The Filter: Old News in New News

(March 18) -- With so many news aggregators out there, who can keep up? AOL News filters the filters to steer you to the headlines that really matter.

Skip Those, Read This: The aggregators lead with a bunch of old news (with new details), ranging from a reported December prison attack on Bernie Madoff to an ex-congresswoman's recollection of a controversial vote that cost her re-election. The Slatest leads with a Wall Street Journal story on the Madoff attack -- which both prison officials and Madoff himself deny. But according to other inmates, the Ponzi schemer was attacked by a judo-expert drug convict who believed Madoff owed him money. Madoff suffered a broken nose and cracked ribs. The story has a lot of other details about Madoff's life behind bars.

"Vote Your Conscience": The Huffington Post leads with a Washington Post op-ed by Marjorie Margolies, a former Democratic congresswoman from Pennsylvania, in which she urges her former colleagues to vote for health care reform. She recalls voting for President Bill Clinton's budget 18 years ago, despite knowing it would probably cost her a chance for re-election, which it did. "While it is easy to say my balanced-budget vote cost me re-election, that assumes the line of history that followed the bill's passage," Margolies writes. Had I voted against it, the bill wouldn't have passed, the Republican opposition would have been emboldened, the Clinton presidency would have moved into a tailspin ... and all of this could have just as easily led to my undoing." She argues that Democrats will be assailed no matter how they vote on health care. "So cast the vote that you won't regret in 18 years."

States' Rights: The Daily Beast repeats itself with today's lead story from The Associated Press, which details Idaho's new law requiring the state attorney general to sue the federal government if the health care reform bill passes. Most law experts believe, though, that federal law prevails in this situation, but it's another sign that states are flexing their muscles. On Wednesday, the Daily Beast picked up a New York Times story on the trend.

JihadJane Confession? The Daily Beast picks up a Philadelphia Inquirer story saying that Colleen LaRose confessed to FBI agents soon after she was arrested at Philadelphia International Airport in October. She admitted her involvement in a plot to kill a Swedish cartoonist. The report cited two people close to the investigation and said her lawyer declined to comment. LaRose, who took the handle "JihadJane" on Internet message boards, was a convert to Islam and resented the cartoonist's depiction of the Prophet Muhammad. She is being arraigned today in a federal courthouse in Philadelphia.

Catch of the Day: Economic officials whom some blame for the Great Recession should be glad they don't live in North Korea. The Slatest picks up a chilling British Guardian story about North Korea, where a senior finance official tried to enact currency reform to stem inflation. It didn't work, and last week the official, Pak Nam-gi, was reportedly executed by firing squad. Specifically, he was killed for being "a son of a bourgeois conspiring to infiltrate the ranks of revolutionaries to destroy the national economy," North Korea charged.

Oscar Curse? The New York Post, via Pat's Papers, reports that Sandra Bullock, fresh off her best actress Oscar for "The Blind Side," has split from her husband, Jesse James, who it's claimed had been cheating on her with a tattoo model. Gwyneth Paltrow broke up with Ben Affleck only a couple of months after she won an Oscar for her performance in "Shakespeare in Love," and Oscar winner Kate Winslet recently split with her husband, director Sam Mendes.