and had come to America only about a year before. He had lost his job in England, his marriage had fallen apart, he wanted a new life. In London, he happened to meet Benjamin Franklin, who suggested he move to America. That man was Thomas Paine. "Common Sense" sold 500,000 copies in its first year after publication, at a time when about two and a half million people lived in the 13 colonies. Thomas Paine donated all the royalties to George Washington's Continental Army.
January 10 is the birthday of poet Robinson Jeffers, (books by this author) born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, in 1887. He moved to the coast of California and built himself an observation tower with no electricity or plumbing. And from there, he looked out at the world and wrote his poems.
January 11 is the birthday of the man on the $10 bill, Alexander Hamilton, born in the British West Indies in 1755. He set up the national treasury, the national bank, the first budgetary and tax systems, and wrote the majority of the Federalist Papers, the foundation for the U.S. Constitution.
January 12 the birthday of novelist Haruki Murakami, (books by this author) born in Kyoto, Japan (1949). His characters are often intelligent introverts who get mixed up with mysterious women and conspiracies. Murakami believes that to write well it is critical to be in good physical shape. He said in an interview, "I write weird stories. Myself, I'm a very realistic person. I wake up at 6 in the morning and go to bed at 10, jogging every day and swimming, eating healthy food. But when I write, I write weird."
His books include A Wild Sheep Chase (1982), The Wind-up Bird Chronicle (1995), and Kafka on the Shore (2005). The Writer’s Almanac