Some wonder whether the high profile arrest was more of a PR play to shift the negative press away from the Occupy Wall Street raid, than it was an act of genuine heroics. It’s kind of shocking that Bloomberg didn’t try to just kill two birds with one stone and claim the guy was a radical Muslim protester.

As you can imagine, these latest findings also provide more reasons to avoid the Midwest at all costs:

By region, the percentage of marijuana arrests was highest in the Midwest (63.5 percent of all drug arrests) and southern regions (57 percent of all drug arrests) of the United States and lowest in the west, where pot prosecutions comprised only 39 percent of total drug arrests.

Here’s a handy graph to visual the frequency of the scariness. And yes you read that correctly: 97.5 people an hour are arrested on weed-related charges!

By contrast, Twitter actually fought a federal ruling that would have prevented them from notifying users of their subpoenas. The “dumb fucks” who use Facebook should be really, really, really careful.

Then again… Really? There are downsides to transplanting your entire existence into a searchable database? What, you mean like these recent reports of creeping lawyers “friending” struggling home-owners to serve foreclosure notices in Australia? Or maybe this disturbing little ditty of modern day McCarthyism — Israeli authorities are now using Facebook to black-list pro-Palestine activists.

You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have… the signs of the times.

The investigation included personnel from the Secret Service, Homeland Security, the Italian National Police and even the U.S. Army—I assume they found a way around that whole pesky Posse Comitatus thing.

The full list:
-The U.S. Secret Service
-The Drug Enforcement Administration
-NYPD
-U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Homeland Security Investigations
-U.S. Marshals Service in the Eastern and Southern Districts of New York
-New York State Police
-New Jersey State Police
-U.S. Army-Ft. Hamilton
-The Italian National Police
-Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office
-Suffolk County Police Department
-The Rhode Island State Police
-Department of Labor’s Office of Inspector General: Office of Labor Racketeering and Fraud Investigations
-Providence Police Department
-Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor
-Monmouth County, N.J., Prosecutor’s Office
-New Jersey Department of Corrections

At this point, one would assume that many of them have moved away or on to more legitimate industries and have shied away from the Goodfellas tactics of a bygone era that basically decimated their numbers in the first place.

Not so says the authorities as they rounded up members from the Bonnano, Columbo, Gambino, Genovese, and Luchese crime families. In fact, it’s the exact opposite. They used to have a “national presence,” but have instead consolidated around the “New York metropolitan area, New England, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Detroit” areas according to a the FBI.

There were so many suspects, they had to be processed in a gymnasium and as you can tell by this handout photo (above), at least one guy lived up to the pasta-eating stereotype and required two set of cuffs to keep him relatively comfortable. Anyway, the FBI are positively giddy and released several press releases, posted photos, and even whipped up a neat little infographic just in case you were unsure of how the mafia is typically structured:

Authorities in Arizona say it could be and are actively looking for information on him. They believe that the middle-aged white man may have helped suspect Jared Loughner in Saturday’s Tuscon massacre. Anyone who recognizes the “possible associate” is being asked to call the FBI. UPDATE: He’s just a cab driver who drove the suspect, no affiliation!