"Very little happens in Union Square that escapes the notice of a man known as Normal Bob Smith, a longtime park fixture who chronicles its characters on the 'Amazing Strangers' portion of his Web site. One of his main genres of park characters is the peeper. Normal Bob, whose given name is Bob Hain, says peepers are a constant presence in the south section of the park, where they prey on women wearing skirts who sit on the sets of steps along 14th Street."

"Two Senators have been warning for months that the government has a secret legal interpretation of the Patriot Act so broad that it amounts to an entirely different law — one that gives the feds massive domestic surveillance powers, and keeps the rest of us in the dark about the snooping…. The Senators tried to get the government to reveal some of the law’s contents, by forcing the Director of National Intelligence and the Attorney General to produce a report outlining when this secret surveillance has gone overboard. Yesterday, the effort failed. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence said no to the report by rejecting Wyden and Udall’s amendment to [...]