Update: This is now a Barrett Brown individual mission, not an Anonymous mission. Here's Brown's latest. Shorter version: Barrett Brown, drug warrior recruit.

Anonymous has again canceled OpCartel, its threatened exposure operation against the Zetas cartel. It says its kidnapped member has been released. It also says retaliation threats played a role.

The cartel had threatened to kill 10 people for each name of a Zeta supporter revealed.

Barrett Brown, on Twitter, says he will "now go after other cartels with help from informants" and that the e-mails identifying Zeta supporters will go to Der Spiegel.

Anonymous has changed course again and now its plan to release names of supporters of the Zetas cartel is back on. The Atlantic interviewed Barrett Brown, speaking for the group, who said:

After it was cancelled we got to talking about it, and the video got a whole lot of views. [Members of Anonymous] had a vote amongst themselves and decided to go ahead."

The group will release about 60 names on Nov. 5, including that of a District Attorney in the United States. [More...]

The X-Factor Live show tonight: Judge Nicole Sherzinger criticized singer Rachel Stow for changing, at Simon's request, the line in the song she sang, Katrina and the Waves' "Walkin' on Sunshine," to "You're My Sunshine." Nicole ssid she preferred the original version.

But the judges didn't say a word when Malanie Amparo not only changed a few words of the Eagles' Desperado, but sang verses out of order, combined lines from different verses and left lines out of a verse. She sounded great, but she butchered the lyrics and no one said a word. [More...]

Smart move by Anonymous: They are backing off plans to name and publish details about supporters and associates of the Zetas cartel (Details here.).

According to Stratfor Intelligence Group (which automatically plays a video when you click, I hate that):

Since we have seen evidence of cartels employing their own computer scientists to engage in cybercrime, it is logical to conclude that the cartels likely have individuals working to track anti-cartel bloggers and hackers. Those individuals involved thus face the risk of abduction, injury and death — judging by how Los Zetas have dealt with threats in the past.

Anonymous is no match for the Zetas or any cartel. [More...]

A federal court in Nevada has issued a writ of execution authorizing the U.S. Marshals to use "reasonable force" to seize $63,720.80 in cash and/or assets of copyright troll Righthaven that sued scores of bloggers and tried to take their domain names for publishing too much of news articles and photographs from papers like the Denver Post and Las Vegas Review Journal which had ostensibly assigned their copyrights to the company.

The money is owed to the Randazza Legal Group which represented many of the bloggers. The court awarded the firm a judgment of $34,045.50 for legal fees in the case of Righthaven v. Hoehn, 11-cv-00050-PMP. Righthaven filed an appeal and asked for a stay, claiming the judgment would put them out of business and push them into bankruptcy.

The trial judge granted the stay provided Righthaven file a cost bond with the court for the amount of the $34,045.50 judgment by October 28, 2011. Righthaven didn't file the bond. Nor did it timely seek further relief from the 9th Circuit, or file a bankruptcy petition. Randazza went back to court yesterday for a writ of execution. [More...]

Hillary Clinton's mother, Dorothy Rodham, has died at age 92. The Clinton family has released this statement:

"A warm, generous and strong woman; an intellectual; a woman who told a great joke and always got the joke; an extraordinary friend and, most of all, a loving wife, mother and grandmother."

I had a few conversations with her in Iowa during the 2007 caucus -- usually in the elevator. (It seemed like everyone was staying at the same hotel -- the mainstream media, the Clintons, bloggers, etc.) I remember how absolutely freezing it was and how it never bothered her. She was always smiling and ready to venture out. Mrs. Rodham was an active part of Hillary's campaign during the primaries. In Iowa, she was part of Hillary's "bring a buddy" program.

R.I.P. Mrs. Rodham and our condolences to the Clinton family.

They have no guns, just the web. Are they any match for the Zetas? The Zetas have until November 5 to decide whether to release a kidnapped Anonymous member or face the consequences: Anonymous will publish the identities and personal information of all the associates, police officers, politicians, businesses and others who support the Zetas, which it says will lead to the Government forfeiting their property.

It seems that an Anonymous supporter in Mexico was kidnapped by a Mexican drug cartel, and well, this isn’t sitting too well with the larger Anonymous group as a whole. In fact Anonymous has let it be known that if they Zetas Cartel doesn’t release their compatriot the hackavist group will start publishing the names, address, and other personal information of all the Zetas Cartel members as well as politicians, cops, and military members who are bought and paid for by the cartel.

[More...]

The judges on DWTS sure have had their favorites this year. Their judging has been completely inconsistent. Some who dance poorly get higher scores than deserved for their "effort" while others, also praised for their effort, get low scores.

Carrie Ann Inaba's undeserved high marks to Nancy Grace are a prime example. Could it be her eyesight?

You know, I'm legally blind. I'm 20/750, since I was in fifth grade. I wear glasses and contacts. But I won't even get LASIK."

Maybe she needs to wear those glasses on the show. One thing Grace's Mary Poppins-ish, amateur dance was not, was Inaba said, a "showstopper." The dancing devil has wooden piano legs and as much grace as a bull in a china shop. (pun intended.) [More...]

As a diehard Florida Gator fan, I am rooting for Tim Tebow to succeed as an NFL quarterback but my expectation is he will fail. I do not think he has, or will have, the passing skills necessary to be a good NFL QB. That said, who really knows? Merrill Hoge? Trent Dilfer? Really? This morning I listened to Dilfer say that Tebow's problems are "quantum mechanics." I kid you not. That is what he said. It is not inspiring of confidence. Yet, I think we should all be wary of "the illusion of validity." I had a great day picking games Saturday. It was a fluke. But the "illusion of validity" creeps in to my psyche. What is the "illusion of validity?" Via Kevin Drum, Nobel prize winner Daniel Kahneman explains (and, yes beware of the "illusion of validity" here too):

I thought that what was happening to us was remarkable. The statistical evidence of our failure should have shaken our confidence in our judgments of particular candidates, but it did not. It should also have caused us to moderate our predictions, but it did not. We knew as a general fact that our predictions were little better than random guesses, but we continued to feel and act as if each particular prediction was valid. I was reminded of visual illusions, which remain compelling even when you know that what you see is false. I was so struck by the analogy that I coined a term for our experience: the illusion of validity.

More . . .

Kevin Drum continues to project his fear of Rick Santelli on to the rest of us:

[T]he Republican responses are a grim reminder of just how bad the politics of housing are. Voters may say they hate bailing out the banks — and they do! — but they hate bailing out the profligate next-door neighbors even worse. No politician in America seriously wants to risk voter wrath by doing that.

Drum has trotted out this nonsense consistently since Santelli called for "a thousand tea parties." He's been consistently wrong on this throughout. Obama and Dems gain no votes from the Tea Party - who are merely the same right wing Republicans that we all know. This is the type of Third Way/DLC thinking we thought had already been thoroughly discredited. Drum's thoughts lead to the path of Dem defeat - half baked policies like HAMP.

Speaking for me only

The X-Factor seemed to start off on a bad note when it dropped British judge Cheryl Cole. Replacement judge Nicole Scherzinger didn't seem to me like a good fit during auditions. But now that it's clear the judges' role is not just to vote every week, but to train their assigned group of contestants, I've changed my mind. I can't see Cheryl Cole coaching any of these teams to musical super-stardom. Nicole may be lacking in the magnetic personality department (as she was on DWTS, which she won) but after watching the judges' home segments, I think she'll be a winner as a coach.

It was definitely a struggle to stick with the show through the weeks of auditions. L.A. Reid and Simon were the only reasons I kept watching. For the most part, the contestants were either very physically unappealing or far too young. But in the end, with tonight's selection of the final 17, it was worth it and made for pretty riveting TV.

The X-Factor is not the same as American Idol. To say it's more emotional is an understatement. It's like Queen for a Day on steroids. [More...]

There are two important TV programs to watch tonight.

• 9 p.m. (ET): CNBC will air "Billions Behind Bars: Inside America's Prison Industry." The program examines the multi-billion dollar industry of private prisons. The Justice Policy Institute (JPI) was consulted by CNBC producers throughout the making of the documentary following its release this summer of Gaming the System: How the Political Strategies of Private Prison Companies Promote Ineffective Incarceration Policies, which explored the political strategies private prison companies employ to influence policy.

• 9 pm ET: PBS: Lost in Detention, FRONTLINE and the Investigative Reporting Workshop examine the Obama administration’s controversial get-tough immigration policy. [More...]