Ten years old sounds so very young, doesn’t it? But it’s very nearly middle school, and that’s a whole new world. In today’s NY Times, Lawrence Downes writes: It’s hard to write this without sounding like a prig. But it’s just as hard to erase the images that planted the idea for this essay, so here goes. The scene is a middle school auditorium, where girls in teams of three or four are bopping to pop songs at a student talent show. Not bopping, actually, but...

Nothing underscores the chaotic post-Katrina conditions in New Orleans like the Danziger Bridge shootings. Yesterday, a grand jury indicted seven New Orleans police officers — four of them for first degree murder. It’s yet another chapter in a long, ugly story; I wrote about it here.

From the UK Telegraph: Iran’s oil exports are plummeting at 10pc a year on lack of investment and could be exhausted within a decade, depriving the world economy of its second-biggest source of crude supplies. [snip] “They need to invest $2.5bn (£1.28bn) a year just to stand still and they’re not doing it because it’s politically easier to spend the money on social welfare and the army than to wait four to six years for a return on investment,” he said. “They’ve...

Gerald Ford was an ordinary man called upon in extraordinary times. I’m glad somebody remembered to tell him, “Thank you“.

It’s Christmas Eve, and Polimom has triumphed over procrastination again. The presents are ready (and even wrapped!), we have all the ingredients to bake Santa’s cookies, and the stockings are hung. Gifts have been arriving all week, steadily expanding to inhabit every square inch of space beneath the tree. By tomorrow morning, they’ll have spread beyond the tree skirt — but we have a bit of unanticipated space there, because today, I’m removing a couple that have been...

I remember lots of things about being a teenager: braces, acne, boys (!), rebellious arguments with parents, and having entirely too much time on my hands. (Did I mention boys?) Of them all, though, it was “time” that impacted me the most. It wasn’t so much the lack of homework (although I had very little); it was because as a young person, Polimom was not a “joiner”. I started “hanging out” at a local fast food place (I can’t remember why, other than...

There are many excellent arguments against the death penalty, and TMV co-blogger elrod wrote passionately about them in an earlier post. From arbitrary and racist sentencing to the truly horrible risk of executing an innocent person, worries abound, because once the ultimate penalty has been carried out, there’s no going back. Yet this latest Great Debate about capital punishment didn’t come up for any of these reasons. Instead, they arose yet again from questions about lethal injection,...

We’ve all seen how the anonymity of the Internet can bring out the very worst in people. From vicious blog comments to fictitious rumors, the new media is a modern-day Wild West. Usually, the ugliness stays in virtual unreality-land; no real harm done beyond hurt feelings — but there’s real danger lurking there too. Who will read your son’s MySpace profile, and try to learn more? Where did your daughter meet the people with whom she chats for hours on end? What do these faceless...

In a jaw-dropping result Saturday, an underwhelming 16% of registered voters in Louisiana’s 2nd District returned William “Dollar Bill” Jefferson to Congress for another term. From NOLA’s Times-Picayune: Overcoming the specter of a roiling federal corruption probe that threatened to draw the curtain on his 16-year career on Capitol Hill, U.S. Rep. William Jefferson survived the fight of his political life Saturday, easily defeating state Rep. Karen Carter to win his ninth...

Ignorance is generally overcome through information and dialogue. For moderate Muslims, though, condemning terrorism (and terrorists), and responding to questions doesn’t seem to be enough. What more, if anything, can they do?

I sat down this morning to write about the reactions to Mary Cheney’s pregnancy, but as I mentally organized my thoughts, I was distracted by activity outside. It was my neighbor leaving for work, and I paused to watch as she wheeled out the trash cans, carried the recycle tubs, and then helped her young daughter into the backseat before closing the garage door and driving away. On the weekends there’s a lot of activity at their house, because my neighbor’s parents are often there....

The House pulled the offshore drilling bill from today’s agenda, but what is this really about? Is it Big Oil? (Washington Post) Foes of offshore drilling hoped that today’s move spelled the end of efforts to get the bill passed. “Let’s hope this is the end of Congress’ fling with Big Oil and that we can make a fresh start to achieving true energy security with the new year and the new Congress,” Athan Manuel of the Sierra Club said in a statement. For people...

My former mother-in-law was convinced that the Apollo moon landing was an elaborate hoax. I wonder what she’ll think of this (Washington Post): NASA unveiled plans yesterday to set up a small and ultimately self-sustaining settlement of astronauts at the south pole of the moon sometime around 2020 — the first step in an ambitious plan to resume manned exploration of the solar system. The long-awaited proposal envisions initial stays of a week by four-person crews, followed by gradually...

Earlier this morning, I wrote about the New Orleans Saints — a story of success and hope in the larger tale of a struggling city. For forty years, the Saints have been part of the rich gumbo of New Orleans’ soul — one of many crucial elements that, when mixed together, created an utterly unique culture. They’re neither the only ingredient nor the oldest, but they’re the team we loved in spite of its flaws — just like the city itself. I wrote that post for...

During a “go to bedâ€? conversation some years ago, Adorable Child (AC) asked Polimom, “Mommy, would our lives be different if we were black?â€? There is no easy answer to such a question from a five-year-old, and I floundered badly. Five years later, though, I realize that I might have better answered her question with one of my own: What about our lives was the same? If I could answer her today, I wouldn’t talk about race or differences; instead, we’d discuss pillars…

As a rule, I tend to dismiss those who rave about the Dangerous Muslims Among Us as… well… a bit unhinged. According to this Reuters article, though, it isn’t a fringe attitude at all: A Gallup poll this summer of more than 1,000 Americans showed that 39 percent were in favor of requiring Muslims in the United States, including American citizens, to carry special identification. Roughly a quarter of those polled said they would not want to live next door to a Muslim and a third...

In February, less than six months after Katrina and Rita hit, FEMA began transitioning from short- to long-term housing assistance for victims of the 2005 Gulf Coast hurricanes. The notification process was confused, information changed from week to week, and people simply were not able to navigate the red tape. By April, when FEMA declared that some clearly uninhabitable homes were usable, it was obvious that the agency was unable to meet the challenge… yet the “transition” continued,...

The water had barely started to rise in the streets of New Orleans when people started looking for someone to blame. Fingers were pointed in every direction — any direction but their own, or that of their interest group. The fault lay with: the Army Corps of Engineers, the Bush administration, Governor Blanco, Mayor Nagin, the Louisiana political culture, the local levee board, black people, white people, poverty, Democrats, Republicans…. anyone and everyone who could conceivably be responsible...