SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:55 P.M. ET: 

THE COST OF EDUCATION – From AP:  " A new study of salaries at Rutgers University finds that 17 employees, including 14 doctors and three athletic coaches, have salaries over $1 million per year. The Home News Tribune (http://mycj.co/1AaTB3s ) also finds that half of the university's nearly 25,000 employees were paid less than $50,000 in 2014.  The lower paid workers include non-faculty support staff as well as part-time lecturers and other adjunct faculty.  The median salary for tenured faculty was just over $120,000."  Major colleges have become big business, with college presidents, and many faculty members, paid corporate salaries.  It's time we started taking a hard, cold look at colleges and universities, how they're run, and the debts that are incurred by students to support these dinosaurs.

SPLIT – Secretary of State Kerry told a Congressional committee yesterday that the threats to Americans have declined.  Field Marshal Obama told us several weeks ago that the threat of terrorism was being hyped by the news media, meaning Fox News.  But now we have this, from the New York Daily News:  "Testifying on Capitol Hill, the country's top intelligence chief said 2014 was the worst year on record for global terrorism.  National Intelligence Director James Clapper told members of Congress that terror attacks reached their highest number since such records started being archived. 'When the final accounting is done, 2014 will have been the most lethal year for global terrorism in the 45 years (since) such data has been compiled,' he told the Senate Armed Services Committee."  Maybe members of the administration should occasionally talk to each other.

LOSE YOUR HEAD?  HEY, NO PROBLEM – From London's Telegraph:  "The first human head transplant could take place in just two years, it was reported on Thursday.  Italian surgeon Sergio Canavero, from the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group, claims the Frankenstein-style procedure to graft a living person’s head on to a donor body will soon be ready."  Some political figures might benefit.  Please e-mail us suggestions as to what combinations you'd like to see.  comments@urgentagenda.com

I'M SHOCKED, SHOCKED – From WaPo:  "In a report to Texas elected officials, the state Department of Public Safety says border security agencies have arrested several Somali immigrants crossing the southern border who are known members of al-Shabab, the terrorist group that launched a deadly attack on the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya, and Al-Itihaad al-Islamiya, another Somalia-based group once funded by Osama bin Laden. Another undocumented immigrant arrested crossing the border was on multiple U.S. terrorism watch lists, the report says."  If only we'd given them government jobs.

February 26,  2015