Events

Pilot

First run

The legal team representing the only governor Illinois has quit this afternoon. More precisely, they stuck their collective tongue out at the legislature because impeachment is just so unfair: Blagojevich's lawyers believe the process has become "fundamentally unfair" because they have had too little time to prepare for the Senate trial and have been denied subpoena power to call their own witnesses. The governor's lawyers had been asked to file an appearance on his behalf by Monday. The Senate trial is...

The Chicago Tribune can turn off its clock; Chicago officially hit -17°C a few minutes ago.

I just realized only 96 hours and 10 minutes remain in the worst presidency in American history, and felt glad.

The Chicago Tribune's home page this morning has this counter, which as a native Chicagoan I have to call pretty whiny: Yes, it's colder right now in Chicago than at the North Pole, and yes, we've only had 44 days in the last 139 years when the temperature failed to go above -17°C, but this counter just seems silly. And it's so short-lived: we'll be out of the danger zone by noon today. Now, a counter ticking down the 4 days, 4 hours, and 1 minute until Barack Obama is sworn in as President? Not silly...

In no particular order: Three cheers for the US Airways crew who executed a good landing[1] in the Hudson River this afternoon. I'm not joking: it's hard enough to glide any airplane after a total power loss, something else entirely to land on water without flipping the plane or sinking immediately. That all 155 passengers got out means Capt. C.B. "Sully" Sullenberger and his first officer deserve medals. Let's remember that one kilometer in either direction would have led to a horrible outcome. This...

The other-worldly cold that parked over Alaska at the end of December has now schlumped down to Chicago. For the first time since 3 February 1996, we've got more than 24 consecutive hours of temperatures below -18°C—officially bottoming out at -23°C overnight at O'Hare. (This is nowhere near the record set 15 January 1972 of -33°C.) <humor tone="gentle">You know, between this weather and their annoying governor, I'm wondering about whether we should have admitted the state in 1959....</humor>

The Prisoner, Patrick McGoohan, dead at 80. Yesterday, Khan Noonien Singh (Ricardo Montalban) died at 88. Imagine the conversation: "Where am I?" "You didn't expect to find me...you thought this was a dead planet. Tell me: why are you here?" "Whose side are you on?" (Come to think of it, that gets too silly, too quickly...never mind.)