Earlier this month, after Sprint, Verizon and Yahoo were blasted following revelations that they’ve shared customer data with the authorities, Google’s Eric Schmidt declared in an interview with CNBC: “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.” Boom! It was as if Schmidt had planted a bomb in the blogosphere. And he wasn’t done: Since Google is subject to the country’s Patriot Act, “it is possible that information could be made available to the authorities,” Schmidt went on. Ka-boom! Quite a statement coming from the head honcho of the Internet’s biggest company. The reaction was swift and damning. Wrote John C. Dvorak of Market Watch: “For a chief executive to make what amounts to a threat to its users is absolutely astonishing.”

The tense White House meeting came after Mr Obama complained that he didn’t run for office ‘to be helping out a bunch of fat cat bankers’.

The president called top U.S. chief executives to Washington because he was unhappy they weren’t doing enough to boost lending for small businesses or throwing their weight behind the administration’s efforts to tighten up Wall Street regulations.

In the interview, Obama suggested that many banks are paying back their TARP money early solely to free themselves from government restrictions on pay. He used fairly strong language, in what appeared to be a nod to the populist outrage over Wall Street bailouts.

“Which I think tells me that the people on Wall Street still don’t get it,” Obama says. “They don’t get it. They’re still puzzled, why is it that people are mad at the banks?”

A change in leadership at the state Capitol helped open the doors to the gun-related bills and put Tennessee at the forefront of a largely unnoticed trend: In much of the country, it is getting easier to carry guns.

A nationwide review by The Associated Press found that over the last two years, 24 states, mostly in the South and West, have passed 47 new laws loosening gun restrictions.

Among other things, legislatures have allowed firearms to be carried in cars, made it illegal to ask job candidates whether they own a gun, and expanded agreements that make permits to carry handguns in one state valid in another.

The president departed Wednesday to Oslo in an overnight flight, in time to be there for the award ceremony and banquet, and not much more. His minimalist approach reflects a White House that sees little value in touting an honor for peace just nine days after Obama announced he was sending 30,000 more troops to the war in Afghanistan.

It’s been even longer since Fidel handed power to Raul on a temporary basis. But anyone looking for signs of better human rights conditions on the island would be disappointed, according to a report last month by Human Rights Watch called “New Castro, Same Cuba.”

The rights group said the government has jailed scores of dissidents, protesters and others in recent years. For the U.S., the persistent question is whether to lift its 47-year-old embargo on travel and trade with Cuba. The embargo remains even as President Obama has eased some rules on travel and money transfers for Cuban Americans. An editorial in today’s Los Angeles Times calls for the U.S. and the European Union to try something new.