First, local (Pittsburgh):
This dive seemed like a good idea at the time
Story concerns a bad road, an odd situation, and, like the headline implies, an understandable choice that went unthinkably wrong. Spy novelist John Gardner famously said all novels have one of two plots: Someone goes on a trip, or a stranger comes to town. This story reads like the beginning of the former idea -- like accidentally jumping off a bridge and into a giant lake might act as a catalyst for incredible change, the beginning of a long, strange trip. Who knows. Related: Someone jumps off the Homestead Grays Bridge on purpose. Which is apparently not an uncommon decision.
Key witness in drive-by shooting case changes tune
Sounds like a story directly out of The Wire: a kid raised in the inner-city says he doesn't "know anything about the law, rights, justice," then listens to conniving police and does "what they [tell him] to do" and basically admits accessory to homicide and implicates an acquaintance in a shooting. Then he says, after meeting with a lawyer: Wait a minute, I don't have to lie? Everyone gets confused, no one knows who to believe. Story goes from there.
Bishops draw slavery/abortion parallel
"'The common good can never be adequately incarnated in any society when those waiting to be born can be legally killed at choice,' the president of the group said to long applause from nearly 300 bishops gathered here for their regular meeting. 'If the Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision that African Americans were other people's property, and somehow less than persons, were still settled constitutional law, Mr. Obama would not be president of the United States. Today, as was the case 150 years ago, common ground cannot be found by destroying the common good.'"
Debate at will.
Gotta side with the Trib on this one. The financial services bailout precedent has already been set. Following suit by bailing out a failing auto industry just doesn't seem to make sense. Related: PNC using bailout funds to acquire National City.
Outside Pittsburgh:
"One cause of the overparenting trend, Marano says, is the working mother. That seems paradoxical: if Mother is at the office, how can she hover over the child? Well, she can hover at night and on weekends. The rest of the time, she can hire someone else to do it—and secretly install a 'nanny cam' (one model is disguised as a smoke detector), to make sure it’s being done right. Marano believes, however, that the risk of overparenting is greater for a woman who quits her job in favor of full-time mothering while her children are young. Such a woman faces a huge loss of income—one source says a million dollars, on average, over the course of her career. It is no surprise that she might want child-rearing to be a project worthy of that sacrifice."
What’s Next for Affirmative Action?
"As Gerald Early, a professor of African and African-American studies and American-culture studies at Washington University pointed out last month in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Americans have embraced black CEOs, authors, and diplomats -- but for an African American to become the most powerful person on earth represents 'the ultimate' advance for 'a people who have endured a history of powerlessness.' And on Tuesday, Children’s Defense Fund president Marian Wright Edelman wrote in Politico, 'This morning, as I stood in line to vote, I was moved by the realization that finally this is the day on which my fellow Americans are willing to do what Dr. King envisioned: vote for a President based on the content of his character rather than the color of his skin.'" Related: Is Obama the End of Black Politics? And: Race and the campaign of Barack Obama.
Also, "The Knife Went In," which I got from this. And apparently not many bloggers actually update their blogs. Take this one for example -- only updated once, ever, and with a post titled "I Loved My Whitey Tighties."
What are you reading?