It’s almost as if Newt were the Democrats’ Manchurian Candidate. (video)

What’s even more remarkable is that it will do that not only without a pilot in the cockpit, but without a pilot at all.

The X-47B marks a paradigm shift in warfare, one that is likely to have far-reaching consequences. With the drone’s ability to be flown autonomously by onboard computers, it could usher in an era when death and destruction can be dealt by machines operating semi-independently.

“These loans are going to have the hardest time being refinanced since they were underwritten when property values and revenues were far higher,” said Thomas A. Fink, a managing director at Trepp. “We are going to see a wave of loans maturing this year, then again in 2014 and 2017, when the 7- and 10-year deals underwritten during the bubble mature.”

Most large commercial mortgage loans are typically not self-amortizing — that is, they require a balloon payment upon maturity.

While the number of loans maturing is expected to spike this year — $40.7 billion worth of securitized commercial mortgage loans matured last year and $49.5 billion worth is expected to mature in 2013 — the universe of lenders has shrunk. European banks, reeling from the debt crisis, have mostly stopped underwriting loans in the United States, while the market for commercial mortgage-backed securities remains relatively small, at roughly $30 billion in new issuance expected this year. And while insurance companies have increased their appetite for commercial mortgage loans, they are very conservative in their lending standards and selective in their deals.

“This means there may not be enough money available to refinance all of the debt that is coming due,” said Lawrence J. Longua, a clinical associate professor at the Schack Institute of Real Estate at New York University.

Five Democratic state senators in Missouri discovered large, orange crosshair stickers over their office nameplates on Tuesday in the Capitol Building in Jefferson. The targets included all four Democratic women in the state Senate, as well as the Democratic minority leader. [After staff removed them, larger ones turned up in their place.]

Capitol police are still investigating the matter, and some of the senators took to the Senate floor to express their concerns:

“Many of us when we came back to our office this afternoon had gun targets on our nameplates. A few of the senators removed them, only to have them replaced by larger stickers later,” said Jolie Justus, a Democrat from Kansas City.

None of the senators who were affected reported any kind of note or any other message. Capitol police have stepped up security, but they have yet to report any leads on a possible suspect.

The Columbia Daily Tribune reports that the senate on Tuesday was debating a Republican-sponsored bill that would seek to block the implementation of the health care reform that President Obama and congressional Democrats passed in 2010.

The controversy in Missouri comes in the same week that U.S Representative Gabrielle Giffords formally resigned from Congress. Giffords’ Arizona district was one of several marked by crosshairs on a map that Sarah Palin’s SarahPAC had used to highlight vulnerable Democratic districts. After the Giffords shooting last January in Tucson, the Palin map faced a wave of criticism.