Hooray!!!!!

details here:
http://tinyurl.com/6ofyxh

The buses wouldn't come down the road, so I walked and slid my six year old to the nearest school and his bus picked him up him there.  (Apologies to all the neighbors whose yards I trudged through because I was avoiding the slick sidewalks.)  Apparently I was the only person suggested an alternate pickup point, because parents were driving their kids to school.  Eh.  I happened to know that the bus driver dropped a student off at that school before he picked mine up.

(Come to think of it, the Transportation Master was a little surprised to hear I wasn't going to toss my darling child in the car and bring him to school myself.  He simply stated the problem: The bus would not be going down my street.  My solution was: Alternate rendezvous that didn't involve going down my street.)

My cute lil' high visibility vest made people think I was a school employee or something.  Nope.  I just don't want to get hit.  My kid would have had one on too, but I still haven't found ANSI rated gear in size XXS.

http://www.star-telegram.com/news/story/1098258.html

That Dallas-Fort Worth residents tend to get on reality shows isn't unusual, but their success this year -- in which So You Think You Can Dance, Nashville Star, Last Comic Standing and The Amazing Race were all won by people who were North Texas residents at the time -- has been noteworthy.

"That's the Texans,"..."It's their competitive spirit."

Several years ago I negotiated the consolidation of two employee bargaining units caused by the merger of my company and a former competitor company that had fallen on bad times. The management of the company being merged was displeased over the general circumstances of the merger and blamed its company's woes on the working agreements of its union-represented employees.

I listened intently and ultimately responded with a question that stunned those managers. I asked for the names of all the managers involved in the negotiations of those purported onerous agreements because such managers had exercised poor judgment and needed culling.

My point there, of course, was that collective bargaining is not a unilateral action of one party and is, simply, a two-way street. It is clearly wrong to hold the union wholly accountable for some predicament that results from the voluntary and agreed-to actions of both management and the union. There were two parties at that bargaining table and management had the responsibility to reject any and all nonsensical proposals.

The real story behind this story is not even about Pelosi and Rahm; it's about the battle for the hearts and minds of rank and file Democrats, who will face four-way cross-pressures from the White House, their constituents, the Republicans and their party leadership in Congress.

Pelosi knows the power game.

WSJ:

New names for director of national intelligence and CIA director have surfaced in recent weeks, including former CIA analysis chief John Gannon for either job. Former CIA operations chief Jack Devine, deputy CIA director Steve Kappes and John R. Tunheim, a federal judge in Minnesota who has handled several terrorism cases, have been mentioned as potential CIA directors. Current and former lawmakers like former 9/11 Commissioner Tim Roemer and Rep. Jane Harman, a California Democrat, also remain in the mix. And some lawmakers have called on Mr. Obama to reconsider Mr. Brennan, said one person familiar with the transition.

Also

Obama advisers as recently as last week were soliciting recommendations for both jobs from allies in intelligence circles, suggesting that the Obama team is still deliberating over its picks, former intelligence officials said.

An insurance company with a potential $25 million liability from a 2007 Houston office fire is claiming smoke that killed three people was "pollution" and surviving families shouldn't be compensated for their losses since the deaths were not caused directly by the actual flames.

Great American Insurance Company is arguing in a Houston federal court that the section of the insurance policy that excludes payments for pollution -- like discharges or seepage that require cleanup -- would also exclude payouts for damages, including deaths, caused by smoke, or pollution, that results from a fire.

"This is shocking. It's an extraordinary effort by an insurance company to avoid paying on a contract for insurance," said Randy Sorrels, who represents several family members in wrongful death lawsuits from the fire in a six-story atrium building on the North Loop.

http://tinyurl.com/6lpfhb

I'm waiting for the state to ask for a dollar every time a citizen urinates.  Is it time for another tea party?

A police officer who was videotaped knocking a man off his bicycle in July during a monthly cycling event in New York City has been indicted, the officer's lawyer said on Monday.

The officer, Patrick Pogan, has been instructed to report to State Supreme Court in Manhattan on Tuesday for the unsealing of the indictment, said the lawyer, Stuart London. Mr. London said he did not know what the charges would be.

NYT

Had the tape not existed, Mr Long would have, no doubt, been found guilty of three misdemeanor charges of  attempted assault of a police officer, resisting arrest and disorderly conduct.

Until the ruling, recipients of so-called "national security letters" were legally forbidden from speaking out. The letters, usually a demand for documents, or a notice that private records had been searched by government authorities, were criticized as a cover-all for FBI abuses.

"The appeals court invalidated parts of the statute that wrongly placed the burden on NSL recipients to initiate judicial review of gag orders, holding that the government has the burden to go to court and justify silencing NSL recipients," said the ACLU in a release. "The appeals court also invalidated parts of the statute that narrowly limited judicial review of the gag orders - provisions that required the courts to treat the government's claims about the need for secrecy as conclusive and required the courts to defer entirely to the executive branch."