Here’s the Star Tribune coverage of the collapse of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis, where at least four people were killed, 79 were injured, and 20 remain missing. Dr. John Hick, who was one of the first responders to the bridge collapse, said “It’s somewhat of a miracle that (the number of injuries and fatalities) was that low.” Hick also praised work done by passersby and people in area who jumped in to assist police and paramedics with evacuating the... Read more
* Brush with infamy: Turns out disgraced former NBA referee Tim Donaghy went to high school with my girlfriend. Her yearbook shows that Donaghy was voted Most Likely to Compromise the Integrity of a Major Sports League. * Civil discourse, illustrated: Seattle Mariners GM Bill Bavasi was asked to comment on criticism from Florida Marlins’ exec David Samson, “My mother always taught me that if the only thing you have to say is ‘[expletive] David Samson,’ you shouldn’t say anything... Read more
Frank Rich writes about the magic spell that President Bush is invoking in the hope it will protect him from his dementor-ish approval ratings: It was The Washington Post that first quantified General Petraeus’s remarkable ascension. President Bush, who mentioned his new Iraq commander’s name only six times as the surge rolled out in January, has cited him more than 150 times in public utterances since, including 53 in May alone. As always with this White House’s propaganda offensives, the... Read more
I had a short-term job some years ago working at a home for dual-diagnosis adults. The best thing about that job was each night, on my way home, heading out of the driveway past some of the men’s group homes where, in all but the harshest weather, the guys would all be gathered on the porch. So the last thing I would see and hear each night before leaving was a half-dozen beaming faces and waving hands as they wished... Read more
If you haven’t seen this yet, The Roosevelt Institution has put together some of the better policy recommendations from college students around the country. There’s plenty of good stuff there, lots of constructive, pragmatic ideas from people still young enough to think that policy matters matter. (When they’re older, they’ll learn that they can make more money by ignoring stuff like this and embracing pundit-info-tainment — carping about candidate’s hair cuts, appearing on Hardball and writing for The Politico. Public... Read more
Left Behind, pp. 308-314 It is, at last, Tuesday. The previous Tuesday was the morning after The Event and Rayford Steele has had a very busy week since then, getting saved, pestering his daughter, creeping out Hattie, shopping for electronics, reading up on Romanian politics, flying to and from Atlanta and calling poor Bruce Barnes at all hours of the night. And now it’s Tuesday again. Rayford could never get the hang of Tuesdays. Bruce Barnes called the core group... Read more
Left Behind, pp. 305-308 Reading this section of the book is painful and disorienting. It has the unreal, detached sensation of a hangover after a lost weekend. The last thing we knew, we were at the Plaza, talking to Nicolae, but now, suddenly, we’re back at Buck’s apartment. How did we get here? The authors fill in the blanks with a flashback of the end of the conversation at the hotel, but the pieces don’t seem to fit. Something shameful... Read more
And like a thief in the night, in the twinkling of an eye, the End of the World arrives for Dorothy … Back soon with Left Behind Friday. Read more
As a treat after swim practice, we sometimes swing by Ricky’s Candy Cones & Chaos, where the butter pecan ice cream is what every other butter pecan ice cream I’ve ever had was trying to be. The trouble with Ricky’s, if you should ever spend more than 10 minutes there, is the candy-themed music. In a half an hour at the place, I heard two different versions of “Sugar” (one by the Archies and one by, I think, the Bradys),... Read more
“God hates divorce,” is often cited as the last word from the Bible on the subject by people who turn to the Bible for the last word on any given subject. They wield this passage as a club with which they beat down the already beaten-down. But I think they’re reading it wrong. Most of those citing this verse seem unaware that it’s not a direction quotation — that they are actually paraphrasing the prophet Malachi. (The prophets, in general,... Read more
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