If you enjoy good intelligent discussion of issues that looks at things from many ideological perspectives, I recommend Outside The Beltway. Here are 2 representative pieces - the first by James Joyner and the second by Prof. Steven Taylor - discussing the the Repeal Amendment and the role of States under the Constitution.

I'm on trial next week so I'll be going dark after today.

Open Thread.

Update: (TL): I'll be at the jail today, but should be around this weekend and next week while BTD is in trial. Good luck, BTD.

The World Cup is going to Qatar.

LeBron returns to Cleveland tonight.

Open Thread.

Tonight begins the 8 days celebration of Hanukkah. What's it about?

In 167 B.C.E. the Syrian-Greek emperor Antiochus made the observance of Judaism an offense punishable by death. He also ordered all Jews to worship Greek gods.

The year before, Syrian-Greek soldiers had seized the Jewish temple and dedicated it to the worship of the god Zeus. Enough was enough. Jewish resistance began in the village of Modiin, near Jerusalem when Greek soldiers demanded Jews bow down to an idol and eat a pig. Mattathias, a Jewish High Priest, refused to accede to the Greek soldiers' demands and he and his five sons killed the Greek soldiers. [More...]

Open Thread.

There really are good deals out there. I'm glad I have to go go to work, otherwise I'd spend the whole day buying things I don't really need but are just too cheap to pass up. The prices vary widely though. I recommend doing a google search for the exact item you want and finding the best price, and then checking it against Amazon. Then look for a free savings coupon for the seller and apply it.

If you found something awesome, let us know.

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

It's Sunday.

Open Thread.

Today's picks: S.Fla (+13) over Miami, Mich. (+18) over Ohio State, VaTech (-23) over UVA, Penn State (+2) over Nich. St., Kentucky (+3) over Tenn,BYU (+10) over Utah, Ark (-3) over LSU, TCU (-44) over N. Mex., Stanford (-14) over Ore. State, Ga. Tech (+14) over Georgia, Oklahoma (+3) over Oklahoma State.

Please note that all these picks are just for the first half, as were my winning picks of Alabama over Auburn and Boise over Nevada. I stopped watching in the second half, what happened in those games?

Open Thread.

I'd love to be online shopping today, but instead I'll be at the car dealership getting a side mirror that shattered on Wednesday replaced ($600, unbelievable) and then the jail.

On the plus side, I finally installed my new wireless extreme N dual band router (to go with my new 3.0 cable modem) and my internet shot up to over 20 mbps. I also installed a gizmo to make my blu-ray player wireless instead of ethernet without the player having to be near the ethernet connection. It plugs into a regular power outlet. Netflix streams just as fast as it did with the ethernet. Now I don't have to upgrade my bluray player from wireless capable to full wireless. Here's the router, the modem and the gizmo. (Note, you might find them cheaper elsewhere.)

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

In one of the more remarkable moments of the Absurdist play that is our annual Bowl Championship Series, the President of THE Ohio State University (which has largely distinguished itself by being pummelled by the SEC champion in BCS national championhip games) recently stated that non-BCS automatic qualifier schools are not worthy of playing in the BCS national championship game. Oookaay. Whatever, Buckeyes.

Opinion driven, as opposed to performance driven, assessments of college footbsll teams is the modus operandi of the BCS. That and protecting the big bowls. In an attempt to blunt the charge of a fixed system, the BCS added computer rankings to its formula. But that was deemed flawed because, we were told, it encouraged running up the score. As opposed to a poll voter system. Yeah whatever. This year, the REAL computer rankings, as opposed to the gerrymandered version that the BCS has installed, provide the following rankings going into today's games:

Mick Jagger and Fergie are on fire on this version of Gimme Shelter -- Bono and Will-i-Am are good too. What a great concert -- the 2009 25th Anniversary of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Same concert: Patti Smyth, Bruce Springsteen and Bono and U2 in Because the Night:

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KBCO in Boulder is playing Arlo Guthrie's Alice's Restaurant at noon and 6pm, MT. You can listen live here. It was November 28, 1965 that Arlo was convicted of littering in Stockbridge, MA. You can read the backstory here.

Why is Alice's Restaurant such a ritual, especially for those of us who remember the '60's? Ira Chernus, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder, explains: [More...]

Just a little something to tide you over till tomorrow when radio stations around the country will play the full 18:37 second version of Arlo Guthrie's Alice's Restaurant.

Alice, by the way, is now an artist. I still have my hardcover edition of her 1969 cookbook -- easiest recipes ever, and really, really good (Especially the red chile and her mother-in-law's corn pudding.) [More...]