THE CASE FOR ultimately approving the Keystone XL pipeline — always strong — has grown stronger. A key environmentalist argument against Keystone XL has been that the project would encourage the extraction of bitumen, a particularly dirty oil-like substance, from the “oil sands” in Alberta. If activists could “shut in” Canadian bitumen, limiting the ability of oil companies to sell the product, they argued, perhaps petroleum firms wouldn’t be able to fully develop the oil sands. Read full article > >

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Editorial Board: A better case for Keystone XL

A biography of Joe Paterno, the Penn State football coach whose winning career abruptly ended in the scandal surrounding Jerry Sandusky, must account for his actions. But how?

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Joe Paterno, His Biographer, and the Last Chapter

News of republishing in Germany gets mixed reactions.

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‘Mein Kampf’ Returning to Bookshelves

A friend asked for my reaction to the Los Angeles Times’ publishing two photos last week of American soldiers posing tauntingly with the bloodied bodies of dead Afghan insurgents. The photos were reportedly among 18 provided by a U.S. soldier who wanted “to draw attention to the safety risk of a breakdown in leadership and discipline.” Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta had asked the Times and other media publications to suppress the photos for fear that publication would incite more anti-American violence, and even deaths. The other media complied with Panetta’s request; the Times did not. It’s hard to judge this without being privy to the conversation between Panetta and Times editors. According to news reports, Panetta apologized for the soldiers’ actions, claiming that such brutality was against military policy, and that an investigation was underway. Times editors cited the public’s need to know more about this largely forgotten war. Still unknown is how widespread this phenomenon is. Were the photographed soldiers the proverbial few rotten apples, or the tip of an unsavory iceberg? But even this question begs a more important one: Why are we still in Afghanistan?

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An American Debacle in the Graveyard of Empires

Director Peter Jackson unveils 10 minutes of footage of The Hobbit to a mixed reaction at the CinemaCon convention in the US.

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Jackson presents Hobbit footage

Faced with high shipping costs, Zimbabwe hardly has any coins, making it a headache for millions of people to try to get every transaction to add up to a whole dollar.

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Using U.S. Dollars, Zimbabwe Finds a Problem: No Change

New and upgraded attractions helped draw four million more visitors to Scotland’s main tourist sites last year, new research finds.

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Tourist attraction numbers ‘soar’

The nonpartisan government accountability group Cause of Action has asked the acting director of the Office of Management and Budget to perform a government-wide audit to determine whether agencies are abiding by whistleblower protection laws. Read full article > >

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Group seeks audit on whistleblowing

A federal judge ruled that the actions of Julian P. Heicklen, charged with jury tampering for protesting outside a Manhattan courthouse, did not violate a statute.

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Case Against Jury-Nullification Advocate Heicklen Dismissed

A Libyan military commander is taking legal action against Jack Straw, to find out if the former foreign secretary signed papers allowing his rendition.

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Straw faces ‘rendition’ legal bid

PRESIDENT OBAMA is fond of saying that there is no silver bullet to bringing down gasoline prices. On Tuesday, however, he went into the silver bullet business. With gas prices high and an election looming, the president announced a very public “crackdown” on “those who manipulate the market for private gain at the expense of millions of working families.” He asked Congress to spend $52 million on more oversight, to allow regulators to set higher capital requirements in oil markets, and to mandate a few other steps. Many of the policies Mr. Obama proposed are fine — technology upgrades at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), for example. Yet the administration can’t offer any satisfying explanation for why they are so necessary as to require emergency congressional action. The only emergency seems to be a mindless election-year war over who’s to blame for sustained high gas prices — a question for which Mr. Obama himself has repeatedly given the most reasonable answer: those shadowy actors called supply and demand. Read full article > >

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Editorial Board: Obama’s gas ‘crackdown’ will do little to lower prices

One of two footballers accused of raping a woman “too drunk to consent” told police she was “in control of her actions,” a jury hears.

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Rape jury told woman ‘in control’

One of two footballers accused of raping a woman “too drunk to consent” told police she was “in control of her actions,” a jury hears.

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Rape jury told woman ‘in control’

The Rev. Al Sharpton is lord of all he surveys. “Check out this,” the flamboyant civil rights leader told me during breakfast at his organization’s annual meeting this week. He flipped through the program until he found a full-page ad with the logos of Fox News, the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal. “News Corporation Proudly Supports National Action Network ’s 2012 Convention,” it said. Read full article > >

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Al Sharpton, power player

A man who defended his shop and his fiancee from a would-be robber who was holding a gun says he was worried he would get into trouble for his actions.

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VIDEO: Shopkeeper on brutal gunman attack