Events

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords reads the First Amendment last week: Andrew Sullivan: When you put a politician in literal cross-hairs, when you call her a target, when you celebrate how many targets you have hit, when you go on national television and shoot guns, when you use the language of "lock and load" to describe disagreements over healthcare provision ... you are part of the problem. My thoughts are with Giffords, her family, and the families of the people killed and wounded yesterday in Tuscon.

San Francisco

When I visit Half Moon Bay, Calif. (which I do about three times a year), I get up several hours before the family because (a) I stay on Chicago time and (b) they sleep later than I do anyway. I usually then walk down California Route 1 for about 1.5 km from the house to the Peet's Coffee so I can work without disturbing anyone. Since my last visit the city has built a bike trail along the highway, making the trip immeasurably safer and less muddy: Excellent. They even spent several hundred thousand...

A trio of crab fishermen had a very bad day earlier this week about a mile from my dad's house: A crab fishing boat flipped on its side in the surf at Francis State Beach early Tuesday morning, sending three crew members scrambling to the beach. All three men were reportedly uninjured. The incident occurred about 1 a.m. Tuesday. The U.S. Coast Guard dispatched a helicopter and rescue boat from their San Francisco stations and, upon arrival, rescuers found the three crew members clinging to the hull of...

It turns out that yesterday's swearing-in failure really annoyed some people. Possibly the irony of having the GOP recite (most of) the Constitution and then allow people who had not been properly seated in Congress to vote on things was a bigger deal than the Speaker thought: Rules committee Democrats are criticizing Drier's scheme, which they say needs to be addressed by the full House, not just the Rules committee. They propose a delay in the repeal hearings so the House can meet and figure out what...

It turns out my idle speculation yesterday about who would read the more unsavory bits of the Constitution on the House floor had some merit: In consultation with the Congressional Research Service and others, the leaders of the House had decided to read a version of the Constitution that was edited to exclude those portions superseded by amendments — including amendments themselves — preventing lawmakers from having to make references to slaves, referred to in Article I, Section 2 as "three fifths of...

Of all the eye-rolling things the new House majority has done in the past day, Speaker Boehner's squawking about taking the government back for the people grated the most. Given the Republicans' 20-year reign as the country's least popular option—if we had a parliamentary system we'd have had Democratic governments since 1992 without interruption—I wonder which people he means. But by far the oddest thing they've decided to do, the House will today read the U.S. Constitution on the House floor. I'm not...

AA 451 ORD-SFO (Kindle)

Oops: The cause of the communications equipment problem that caused a United Airlines flight out of O'Hare International Airport to make an unscheduled stop in Toronto this week was the pilot's spilled cup of coffee, Canadian officials said. The flight to Frankfurt, Germany was diverted after the pilot dumped a cup of coffee on the plane's communication's equipment. The unwanted liquid triggered a series of emergency codes, including one for a hijacking, according to Transport Canada, the agency that...