Street artist will get day in court for pasting up his art
Shepard Fairey is scheduled to face charges in a Boston courtroom on February 9 for allegedly pasting art without permission on two local sites that police discovered last month--one under the Boston University Bridge and the other above Storrow Drive.
Fairey was arrested February 6 just as he was about to enter the Institute of Contemporary Art for a scheduled performance. The artist, who lives in Los Angeles, rose to national fame last year for creating the red, white, and blue image of Barack Obama emblazoned with the word HOPE, iconography that was adopted and popularized by campaign supporters. http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/02/08/street_artist_will_get_day_in_court_for_pasting_up_his_art/

Book ban upheld
According to this account in the Miami Herald, the 11th Circuit ruled Thursday that the Miami-Dade School Board did not violate the Constitution in 2006 when it removed a controversial children’s book about Cuba from the public schools’ library system.
In a 2-1 decision, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta said the board did not breach the First Amendment, and ordered a Miami federal judge to lift a preliminary injunction that had allowed the book, called Vamos a Cuba to be checked out from school libraries. WSJ Law Blog February 6, 2009

The 2008 Bank Performance Scorecard: America's Top 150 Banks
Bank Direct Magazine: "There is not much flash and glitz among this year’s crop of top-performing U.S. banks and thrifts. But given all that’s occurred in the last six months, maybe slow and steady really is the name of the game. In fact, over a recent 12-month period, as the credit and financial markets came unhinged and some of the country’s best-known depository financial institutions teetered on the brink of collapse, “steady at the helm” was the governing mantra for the highest-ranked banks. That is just one salient feature of this year’s class of top performers among banks and thrifts, according to our annual Bank Performance Scorecard. Based on measurement criteria and analysis compiled by Sandler O’Neill & Partners L.P., a New York-based investment banking firm that specializes in the financial services industry, the scorecard features the institutions that maintain top standing in good times and bad—often with recurring high scorers."
2008 Bank Performance Scorecard Highlighting America’s Best Banks

The Financial Services Fact Book 2009, Insurance Information Institute, The Financial Services Roundtable: "The 2009 edition includes a host of new material to shed light on this challenging environment, including -
Trends in bank insolvencies
Data on credit default swaps
Information on the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, Congress’s landmark $700 billion rescue plan for the financial services industry
Expanded information on mortgage defaults
New data on mortgage-backed securities"

Newseum--daily newspaper front pages from around the world in their original, unedited form. http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/flash/default.asp

Quote
Some people love to love and some people love to loathe.
Some people love to praise and some people love to blame.

Book linked to JFK is decades overdue--Lincoln biography borrowed in '50s
The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum said it will display, as part of a weeklong celebration of Presidents' Day, a 1930 biography of Abraham Lincoln that was apparently borrowed by Kennedy, or a member of his staff, when he was serving in the Senate in the 1950s. The Library of Congress book, "A. Lincoln" by Ross F. Lockridge, was found in Kennedy's pre-presidential papers. It has been listed as missing in the Library of Congress online catalog, and will be returned to its collection after the display.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/02/04/book_linked_to_jfk_is_decades_overdue/

Have you ever seen a house moved over ice? A muse reader shares the story:
http://www.startribune.com/local/south/38530692.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyqyP4O:DW3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUnciaec8O7EyUsl