What a complete joke. LeBron James has been stripped of his high school eligibility the the Ohio State Athletic Association because he accepted 2 basketball jersey's from a local store. Amateur rules have got to be changed. Did you know that in Kansas, kids aren't even allowed to compete in non-KSHAA sanctioned events during the school year without losing eligibility? So if I had gone down to Oklahoma to play a golf tournament in the fall of my senior year - I would have been ineligable to play in the spring. Nice rule.

Though its not much different than the other zero-tolerance shit schools pump out. Think about it - LeBron gets his eligibility stripped over 2 pieces of clothing. The exact same punishment that he would have gotten had he signed with an agent and a shoe company and accepted the millions of dollars that would come with it.

"I think this sends a message that we are all about fairness,'' Muscaro said. "LeBron is being treated like any one of the thousands of student-athletes in Ohio.'' "Naturally, LeBron is talented and he's noted nationally and internationally, but as far as this association is concerned, we will treat him the same as all our other athletes. James is the first athlete he has declared ineligible in his 14 years as commissioner.

Yep, just like everybody else - except he's the only one to be declared ineligible. He should have gotten a 1 game suspension and been made to return the jerseys.

Schools are still making the same idiotic mistakes they made over the past two years. A 3rd grader was suspended for 5 days for violation of the school's substance abuse policy. Take a guess why ... Unless you are as cynical as I am, I'm betting that the thought 'because he ate a multi-vitamin with his lunch' never came into your head.

Thats OK though. There's thousands of school administrators who never have much of anything come into their heads - they just pull the lever like a monkey trying to get a food pellet and suspend the kid.

O'Rourke Principal Karen Mohr said other students saw "a purple pill." "It was very frightening because we didn't know what the child had ingested," she said. Thats a very honest, and expected reaction. I would hope that all school administrators would be concerned with what kids are injesting on campus. But once you find out its just a mult-vitamin, its time to relax - not time to make an example of a kid who didn't do anything wrong other than to violate an entirely vague rule. Jeez, think of the trouble he'd have been in if he had brought the real purple pill to school.

Maybe the worst movie analogy ever: 'Biker Boyz' Like 'Star Wars' on Bikes.

Andrew Sullivan vs. the NY Times - I think we have a clear winner. So let's get this straight. Even if Saddam has chemical and biological weapons; even if he is in clear violation of U.N. resolutions; even if he and his proxies amount to a dire threat against the lives of Americans, the U.S. president should do nothing unless the French, Germans and Russians agree. This isn't foreign policy. It's the abdication of foreign policy. And it's certainly a direct assault upon the credibility of the United Nations. [via IP]

UPDATE: The New Republic also has some harsh words for the NY Times editorial coverage of the Iraq situation. This article does a great job of comparing the Times editorial positions prior to inspections resuming and what they are now - it ain't pretty for the Times. For a paper that slapped down two sports columnists articles because they deviated from the editorial line of the paper regarding Augusta, the Times sure seems to be embracing a deviation from their own editorial line from just a few months ago.

This report that a grocery store clerk saw Laci Peterson in December just stinks beyond all belief. This clerk would have us believe that she had a short conversation where Laci told her she had been kidnapped, then the clerk told the kidnapper what she & Laci had talked about. After Laci & the kidnapper left, she tried to find a phone book to call the police - because 911 is just too difficult to commit to memory apparently - but couldn't find one. Then she got distracted and completely forgot about the incident - until now.

Yeah right. I don't understand why people do things like this. It messes up an investigation and its going to get this store clerk thrown in jail. You'd think people would be a bit smarter about making up stories like this after the guy got nailed lying about seeing the snipers at the Home Depot store last year.

For those of you on pins and needles, Mike has successfully fought off the bad guys from Golf Digest that were claiming nearly every aspect of my Ty Tryon Celeblog was a violation of their rights.

I'd like to thank everybody who wrote me a supportive email - its nice to know there is still some aspect of community left in the weblog world. And I'd like to thank Mike, who took on this issue and helped me out when he was under no obligation to do so. Thanks.

Remember way back in September when I linked to an article where Nelson Mandela criticized the US for not going to the UN in relation to the Iraq situation? Of course you don't. Here's what Mandela said on Sept 2, 2002: We are really appalled by any country, whether a superpower or a small country, that goes outside the U.N. and attacks independent countries," Mandela said before meeting with French President Jacques Chirac at his Johannesburg home.

Of course, shortly after that, the US went to the UN and got another resolution and inspections, yadda yadda yadda. 5 months later, we haven't attacked anybody and 8 European leaders have signed a 'petition' supporting our position. So Mandela ought to be cool with the whole scenerio now, right? I mean, we did what he wanted - we went to the UN and made our argument. Of course, Mandela wasn't expecting our argument to carry the day so he's still pissed.

Today he says: "If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the United States of America." Speaking at the International Women's Forum, Mandela said, "One power with a president who has no foresight -- who cannot think properly -- is now wanting to plunge the world into a holocaust."

Lets get a replay of that: "If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the United States of America." Not Germany's attempted extermination of the Jews. Not even his own country's Apartheid. Its the US that is the king of unspeakable atrocities of the world. Yeah.

Nicely done. Tom Daschle's Fantasy World: ...a curious set of propositions: (1) Yes, Saddam Hussein retained and developed weapons from 1991-1998, while inspectors where in Iraq. (2) Once the inspectors left Iraq, between 1999-2002, he disarmed unilaterally. And (3) for whatever reason, Saddam chose not to notify the United Nations of this disarmament so that the sanctions crippling Iraq's economy would be kept in place.

My wife is all fired up because Devil May Cry 2 is being released on Friday. She went wild and played the first game in just a few days, and the appearance of this Japanese commercial for the sequel (QT movie) just had her giddy. Unfortunately for me, this likely means that some of the money I won at the Superbowl party on Sunday will be missing come Friday morning.

I pity the Best Buy staff if they don't have the game out on the shelves when the doors open at 10AM. When Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance came out, she lectured them on the official release date and made them fetch a copy of the game from the stockroom since they hadn't put it on the shelves yet.

An article over at Slate tries to answer the question, Why France Hates Us. The article basically argues that publically opposing (nearly) everything the US does is what keeps France inside the power circle.

I actually managed to not watch the State of the Union Address last night. Its the first one I've missed in a few years, but I tend to get so wrapped up in politics around the presidential elections that I feel I need to distance myself from it during the off years. Paying too close attention to it just gets me to angry.

Another Hitchens article, this time he argues that Bush is not the 'cowboy' he's portrayed at by the left. He also gets some shots in at France while he's at it. To have had three planeloads of kidnapped civilians crashed into urban centers might have brought out a touch of the cowboy even in Adlai Stevenson. But Bush waited almost five weeks before launching any sort of retaliatory strike. And we have impressive agreement among all sources to the effect that he spent much of that time in consultation. A cowboy surely would have wanted to do something dramatic and impulsive (such as to blow up at least an aspirin-factory in Sudan) in order to beat the chest and show he wasn't to be messed with. But it turns out that refined Parisians are keener on such "unilateral" gestures—putting a bomb onboard the Rainbow Warrior, invading Rwanda on the side of the killers, dispatching French troops to the Ivory Coast without a by-your-leave, building a reactor for Saddam Hussein, and all the rest of it.

This 'not a cowboy' meme gets stronger with the Taranto entry poking fun at the left's continued use of the term 'Rush to War'. Is it really a rush to war if they've been making the rush claim for so many months now? By the time the liberation of Iraq begins in earnest, perhaps a month from now, critics of the Bush administration will have spent at least six months complaining about the "rush to war." But half a year's preparation is no rush; it's more of a saunter.

Saunter eh - isn't that something a cowboy does?

I just lost a bunch of respect for the Dark Horizons website. From their 'Best Films of 2002' write-up:

2. Bowling for Columbine - "Moore manages to swap between sheer outright shock to belly-busting laughter and back again all in the space of a minute or two. Its a project which asks the big questions and looks at the issue from a very balanced viewpoint and allows you the viewer to make up your own mind. Smart, funny, incisive and abundantly clever".

Emphasis mine. Anyone who's read any critique of Moore's movie knows better than that.

Yesterday, Japan admitted that 206kg of plutonium - enough to make about 25 nuclear bombs - is unaccounted for at a nuclear reprocessing facility. How long till Susan Sarandon or Garafalo wonder out loud why we aren't planning an invasion of Japan?

I think I've now figured out how I'll eventually die. People who spend many hours every day sitting in front of a computer could be at risk of developing deep vein thrombosis - potentially fatal blood clots. A team led by Richard Beasley of the Malaghan Institute of Medical Research in New Zealand identified a 32-year-old man who lost consciousness a few weeks after suffering a swollen calf. The cause was found to be a massive clot that had formed in a vein in his leg and travelled to his lungs - a pulmonary embolism.

This is actually a bit of a worry for me because I currently have a very painful (at times) right calf. I think it is a partially torn muscle from a couple of years ago that never healed quite right - but I suppose it could be a clot.

Leave Jimmy Kimmel's show alone! His bar that serves drinks to audience members during the show is being shut down after only 1 episode. Although I didn't see the George Clooney stuff that the article talks about, I did see the last half of the show. Al Michaels crooning lyrics from a 50 Cent song was priceless.

Can we just go ahead and get rid of women's sports? First a woman qualifies for a PGA Tour event - from a different set of tees than the rest of the competitors, and now Annika Sorenstam wants to play an event on the PGA Tour. She's easily the best female player in the world, but her skills don't translate well onto the men's tour.

I followed her around for two days at the US Womens Open this past summer and saw up close what kind of ability she has. Undoubtedly, she (and all the top women players) were better than I expected - but that doesn't mean they have a shred of hope playing against men on difficult golf courses.

Now there is the issue of where and when Sorenstam would play a PGA Tour event. She said it would have to be the right situation, the right course, preferably one that is short and tight, where driving distance would not be the ultimate factor.

The venue won't matter much - short and tight for the men is still longer than anything the women get near. Plus the greens will be faster and harder than she's used to, and the rough will be 1-2 inches deeper. She'd struggle to stay close to even par - especially if the weather acts up at all. Has everybody forgotton how poorly she & Karie Webb played in the teams event with Tiger Woods last year? It was a complete fiasco.

Sorenstam's presence in a PGA Tour event would be big news, front-page news. It would be a boost for the LPGA Tour. A Sorenstam appearance in a PGA Tour event would be great for the game, great for the LPGA Tour.

I struggle to see this as valid. If she wants to play - thats just fine, but don't go making it into some social cause for women's sports - because it will not have a positive impact on them. Best case scenerio - she wins the tournament and the $750k or so that goes with it. Do you think she'd happily head on back to the LPGA to play for $150k winner's checks every week? Hell no, she'd stay up with the men - probably attracting a few more of the top female players to follow her - and the LPGA would go from the 2nd rate tour that it is now, to utter irrelevance.

Worst case scenerio - she shoots 76-80 and misses the cut by a dozen strokes. With the LPGA already suffering from a lack of respect for player's abilities, I hardly see how a conclusive confirmation of what everyone already believes to be a positive thing for women's golf.

Middle case scenerio - she barely makes the cut and finishes T54. Again, if after handpicking a tournament and course, the best she can do is hang around with the PGA Tour also-rans - the lack of ability label will just be that much more stuck to the LPGA players.

Scott Ritter's sealed arrest report has now been opened by the Feds as they look into possible federal charges against him. Ritter must be awfully confused about all this, considering that when confronted with the charges by the media just a week ago - he had no idea what they were referring to: When contacted by the Gazette last Friday, Ritter denied any knowledge of the incidents. ''Sorry, you must have the wrong person,'' Ritter told the newspaper.

The Assistant DA that sealed the case (and never told the DA) has been fired since all this came out, and considering the news that sealing these types of cases doesn't happen, and piling on the fact that he was also caught doing the same damn thing 2 months prior and let off with just a warning makes claims by the Indymedia crowd that this just a scheme to silence a dissenting voice seem crazy. Anybody who doesn't believe that Ritter was specifically targeted on account of his political activities needs to seek help: that sort of naivete can be terminal, and the patient probably shouldn't be trusted to cross the street unattended.

Also, the Corner points out that as of Sunday, the New York Times hadn't found it newsworthy to report any of the Ritter saga. My own search turns up that Sunday and today's paper didn't include anything on Ritter either.

The following headlines were right next to each other today: 'A 4,000-Pound Murder Weapon' and Actress Nell Carter Dies at 54.

I'm almost speechless - a judge has actually made a very smart decision by throwing out the lawsuit filed against McDonalds on behalf of fat kids everywhere.

Oh, and I'm in the middle of nowhere this week - Presidio TX. As a result, I'll be pretty limited in my net access this week.

Christopher Hitchens takes the peace movement to task - and the result isn't pretty. A year or so ago, the ‘peace’ movement was saying that Afghanistan could not even be approached without risking the undying enmity of the Muslim world; that the Taliban could not be bombed during Ramadan; that a humanitarian disaster would occur if the Islamic ultra-fanatics were confronted in their own lairs.

If the counsel of the peaceniks had been followed, Kuwait would today be the nineteenth province of Iraq (and on his own recently produced evidence, Saddam Hussein would have acquired nuclear weapons). Moreover, Bosnia would be a trampled and cleansed province of Greater Serbia, Kosovo would have been emptied of most of its inhabitants, and the Taliban would still be in power in Afghanistan. Yet nothing seems to disturb the contented air of moral superiority which surrounds those who intone the ‘peace’ mantra.

If anything is going to give the game of golf a bad name over the next year, it won't be Augusta National's membership policies - it'll be Aaron Baddeley's pants. Speaking of Augusta, there's a letter to the editor in the Washington Post that just absolutely rips them on their coverage of the membership fiasco w/ Martha Burk - most of the criticisms could be made of the NY Times and nearly every other important newspaper in the US.

High school sophmore holds classroom hostage w/ 9mm in what was supposed to be a suicide with an audience. The unidentified boy was tackled by two classmates, who took a loaded 9 mm semiautomatic gun from him, police Sgt. John Allen said.

Only 1 in 9 school board members think violence in schools is a "major concern".

After watching some of the peace protests (or are they war protests?) yesterday, all I have to say is that its a good thing that this is all about oil. Otherwise we'd be in big trouble. Oh, wait... The documents seized at the homes of the two scientists, however, confirm what Western intelligence has been arguing all along, that Saddam is continuing with his quest to develop the first Arab atom bomb.

Have I officially passed into 'dorkland' since I'm excited about Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix? I'm afraid I already know the answer.

I'm in Dallas this week, so updates will be in the late evenings, if at all.

UPDATE: This will the the only update. Its freaking cold here. I figured leaving Kansas behind I'd get a bit of warm weather, but I've been able to see my breath everyday down here. The solution? I get to come back to Texas for 3 days next week - this time further south, in Presidio.

To the rescue - Mike & Dineen are my new heroes.

See what kind of shit I have to put up with. Any hotshot lawyers want to give me a hand with this?

We represent The Golf Digest Companies ("GDC"), publisher of Golf Digest and Golf World magazines and owner of the www.golfdigest.com and www.golfworld.com websites. We have been made aware that your website (www.watchingtytryon.com) has, without permission, posted Golf Digest covers and linked to several articles on GDC websites and reproduced at least two (2) photographs from our client's publications.

These articles, photographs, and covers were created for GDC, either by employees of GDC, in which case GDC is the copyright owner, or by freelancers, who own the copyright and have assigned certain exclusive rights to GDC. Your publication of the photographs and covers infringes the copyright rights of GDC and/or the individual authors/photographers. Under the copyright law, only the copyright owner has the right to publish or allow others to publish their material. As you should be aware -- if you are not, you will soon be -- the Copyright Act provides severe remedies for infringement, including injunctive relief, payment of substantial damages (including in certain cases statutorily-prescribed damages of up to $150,000 per infringement), and reimbursement of our client's attorneys fees.

In addition, your use of the GOLD DIGEST and GOLF WORLD trademarks on your site, and use of the Golf Digest covers to implore users to purchase a magazine subscription at www.Amazon.com for your referral fee, suggests some affiliation or association with these magazines. From the context of your site, consumers are led to believe that www.watchingtytryon.com has some relationship with GDC to supply material from the publications and/or share proceeds from magazine subscription sales. Such use of our client's marks and cover images constitutes unfair competition and trademark infringement in violation of Federal and state laws. These laws also provide significant remedies for infringements such as yours.

Since your website explicitly requests that users scan and send to you magazine articles and pictures concerning Ty Tryon, your infringement is obviously knowing and willing. Given this fact, there is little doubt but that if a court is requested to provide remedies for your infringement, the maximum damages will be awarded.

In addition, your use of the names of the authors of the articles may give rise to separate claims by them for misappropriation of their names and invasion of their right of publicity/privacy.

On behalf of our client, we demand that you immediately remove from your website all photographs and other material taken from GDC publications and websites, and stop linking to GDC websites. In addition, you must advise us of the full extent of your use of material from GDC, including identifying each such item by title and author and providing a printout of it, as well as the original posting date. We can then determine what further remedial and corrective measures are necessary, including the publication of an apology and corrective advertising, and the payment of substantial damages.

Please respond in writing. Alternatively, we suggest that you have your attorney contact me right away, and in any event no more than 10 days from the date of this letter

More on the Rangel/Conyers proposal to reinstate the military draft (previously discussed here). It appears that less than 10 months ago, Representitive John Conyers (D), was co-sponsor of a bill spoke out against the possibility of a draft. The title of the bill read: Expressing the sense of Congress that reinstating the military draft or implementing any other form of compulsory military service in the United States would be detrimental to the long-term military interests of the United States, violative of individual liberties protected by the Constitution, and inconsistent with the values underlying a free society as expressed in the Declaration of Independence."

See that you lefties? Your individual liberties and Constitutional protections are only supported by Mr. Conyers when they are politically helpful to him. I hope the people of Michigan remember this when he is up for re-election in 2004.

Police arrested 2 men trying to scale the fence at Augusta National with golf clubs and balls in their hands. I have a vision that a similar fate awaite Martha Burk and Jesse Jackson come April - sans clubs & balls.

You've likely heard by now that the NFL has admitted a huge officiating error on the last play of the 49ers/Giants playoff game last weekend. It was a screw up, but I didn't think it was interesting enough to mention here. But whats happened in the aftermath is downright crazy. Meanwhile, New Jersey Assemblyman Anthony Impreveduto (D) wants the league to allow the state to host a Super Bowl by 2006 and called on the head of the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority, which runs Giants Stadium, to begin legal action against the NFL.

He wants to sue the NFL over a blown call. That alone is amazing enough, but the fact that as redress he wants to hold the Superbowl - in January - in an outdoor stadium in New Jersey - is freaking insane. Do he know how many Superbowls have been played in outdoor stadiums in cold weather states? Umm, that would be none.

"New Jersey taxpayers may have been cheated of tax revenue the state would have earned from players' income and other Giants-related enterprises had the team advanced in the playoffs," Impreveduto said in his letter to George Zoffinger, the sports authority president.

When hell freezes over buddy.

Oh joy. I got my 2003 Golfsmith catalogue in the mail today. I'll probably look at this thing 50 times before the end of the month. The only item I'm sure I'll buy for this season is a whole batch of Golfpride V-50 Cords for my irons. I've had this grip on my driver and 3-wood since late in 2001 and its the best feeling cord grip I've ever touched.

Anybody else think the Dems are sabotaging themselves by trying to get the military draft re-instated?

Reps. Charles Rangel of New York and John Conyers of Michigan, both Korean War veterans, said the nation must debate whether it should continue with a fighting force comprised disproportionately of people from low-income families and minorities. Their bill would require military or national service for men and women, ages 18 to 26, without exemptions for college or graduate studies. "I believe that if those calling for war knew that their children were likely to be required to serve -- and to be placed in harm's way -- there would be more caution and greater willingness to work with the international community in dealing with Iraq," Rangel said at a news conference.

There's already alot of resistance and complaining and just general guffawing at the idea. I also see that some Republicans tried something a bit similar way back in March.

The Richardson family sure is melting down: Tennessee State baseketball coach Nolan Richardson III, the son of former Arkansas bball coach Nolan Richardson, is likely to be fired after a Christmas night argument with an assistant in which he went looking for the man while carrying a handgun. Additionally, The NCAA is investigating Richardson and his staff for alleged rules violations including impermissible practice out of season, unauthorized individuals recruiting, providing recruiting inducements and unethical conduct by a member of the coaching staff. You ought to remember me mentioning his father's problems last month

Contrary to current popular belief, the Republican party has not been an opponent of Civil Rights. I've heard Boortz talk about this stuff before, but he never named any names or had specifics.

Norman Mailer, who once was an anarchist and now refers to himself as a Left-Conservative is actually just incompetent. He claims he can't be aliberal because he believes in God and the Devil; and thinks that Bush is going for world domination: Behind the whole thing in Iraq is the desire to have a huge military presence in the near-East as a stepping stone for eventually taking over the world.

He continues: From a radical Muslim point of view, America is absolutely the Great Satan, and this is a war to the death. But in terms of military realities, I don’t think it is necessary for us to build an empire to be able to contain Muslim rage. For one thing, apart from anything else, it would take Islamic extremists, what? A hundred years to overthrow us? Systematic terrorism for 100 years? Fifty years? Their all-out rage is not likely to last that long.

So there it is. Mailer thinks we just need a strategy to wait out the terrorists till they get bored with us. And on what basis does he think their rage 'is not likely to last that long'? How long have the Arabs hated and fought with the Jews? Centuries perhaps.

The rest of his comments presuppose his assumption about Bush's intentions of world domination and so aren't particularly enlightening. [link via Fimoculous]

UPDATE: If you need an additional reason to dislike Mailer - here's the gravy: Abbott, who wrote the best selling book "In the Belly of the Beast," was paroled in 1981 with the help of author Norman Mailer (he had been serving time for robbery). Weeks after his release, Abbott murdered a man on a New York City street, a crime for which he was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison.

The 2003 prototype automobiles have been released. I'm not sure why I link to these things every year and get all excited about the new vehicles. No industry promised more thru prototypes, and delivers less in its actual products than the auto industry. For literally decades now, we are treated annually to a host of futuristic looking cars - and yet, the cars we can buy never look much anything like the prototypes promised. (Here's my entry about last year's concept cars)

Sure, some of the vehicles will get released looking pretty much like they do in these pictures - but most we'll never hear about again. As for this crop, I'd be satisfied if only the Chevy SS (click on the 'next' link once you get there to see all the photos) gets released. I'd buy that car in a heartbeat.

Just another thought on the stillborn baby eating 'artist' mentioned below. Isn't he basically just playing out a Fat Bastard skit that was left on the cutting room floor of the 2nd Austin Powers movie? Can't you just see this dimwit on stage taunting the little baby, "I'm gonna eat ya", "I'm bigger than you and higher up the food chain...so get in my belly!", "Christ, its tiny". Then, after eating the baby, the big finish: "I ate a baby! Ay, the *other* other white meat."

A quick PSA for you single guys looking for love - tell those chicks you hit on in bars that sex is good for your brains. They discovered the naturally occurring hormone prolactin -- which surges after sex and during pregnancy -- prompts stem cells in the brain to produce new neurons in the brain. [via Geeknik]

I may have to order a couple of DVDs from Amazon this week - Best Little Whorehouse in Texas and CB4 are both getting released tomorrow. Its amazing that CB4 is still the best rap movie ever made. Eminem ain't got nothing on MC Gusto, Stab Master Arson and Dead Mike.

Remember back when artists did things like paint portraits and make scuptures? We're obviously long past that phase, and well into the urine-soaked-cross with a turd on top phase. Bad as the turd 'art' is, I just have a hard time thinking of eating a stillborn baby or drinking wine w/ a penis floating in it as art. Somehow, I always considered that type of crap to be deviant behavior. But hey, anything for ratings.

My Snoop Doggy Blog site got some press today - though the journalist who wrote the article ought to be ashamed. The jist of it was to report on celebrities who are keeping weblogs - folks like Moby and Chuck D and Snoop. Except that the Snoop site is a pretty obvious parody (if the URL doesn't tip you off, the disclaimer at the bottom of the page ought to).

The nomination form for the 2003 Bloggy Awards is up. I actually nominated myself for a couple categories this year: Best Tagline for this site and Best Topical Weblog for Our Horrible Children. My vote for Weblog of the Year will go to Instapundit. Agree with the site or not, its been at the center of the weblog universe for quite a while now.

Even though I wasn't terribly impressed by Lullaby, I'm still hooked on Palahniuk enough to be interested in his next couple of works - Fugitives & Refugees (a travel book on his hometown of Portland written in the form of postcards sent to friends) and Diary or Period Revival, I've seen both titles listed (It involves an older woman protagonist who, after her husband's attempted suicide has left him in a coma, begins to unearth a series of notes left behind in all the homes he helped build that point towards disturbing revelations about her life and marriage.)

I'm more interested in the latter book - it sounds like it has some real potential.

The Our Horrible Children section of this website has just been made a lot more user friendly. Instead of loading up all the stories at once on the main page, it only grabs the most recent 20, and provides an excerpt for each individual entry at the bottom of the page that'll lead you to all of the individual entries. With over 18 months of material, it was just getting too large to serve up in one chunk.

Part 2 of the NFL year end article mixed with Swingers references is now online. I'm becoming convinced that Swingers can make anything seem funny.

Keep an eye on this one - Burk & Jesse Jackson are planning protests outside the gates of the Masters in April, but the local sheriff says there's no way he's letting them get that close. Richmond County Sheriff Ronnie Strength told The Augusta Chronicle that law-enforcement officials will ``not even consider the sidewalks around the Augusta National,'' and that public safety will take precedence over planned protests. Strength said the sidewalks are too narrow and there will be too many pedestrians and vendors on Washington Road to allow a large protest there.

Burk, or course, is going to sue; and considers this treatment "intimidation". "My reaction is who is going to pay for all this police protection?" she said. "Was there a public referendum on it? The more she talks, the more her ignorance of the law and civil rights shows. Public referendum my ass. Certainly she's aware that when the KKK stages parades across this country, local law enforcement officials are required to provide security for them. Apparently either Burk isn't aware of the normality of this, or feels that Augusta National is less worthy of security than the Klan is.

These are the type of people we need speaking up against zero tolerance policies. Henry Silverman, a retired teacher and administrator who served for 37 years at Michigan State University. He is currently president of the Lansing Branch of the Michigan ACLU and serves on the Board of Directors of the Michigan ACLU. Michigan's public schools have embraced the concept of zero tolerance rather blindly, argues Silverman, a former MSU educator. As a result, student rights have been eroded, and public schools have been miseducating students in the meaning of democracy.

It isn't just a problem limited to Michigan, but we've got to start somewhere. Alot of his article revolves around the kid who got in trouble last year for wearing a traditional 3 inch blade with his kilt outfit to a school dance (the school backed off him when he started legal proceedings against them); and a second incident that I hadn't heard of. A student was suspended for ten days for writing a parody about the tardy policy at Mt. Pleasant High School and about the teachers and administrators charged with enforcing it.

The lawyers for Alex argue that Alex has a constitutional right to express his ideas and thoughts freely in the form of private communications without the fear of sanction based on the content of his expression. The school, in suspending him, was retaliating by attempting to silence him for protected written expression. The school�s verbal assault policy, it is further claimed, is overbroad and unconstitutional.

Hell, nearly every zero tolerance policy that I've ever written about fits the description in that last sentence.

They'll never win a dress-code argument, but some Georgia kids are doing a good job of trying - they are currently banned from wearing 'Dixie Outfitter Tshirts' to school because they have the Confederate flag on them. ...no one complains when African American students wear clothes made by FUBU, a black-owned company whose acronym means "For Us By Us." Worse, she says, school officials have nothing to say when black students make the biting crack that the acronym also means "farmers used to beat us." Similarly, she says, people assume that members of the school's growing Latino population mean no harm when they wear T-shirts bearing the Mexican flag."

Students likely to be suspended after winter break for distributing candy canes w/ religious messages attached in between classes and during lunch hour. ''We do not allow students to distribute non-school curriculum or activity-related literature of any kind directly to other students on school grounds,'' said Superintendent Thomas McDowell ''We do not single out students based upon the content of their message, in this or any other instance." No, because they know doing that would get them in trouble. So as a result, they just ban any and all written communication among students during school hours. Um, Mr. McDowell, I think thats called over-reaching.

33 kindergartners suspended in Philly during 2002.