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Tim Jones

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How 60 Words From 13 Years Ago Ruined A Country's Relationship With The Rest Of The World

Welcome to 2014! Some of the fun things our government has been up to in the past decade include: mass torture, detention without trial, assassinating citizens with remote-control robots, and mass surveillance of every American's phone calls and Internet use. Not spooky at all, nope.Pretty often I find myself wondering: Do the president and military just get to do whatever the hell they want? We're supposed to be a nation governed by laws, but in practice so many of the most important laws have been declared secret that nobody seems to know what's allowed and what's not anymore.RadioLab and BuzzFeed produced this amazing radio piece. They traced our past decade of unaccountable military mayhem back to a 2001 law called the Authorization for Use of Military Force. This is that law's story.It's a whole hour long, so get somewhere comfortable before hitting play. It's worth it though.

'52 Shades Of Greed': The Best-Looking Thing To Come Out Of The Financial Crisis

Remember the so-called "banking crisis" of 2008? The one where a handful of clever investment bankers stole billions of dollars from ordinary people — and got away with it?To make sure we don't forget, 27 artists made this awesome deck of cards, each representing a different culprit.This is just 12 of them. After you've shared it with your friends, you can head over to 52ShadesOfGreed.com to see the rest.

Joe Cassano: AIG Executive

Hank Paulson: Treasury Secretary

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