Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Bill Press: In Defense of ACORN (billpressshow.com)
Quick! What's the most important issue facing this country?
If you watch Fox News, you have no doubt. It's not health-care reform, the economy, global warming, Afghanistan, or swine flu. All Fox loyalists know that the greatest crisis facing America is: ACORN!
Daniel Engber: Glutton Intolerance (slate.com)
What if a war on obesity only makes the problem worse?
ERIC ETHERIDGE: Is 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' Done For? (opinionator)
"The Battle of DADT is over, and the mopping-up operations are ready to begin." That's Mark Kleiman's assessment of the effort to end Don't Ask, Don't Tell, the Clinton-era law that "requires homosexuals in the services to keep their sexual orientation secret."
Tom Danehy: After 12 years, Dirk Nelson's Big Brother relationship comes to a heartbreaking end (tucsonweekly.com)
Tucsonan Dirk Nelson reminds me of Michael Keaton's character, Billy Blazejowski, in the 1982 comedy movie Night Shift. The dozen or so of you who remember that movie will know exactly what I mean; everybody else will need some help.
Michael Dirda: These Foolish Things (incharacter.org)
There are three kinds of fools: Real Fools, Professional Fools, and Unsuspecting Fools. The professional, a staple of Shakespeare's plays, is, in reality, nobody's fool.
Gary Goldstein: "'Stark Raving Black': Comedian Lewis Black at his cranky best" (latimes.com)
Lewis Black gets it right when, at the start of his concert film "Stark Raving Black," he suggests his audience lower their expectations...
Interview by Matt Munday; "A Life in the Day: Lenny Henry (timesonline.co.uk)
The comic and actor, who is due to take to the stage as Othello, on drama, dog-walking and 'admin-type stupidity.'
W.A. Pannapacker: Confessions of a Middlebrow Professor (chronicle.com)
Ridicule the Great Books, if you will, but do not forget they stood for the value of hard work to achieve understanding. Not the passive entertainment model college students now expect...
Thomas Fitzgerald: Taylor Branch recorded Bill Clinton's secret conversations for posterity (The Philadelphia Inquirer)
He never knew when the White House summons would come: The president wants to talk, and he has some unscheduled time tonight. Can you get down here?
Robert W. Butler: In a new book dozens of luminaries tell tales of the brilliant, stubborn Robert Altman (McClatchy Newspapers)
Robert Altman's films never told us what to think or feel.
Late Show Video: Steve Martin and Martin Short (Video)
Preceded by an ad.
BBC Victor Fehrenbach Story (youtube.com)
The Weekly Poll
Current Question
The 'Afghan Options' Edition
The White House said Monday that President Barack Obama is not considering a strategy for Afghanistan that would withdraw U.S. troops from the eroding war there.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said "I don't think we have the option to leave. That's quite clear," ( White House: Leaving Afghanistan Not An Option | CommonDreams.org )
That being the case, what options would you recommend to the President?
Send your response to
wrote:
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Still sunny and cooler than seasonal.
$3 Million Donation To Vets
Bob Barker
The Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund (IFHF) announced today that with the help of American TV icon Bob Barker, it has reached its goal of $60 million to complete its current project, the National Intrepid Center of Excellence (NICoE), an advanced facility dedicated to research, diagnosis and treatment of traumatic brain injury (TBI) suffered by U.S. military personnel.
The announcement comes after Mr. Barker, the long-time host of TV's "The Price is Right" and a Naval aviator who served during World War II, pledged to personally contribute the final $3 million needed for the construction aspect of the project. Additional funds will be raised for research and other related items.
The Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund has been fundraising for this project since late 2007, and in recent months, the Fund has pulled to within $3 million of the goal. While it has reached the $60 million goal, the Fund is still working to raise additional funds for research and other related efforts for wounded troops.
NICoE, located in Bethesda, Maryland, adjacent to the new Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, will be the Department of Defense's premiere facility for the study of TBI, which according to some estimates afflicts more than 300,000 veterans of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Set to open next year, NICoE will be a 72,000 square foot, two-story facility. The Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund is building the Center and equipping it with the most advanced medical equipment for TBI research, diagnosis and treatment. Once complete, the Center will be turned over to the Department of Defense for operation.
Bob Barker
Space Show For Earth's Water
Guy Laliberte
Guy Laliberte, the Canadian billionaire circus entrepreneur, flew into space with a clown nose and an idea that was literally out of this world.
His concept is set to come to fruition on Friday when Laliberte hosts a global performance event from the International Space Station involving singers, dancers and celebrities in 14 cities around the world to highlight the scarcity of clean water for people in many parts of the world.
Laliberte, founder of "Cirque du Soleil" and the world's seventh space tourist, is set to open and close the show from the space station. Called "Moving Stars and Earth for Water," the two-hour event is billed as the first of its kind to be hosted from space.
The event at 8 p.m. EDT on Friday (midnight GMT) will be broadcast on satellite TV in the United States, Canada and Latin America and also can be seen on the Internet at www.onedrop.org.
Guy Laliberte
Receives Liberty Medal
Steven Spielberg
Filmmaker Steven Spielberg has been honored in Philadelphia with the 2009 Liberty Medal for his artistic and humanitarian achievements.
Former President Bill Clinton presented the medal to Spielberg at the National Constitution Center on Thursday evening. The ceremony began with clips from Spielberg's films being shown on a large outdoor screen.
The medal was established in 1988 to honor those whose actions represent the founding principles of the United States.
Steven Spielberg
Seeks Pardons For Ancestors
Tom Joyner
Nationally syndicated radio host Tom Joyner is asking South Carolina to posthumously pardon two of his great-uncles - black landowners executed in 1915 after being convicted of murdering an elderly Confederate Army veteran.
Joyner learned the fate of farmers Thomas and Meeks Griffin during filming of the PBS documentary "African American Lives 2," which first aired in February 2008 and was based on research by Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr.
The program traces the lineage of 12 people, including Joyner. The host of "The Tom Joyner Morning Show" said he was stunned to learn of his South Carolina roots and two great-uncles he didn't know existed.
"The records will show they did not do what they were executed for, and maybe now they can rest in peace," Joyner said from his Dallas studio.
Tom Joyner
2009 Nobel Literature Prize
Herta Mueller
Herta Mueller, a little-known Romanian-born author who was persecuted for her critical depictions of life behind the Iron Curtain, won the 2009 Nobel Prize in literature Thursday in an award seen as a nod to the 20th anniversary of communism's collapse.
The decision was expected to keep alive the controversy surrounding the academy's pattern of awarding the prize to European writers.
Mueller, a member of Romania's ethnic German minority, was honored for work that "with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed," the Swedish Academy said.
Mueller, 56, made her debut in 1982 with a collection of short stories titled "Niederungen," or "Nadirs," depicting the harshness of life in a small, German-speaking village in Romania. It was promptly censored by the communist government.
Herta Mueller
Turns Into Cooking Channel
Fine Living
Scripps Networks Interactive Inc. is turning Fine Living into the Cooking Channel and moving the cable network from the hills of Tennessee to New York City's food-oriented Chelsea Market.
Scripps spokeswoman Cindy McConkey says Fine Living employees were told Thursday. The revamped channel will launch in third quarter of 2010.
About 20 jobs will be lost at Scripps' 1,000-employee headquarters in Knoxville, though Scripps hopes to find other positions for those workers locally.
Scripps Networks created Fine Living in 2002. The channel reaches 55 million households but hasn't grown as fast as its Knoxville-based sister networks HGTV and DIY Network, both geared to all things about homes.
Fine Living
Son Convicted
Brooke Astor
Brooke Astor's 85-year-old son was convicted Thursday of exploiting his philanthropist mother's failing mind and helping himself to her nearly $200 million fortune.
Anthony Marshall now faces a mandatory jail sentence of at least one year - and perhaps as many as 25 years.
Jurors delivered their verdict on the 11th full day of deliberations, ending a five-month trial that revealed the New York society doyenne's sad decline. She was 105 and had Alzheimer's disease when she died in 2007.
The jury convicted Marshall of 14 counts, including first-degree grand larceny and scheming to defraud, but acquitted him on two charges, falsifying business records and another first-degree grand larceny count. His co-defendant, estate lawyer Francis X. Morrissey Jr., was convicted on all five charges, including scheming to defraud, conspiracy and forgery.
Wisconsin Hideout Sold
Al Capone
The one-time gangster's house is built of stone with 18-inch thick walls and protected with guard towers, just in case G-men or goons with machine guns inside violin cases come calling.
Chicago mobster Al Capone, local legend says, used the 37-acre lake nearby for seaplanes carrying shipments of bootleg alcohol, before they were loaded onto trucks bound for the speakeasies of Chicago in the days of Prohibition.
Capone's hideout, 407 acres of wooded property in northern Wisconsin about 150 miles northwest of Wausau, is owned now by the bank that foreclosed on it more than a year ago after no other bidders emerged at the $2.6 million floor price.
But Chippewa Valley Bank, which bought the site for the minimum bid during a five-minute sheriff's sale Thursday in Hayward, doesn't want to own it for long. So what the lender describes as a "very private and pristine" property with some notorious gangster history is still on the block.
Al Capone
Polish Museum Opens Exhibit
Roman Polanski
An exhibit exploring the career of Franco-Polish film-maker Roman Polanski opened Thursday in a film museum in Lodz, the Polish city where the embattled director studied cinema.
The museum features photographs from Polanski's private collection and from his friends. It also includes 200 posters of his movies from around the world and will have a retrospective of his movies.
The museum, however, denied that the exhibit was linked to Polanski's arrest in Switzerland, where he was detained last month on a US warrant over a 1977 child sex case.
"You cannot prepare such an exhibit in a few weeks. We have worked on it for a year and a half," Krystyna Zamyslowska, the exhibit's manager, told PAP news agency.
Roman Polanski
Antitrust Investigation
Monsanto
The Justice Department is investigating whether Monsanto Co. violated antitrust rules in trying to expand its dominance of the market for genetically engineered crops.
At issue is how the world's largest seed company sells and licenses its patented genes. Monsanto has licensing agreements with seed companies that let those companies insert Monsanto genes into about 96 percent of U.S. soybean crops and 80 percent of all corn crops.
Monsanto's rivals allege that the company uses the licensing agreements to squeeze competitors and control smaller seed companies -- an allegation Monsanto denies.
A department spokeswoman declined to confirm or deny the investigation. But the department has interviewed two of Monsanto's biggest rivals, Delaware-based DuPont and Swiss biotech firm Syngenta AG, about Monsanto's business practices. Both companies said they are cooperating with the probe.
Monsanto
'Reasonable Suspicion'
Police Stops
A teenager trying to get into his apartment after school is confronted by police. A man leaving his workplace chooses a different route back home to avoid officers who roam a particular street.
These and hundreds of thousands of other Americans in big cities have been stopped on the street by police using a law-enforcement practice called stop-and-frisk that alarms civil libertarians but is credited by authorities with helping reduce crime.
Police in major U.S. cities stop and question more than a million people each year - a sharply higher number than just a few years ago. Most are black and Hispanic men. Many are frisked, and nearly all are innocent of any crime, according to figures gathered by The Associated Press.
And the numbers are rising at the same time crime rates are dropping.
The practice is perfectly legal. A 1968 Supreme Court decision established the benchmark of "reasonable suspicion" - a standard that is lower than the "probable cause" needed to justify an arrest.
Police Stops
Full Season Pickups
CBS
CBS has given full-season pickups to Tuesday night freshman dramas "NCIS: Los Angeles" and "The Good Wife," which both have had three weeks of strong ratings,
"NCIS: Los Angeles" is the most-watched new show of the fall season, averaging 17.5 million viewers. "Good Wife" ranks as the second most-watched freshman series, pulling 13.7 million viewers.
CBS
NBC Cancels
"Southland"
It's the end of the road for NBC's cop drama "Southland," which has been canceled before the launch of its second season.
Although supportive of the show, NBC brass considered the six episodes produced for the new season to be too dark and gritty for broadcast TV -- especially now that the network's 10 p.m. week-night dramas must air an hour earlier to accommodate "The Jay Leno Show."
"Southland" was originally slated to debut in its new Friday 9 p.m. time slot last month. But NBC decided to push the start to October 23 and air "Dateline NBC" in the meantime. It is not clear when the six produced episodes will air.
There is a possibility that "Southland" could be shopped to cable networks. The cancellation of "Southland" ends (for now) a long relationship between NBC and executive producer John Wells, the man behind such hits as "ER" and "The West Wing."
"Southland"
| CURRENT MOON lunar phases |
