ABC is reporting the Department of Justice has given the go ahead to formally seek an indictment against former Senator Edwards for campaign laws primarily dealing with hundreds of thousands of dollars donated by two wealthy supporters. At least some of that money is said to have gone to his mistress Rielle Hunter in order to cover up his affair. Edwards contends he has done nothing illegal.

The next question is will he seek a trial or a deal?  

By now everyone should have heard something about Wachovia admitting they allowed Mexican drug cartels to launder almost FOUR BILLION dollars through their bank. What amazes me is how little this story was covered especially locally and what’s worse is it appears it takes a U.K. paper to tear down the story and present it in a clear timeline of events. Now even more interesting is this video from The Keiser Report. In this video they draw a clear line to the Mexican Drug Money pullout to the banks needing to go to the Feds for cash and thus the beginnings of the financial crises.

PART has asked for Forsyth, Guilford, Davidson, Surry and Randolph County Board’s to approve a $3 per vehicle fee to offset 3.2 million dollar deficit.  The fee would be imposed on each vehicle as part of the yearly tag renewal. The state would be responsible for collecting then disbursing the money collected. PART is also looking at reducing or changing services and routes however put off any decision on that in lieu of asking for added taxes to pay for the service.

Although parties on both sides had asked for a continuance the City Council was to take up the mater of allowing Harvey Davis to relocate Davis Garage to the intersection of Jonestown and Stratford roads. The Planning Board had denied a rezoning request so now it us up to the City Council to approve or deny the request. Harvey Davis though has withdrawn his request to rezone although may not have given up on moving the garage to that location. With the Council appearing to be stacked against him Davis was able to withdraw the request instead of having the possibility of having it denied. This will allow Davis a second shot since the request was never heard.

You may have forgotten that Winston-Salem is taking Davis Garage in an eminent domain case as Winston-Salem wants to refurbish the building and make it the anchor for the new, yet to be planned, funded or developed, city train system or hub. That Hub is is a requirement in order for Winston-Salem to be consider for the even farther fetched High Speed Rail systems being touted by The White House. At a price of almost $700,000 to condemn and take the Garage then who knows what cost to remodel and upgrade it the city appears to want to be on the hook for even more than their current deals with the stadium.

Eight Marines and two Sailors were wounded last night during a Live Fire Training exercise at Fort Bragg. It appears a round exploded while in the barrel of a 155mm howitzer sending shrapnel flying. Two of the injured were flown to UNC Hospitals in Chapel Hill while the remaining eight were at Womack Army Medical Center. The extent of the injuries as well as the names of the wounded have not been released.

In a work of almost pure opinion the New York Times is clearly suggestion the Grand Jury investigating John Edwards is getting closer to an indictment. For the most part it appears they are basing all of this on an uptick in testimony and the fact John Edwards has not been seen around town as much lately, seems a little weak to me.

Over the past few weeks, people in this tight-knit university community have not seen much of John Edwards.

the possibility that a federal grand jury in Raleigh could soon hand up an indictment against him in a case centering on campaign finance practices.

One would think taking two years to track the millions is a bit much but then again how long have they been looking for Osama?

Edwards Lies Low, but That Won’t Last, New York Times 2.28.11

Friday is Data Privacy Day, don’t ask me who made it so I just know it is. Anyway as such Microsoft has put up a nice PDF on using location based services safely and being aware of how these services work.

If your not up on this new trend you may be using Location Based Services without even knowing it. If your using one of these nice new smartphones with built-in GPS are you aware your images may be tagged with the GPS location of the photo. Imagine those pictures of your kids playing in the backyard and you posted those images to Flickr or other sites and in doing so you just posted your home’s location down to the foot. Even with Geo Tagging (the tagging of GPS data to an image) turned off your phone still places a ton of information in the photo such as the phone model, date, time and more, all of which could pass more information than you thought.

Of course other services such as FourSquare are all about posting your current location to the web, I hope I don’t have to say how dangerous this could be. The objective was to allow for meet-ups with your friends or like minded folks that might be in your general area which in the early days worked pretty well but now with millions using the service can you see the downside? I will give you an example of a post I saw a few weeks back:

Just arrived in Winston-Salem, bored and alone. Thank goodness the Hilton has a whirlpool, going down for a good long soak.

I think it’s pretty obvious just how stupid that post was especially since her profile also includes a picture. Unfortunately many people are just to trusting and just don’t give a post like that second thoughts until it’s to late.

So anyway check out the attached PDF put together by Microsoft on this subject.