Blog Heap of Links for the day 24 February 2009

"As an active-duty officer in the United States Army, I have grave concerns about the constitutional eligibility of Barack Hussein Obama to hold the office of president of the United States," wrote Scott Easterling in a "to-whom-it-may-concern" letter. Obama "has absolutely refused to provide to the American public his original birth certificate, as well as other documents which may prove or disprove his eligibility," Easterling wrote. "In fact, he has fought every attempt made by concerned citizens in their effort to force him to do so."

Violence from Mexican drug cartels has spilled over into Texas. , state Homeland Security Director Steve McCraw said Monday. "Yes, absolutely it has occurred; there's no question about it...." "Anything that involves cartel activity that impacts Texans on this side of the border is, by definition, spillover violence," he said after the meeting. McCraw told lawmakers, though, that Texas has a contingency plan to deal with large-scale violence and that local, state and federal agencies are working to prevent that from happening.

Google's web-based email service, Gmail, has crashed this morning, leaving millions of users from Britain to Australia unable to send and receive messages.

Three former Atlanta police officers, who shot dead a 92-year-old woman at her home in a botched drug raid and then lied about it to cover their tracks, were all sentenced to prison terms on Tuesday. The shooting of Kathryn Johnston at her home in Atlanta in November 2006 raised national questions about police corruption and brutality, as well as civil rights abuses. It led to the disbandment and reform of the city's narcotics squad.

Published since 1940, this venerable "funny animal" comic book has enjoyed 700 issues over 70 years. WDC&S is an important title for many reasons — including the fact that it had the honor of being the home of hundreds of the first and original stories about Donald Duck, Uncle Scrooge, Donald's nephews Huey, Dewey and Louie and the dreaded Beagle Boys written by Carl Barks.

IDW's successful Complete Dick Tracy series is getting bigger…and better. CEO Ted Adams, who initiated the series and edited its first six volumes, has announced that Tracy is being folded into IDW's Library of American Comics imprint, alongside Terry and the Pirates, Little Orphan Annie, and other classic newspaper strip titles.

This October, IDW is publishing the first of five volumes collecting the entire run of Berkeley Breathed's Pulitzer Prize-winning comic strip "Bloom County." Edited by Scott Dunbier and designed by Eisner Award-winner Dean Mullaney, these five hardcover collections will be part of IDW's Library of American Comics Imprint. The daily "Bloom County" strip started up in December of 1980, not long after Ronald Reagan was elected President of the United States, and Breathed developed a loyal following using the quirky denizens of the fictional Bloom County to comment on the politics of the time. CBR News caught up with Breathed to get the details on this definitive collection of "Bloom County."

Earlier this week Village Voice Media suspended publication of all its comic strips across its entire chain of alternative weekly papers in a cost-cutting move.

Hey, America: This is what you'll lose, once the last bloated newspapers close forever: People like this, whining about the Most Important Thing Ever, a soggy newsprint version of yesterday's wire copy and weeks-old syndicate features about "winter vegetables," wrapped around a Big Lots! circular and six or seven pages of foreclosure notices in the back, along with a few "I HEREBY REFUSE TO PAY MY DEBT" classifieds, where the jobs/real estate ads used to be. Oh god.

Forget paper and wave goodbye to inky fingers. Simon Usborne discovers the hottest comics are strictly online

Marvel held their fourth quarter/year-end earnings call this morning, where they discussed their financial performance for 2008 and gave a couple of updates for their upcoming film slate.

Stan Lee's multimedia plans from the '90s have come back to haunt him once again, as shareholders of Stan Lee Media, Inc. on Monday filed suit against Lee, his wife, Marvel Comics, Marvel Chairman Issac Perlmutter, and former head of Marvel Studios Avi Arad for over $750 million — one half the proceeds from Spider-Man, X-Men and Iron Man. The suit claims that Permutter, Lee, Arad and Marvel denied the shareholders of Stan Lee Media to their rights in the ownership of 50% of the characters and properties created by Lee, including Spider-Man, the X-Men, Iron Man and dozens of others. The shareholders claim that Lee transferred all of his interest in the characters he created for Marvel to Stan Lee Media in 1998.

The space agency's first carbon dioxide-monitoring satellite took off on a rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California this morning, but after blasting through the Earth's atmosphere it fell short of its orbiting height and plummeted back towards the sea.

It was mentioned that Ernest William Barnes book: Scientific Theory and Religion was used for source material for The Urantia Book. Here are some ideas that may indicate a connection. This does not attempt to show that The Urantia Book was authored by humans, but that Celestials used the best available human sources. It gives an idea what the thoughts were at that time.