A free enterprise think tank in Michigan -- backed by some of the biggest names in national conservative donor circles -- has made a broad public records request to at least three in-state universities with departments that specialize in the study of labor relations, seeking all their emails regarding the union battle in Wisconsin, Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) and MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, TPM has learned.

According to professors subject to the request, filed under Michigan's version of the Freedom Of Information Act, the request is extremely rare in academic circles. An employee at the think tank requesting the emails tells TPM they're part of an investigation into what labor studies professors at state schools in Michigan are saying about the situation in Madison, Wisc., the epicenter of the clashes between unions and Republican-run state governments across the Midwest.

One professor subject to the FOIA described it as anti-union advocates "going after folks they don't agree with."

In newly uncovered audio, a Fox News executive boasts that he lied repeatedly during the closing days of the 2008 presidential campaign when he speculated on-air "about whether Barack Obama really advocated socialism."

Speaking in 2009 onboard a pricey Mediterranean cruise sponsored by a right-wing college, Fox Washington managing editor Bill Sammon described his attempts the previous year to link Obama to "socialism" as "mischievous speculation." Sammon, who is also a Fox News vice president, acknowledged that "privately" he had believed that the socialism allegation was "rather far-fetched."

"Last year, candidate Barack Obama stood on a sidewalk in Toledo, Ohio, and first let it slip to Joe the Plumber that he wanted to quote, 'spread the wealth around,' " said Sammon. "At that time, I have to admit, that I went on TV on Fox News and publicly engaged in what I guess was some rather mischievous speculation about whether Barack Obama really advocated socialism, a premise that privately I found rather far-fetched."

After the demise of Channel 4's digital investment fund 4ip, we wondered in what form Tom Loosemore would next emerge. Loosemore has an impressive and rather privileged CV that spans Wired's first UK magazine, head of web 2.0 for the BBC and digital strategy adviser for Ofcom, before he joined Channel 4 in September 2008.

Loosemore's next gig, the Guardian can reveal, is possibly the most ambitious yet. Leading a small team of developers including Richard Pope, formerly of Moo and MySociety.org, and former BBCer Matt Patterson, Loosemore's project is to build an alpha version of One Government Website to Rule Them All.

Using the prolific planet hunting Kepler spacecraft, astronomers have discovered 1,235 candidate planets orbiting other suns since the Kepler mission's search for Earth-like worlds began in 2009. To find them, Kepler monitors a rich star field to identify planetary transits by the slight dimming of starlight caused by a planet crossing the face of its parent star. In this remarkable illustration, all of Kepler's planet candidates are shown in transit with their parent stars ordered by size from top left to bottom right. Simulated stellar disks and the silhouettes of transiting planets are all shown at the same relative scale, with saturated star colors.

Cameron launched a new, unoriginally named (see Startup America) website today purporting to be a "£1500 rescue package" for small businesses.

This morning, to much media fanfare, David Cameron launched a website to go with it - `startupbritain.org'. To the trained eye, it's clearly a glorified government backed `link farm' - a term which is used by those in the industry to describe a page full of `spam' advertisements. Digging deeper however, it's clear that the representations made by the website released today are a direct reflection of Cameron's `private-sector led' policies and proposals regarding start-ups, enterprise and entrepreneurialism in Britain under the Tory led coalition.

Let's dive in to News International's second release of numbers pertaining to Times Newspapers' digital fees...

 They say (1): "Combined, The Times and The Sunday Times had 79,000 monthly digital subscribers at the end of February, up from just under 50,000 on 31 October 2010."

See more of our latest News International coverage
or add an alert for future coverage of News International.

Our take (1): In other words, the papers notched 50,000 digi subs in their first four months - but only 29,000 additional subs in their second four months.

A wealthy financier involved in a family dispute has made British legal history by winning anonymity in a libel case. This latest court attempt to censor internet material has led to claims that free speech is being further eroded in Britain.

In a novel extension of controversial superinjunctions, Mr Justice Tugendhat forbade anyone in Britain from identifying "Mr Z", who claims to have been defamed by his relatives in a row over a multimillion pound family trust.

The judge ordered that the relatives' identities also be kept secret, and that no-one be allowed to detail allegations aired in the secret hearings in the high court in London. His ruling was published under the coded title ZAM v CFW and TFW.

Here's one of the most appalling abuses of power I've ever seen. A judge refuses to sign an arrest warrant so the state policeman who submitted it now wants the judge arrested for hampering an investigation and "coercion."

State Trooper from Salisbury, CT (where watching paint dry is exciting) Mark Lauretano apparently submitted an arrest warrant for a man who got into a bar fight with someone else. The "victim" of the fight (meaning the guy who got beaten up worse), was obviously not arrested, as these things go. Judge Klatt, upon reviewing the information in the warrant declined to sign it, apparently until the "victim" was also arrested.

Judge Klatt, a former prosecutor from Death Valley Waterbury, CT, should have known better. You simply do not refuse the State Police what they want. So instead of, I don't know, reviewing the information again to see if maybe the Judge had a point, Lauretano does the logical thing and is now seeking an arrest warrant for the Judge herself*.

Here's the trooper's argument:

Of Interest: Early this morning, at 5:20 am EDT, MESSENGER captured this historic image of Mercury. This image is the first ever obtained from a spacecraft in orbit about the Solar System's innermost planet. Over the subsequent six hours, MESSENGER acquired an additional 363 images before downlinking some of the data to Earth. The MESSENGER team is currently looking over the newly returned data, which are still continuing to come down. Tomorrow, March 30, at 2 pm EDT, attend the NASA media telecon to view more images from MESSENGER's first look at Mercury from orbit.

A foreign national was indicted yesterday for allegedly illegally importing an unmanned spy plane into the U.S., and then trying to resell it on eBay.

According to a press release from the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement service, Henson Chua of the Philippines was indicted and charged by a grand jury in Tampa with violating the Arms Export Control Act and smuggling. Chua is accused of importing an RQ-11B "Raven" Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) from the Philippines into the U.S., which is listed on the U.S. Munitions List as a defensive item, "without having first obtained from the U.S. Department of State a license or written authorization." He then "aided and abetted the attempted export" of the same UAV.

Facebook has removed a page calling for a new Palestinian uprising against Israel after more than 350,000 people signed up to it.

The page which appeared on the social networking site was called Third Palestinian Intifada after two previous uprisings against Israeli occupation.

It was removed for featuring calls for violence, a company spokesman said.

Israel had raised concerns about the page. Facebook has helped spread calls for protests in Arab states.

The Third Palestinian Intifada page had called for an uprising after Muslim prayers on Friday 15 May.