Treasury Announces New Restrictions On Executive Compensation from ProPublica Stimulus Bill Limits TARP Exec Pay: "...tucked into the 1,071-page bill [H.R. 1, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009] is a twelve-page section that goes much further than any limits imposed by the Bush administration or even contemplated by the Obama administration" [on executive compensation and corporate governance].

Free WSJ chart: Where the Money Goes | Selected programs from the $789.2 billion bill: Spending - 24% | Aid 38% | Tax Cuts 38%

Pacer, the government-run Public Access to Court Electronic Records is a system designed in the bygone days of screechy telephone modems. Cumbersome, arcane and not free, it is everything that Google is not. Recently, however, a small group of open-government activists teamed up to push the court records system into the 21st century—by simply grabbing enormous chunks of the database and giving the documents away, to the great annoyance of the government. “Pacer is just so awful,” said Carl Malamud, the leader of the effort and founder of a nonprofit group, Public.Resource.org. “The system is 15 to 20 years out of date.” Worse, Mr. Malamud said, Pacer takes information that he believes should be free—government-produced documents are not covered by copyright—and charges 8 cents a page. Most of the private services that make searching easier, like Westlaw and Lexis-Nexis, charge far more, while relative newcomers like AltLaw.org, Fastcase.com and Justia.com, offer some records cheaply or even free. But even the seemingly cheap cost of Pacer adds up, when court records can run to thousands of pages. Fees get plowed back to the courts to finance technology, but the system runs a budget surplus of some $150 million, according to recent court reports.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/us/13records.html?_r=1&ref=technology

Alfred Whital Stern (1881-1960) of Chicago presented his collection of Lincolniana, to the Library of Congress in 1953. His collection, which he began to assemble in the 1920s, documents the life of Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) both through writings by and about Lincoln as well as a large body of publications concerning the issues of the times including slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and related topics. The collection contains more than 11,100 items. This online release presents more than 1,300 items with more than 4,000 images and a date range of 1824-1931. It includes the complete collection of Stern’s contemporary newspapers, Lincoln’s law papers, sheet music, broadsides, prints, cartoons, maps, drawings, letters, campaign tickets, and other ephemeral items. The books and pamphlets in this collection are scheduled for digitization at a later date. Direct to Digitized Collection via American Memory
Source: Library of Congress

Feedback from A.Word.A.Day
From: Hanns Ewald (hanns.ewald verizon.net)
Subject: columbarium
The name of the town Colmar in Alsace, France derives its name from this word. The place is popular with tourists for the regional food and wine, architecture and art (Isenheim altar). Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi, creator of the statue of liberty, was born there in 1834.
From: Meredith McQuoid (mcquoidm si.edu)
Subject: pied
In the vocabulary of equine lovers, a horse that has a coat of large patches of black and white is referred to as piebald (can be a noun or adjective); correspondingly, if the patches are white and any other color but black, it is called skewbald.
From: Kitty Rieske (kitrieske aol.com)
Subject: pied
I love the word "pied". I first met the word in regard to horses, but the very best memory I have of the word is Gerard Manley Hopkins poem, Pied Beauty. The descriptions of nature and the world make me happy to have experienced this world in all its many colors.
From: Bill Barker (billb11 alltel.net)
Subject: pied
This word back in the days of hand set type meant different fonts of movable type that were mixed. At the school I attended in California vandals pied all the type in the school print shop. As a student learning the trade I spent about a week unpieing it.

February 17 is the birthday of the Queen of Crime, novelist Ruth Rendell, (books by this author) born in London, England (1930). Her career as a writer did not start out on a promising note—she was fired from her first job as a journalist after she wrote a story about a Tennis League dinner without actually attending it, which was obvious since she failed to mention in the story that the keynote speaker had died in the middle of the speech. But she went on to become a best-selling author of more than 50 books, many of them under the pseudonym Barbara Vine. Her novels include A Judgment in Stone (1977), King Solomon's Carpet (1991), and her most recent, Portobello (2008). Every morning she writes for four hours, and then she eats the exact same lunch: bread, cheese, salad, and fruit.
February 17 is the birthday of the poet, journalist, and songwriter Banjo Paterson, (books by this author) born Andrew Paterson in Narrambla, Australia (1864). He was a lawyer who wrote poetry on the side—his family and friends called him "Barty," and his readers knew him as "the Banjo." For a while, he was the second-most popular poet writing in English in the world, after Rudyard Kipling. But we remember him best for writing the lyrics to "Waltzing Matilda." The words have changed slightly in the years since he wrote these original lyrics:
Oh there once was a swagman camped in the billabong,
Under the shade of a Coolibah tree,
And he sang as he looked at the old billy boiling,
Who'll come a waltzing Matilda with me?

Who'll come a waltzin' Matilda my darling,
Who'll come a waltzin' Matilda with me?
Waltzing Matilda and leading a water bag,
Who'll come a waltzing Matilda with me?

A "swagman" is someone who travels around the countryside, looking for work—the name comes from "swag," the big bundle of cloth or blanket a swagman would keep his belongings in. To "waltz Matilda" meant to travel around with a swag.
The Writer’s Almanac