The International Bible Society has paid the Colorado Springs Gazette $36,000 to include the New Testament as an insert in its Sunday paper.

...for the International Bible Society, it's a winner. It gets new souls to save. And the Gazette? Well, the newspaper will make $36,000 for distributing the New Testament, as well as proceeds from a full-page ad that will appear that day thanking 130 local Christian churches and ministries (including Focus on the Family and New Life Church) who shelled out the money to pay for the insert.

This is only the first of several such planned inserts:

Colorado Springs is merely the first city where the International Bible Society plans to distribute the New Testament inside daily newspapers. Jackson said the group is currently in discussions with the Denver Post to distribute a Denver version; Seattle, Nashville and Santa Rosa, Calif. are also high priorities.

The local Synagogue is less than pleased. But it has decided to try and make a positive statement by distributing unwanted bibles to churches and homeless shelters. One other reason it disapproves of the inserts--they show a disrespect for that which is holy:

So much for freedom of expression. The New York Museum showing the 'Bush Monkeys' exhibit canceled it despite its popularity.

A portrait of President Bush using monkeys to form his image led to the closure of a New York art exhibition over the weekend and anguished protests on Monday over freedom of expression.

"Bush Monkeys," a small acrylic on canvas by Chris Savido, created the stir at the Chelsea Market public space, leading the market's managers to close down the 60-piece show that was scheduled to stay up for the next month. The show featured art from the upcoming issue of Animal Magazine, a quarterly publication featuring emerging artists.

More than 2,000 people showed up to view the exhibit over the weekend.

You can see some more Bush-monkey images here and here (not from the closed exhibit.)

If you missed Bob Dylan's interview on "60 Minutes," you can watch it over at Crooks and Liars.

So Dan Rather is stepping down as nightly news anchor at CBS. The press release makes no mention of his Texas National Guard story. Why now? I don't think it's just the end of the election cycle as he says. I tend to agree with Jay Rosen to this extent: He wants to reclaim his reputation as a reporter and journalist....and the independent investigative report on the Guard story likely will find fault with Rather and CBS.

I don't think the Guard story is a big enough deal to end Rather's anchor career. I don't think he's too celebrity oriented. I don't think his reporting exhibits a liberal bias, and if it did, I'd be glad. I hope people focus on his contributions over the past several decades rather than one instance where he fell short.

Record producer and songwriter Terry Melcher died Friday night at age 62 of melanoma. He was a prominent figure on the music scene in the 60's. He was Doris Day's son. He was linked to the Charles Manson murder of Sharon Tate because he used to live in the house on Cielo Drive that Tate was killed in and had refused to give Manson a record contract. [Melcher had been introduced to Manson by Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys. Manson and some of his group moved into Wilson's house for a year, during which time the Beach Boys recorded one of Manson's songs. Manson then auditioned for Melcher, who wouldn't give him a contract, leading many at the time to speculate that Melcher had been the real target that night. Melcher had moved to Malibu and rented the house to Tate and Roman Polanski. When Melcher did live in the Tate house, his live-in girlfriend was Candace Bergen.]

He worked with an impressive array of groups, from the Byrds to the Beach Boys, Mamas and Pappas, Ry Cooder, Paul Revere and the Raiders, and more. One of his last major produced hits was 'Kokomo' by the Beach Boys, that was featured in the Tom Cruise movie, 'Cocktail.'

Heres something I didn't know: He was a member of the two-man group, the Rip Chords, whose one hit was "Hey Little Cobra" in 1964. I loved that song. Or maybe I just think I did because the radio stations played it every ten minutes when I was a kid and I can still remember the words and the tune.

R.I.P., Mr. Melcher.

South Knox Bubba and Bubbablab posters have put together an outstanding list of the top 500 songs--in a very democratic fashion. Here were the rules:

Yeah, who needs Rolling Stone? Let's do the Bubba Blab 500!

Rules: We will list 500 songs. They will be numbered only for purposes of keeping track, not for purposes of ranking. Anybody can add any song to the list -- there is no veto power. The only limitation is that nobody can add 2 songs in a row. So if you add one, you have to wait for someone else to add one before you can add another. That's it. No limit on number of songs per artist -- if you want to put the entire Carpenters catalog on there, have at it. But only if you really like the Carpenters -- try to limit it to songs you actually like. Capiche?

Here's the final list. It's a keeper, and I'm going directly to i-tunes to do some major downloading.

Rolling Stone magazine's 500 best songs of all time has just been released. The judges included Joni Mitchell, Brian Wilson, Berry Gordy, Art Garfunkel,Ozzy Osbourne, Jakob Dylan and someone named Tweedey of a group called Wilco.

Little seems to have changed since the magazine's heyday. It affirms what needed no affirmation, that the 1960s was the pre-eminent decade of rock music, followed far behind by the 1970s.

Drumroll, please, here's the top song of all time:

Bob Dylan, Like a Rolling Stone

Followed by:

The Rolling Stones, Satisfaction

Here's the rest of the top 10:

John Lennon's "Imagine," Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On" and Aretha Franklin's "Respect." "Good Vibrations" by the Beach Boys, "Johnny B Goode" by Chuck Berry, the Beatles' "Hey Jude," Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and Ray Charles' "What'd I Say."

Some I would have ranked higher than did the Judges:

21: Bruce Springsteen, Born To Run 1975
27: Derek and the Dominos, Layla 1971
28: Otis Redding, (Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay 1968
32: Rolling Stones, Sympathy For The Devil 1968
38: The Rolling Stones, Gimme Shelter 1969
41: The Band, The Weight 1968
49: The Eagles, Hotel California 1977

Here's the rest of their top 25:

A civil rights sage set in 1920 won out over the 9/11 Report to get the non-fiction National Book Award Wednesday night.

"Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age," an account of the struggles of an African American in Detroit in the 1920s, took the trophy, disappointing the many who had contributed to and orchestrated the publishing industry's surprise bestseller of the year, the 9/11 Commission Report.

"Arc of Justice" author Kevin Boyle seemed awed by the triumph of his book, about the efforts of a man named Ossian Sweet to integrate a white neighborhood. He expounded on the unfinished work of integrating American cities. "Eighty years on, the system of segregation that Dr. Ossian Sweet confronted is still in place," Boyle said, "including in this extraordinary city that we're in at the moment."

Eric Alterman is angry at Gary Hart for giving Eric's book, When President's Lie, which Eric spent ten years writing and researching, a less than favorable review in the New York Times. Here's the letter to the editor exchange, one by Eric, one by Hart, that followed the review.

I hate it when two people I respect have a public tiff. I hope they make up soon.

These three banners were hung Friday morning at 6:20 am over the inbound Kennedy (I-90/I-94 in Chicago.) They stayed up until 8:00 a.m. Here's my favorite:

Here's what it looked like:

Now #1 on MTV.

Watch it here Then go here and vote to keep it up there.

More viewing sites and lyrics available here.

Bush Be Gone...

Update: The best place I've found to watch it is here...no commercials, full screen, good sound.

Eminem's powerful new anti-war, anti-Bush video is out. It probably won't air on MTV, but here are direct links where you can view it:

• Windows Media Player
• Real Player
• Quicktime
• Another Quicktime site.

Here are some lyrics. Note the line, ""This is Bin Laden, look at his head nodding":