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The [Sunday] PapersThe thing about the new Spanish-language version of the national anthem is this: It is beautiful. It is poetry. These people love America. On Saturday, the Chicago Sun-Times did us all a favor and printed the lyrics, translated to English (via the Associated Press). ("At night they said: 'It's being defended!/Oh say! Your starry beauty is still unfolding.") And it is. Tribunal Beachwood special affairs editor Tim Willette also suggests "Vice Squad," from The American Prospect. An excerpt: "[Cheney's flacks'] job is saying nothing, and saying it often. His press people seem shocked that a reporter would even ask for an interview with the staff. The blanket answer is no - nobody is available. Amazingly, the vice president's office flatly refuses to even disclose who works there, or what their titles are. 'We just don't give out that kind of information,' says Jennifer Mayfield, another of Cheney's 'angels.' She won't say who is on staff, or what they do? No, she insists. 'It's just not something we talk about.' The notoriously silent OVP staff rebuffs not just pesky reporters but even innocuous database researchers from companies like Carroll Publishing, which puts out the quarterly Federal Directory. 'They're tight-lipped about the kind of information they put out,' says Albert Ruffin, senior editor at Carroll, who fumes that Cheney's office doesn't bother returning his calls when he's updating the limited information he manages to collect." Recommended Elsewhere The always insightful Carol Marin on aldermen who think they are beyond the law. The New York Times on the efforts of Rahm Emanuel and Charles Schumer to get more Democrats elected to Congress this fall. (Emanuel's tactics will sound familiar to residents of the Illinois's Sixth District. "Mr. Schumer and Mr. Emanuel harangue contributors, micromanage their candidates, and aggressively court newspaper and television coverage." What they don't do, apparently, is show any concern for citizens.) Comedy Writing Rights Revoked "Hinckley & Schmidt Water Filtration Plant; Morton's Salt spreaders. The ADT 911 Center. The Geritol Senior Citizen Center. Coke or Pepsi as official beverage. These are just a few of the intriguing possibilities, now that mayor Daley has decided to turn city assets into moneymakers." - Sun-Times "The Budweiser Taste of Chicago? The Poland Springs Water Filtration Plant? Who knows? Mountain Dew, Chicago's official soft drink? Could be. Hollywood Casino's City Hall? Penthouse Magazine's Millennium Park?" - Tribune Is it any wonder your newspapers are so dreadful? (Although the Tribune story, by Gary Washburn, opened with a gem: "It turns out the skyway is not the limit when it comes to naming rights for the city of Chicago.") Gas Groaners Leave it to a Sun-Times columnist to patronize those of lesser means as well as fail to see that rising gas prices are just one effect of the new costliness of oil, which impacts virtually all parts of the economy. Leave it to Walter Kowalczyk and John Passarelli to set them straight. (Midway down the link.) Baking Soda - Andrew Herrmann, "Half-Baked Concert Promotion," Sun-Times "In an early September op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle, [then-Drug Czar John] Walters wrote: 'In 1974, the average THC content of marijuana was less than 1 percent. But by 1999, potency averaged 7 percent.' This is plain wrong. According to the federal government's own Potency Monitoring Project at the University of Mississippi, 1999's average was 4.56 percent. Referring to Walters' 7 percent figure, Dr. Mahmoud A. ElSohly, who runs the project, says, 'That's not correct for an overall average.'" "As to Walters' claim that all those '70s hippies were getting goofy on the 1-percent stuff - the basis for his 30-fold increase claim - the number lacks credibility. No one smokes 1-percent dope, at least not more than once. You make rope with it . . . Walters is disingenuously comparing the best pot of today with the worst of yesterday, rather than comparing average marijuana of a generation ago with average marijuana now." - Daniel Forbes, "The Myth of Potent Pot," Slate Hastert Hijinks - submitted by Tim Willette via Kevin Drum's Washington Monthly blog Note from Beachwood HQ The Beachwood Tip Line: Even better in Spanish. Posted on May 1, 2006 |
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