Way to live the stereotype, dude.

Dean Combs, a former NASCAR driver and crew chief for the legendary Junior Johnson, has been charged with making moonshine.

State agents and Wilkes County sheriff's deputies said they found a 300-gallon still in a shop building on property owned by Combs, 57. Acting on an anonymous tip, the still in a shop building behind a go-kart track near the North Wilkesboro Speedway.

Read the rest of this That'sRacin.com article here.

Police Chief Rodney Monroe might be right, if you take the officers out of the doughnut shops their offices and plant them in the communities they are sworn to protect, crime rates fall. Amazing.

Police Chief Rodney Monroe has credited Charlotte’s lower crime rates to increased police presence in high-crime neighborhoods. After arriving last year from Richmond Va., Monroe reassigned officers from desk duty back to the streets. He has asked for more officers to create smaller patrol districts.

To see the stats and read the rest of this QCityMetro article, click here.

From ABC News:

By EWEN CALLAWAY

Americans may paint themselves in increasingly bright shades of red and blue, but new research finds one thing that varies little across the nation: the liking for online pornography.

A new nationwide study of anonymised credit-card receipts from a major online adult entertainment provider finds little variation in consumption between states.

"When it comes to adult entertainment, it seems people are more the same than different," says Benjamin Edelman at Harvard Business School.

However, there are some trends to be seen in the data. Those states that do consume the most porn tend to be more conservative and religious than states with lower levels of consumption, the study finds.

"Some of the people who are most outraged turn out to be consumers of the very things they claimed to be outraged by," Edelman says.

Edelman spends part of his time helping companies such as Microsoft and AOL detect advertising fraud. Another consulting client runs dozens of adult websites, though he says he is not at liberty to identify the firm.

That company did, however, provide Edelman with roughly two years of credit card data from 2006 to 2008 that included a purchase date and each customer's postal code.

After controlling for differences in broadband internet access between states – online porn tends to be a bandwidth hog – and adjusting for population, he found a relatively small difference between states with the most adult purchases and those with the fewest.

The biggest consumer, Utah, averaged 5.47 adult content subscriptions per 1000 home broadband users; Montana bought the least with 1.92 per 1000. "The differences here are not so stark," Edelman says.

Number 10 on the list was West Virginia at 2.94 subscriptions per 1000, while number 41, Michigan, averaged 2.32.

Eight of the top 10 pornography consuming states gave their electoral votes to John McCain in last year's presidential election – Florida and Hawaii were the exceptions. While six out of the lowest 10 favoured Barack Obama.

Isn't it a relief to know intelligence is back in fashion in Washington?

President Barack Obama wants agencies, at least for now, to resume full scientific reviews of projects that might harm endangered wildlife and plants.

Officials said Tuesday that the president will sign a presidential memorandum to put on hold a last-minute Bush regulation until the Interior and Commerce departments complete a review of the rule.

The Bush-era regulation made optional the consultations federal scientists have performed for 35 years on endangered species decisions. The rule allowed federal agencies to decide for themselves whether projects such as dams and power plants posed risks to endangered species or the places they live.

Read the rest of this Associated Press article here.

This is good, right? Right?

Shouldn't we all strive to become more fiscally responsible as individuals, especially now that we realize so many of our financial advisers are full of phooey?

Yes, yes; I understand the entire world hopes and prays Americans will spend beyond our means, gobbling up piles of crap we don't need-- or even really want-- and stressing ourselves into heart attacks over our insurmountable debt. But, perhaps we're evolving out of our must-have-everything-at-any-cost mindset?

U.S. households socked away most of the extra income they got in January from annual cost-of-living raises, boosting the personal savings rate to a 14-year high, the Commerce Department said Monday.

Disposable real incomes rose in January at the fastest pace since May as annual pay raises and cost-of-living increases took effect while taxes plunged 9.3%, the Commerce Department said. Real disposable incomes (adjusted for inflation and after taxes) increased 1.5%, despite the third straight decline in income from wages and salaries.

Read the rest of this MarketWatch.com article here.

What do you think? Is he being straight with us or are the eyes lyin'?

Bank of America’s request for $20bn of government money to prop up its acquisition of Merrill Lynch was a “tactical mistake” that made the bank appear as weak as Citigroup, Ken Lewis, BofA’s chief executive told the Financial Times on Monday.

Mr Lewis vowed to stay on as chief executive of the North Carolina-based bank until it paid back the $45bn of government money it received under the US Treasury’s bank recapitalization program, possibly within two to three years. This is the first time he has signaled his plans to leave the company.

Read the rest of this Financial Times article here (includes a video interview).