RV Residents Purged from Voter Rolls in Tennessee

It's an American tradition — hitting the open road, seeing the country, no ties to hold you back. I had always imagined doing it in something like a Volkswagen Beetle after college. These days, it's popular for Americans to take off in their RVs after they retire.

But in Tennessee, as Audie Cornish explained on Day to Day, there's a price for wanderlust — you can lose the right to vote. The Tennessee legislature recently passed amendments to state voting laws requiring voters to have a residential address. So officials in Bradley County told 286 people who live in their RVs full-time that they are being removed from the voter rolls. All list their addresses through a mail-forwarding service, Mail Call USA. Tennessee does not allow people to list commercial businesses as their official residences unless they actually live there.

But the RVers are fighting back with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union. They're suing the Tennessee government to put them back on the rolls, saying that they shouldn't be penalized for their lifestyle. Tennessee has no official requirement for the amount of time needed to establish residency — if it did, they say they would have complied.

But Tennessee officials aren't impressed with those arguments. "You can't establish residency by wanting to live somewhere ... it means actually physically moving here," said Brook Thompson, the state's coordinator of elections.

Interesting problem, especially as more Americans look at adopting this kind of lifestyle as they get older. What do you think? Should people without residential addresses be allowed to vote, or is there too high a risk of someone manipulating an election by having lots of RVers "move" into their state?

2:03 PM ET | 11-28-2007 | permalink | comments (9) | e-mail post

Southerners and Football: More Than Just the Game

My wife, who grew up in a little town near Atlanta, hates football. No, "hate" is too weak a word. She despises it. She says "football" the same way a Red Sox fan says "Yankees."

So imagine my surprise when recently, while an ESPN announcer was talking about the Georgia football team, she threw her hands in the air and shouted, "Go Dawgs! Woohoo!" I gave her a look that said, "What have you done with my wife?" She shrugged and said, "I'm from Georgia. What did you expect?"

That's when I first grasped that the attachment Southerners have to college football is not just about the game. It's about the experience of football: hanging out with friends, joshing rivals, having an excuse for a party.

That spirit is captured in NPR sports correspondent Tom Goldman's piece about the LSU-Ole Miss football game and the Web diary that sports editor Uri Berliner kept of their trip. They provide lots of vignettes about the fans' traditions.

Take June Guillory of Baton Rouge, La., who looks like your grandmother but wears a button that says "Go to Hell Ole Miss." Then there's the "mic man" who fires up the crowd at Ole Miss: Marcus Guinn, a 6-foot-7 black man who was surprised by his celebrity, especially in an area once known for its racism. And the get-togethers at the Grove in Oxford, Miss. Nine acres of parties: Women in pearls in one canopied area beside Southern rockers who've erected shrines to Elvis in another.

And this is great: The speed limit in the Grove is 18 mph in honor of former Ole Miss quarterback Archie Manning, who wore No. 18.

3:22 PM ET | 11-21-2007 | permalink | comments (3) | e-mail post

When Turkeys Attack

Davis, Calif., used to be a nice place. A college town where you could walk around in peace. But that was before ... before the turkeys came.

Day to Day has the story of what happens when a town is terrorized by a pack of turkeys. Not the plump, overfed birds we'll be carving up Thursday, but wild, lean birds, almost three feet tall, with tattoos that say, "Don't call me butterball." OK, maybe no tattoos, but you get my drift.

The turkeys, who hang out in a cemetery, attack passers-by. They also seem to have issues with bicycles — in a town labeled the nation's most bicycle-friendly.

Cemetery managers hired a trapper to get the birds and take them into the wild. But he gave up after he couldn't entice them into the traps. College researchers also have experimented with turkey alarm calls to scare the aggressive birds. Unfortunately, the Davis turkeys didn't even notice.

My suggestion: Call in someone like Rachael Ray or Emeril Lagasse to make an emergency visit and turn this problem into lunch for the whole town.

7:00 PM ET | 11-19-2007 | permalink | comments (8) | e-mail post

Americans Skip a Page When It Comes to Reading

If you'll pardon the pun, read it and weep. A new National Endowment for the Arts report says Americans are reading less. And young people are reading a lot less.

The report, To Read or Not to Read: A Question of National Consequence, found that the average person between 15 and 24 spends 2 1/2 hours a day watching TV and seven minutes reading. Between 1992 and 2002, the number of young adults (18-24) who voluntarily read a book each year (we're talking about one book here) dropped from 59 percent to 52 percent.

There's a little good news. The reading comprehension scores of 9-year-olds have soared in the past decade (thank you, J.K. Rowling). But only 30 percent of 13-year-olds read almost daily. And the number of 17-year-olds who "never or hardly ever" read for pleasure has doubled, and their comprehension scores have fallen.

And it's not just young people reading less. Only 38 percent of adults said they spent time reading a book for pleasure the previous day in 2006.

Now, you might say, who cares if people don't read as much as they used to? The NEA report hints at the possible consequences. People who read, The Associated Press writes, "are more likely to exercise, visit art museums, keep up with current events, vote in presidential elections and perform volunteer work."

10:42 AM ET | 11-19-2007 | permalink | comments (23) | e-mail post

Are Boys Stumbling in School?

This caught me by surprise. An analysis by the Chicago Tribune found that girls outperformed boys on every state achievement exam in Illinois last school year. That includes math and science, two subjects where boys have tended to score higher.

Some blame the imbalance on a "boy crisis" in schools across the country, as research shows girls are more likely to get good grades and graduate on time. But others say the explanation may lie in a revamp of the Illinois Standards Achievement Test. Illinois "made tests more colorful, gave pupils extra time to finish, added questions with longer reading passages and replaced state-created test items with those pulled from a national bank of questions." Bob Schaeffer of FairTest, a nonprofit group that monitors quality and gender bias in achievement exams, says the results show how even a small change to a test can have a significant effect.

Have you seen examples of boys falling behind girls in school? Is it cause for concern?

6:05 PM ET | 10-31-2007 | permalink | comments (13) | e-mail post

Fake Briefing Not Up to Fake News Standards?

Doing fake news seems to be one of the top jobs in the media world these days. Look at the fame and influence of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. And let's not forget the Walter Cronkite of fake news: "Weekend Update" on Saturday Night Live.

It was those lofty standards that Day to Day humorist Brian Unger was likely thinking of when he declared the Federal Emergency Management Agency's staged news conference on the California wildfires "a slap in the face to fake journalists everywhere." (Especially after his own work making phony news credible, he adds.)

Now, FEMA officials say employees played reporters on TV because they arranged the briefing at the last second and "real" reporters hadn't shown up. (Not that they bothered to tell anyone that before they got caught.)

Unger points out that this really calls into question the, er, integrity of the entire fake news industry.

7:00 PM ET | 10-29-2007 | permalink | comments (8) | e-mail post

Really Need an Excuse? You Can Buy One

My dad always used to tell me that if you can find a need that people have and fill it, you can have a successful business.

I guess that John Liddell, the businessman who co-founded the Excused Absence Network, is an example of that approach. He will sell you excuses to get out of work or school. (And all excuses are on special right now, only $19.95!) You can get a fake jury summons or a fake doctor's note. But the site says it's just for entertainment purposes. (Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.)

Could this site fill a need for you, or do you already have excuse-making down? (Please share any good stories.) Or, even better, do you have any suggestions for other ethically questionable but potentially profitable businesses to start?

That's all for this week. You can e-mail us at newsblog@npr.org.

6:11 PM ET | 10-26-2007 | permalink | comments (1) | e-mail post

Torre Leaves Yankees

I'm a Boston Red Sox fan. So for me, I must disclose, there are only two things that matter: that the Red Sox win the World Series and that the New York Yankees don't.

Yankees manager Joe Torre has been one big reason why Sox fans could never count the Yankees out for the past 12 seasons. And now he's gone. The pending departure adds a new twist to the teams' rivalry.

On Thursday, the Yankees' brass offered Torre a one-year contract at a reduced salary based around performance incentives. On Morning Edition, Tom Goldman talked about how Torre saw this offer as an insult and turned it down. Many believe that Torre became the fall guy for the Yankees' failed strategy of just buying the biggest names they could find, rather than developing from the bottom up — the strategy of this year's National League champs, the Colorado Rockies.

So now the question becomes who will manage the Yankees? Bench coach and former Yankees' first baseman Don Mattingly is a leading contender, but even he has said that whoever replaces Torre will have a really tough job. As Mark Feinsand wrote on Blogging the Bombers, "You won't realize how good Torre was until you go through a season without him."

2:50 PM ET | 10-19-2007 | permalink | comments (2) | e-mail post

Native American Activist Fought Sports Mascots

I'm writing this blog in a town that has a football team named the Redskins, and I've been reading about how the Cleveland Indians are threatening to beat my beloved Red Sox for the American League pennant.

The use of Native American names and images as mascots for teams like Washington and Cleveland really bothered Vernon Bellecourt, who died recently at the age of 75. On Tell Me More, Suzan Shown Harjo, a columnist for Indian Country Today, talked about how Bellecourt became involved in fighting sports stereotypes of Native Americans.

Bellecourt was an outspoken member of the movement that started in the 1960s, targeting mascots like the University of Oklahoma's Little Red and the Dartmouth Indians. When it began, there were more than 3,000 sports teams using references considered offensive by Native Americans, Harjo says. Now, there are fewer than 1,000.

But not a single professional team has changed its mascot, Harjo says. In 1992, Bellecourt publicly lambasted the Redskins' owner before the Super Bowl for not changing the team's name. And he was arrested in Cleveland during the 1997 World Series while protesting mascot Chief Wahoo.

6:05 PM ET | 10-17-2007 | permalink | comments (7) | e-mail post

The Return of Captain America

Captain America is on his way back. And this time he'll be armed.

As you may remember, the original Captain America, Steve Rogers, was shot and killed a few months ago during a civil war in the Marvel Comics universe. But there's a new Captain America, although we won't learn his identity until his debut in January. The big differences already: He's carrying a gun and he's wearing a new uniform.

I confess I've never been much of a Cap fan. Spider-Man is my favorite read. But growing up in Canada, I always had a sense of Captain America being, you know, a stand-up guy who fought the evil-doers with his fists and his wits. I don't recall him using a gun in the few times I remember reading his comics.

But as The Washington Post notes, back in the '40s, Captain America carried a gun. And not just any gun ... a machine gun. And his sidekick, Bucky, had a flamethrower. So perhaps it's just a case of everything old being new again.

So what do you think? Is it OK for Cap to be packing heat?

5:55 PM ET | 10-16-2007 | permalink | comments (23) | e-mail post

Mom Accused of Buying Weapons for 14-Year-Old Son

This is the kind of story that makes me scratch my head and wonder, "What was this person thinking?"

The Associated Press reports that the mother of a 14-year-old Pennsylvania boy, who was arrested Wednesday on charges of plotting a school attack, was herself charged, accused of buying weapons for her kid.

Michele Cossey, 46, bought her home-schooled son, Dillon, a .22-caliber handgun, a .22-caliber rifle and a 9 mm semiautomatic rifle, authorities said.
The teenager felt bullied and tried to recruit another boy for a possible attack at Plymouth Whitemarsh High School, authorities said. His mother was not accused of helping plot an attack, "but by virtue of her indulgence, she enabled him to get in this position," Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce L. Castor Jr. said.

The boy's father also tried to buy his son a weapon in 2005, authorities said, but couldn't because he's a felon. (Chalk one up to background checks.)

Dillon Cossey's attorney says the accusation that this was a "Columbine in the making" is "not borne out by the facts."

2:08 PM ET | 10-12-2007 | permalink | comments (2) | e-mail post

GAO: Poor Management Had Role in Boot Camp Deaths

They are the places of last resort for some parents: privately run "boot camps" designed to help troubled teens. But a report from the Government Accountability Office presented to Congress today found that "ineffective management" and problems such as "the hiring of untrained staff" contributed to most of the 10 deaths in residential treatment programs between 1990 and 2004 that it examined.

Federal regulators found thousands of allegations of abuse since 1990. For instance, more than 1,600 staff members were involved in cases of abuse in 2005.

Although reporting on the private facilities is spotty, GAO investigators searched court records and Web sites. They interviewed lawyers, family members and others familiar with the facilities. "This nightmare has remained an open secret for years," said Rep. George Miller (D-CA), chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee.

Day to Day interviewed Kansas City Star reporter Steve Rock, who discussed allegations about Thayer Learning Center in Kidder, Mo., where a 15-year-old boy died a few years ago.

Rock says parents, teens and others familiar with Thayer have described the center's rules as especially strict. Children are allegedly allowed few bathroom breaks, resulting in many of the teens soiling themselves regularly. There have also been allegations of teens being dragged around a dirt track. But because the center is private, local officials in Missouri say it is difficult for them to investigate these allegations.

Rock says Miller's committee is trying to "collapse" facilities that operate without oversight, including possibly helping fund states that want to find a way to investigate them.

5:57 PM ET | 10-10-2007 | permalink | comments (6) | e-mail post

Author: 'Rich White Kids' Get More College Breaks

Peter Schmidt, a deputy editor of The Chronicle of Higher Education, says that if you want to find the largest group of kids getting into America's top colleges without making the grades, you shouldn't be looking at students admitted through affirmative action.

Instead, Schmidt writes in The Boston Globe, research shows it's white teens who take advantage of "cash and connections." Schmidt, author of Color and Money: How Rich White Kids Are Winning the War Over College Affirmative Action, writes that researchers with access to colleges' admission data have found that "about 15 percent of freshmen enrolled at America's highly selective colleges are white teens who failed to meet their institutions' minimum admissions standards."

While some are athletes, a larger number are "students who gained admission through their ties to people the institution wanted to keep happy, with alumni, donors, faculty members, administrators, and politicians topping the list." (You can find many of the research papers showing how colleges admit students at Schmidt's blog.)

Schmidt writes that many college officials say they have to keep the people who financially support their institutions happy, because it is the "only way to keep the place afloat." And these administrators argue that the money they get allows them to help more financially needy students. But Schmidt writes that the statistics don't support this claim. "Just 40 percent of the financial aid money being distributed by public colleges is going to students with documented financial need," he writes.

6:21 PM ET | 10- 2-2007 | permalink | comments (39) | e-mail post

Blogosphere Plays Role in 'Jena Six' Story, Others

If anyone doubts that the blogosphere is increasingly playing a role in shaping our political and news environment, this week's events may convince them otherwise. Three stories in the past few days illustrate the point.

First, there's Eric Weiner's piece for NPR.org about the role that African-American bloggers played in bringing the story of the "Jena Six" to the forefront of the traditional media. The story of the six black youths charged in the beating of a white classmate was largely untouched by mainstream media outlets for months, but a loose network of black bloggers (sometimes called the "Afro-Sphere") refused to let it die. Eventually their efforts helped lead to Thursday's massive — and massively covered — demonstration.

Shawn Williams, a blogger from Dallas, compared the bloggers' network to "the underground railroad. A lot of people are faceless and nameless. So just like the underground railroad, you know where to go but you don't know who might be there once you arrive."

Second, Dan Rather might still be an anchor at CBS, rather than suing it, if not for the blogosphere. After CBS aired a damning story about President Bush's days in the Air National Guard based on a series of memos, bloggers immediately raised concerns that they were phony. Eventually CBS retracted the story, which ultimately led to Rather's departure.

Finally, The Washington Post reported Sunday that President Bush had met with a group of military bloggers. The Post notes that the meeting offered Bush the chance to get around the traditional media, while also reaching out to the providers of a new source of information for soldiers, their families and others who follow the conflict in Iraq closely.

"More and more we are engaging in the new-media world, and these are influential people who have a big following," said Kevin F. Sullivan, the White House communications chief.

2:54 PM ET | 09-21-2007 | permalink | comments (5) | e-mail post

Protest over 'Pornographic' Book Raises Interest

You know, it's fascinating how raising a stink about a risque book increases its popularity.

Take, for instance, JoAn Karkos and her battle with two libraries in Maine over the acclaimed sex education book for preteens, It's Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex & Sexual Health. Karkos was apparently so offended by the book (which she had learned about from an anti-abortion group) that she took the copies out of both libraries and refused to return them (although she did send in checks to cover the cost).

Karkos wrote a letter to the editor of the local paper, saying that the book "promotes promiscuous sex by illustrations and written content specifically intended to distort, undermine, and destroy wholesome traditional family values."

The librarians were not amused. "This has never happened before," Rick Speer, director of the Lewiston Public Library, told the Sun Journal. "It is clearly theft." The book's publisher notes that it has been sold in 25 countries and translated into 21 languages.

And Karkos may have been hoist by her own petard. Not only have both libraries ordered copies to replace the books she took, but one ordered an additional two because of an increase in requests to borrow it. Karkos did say she knew that might happen.

5:02 PM ET | 09-18-2007 | permalink | comments (25) | e-mail post

O.J. Simpson Is Suspect in Las Vegas Hotel Break-In

Yes, the man that the cable news and entertainment networks see as Lindsay, Britney and Paris all rolled into one big ratings winner is back in the news.

O.J. Simpson has been named a suspect in an alleged break-in of a hotel room at Palace Station hotel and casino in Las Vegas. Simpson told The Associated Press that he was doing a "sting operation" to get back collectibles that belonged to him. He was questioned by police and released.

My wife had an interesting comment that I suspect shows how many people may think of Simpson these days: "He's just a sad figure now."

That's all for this week. If you see something interesting, send an e-mail to newsblog@npr.org.

4:26 PM ET | 09-14-2007 | permalink | comments (5) | e-mail post

We're an Overweight Nation of Skinny Celebrities

Wow. As a nation, we are really packing on the pounds.

A new report by the Trust for America's Health said obesity rates climbed in 31 states last year. They did not decline anywhere. Mississippi's population has the highest percentage of obesity — more than 30 percent of residents fall into that category. Washington, D.C., has the highest rate of overweight kids.

And all this despite the warnings we've received from health officials about how all this extra weight will kill us, the efforts by food manufacturers to cut back on trans fats and sugars in food and the endless infomercials pitching weight-loss programs, exercise equipment and weight-reducing pills.

I think Brenda Wilson's report on Morning Edition today caught the real problem. It included a question from a reporter in Mississippi who wondered if making kids exercise more will change the culture of a state where people eat "fried catfish five times a week" and the last official in charge of the state's health department weighed 300 pounds.

Poverty is part of the problem. When you don't have the income, it's harder to buy the foods that have higher nutritional value. But as the report shows, obesity is a problem in states with high and low average incomes. I keep thinking of the speech Bruce Willis' raccoon character gives in the animated film Over the Hedge, describing how people worship food.

Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times recently wrote about how the problem of women celebrities being too thin is getting worse, not better. There is even an acronym for these waifs: MAWs (for "model, actress, whatever"). They have taken the idea of "you can't be too thin" to ridiculous extremes.

We seem to be truly a messed-up nation when it comes to weight. From one extreme to the other.

2:48 PM ET | 08-28-2007 | permalink | comments (7) | e-mail post

Boy, Is It Hard to Sell a House These Days

Today, Morning Edition's Your Money segment looked at just how hard it has been to sell a house in America this summer.

I know this story. I'm living it.

When I moved to Washington in late spring to take this job, I had to put my house in Milton, Mass., (just south of Boston) on the market. It's a great place — four bedrooms, big yard, two-minute walk to the subway — in a community that a magazine just named the seventh best place to live in America. My real estate agent figured it would go in a jiffy.

Hardly a sniff all summer. Alcatraz gets more offers.

Just like the Cascones, the family featured in Jason Beaubien's Morning Edition piece, we've had to knock down the price on the house ... which is very hard to do because it makes you feel like a loser. And Ken Fears, an economist at the National Association of Realtors, says that it's likely even more concessions on price will be needed nationally before the worst is over. Ouch.

OK, time for a big pity party. Anybody else have a house horror story to tell?

1:19 PM ET | 08-24-2007 | permalink | comments (3) | e-mail post

AFL-CIO Names America's Worst Boss

Ever had a bad boss? I mean, a real stinker? I once had a boss who walked into the room where I was working, threw $5 down on the table and told me to go get him a pack of smokes. I stood up and walked out, never to return to that job.

But there are worse bosses ... such as the winner (or, perhaps, the loser) of this year's AFL-CIO My Bad Boss contest. The employee involved -- a young father with three children under the age of 8 -- filed paperwork to take some time off to help deal with the bills from his cancer treatment. John Dimsdale of Marketplace explained on Day to Day that the boss threw away the paperwork and then lied about receiving it, knowing it would take months, perhaps years, for the issue to be resolved.

Then there was the guy who hired the "creep" who had been stalking one of his waitresses -- and put him on the same shift as her. And the boss who made his employees continue to answer phones when there was a fire in the building -- until a security officer forced them to leave.

Abusive bosses are apparently a common problem. In a recent national survey, 44 percent of those polled said they had worked for an abusive boss, while 33 percent said their supervisors failed to keep promises. The Los Angeles Times reports that experts believe one reason for this trend may be that "short-staffed companies tap managers with lousy people skills." And the Internet has made it easier to share complaints about bad bosses -- just take a trip over to ebosswatch.com.

How about you? ... Got a terrible boss story to share? (Like the AFL-CIO contest, let's keep the boss's name anonymous.)

5:14 PM ET | 08-21-2007 | permalink | comments (5) | e-mail post

Should Cell Phones Be Totally Banned While Driving?

Sunday night, I pulled up to the light at the intersection near my home. As I waited for a green, I glanced over at the car next to me. The young driver wasn't paying any attention to the light -- instead, she was madly texting on her cell phone. I thought once the signal changed she would stop, but no, she continued one-handed as she drove off.

And she's not the only one risking her life and yours -- Morning Edition reports that a survey by Zogby International shows that two-thirds of drivers ages 18 to 24 are using their phones to text message while driving. It makes me want to just stay inside my house and never go out on the roads again, ever.

You might yell, "There oughta be a law," but as Morning Edition found out, laws don't matter diddly squat. In New York, where the law says you can only use a cell phone while driving if you have a hands-free device, authorities say very few people observe it anymore. One self-admitted offender described it as being like "a jaywalking law."

Assemblyman Felix Ortiz of Brooklyn, who wrote the New York law, says enough is enough. He wants to pass a total ban on using phones while driving -- including hands-free devices -- unless it's an emergency.

Are you in favor? Or should we just bow to technology and hope that the next time the driver in the car opposite us makes a left-hand turn one-handed while talking on the phone, he or she is paying at least enough attention not to hit us?

9:24 AM ET | 08-21-2007 | permalink | comments (9) | e-mail post

People Say Media Are Sloppy, Biased ... But Doing OK

To paraphrase Sally Fields, you sort of don't like us, you really, really sort of don't like us. The news media, that is. OK, maybe that's going too far. You still like us, but you're feeling more than a bit iffy. And you're really grumbling if you read or listen to us online.

According to the latest Pew Research Center survey, "Views of Press Values and Performance: 1985-2007," a majority of you think that we're biased and inaccurate, and more than a few of you see us as uncaring about the people we cover and too critical of America. I won't go into all the percentages -- you can read them on the report summary.

But you still think we're very professional and doing a good job keeping politicians in line. Go figure.

The real news to me is the growing divide between Democrats and Republicans about the media. Conservatives have long considered the traditional media too liberal, but the gap is growing. No doubt reporting on the war in Iraq and Afghanistan is influencing this divide. (For instance, more than twice as many Republicans as Democrats say news organizations are too critical of America -- 63 percent vs. 23 percent.)

Jay Rosen over at PressThink tries to shed some light on the debate and concludes that what really undermines the news media's better instincts is not being liberal or conservative but being addicted to "savviness."

Deep down, that's what reporters want to believe in and actually do believe in -- their own savviness and the savviness of certain others (including operators like Karl Rove.) In politics, they believe, it's better to be savvy than it is to be honest or correct on the facts. It's better to be savvy than it is to be just, good, fair, decent, strictly lawful, civilized, sincere or humane.

The idea that many important journalists have replaced tough reporting with an adoration of "savviness" is a very interesting one. Your thoughts?

5:07 PM ET | 08-14-2007 | permalink | comments (2) | e-mail post

Tommy Makem Dies in New Hampshire

In the midst of all the news about the bridge collapse in Minnesota, my friend Dave Beard at Boston.com sent me an e-mail to tell me that Tommy Makem had finally succumbed to lung cancer.

When I was a kid in the '60s, my house was filled with music, primarily coming from my dad's record player. We listened to Sinatra, Fitzgerald, Count Basie and Vaughn. But more than any other musician or group, we listened to the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem.

As All Things Considered reports, the group became a part of the folk music revival in the '60s, specializing in, of course, Irish music, which they played a key role in popularizing in America.

And we had every record. Their concert at Carnegie Hall. Their concert back in Ireland. All their studio albums. I knew their songs by heart, and years later, when my brothers and I formed a college folk band, we sang many of their songs and chanted their ditties at the tops of our lungs: "Up the long ladder and down the short rope, to hell with King Billy and God bless the pope, if that doesn't do, we'll tear 'em in two and send 'em to hell with their red, white and blue."

My house was a touch republican.

In the old days, my brothers and I would hold a wake whenever a great musician died. Over the years, we held wakes for Harry Chapin, Stan Rogers, Jim Croce and John Lennon, to name few. We may all be in separate places now, but tonight we will lift a parting glass to Tommy Makem.

5:16 PM ET | 08- 2-2007 | permalink | comments (6) | e-mail post

Simpsons, Meet the Simpsons ...

A Simpsonized Tom Regan

Simpsonizeme.com/Meghan Gallery

OK, two things right off the bat.

First, I've been a Simpsons fan from the beginning. Second, no way is Springfield in Vermont. It's in Massachusetts. Springfield, Mass., may not have a nuclear reactor, but if you've ever been there it has the same, er, outstanding qualities as Homer's Springfield. Sort of. In a way. If you close your eyes and imagine.

Now that I have that off my chest, we're all set for today's opening of The Simpsons Movie. Mark Jordan Legan of Slate gave the lowdown on what critics had to say about the movie on Day to Day. In short, they like it; they really, really like it.

Meanwhile, Morning Edition talked to the man behind the Simpsons curtain, creator Matt Groening, on his, well, inspiration for the crazy family.

Better yet, you can Simpsonize yourself. Burger King has created the site, which allows you to upload a headshot that will be used to create a Simpsons character who looks like you. (But be prepared to wait; it's taking a long time, probably due to the demands on the Web server.)

That's it for this week. If you see anything interesting, you can e-mail us at newsblog@npr.org.

(Tom's Update: OK, we finally got through to the Simpsonizeme site, and the result is above. I was momentarily excited when I thought that it had given me brown hair -- my hair hasn't been brown since Jimmy Carter was president. But alas, my editor told me it was steel gray. Rats. Darn color-blindness.)

5:52 PM ET | 07-27-2007 | permalink | comments (1) | e-mail post

Map Shows How Our Spread Is Spreading

If you want to see the weight gains of Americans in the past 20 years, check out this map at CNN. It shows how many of us throughout the country are now not just overweight but obese.

While nearly every state had at least 20-24 percent of its residents in the obese category in 2004, the problem appears to be really growing, so to speak, in the South, where more than a quarter of the population in several states was obese.

No jokes from me on this one. I've struggled with weight my entire life thanks to my love-hate relationship with fried food. Basically, if you deep fried an old sneaker, I would probably eat it.

3:37 PM ET | 07-24-2007 | permalink | comments (11) | e-mail post

Drew Carey Agrees to Host 'The Price Is Right'

Drew Carey speaks about another game show he's hosting, Power of 10, at the Television Critics Association Press Tour in California earlier this month.

Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images

At first, I thought I was hearing things. Driving to Dulles airport around 3 a.m. to pick up my wife, home from a month overseas, I heard the announcer say the new host of The Price Is Right -- an American institution rivaled only by Mount Rushmore and Old Faithful for longevity and durability -- was going to be ... Drew Carey.

Drew Carey?! The host of the hilarious, frequently ribald Whose Line Is It Anyway? taking over one of my long-dead grandmother's favorite shows? Drew Carey, who admitted in his autobiography that he got frustrated with censors while filming his eponymous TV show because they wouldn't let him tell more dirty jokes? It was like having an out-of-body experience.

But when I looked online later this morning, there was the news: Carey is taking the reins from Bob Barker, who had hosted the show since FDR was president. (OK, actually, it was Nixon.)

The Associated Press reports:

The deal was set shortly before a taping of CBS' Late Show with David Letterman, where Carey confirmed it. "I realize what a big responsibility this is," he said. "It's only a game show, but it's the longest-running game show in American television and I plan to keep it that way."

Twenty years ago, when I worked in Nova Scotia, I interviewed a popular local DJ, who told me that his real goal in life was to be a game-show host. I almost laughed out loud. What kind of ambition was that?

But I think I've changed my position. Game shows are a lot more fun now than they were 20 years ago. (Think Wait, Wait... Don't Tell Me!) Hosting one could actually be kinda cool.

11:39 AM ET | 07-24-2007 | permalink | comments (2) | e-mail post

Cartoonists Yearn for New Target after Years of Bush

I have known several editorial cartoonists in my time, including Pulitzer Prize winner Clay Bennett and the formidable Jeff Danziger. And if I've learned anything from hanging out with these folks, it's that they love finding new targets.

Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, good cartoonists love them all and can't wait for them to goof up -- or to do, wear or say something even remotely ridiculous.

Today on Morning Edition, John Ydstie reported on his trip to an exhibit at American University in Washington, D.C., which features cartoons of the Bush administration. (Seeing some of these cartoons reminds me why I would never want to be president.) But after more than six years of satirizing this administration, Rex Babin of The Sacramento Bee and freelancer Mikhaela Reid, for instance, are both ready for new targets.

Babin says he relishes the thought of a new Al Gore campaign -- he finds all that extra weight fun to draw. Reid thinks Hillary Clinton would be a cartoonist's delight.

Personally, I like the idea of Clinton too -- but just because you'd get Bill Clinton as well. As the former president once said, it's a two-for-one deal.

And if reading this makes you want to see some cartoons, head to the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists' site. Each day, it gives a large selection of what its members have been drawing. It's one of the first places I go every morning when I jump online.

5:07 PM ET | 07- 9-2007 | permalink | comments (1) | e-mail post

Is 'Ghost Gas' Giving Your Wallet a Scare?

One day every week, I put my shoes on around 11 p.m., get in the car and drive to the local gas station, where I fill 'er up (for a better than average price if I'm lucky). Why skulk around in the night for gas? I'm trying to avoid the problem of "ghost gas."

What's ghost gas? Well, when it gets hot during the summer, gas expands. It's a liquid -- remember physics class in high school? The price of gas is calculated on the gas being about 60 degrees Fahrenheit. So when you go to the gas station on a hot day (like today in Washington -- it's about 95 degrees) and put a gallon of gas in your car, you get less actual fuel than you would if you pumped it in cooler temperatures.

The difference can add up to as much as 10 cents a gallon, according to some estimates. And that's put a bee in some lawmakers' bonnets.

Today's Day to Day featured a Marketplace report about how a group of Democratic lawmakers has asked the National Conference on Weights to consider setting new standards for gas.

Here's a shocker: The oil industry wants none of it. Dan Gilligan with the Petroleum Marketers Association of America says retrofitting the pumps with temperature compensation devices would be too costly. Gilligan makes a familiar request in these situations -- let's study it some more. But The Kansas City Star notes that the National Conference on Weights has been debating the issue for three decades.

I first learned about ghost gas -- where else? -- on Car Talk. Tommy and Ray talked about it a couple of years ago while discussing ways to get more value for your buck at the pump.

2:57 PM ET | 07- 9-2007 | permalink | comments (7) | e-mail post

The Changing Face of Marriage in America

While 80 to 90 percent of Americans will be married at some point in their lives, the paths that they take to get there can be very different and are often dependent on education and wealth. That's the finding of Johns Hopkins sociologist Andrew Cherlin in his new book, Public and Private Families: An Introduction.

As the blog for the senior dating site ErosOver40 explains:

Individuals from the middle or upper class traditionally get an education, become employed, meet someone or several people, get married and raise a family. People with a lower income value marriage but often postpone it because the men often times do not have steady employment. This in turn causes women with the same socioeconomic background to have children before they marry from the fear of waiting too long. Having children outside of marriage is often considered acceptable in lower income communities.

Changing attitudes about marriage may also be affecting the way people think about starting a family. A recent national survey shows that children "rank as the highest source of personal fulfillment for their parents, but have dropped to one of the least-cited factors in a successful marriage," The Washington Post reports. The survey for the Pew Research Center also shows young people attach "far less moral stigma than do their elders to out-of-wedlock births and cohabitation without marriage."

Celeste Headlee reports on Day to Day that while the stats do show that marriage is declining among Americans, it's still seen as an important institution. One expert points out that children from two-parent families do better in school and social situations.

4:56 PM ET | 07- 6-2007 | permalink | comments (0) | e-mail post

(Americans) Don't Know Much About History

For years, I used to joke to my family back in Canada about the number of times I had to tell American friends about their own country's history, or which senator was from what state or where such-and-such country was.

Now, a new survey by Newsweek shows my friends weren't an isolated group: when it comes to history, current events or culture, the U.S. is a "Dunce-Cap Nation."

There were some pretty amazing results. More Americans could identify the most recent winner of "American Idol" than could name the chief justice of the Supreme Court. Forty percent didn't even to try to identify the first Republican president (Abraham Lincoln). A staggering 41 percent still believe that Saddam Hussein's Iraq was directly involved in the Sept. 11 attacks, despite all evidence to the contrary. Only 23 percent could identify Indonesia as the country with the world's largest Muslim population -- Iran and India were more often mentioned.

However, a majority could identify Nancy Pelosi as speaker of the House. And in a result that surprised me, a plurality of 36 percent knew that Andrew Jackson and Al Gore both lost presidential elections despite winning the popular vote. I don't think I would have gotten that one.

(By the way, Americans shouldn't feel too bad. A recent survey of my native land shows that Canadians don't know much about their history either.)

11:10 AM ET | 07- 6-2007 | permalink | comments (7) | e-mail post

Has Being a Lifeguard Lost its Coolness Factor?

Fewer and fewer people want to be lifeguards -- at least that's the story in New England. As a result, 10 Massachusetts beaches will have no lifeguards on duty this summer and many others only part-timers, The Boston Globe reports.

In recent years, there has been a 19 percent drop in kids applying for their lifeguard certification. The Globe reports many teens want a "career-oriented job," preferably one with air conditioning. One boy says teens don't want to work at a place where their friends go to relax. Also gone for many is the sense of responsibility that came with the job.

"Kids get fired and hired all the time," said Dustin Pineau, director of beaches and recreation in [Dennis, Mass.] "If they find out that going to a concert is more important than showing up on time for their shift, they're gone."

Years ago, when I was in high school and college, being a lifeguard was the best summer job you could get. Outside all summer, the dark sunglasses, hanging out with cute members of the opposite sex and the "Lifeguard" T-shirt that gave you instant cachet. The idea that it's more important to get a "career-oriented" job when you're 16 or 17 gives me shivers.

9:26 AM ET | 07- 3-2007 | permalink | comments (8) | e-mail post

Don't Mess with the Girls from Brooklyn

Verbal air pollution. That's how Michel Martin of Tell Me More referred today to street harassment -- the kind of suggestive and harassing comments that men make to women on public streets.

A group of women and girls in Brooklyn has said enough is enough. Girls for Gender Equity's work to raise awareness of the problem has included producing a documentary called Hey Shorty.

The women say street harassment is frightening and disrespectful. "We know that all men don't street harass," one group member says. "We just want the men who do street harass women to take responsibility for their actions."

It's a hard sell. The men's reactions to the women's responses are often violent and rude. They say most of the men they encounter don't see the comments as a problem and accuse women of being complaining "bit**es."

Martin also shared a story of her own experience dealing with this in Washington's Farragut Square Park when she was working as a reporter at the White House.

Pretty strong stuff.

5:21 PM ET | 07- 2-2007 | permalink | comments (6) | e-mail post

Men, Manliness ... and All That Hooey

On today's show, Talk of the Nation discussed men, masculinity and manliness -- a topic that pushes many of my buttons.

The idea of "manliness" -- that entire shtick promoted by guys like Harvard's Harvey Mansfield -- makes me crazy. I think the patriarchal society would have disappeared about 100 years ago if we had been paying attention to how technology had removed the need for it.

What really sets me off like a rocket is when I hear people criticize women who work, saying kids need a parent at home, not just a babysitter -- as if only women are capable of childcare.

Uh, hello. Over here. Dad speaking.

As a guy who just spent more than two years at home with the kids -- by choice, I might add -- I find this argument myopic. To this day I'm still doing lots of domestic stuff: I cook for them, make cakes and cookies with them, go to PTO meetings, do the laundry for the two small ones, take them to appointments, read to them, etc., and I feel more "manly" now than I ever did in my life.

Oh, I still love steak, beer, football, baseball, the Final Four, NASCAR, hanging out with the guys, watching action movies and all that stuff. But the idea that doing all those things makes you "manly" is a load of hooey.

4:19 PM ET | 07- 2-2007 | permalink | comments (2) | e-mail post

Paris, Who Ya Gonna Call? ... Crisis Busters!

You know, if bottled water is a perfect symbol of U.S. culture at this moment in our history, then so is this: the crisis management consultant. When I was growing up, my "crisis management consultant" was my grandfather, and most of the time, his role consisted of telling me this: "Use the common sense God gave you, boy." It worked pretty well, actually.

But this is the age of Paris and Lindsay and Rush and ... well, the list goes on. Big-time celebrities who get in trouble and worry about how it will affect their bottom line. They end up hiring people like Michael Sitrick.

On Thursday, Day to Day's Madeleine Brand interviewed Sitrick, who's known as the "attack dog image fixer to the rich and powerful." (I wonder if he has that on his business card.)

When trying to rescue the image of a celebrity in trouble, Sitrick is known for using "truth squads" to counteract what media outlets or others are saying about his clients. He also talks about something called the "wheel of pain" -- an expression that describes efforts to bring out "facts" the other side might not want to be public in an effort to rehabilitate a client's image. Most of the people in his firm are ex-journalists.

There's something a bit unsettling about listening to Sitrick talk about what he does -- and what that reveals about the nature of celebrity and the media these days.

12:56 PM ET | 06-29-2007 | permalink | comments (0) | e-mail post

Rethinking Bottled Water

It's not often that I read or hear something that almost immediately compels me to change something I've done for a long time. But that's what happened when I heard a report about the bottled water industry in America on All Things Considered on Thursday.

Robert Siegel interviewed Charles Fishman, a reporter for the magazine Fast Company, who says that Pepsi's Aquafina and Coke's Dasani are basically purified tap water. That's something I didn't know. No magical springs bubbling out of a picturesque hillside in some rural American forest, visited by locals for years. Just plain old tap water.

The companies say they put the tap water through an "energy-intensive reverse-osmosis filtration process," but, to me, that seems like basically the same stuff we get by running our tap water through a Brita filter.

Fishman wrote in his article for Fast Company:

A chilled plastic bottle of water in the convenience-store cooler is the perfect symbol of this moment in American commerce and culture. It acknowledges our demand for instant gratification, our vanity, our token concern for health. Its packaging and transport depend entirely on cheap fossil fuel. Yes, it's just a bottle of water--modest compared with the indulgence of driving a Hummer. But when a whole industry grows up around supplying us with something we don't need--when a whole industry is built on the packaging and the presentation--it's worth asking how that happened, and what the impact is.

Not to mention what all those empty plastic bottles that are tossed aside are doing to the environment.

I seriously may never buy a bottle of water again. It just doesn't make sense. It's back to the tap for me, with a reusable plastic bottle. How about you folks? What's your thinking now about bottled water?

11:11 AM ET | 06-29-2007 | permalink | comments (69) | e-mail post

Examining the Prosecution of a Former Ala. Governor

In a case that has held the attention of Alabama for more than two years, the sentencing hearing for former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman and former HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy began today in Montgomery. Birmingham Weekly reports that about a year ago, a federal jury "found Scrushy and Siegelman guilty on charges of bribery, conspiracy and mail fraud. Siegelman was convicted also on an additional charge of obstruction of justice."

Siegelman, a Democrat, is fighting his possible 30-year sentence by alleging that his prosecution was engineered by White House strategist Karl Rove, the Los Angeles Times reports. And one former Republican attorney general and several Democrats think there may be reason to investigate his claims.

"From start to finish, this case has been riddled with irregularities. It does not pass the smell test," Grant Woods, a Republican former attorney general of Arizona, told the Times.

Scott Horton, a human rights and armed conflict lawyer who writes the No Comment blog for Harper's Magazine, has written a stinging critique of the case against Siegelman.

His piece reads like a "J'Accuse" of the political, legal and media establishments in Alabama. Calling it one of the darkest moments in Alabama justice since the trial of the "Scottsboro Boys" (the 1930s trial of nine black teenagers accused of raping two white girls), he claims that there are clear signs of Rove's fingerprints on the prosecution of the former governor. Horton also says that the politicization of the Justice Department was a key factor in Siegelman being prosecuted in the first place.

The Times story notes that White House officials say they can't talk about the case while it remains in court. And the U.S. attorney whose office brought the case, Leura Canary, whose husband is a Rove protege, called the allegation that her politics influenced the case "a ridiculous assertion." Canary recused herself from the case after Siegelman's lawyers complained.

6:50 PM ET | 06-26-2007 | permalink | comments (2) | e-mail post

Officials Put an End to Free Food for Troops at Airport

For many of the soldiers on their way back to the U.S. from Iraq and Afghanistan, the treats they received from the troop greeters at the Bangor, Maine, airport were probably the first homemade food they had eaten in months.

But the cookies, brownies and whoopie pies are gone. The Associated Press reports that last month, airport officials informed the Maine Troop Greeters that they were enforcing a ban on the distribution of the food and beverages. Some of the greeters accuse vendors at the airport of pushing officials to close down the operation and force troops to buy things from them.

Airport officials say that no one complained to them -- they're enforcing the ban because of safety concerns about food prepared at home.

The Kennebec Journal did a story last year about the role the greeters (most of whom are elderly) play for the returning troops. Since 2003, about 500,000 troops have gone through the airport as they leave for or return from assignments overseas.

The Bangor Daily News reports that the greeters are willing to give up the food if it means they can keep their room, which is currently filled wit