UConn James

Exactly. I repeat my point from upthread: He and his defense were not prevented from contacting the consulate. They just didn't do it. Ignorance of what your rights are isn't an excuse to get a do-over after you've elected to not exercise those rights.

Rangers fan who died in fall was a firefighter Oh dear.... And yeah, Josh Hamilton's gotta be feeling very ****ty. But like so many of these things, his was only one of the last acts in a series of steps that led to this accident. Every fan assumes risk and must be responsible for their own safety --- it's right there on the back of the ticket --- and it's not legally the fault of the team or stadium designers.... But why do they keep an open area right there or at least have more than a waist-high fence?

Per a picture and post on the Bills' Facebook page, the removal of the old turf has started. Link

So, they don't want to be treated like illegal immigrants by the police... until it might help them escape American justice. The police don't have to tell you which avenues you have to pursue help in fighting charges. They are not your !@#$ing lawyers!! Rot in hell, Humberto! Let this be a warning to the scum of Mexico who treat the U.S. as their back alley to rob, rape and murder. No mercy (except from the Democrats who'll kiss your ass for your votes).

Well, that might only work if TBD had a physical presence in Michigan.

I don't know about teevee, but it looks like they're streaming every game on ESPN3.com, if you have an ISP that has an agreement.

I'm not talking about that kind of thing. But fabrics will change from what is no doubt proprietary stretch material from Reebok, stitching/seams will likely change to the Nike cuts (again, I'm not saying this will have an impact on design), to say nothing that the brand logo will be changing. If you're going to pay for an authentic, it's nice to have it actually be completely authentic for more than a year. [shrug]

If you're going to spend $300 on a piece of cloth with numbers on it... you might wait until Nike takes over for the entire NFL next year. Specs are bound to change from Reebok's, and then you'll have paid a lot of coin for something that'll be outdated inside of a year.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7IhwaEdiV4&feature=player_embedded It's not Wimbledon, but this story was pretty funny. Cornet is the #3-ranked French player. And I gotta say...

The only ones I remember being "sleeveless" by way of Hojo's alterations are Schoebel and Kelsay. There was a photo of one of Kelsey's game jerseys where the underarm gusset is entirely removed. I dunno. Maybe the guy needs constant access to his 'pits for some reason.... Some players use the elasticized sleeve hem so there's less fuss they have to correct after a play; it's bunched up, but there is a sleeve. Other than that, I don't recall any players who actually didn't have sleeves. Regardless, we'll see how the ambiguous shoulder-arm stripes will look once players have them altered. The one thing I keep coming back to is, why would I go buying one (especially an authentic) when the whole league is switching to Nike next year and doubtless there will be changes?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGwDYBWEDSc It takes a lot for me to cry w/o physical pain (and at that, it takes a lot of physical pain for me to cry), but this version gets me. I put this song's main phrase "We'll walk in fields of gold" on a headstone for my dog a few years ago. For 12 years he went with me almost everywhere, including walking all the fields of gold at my grandparents'/uncle's farm in WNY when we went up for my grandfather's funeral, then about a week later, after he fell ill, the vet showed us X-rays of a large mass in his abdomen. So that walk is my last best memory of him. And this song always gets me.

As if it weren't readily apparent previously, this confirms it: you are a COMPLETE douchebag. Not like it's going to matter, b/c by the time NY primaries, it's probably going to be all over anyway. Once things really get going, no matter what she's polling at in Iowa right now, Bachmann doesn't have a chance. And your Westboro-Baptist-type reasoning is why. When independents hear some of her policy points, she may be one of the few Republicans Obama could beat... provided unemployment gets under 8%. If the economic numbers don't improve for the Jimmy Carter clone (and it doesn't look like they will. There's a number of top economists who're expecting another slowdown this summer-fall), Obama has NO chance against ANYONE.

Welcome to the (dis)functioning of government. Not only the salary of these people, but the additional people they'd have to hire to do the original person's job. And per the article, it's not b/c a boss told them to do this --- it's because some custodians decided for themselves that it's easier to sit down and be Lord of the TP than to actually do their job. I'm really looking forward to Obamacare.

PBS' "Need to Know" takes a look at the redistricting process now taking place in California. Legislation last year that was touted by then-Gov. Schwartzenegger places redistricting duties to a 14-member committee comprised of 5 registered Democrats, 5 registered Republicans and 4 registered independents, all of whom do not hold an elected office. Link Some of those districts exampled from across the country are friggin' outrageous. But then again, I can actually see some reasoning for the California coastal district that's highlighted in the video --- coastal areas have their own sets of common concerns that can often get drowned out if a district is just a block; and that specific district is not jerry-mandered to a high degree. Anyway, this is an interesting system they've set up to ostensibly remove some of the "politicians carefully selecting their voters" charge. Personally, I think it'd be easier and more effective to impose term limits.

A bit of trivia: the DoI actually wasn't signed by John Hancock, the President of the Continental Congress, until 2 August, and then by the other Signers a few weeks after that and through November. Connecticut's own Jonathan Trumbull took a few liberties in his famous painting of the signing.

Yeah, Nadal just wasn't firing on all cylinders. I don''t know if his left foot injury from the Del Potro match was still bothering him.... Or it may have been that Djokovich was just that fast on the court. He was chasing down stuff that would beat most anybody else, which forced Nadal to go a little wider/into a different style of play and likely contributed a lot to the errors. I'm glad that Nadal came back to win that third set to push the match a little longer, straight sets in under an hour and a half would've been disappointing after all the great finals from Wimbledon the past several years. Anyway, the word today is that Wimbledon is leaving NBC for ESPN. I hope they keep the broadcast team because it's top-notch. But yeah, it kind of sucks for antenna-only people like myself; broadcast variety decreases a little bit more. Things are pushing more and more to cable (which I just refuse to pay for without channel choice/a-la-carte pricing) and the Internet. I really hope ESPN3.com continues to air these kind of events as they've been doing. And it may not be such a bad thing, after all. NBC's coverage selection (all Venus and Serena, all the time) is tuned on the assumption that Americans only want to watch Americans. As such, I caught several matches on ESPN3.com that NBC either decided not to show or cut away from in their 10 a.m. - 1 p.m. "broadcasting window" last week. And the !@#$ move to not show the semifinals live on Thurs./Fri. morning, and anybody who reads Google News or has a sports RSS feed gets spoilers. So in some respects, the move is an answer to the way that NBC has treated Wimbledon for quite some time now.

It goes from 1" to 2 1/2". That's not a very subtle change. All told, this was not unlike the Chargers' redesign a few years ago. Everyone there wanted the "powder blue" throwbacks... but what they got was powder blue with navy-outlined features. They're probably figuring that people will drag their old duds out of the attic instead of buying new $100-$200 pieces of cloth with a name and number on it. The half-hearted approach to throwbacks (most often, returning to traditional color-schemes, striping patterns, etc.) can be OK if it looks good. But there is every chance it can look like crap, come off as gimmicky, or smack of doing something just to be different. This is often the mother of abortions like the Sluggalo, the NY Islanders' Gorton Fisherman logo, Broncos orange side-gussets, Oregon Ducks unis, and the like. One of the few examples I can think of where new components blended in well with old colors/designs was the Vancouver Canucks' return to blue green and white, and changing the colors on newer logos. I would place several of the Bills' redesign elements in the "doing something just to be different" category. It's certainly better than the navy pajamas. But was it everything fans wanted (which, by far, was a "return to a traditional look")? No. I can't think of anyone who didn't like the '64-'65 throwback set. It would've been the easiest thing to change it to the throwbacks --- they were already designed, as for screen-testing... they've been used on TV before, they were/are immensely popular. I don't get why they had to go do something different when a great set was already in place. I'm not going to carry the torch on this topic, but I'm also not going to be buying the new merch.

If the dude didn't get straight after the initial close call, then tried to flit away whatever excuses he could when he got caught in the act until it was game-set-match, he doesn't show the signs of ever stopping. If she doesn't realize he's a !@#$ing liar, if she believes he will now get straight, if she's so confident that the maid's the only one he's schtooping, if she's so damn confident that he won't be giving her an STD, if she doesn't realize that this pattern only escalates, if she doesn't realize that maybe she's got a self-punishment neurosis herself (did her father/mother cheat?)... then it looks like she's going to be stuck in this pattern. And maybe she wants to be stuck in this pattern. She may now feel like she "has hand" in the relationship, but telling by the guy's behavior, he'll do anything to get that hand back, or just cut off that hand. Make no mistake, there's a lot of risk in that relationship right now. You can only hope that it doesn't turn into one of those stories where the lover or husband kills the wife to get her out of the way and avoid a costly divorce/alimony agreement that might cramp the cheaters' style. It happens every day.

+1. I've really grown to love 'Breakfast at Wimbledon' the last several years, especially. Actually, it's kind of convergent now with my declining interest in football. That WSJ article last year that showed there's 11 minutes of actual play in a 3-hour NFL game really soured me on the 'sport' aspect of it. I knew that it was a lot of standing around as time ticked away, but I didn't think it was 11 minutes. Anyway, you gotta appreciate the shape these tennis players are in. Majors tennis is just a grudge match and they've gotta work for every point. Get a drink, get a gel-pack and then the ref announces 'Time' and it's right back to it. Nadal is simply dominant; great power and placement. (As an aside, Tsonga's game was really impressive. He's going to be one to watch if he maintains that power). I don't know what it is, but I don't really like Djokovic. And I will be rooting for Maria tomorrow.

Apparently, the show just got a new swear-word bleep machine, and there was an inside thing that they were going to try it out. And then, when Halperin said that, and someone didn't push the right button (or the right configuration of buttons) it didn't work. And then everyone on set feigned shock/moral outrage. Did anybody watch the presser? Obama was being a richard. The AP guy with the first question was like 'Speaker Boehner has said that he will not pass debt reduction measures that include tax increases, and you're saying that you're insisting on tax increases. ... [shrug] How do you expect to get anything passed?' Then about the 'Gunwalker' scandal (where the ATF delivered 2,500 AK-47s to the Mexican drug cartels (and no, this is not an exaggeration. They were given to the cartels to be "tracked" and then weren't tracked), one of which was used to murder a Border Patrol agent and another, the brother of a Mexican attorney general) he said he "thinks" someone in the ATF "might" be punished when the internal investigation is over.

CT started that recently as well. 'Course, you've always been technically required to declare the purchases and pay the taxes when you file... but who actually does that? Still, most of what it does is bog the economy down a little bit more. Yeh, taxes!!!

To add to the name-calling, Mark Halperin called Obama a "dick" this morning, referring to the presidential demeanor during yesterday's presser. Link. Apparently, they were initiating a bleep machine on MSNBC, and apparently as a joke, Halperin said that. The bleeper didn't work because someone pressed the wrong button or combination of buttons. So, now Halperin is on indefinite suspension. The crap of it is that during the Bush years, this and worse was/would have been applauded by the MSM (especially MSNBC). And besides that, Halperin has the truth on his side --- Obama was being a prick behind the mic.

Proper link. (No, it's not the Peter Pan Man thing)

When you live by the sword, you die by the sword.... I was half expecting to see he was caught with kiddie porn, because that's just how these things seem to go. At least he put in his extracurriculars with someone of age.

With the talent available and as much initial chip-block help as our OTs need, it will be shameful if Nix & Co. don't at least bid for TE. Perhaps the reason Gailey doesn't use the TE is because he never had one worth a bucket of warm spit.