The fundamental goal of the next Supreme Court justice should be to create a record that would not inspire Sen. Chuck Schumer to say, as he did of Justice O’Connor last week: “We hope the president chooses someone thoughtful, mainstream, pragmatic
Olympics Drops Baseball and Softball
No more hardball or softball in the Olympic games:
Reversing the expansion instincts that have gripped the Olympic movement for more than 50 years, the International Olympic Committee voted baseball and softball out of the Games in 2012 at its meeting in Singapore today, and instead of replacing them, simply decided to go small.
“We are now an Olympics of 26 sports,” the committee’s president, Dr. Jacques Rogge, told reporters after the vote.
The surprise came in two waves. First, the decision to drop baseball and softball came when the 114 committee members were asked to approve or disapprove all 28 summer Olympic sports. That followed a week of speculation by members that none of the sports would be eliminated.
Instead, the committee failed to support baseball, which officially joined the Games in 1992 and softball, which was added in 1996.
It was the first time the International Olympic Committee eliminated any sports in 69 years.
Both baseball and softball suffered from low international support because they are not widely played, despite their Olympic inclusion, and remained dominated by North American teams. Cuba won three of the four baseball gold medals and the United States won the other.
The United States won all three softball gold medals.
The swimming and the beach volleyball are the highlights of the summer games for me.
Some Good News
The news HAS been dreary lately, so here is a nice story that was forwarded to me:
Two months ago, Katie Brownell was happy to be playing Little League ball with all of her boy friends. Now, she’s a Hall of Famer.
The 12-year-old Brownell, who etched her name in baseball lore when she tossed a perfect game on May 14, striking out all 18 batters she faced in a six-inning game, on Thursday donated the No. 3 jersey she wore that day to the Baseball Hall of Fame. The jersey will be placed on display in the museum’s Today’s Game exhibit and later will become part of either the Women in Baseball exhibit or Youth Baseball exhibit.
Cool.
To Raise the Level of the Debate
This is too rich. In the wake of the London bombings, Lashawn Barber offers up a ‘think piece’ on what to do to fight terrorism. Her intent:
1) To raise the level of interaction on this blog. Some commenters are treating it like their own personal forum (or toilet) where they can say whatever they want. Not so. If you don
Monk
The season premiere of Monk is tonight. Set your TiVo®.
Points For Honesty
Crooks and Liars provides this video excerpt of Christopher Hitchens on Scarborough Country last night, where Hitch states:
SCARBOROUGH: Mr. Hitchens, is Senator Clinton correct?
HITCHENS: I have no idea. My presumption would be that she’s just fooling with the numbers. But that’s just because I don’t like her and can’t stand the sight of her…
Notwithstanding his subsequent argument about whether or not DHS needs more money, you have to appreciate Hitch’s candor.
Site Re-Design
Just wanted to let you know that over the next few days, this site will be converted to WordPress, as well as receiving a facelift.
Thanks to a few generous people who have donated a LOT of time and energy with the design and the rebuild, as well as a few of you who threw close to a hundred bucks in the Amazon and Paypal tip jars, we will be moving to a whole new look and server.
I think the new site will be more readable, and will include the option for a fixed width center column (as it currently is) or one that scales. bear with me over the next few days, because I am sure there will be some problems.
The main goal was to keep the general look and feel of the site, while making it more readable (physicially, not substantively) and more stable. The most important feature was to retain the ability for you all to leave as many comments as possible, and I think WP will serve our needs well.