Using windows, a high intensity can cause windows to think my drivers have crashed.  As I understand its a more recent Catalyst thing (feature?).

Downgrading drivers, or using Linux might fix it for you.

Switching to a pool that supports the stratum protocol should reduce the number of rejections.  An example for feathercoin is www.multipool.in

However my rejections are still around 3.5%, which is higher than I've had mining other coins, albeit at different pools.

EDIT: On a second check, you can stay at the same pool.  Just use stratum+tcp://feathercoin.is-a-geek.com:3333 instead of the one you're currently using.

A number of websites compare LTC and FTC directly with BTC, such as coinchooser.com and dustcoin.com

Seems unlikely it should drop below ~$60-70, as below that GPU mining becomes unprofitable.

I'd assume that as it gets close to this point, supply drops off and the price increases.

The cgminer changelog mainly lists additions for ASIC support.