Bush Sewage Plant

Some creative San Francisco bar patrons want to rename a sewage treatment plant after the, um, sitting president. From the Department of Damned-With-Faint-Praise, a group going by the regal-sounding name of the Presidential Memorial Commission of San Francisco is planning to ask voters here to change the name of a prize-winning water treatment plant on the shoreline to the George W. ...

George Carlin Dies at 71

George Carlin, a comedian known for his combination of raunchy language and intellectual humor, died of heart failure last evening. He was 71. Carlin was an interesting guy, combining brilliant observational humor with political activism. Like too many comics in the HBO era, though, it often seemed that he was vulgar and outrageous simply because he could rather than ...

Tim Russert Dies of Heart Attack

Tim Russert has died of a heart attack at the age of 58. Family members say NBC's Tim Russert has died. They tell The New York Times that Russert died of an apparent heart attack. The host of NBC's "Meet the Press" was 58. Longtime NBC anchor Tom Brokaw has now confirmed Russert's death, in a special report on NBC. Brokaw ...

Swift-Boating Here to Stay

Michael Kinsley hopes that Swift-Boating, a combination of smear and truth that "exploits its own complexity and the reluctance of the media to adjudicate factual disputes" and thus sticks, will not reappear this election season. The raw material for swift-boating this year is already apparent. There is Obama's loony pastor, his friendship with a former radical, his dealings with a convicted ...

NYC Chief Crane Inspector Arrested

New York City's chief crane inspector has been arrested and charged with multiple charges of bribery in the wake of two fatal crane accidents in recent months. The city’s chief crane inspector was arrested on Friday and charged with taking bribes to allow cranes to pass inspection, the authorities said. He was also accused of taking money from a ...

Clinton to Bow Out, Endorse Obama

Along with a few hundred thousand other folks in the area, the power's been out at my place since yesterday afternoon, so I'm a bit behind on my blogging. As everyone knows by now, Hillary Clinton has put out word that she will suspend campaigning and endorse Barack Obama at a rally in DC Saturday. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton ...

Why Obama Beat Clinton

AP's Stephen Ohlemacher explains why Barack Obama, the young upstart, is going to be the Democratic Party nominee for president while Hillary Rodham Clinton, the hands-down favorite, is getting a set of steak knives. Unlike Hillary Rodham Clinton, rival Barack Obama planned for the long haul. Clinton hinged her whole campaign on an early knockout blow on Super Tuesday, while Obama's ...

Two Blogs that Pass in the Night

Yesterday's exchange with Thers over the state of conservatism reflects a major defect in the blogging medium. For the most part, we write blogs in serial fashion, as a conversation with our readers, and presume that recent posts on the same subject have been read. Most blog readers, on the other hand, parachute into posts based on links ...

NYT Columnists Need Better Editors

Think Progress' Matt Corley notes that for the NYT has been forced to append a correction on a Bill Kristol column for an egregious factual error. Citing Obama's 41 point loss in West Virginia, Kristol exclaimed, "I can’t find a single recent instance of a candidate who ultimately became his party’s nominee losing a primary by this kind of ...

Girls Sports Injuries More Severe

A long, anecdote-laden New York Times Magazine feature, "The Uneven Playing Field," examines the fact that, excluding football -- which girls generally aren't allowed to play -- female athletes are getting injured far more frequently and seriously than their male counterparts. Girls and boys diverge in their physical abilities as they enter puberty and move through adolescence. Higher levels of ...