Yes, it’s True. In their t’ousands they are heading home to Ireland. And doesn’t it bring a tear t’ yer Eye. / Joe Loy, guestchasing the Reverse Wild Geese. :>

Washington Post:

NEW YORK - By now the shipping container carrying Jonathan Langan’s material life in the United States has arrived in Ireland. The plush green furniture, his American flag and the construction tools of his trade are all gone from his Queens apartment.

Langan, a lanky, red-haired Irishman, was bidding a final farewell to his adopted country. He didn’t leave for want of work — his fledgling construction company was booming. Success was his problem. The more prosperous his company became, the more Langan feared he would get snared by immigration agents. “You don’t want to give off red flags because you’re not supposed to be working,” said Langan, 24, who lived illegally in the United States for three years. “It’s too dangerous, what happens if you get caught.”

The green is draining out of the Irish immigration boom that revitalized neighborhoods across New York over the past two decades. Fear of getting caught in a post-Sept. 11 net coupled with the booming economy in Ireland is drawing thousands of Irish back to the Emerald Isle…

…A more vivid picture of the exodus is the Gaelic downtown of the northern Bronx, on the border with Yonkers, where green signs and shamrocks decorate store windows.

The Padded Wagon, a popular moving company among the Irish [hee hee! / ~ the guestpaddy :], shipped 30 containers to Ireland in the past three months, each containing the possessions of an Irish family. The Irish games — Gaelic football and hurling — have suffered losses. More than 200 players returned to Ireland in the past year, said Seamus Dooley, president of the Gaelic Athletic Association, which has its games at Gaelic Park in the Bronx.

…Post-Sept. 11 security procedures have disrupted life for the city’s undocumented Irish, who number about 20,000, according to estimates by Irish officials and activists…

…federal and state policy changes, the fingerprinting of foreign nationals at airports and a crackdown on driver’s licenses have made it much more difficult to hop a plane to visit relatives or drive a car. And tighter scrutiny of banking transactions to prevent the financing of terrorism has scared off families and made starting a business far more dicey.

“What’s more alarming to me is people who’ve been here for years and years are packing up. Families are moving,” said Nollaig Cleary, president of the women’s division of the New York Gaelic Athletic Association. “You’ve had the community people who set up business and their families, they’re going.”

…”You have a great Irish neighborhood beginning to crumble,” said Niall O’Dowd, publisher of the Irish Voice and chairman of the newly formed Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform. “Unfortunately Americans are mixing up terrorism and immigration.”

…O’Dowd and other activists recently rallied the fighting Irish spirits at Rory Dolan’s pub in Yonkers, as they begin lobbying for an immigration reform that includes a path to citizenship.

…Some Irish take their leave with optimism, looking to the jobs and construction boom in their homeland.

“Everything is so good in Ireland,” said [31-year-old soon-to-be returnee Brenda] Flannagan, while her husband, John, a carpenter, was at the pub enjoying “a few sociables.” “There’s a lot of construction work for the guys.”

Flannagan held her baby girl, a U.S. citizen and last link to the United States. “Maybe she can sponsor us when she’s 21,” she said. Then, she added, “I think the notion of coming back, by then, will be gone.”

Read the whole thing.

Well it’s About time sez I. :} Now where was Lou Dobbs when we REALLY needed him, to raise Hades & the Levees against this horrid green wave of feckless foreign flotsam breaching our Broken Borders? ;>

There’s a new alleged Bin Laden tape out.

Barry Bonds says he’ll retire after the 2006 baseball season, regardless of how many home runs he hits.

If he sticks to his word, that means he needs 48 home runs in 162 games to surpass Hank Aaron’s all-time record of 755 career HRs; otherwise, the record will remain intact. (47 HRs would tie Aaron’s record.) To put that in perspective, Bonds’s home-run totals over the five seasons prior to last year (when he was injured and played in just 14 games) were: 49, 73, 46, 45 and 45.

In other words, if Bonds is able to stay healthy, it could be a very interesting September and October.

At the very least, Bonds seems likely to reach #2 on the all-time list, ahead of Babe Ruth. He needs six HRs to tie Ruth and seven to surpass him.

UPDATE: Apparently he’s changed his mind. (Hat tip: Chris.) MLB.com reports:

Barry Bonds on Sunday qualified a story that appeared on USA Today’s Web site [stating] that he intends to retire after the 2006 season whether or not he sets the all-time home run record.

“If I can play [in 2007], I’m going to play; if I can’t I won’t,” Bonds told MLB.com in a telephone interview Sunday. “If my knee holds up, I’ll keep on going. I’m playing psychological games with myself right now. I don’t want to set myself up for disappointment if things don’t work out this season. So I go back and forth. Back and forth every day. These are the things that are going through my mind. This is what I’m struggling with.” …

Bonds said he thought he was having a personal conversation with the USA Today reporter involved and was just trying to portray the state of his own mind on that particular day.

I’m decidedly unimpressed with Bonds’s line of b.s. here. Bonds has been in public eye long enough to know that a conversation with a journalist is always on-the-record unless the two of you explicitly agree beforehand that it’s off-the-record. So it’s ridiculous for him to assert that he “thought he was having a personal conversation” with the reporter. Essentially, he is implicitly slandering this reporter’s reputation in order to give himself a window to backtrack from his previous comments. Just another example of Barry Bonds being a colossal jerk.

WOOHOO!!!

The parity in the Pac-10 is ridiculous. Last night, ASU beat Cal, and now USC beats UCLA. The teams tied for first place (UCLA and Cal) have four losses, and the teams tied for last place (ASU, Oregon State and Wazzu) have four wins. Anybody can beat anybody in this conference. The Pac-10 tournament is going to be absolutely nuts, and I seriously think that any number of teams with no chance of an at-large bid — USC included — could make a run at the championship and the resulting automatic bid. Bubble teams, beware the Pac-10. It could very easily “steal” a bid this year.

Significantly, USC is now solidly in sixth place, 1.5 games ahead of seventh-place Oregon (two games ahead in the loss column). The top six teams don’t have to play on the first day of the tournament, when #7 faces #10 and #8 faces #9. So finishing sixth or higher is crucial for the Trojans; it means they only need to win three straight to earn an NCAA bid, instead of four straight. USC’s next game is against Oregon at the Sports Arena on Thursday; if the Trojans beat the Ducks, they would only need to win, at most, one game in their final three — at home against Oregon State on Saturday, at Stanford on March 2 and at Cal on March 4 — to secure the #6 seed. So yeah… BEAT THE DUCKS!!!

P.S. I love how M.C. Hammer plays for the Trojans:

USC: the team of the ’80s. :)

P.P.S. About that whole Pac-10 tournament seeding thing… if USC beats the Ducks, the only team currently between #7 and #10 with any chance of taking finishing ahead of them would be Washington State. That would require the Trojans to lose their last three games; the Cougars to win their last four (vs. Cal, vs. Stanford, at Arizona and at ASU); and either Cal or Washington to finish ahead of UCLA in the standings. (Tiebreaker info in PDF file here.) So basically, the Trojans can very nearly clinch at least a #6 seed with a win over Oregon — and indeed, if Cal beats Wazzu earlier that same day (Thursday), the Trojans can clinch.

If Oregon beats USC, the scenarios are far more complicated. I’ll cross that bridge if/when I come to it. :)

USC 62, UCLA 51 with 1:30 to go!!!

If the Trojans hold on, is this a court-rushing win? I think so… especially since it’s the last Trojan-Bruin game ever at the Sports Arena… but hopefully we’ll find out momentarily…

UPDATE: YEEEAH!!! Trojans win, 71-68!!!

A few students rushed the court. Kinda lame, but oh well. Who cares… WE BEAT THE BRUINS!!!!!!!!!!!!

I’ve noted before that my least favorite bad call in all sports is the pure-anticipation whistle on a clean block in basketball. As I wrote then:

I hate it when refs do that. That particular bogus call, a “foul” on a clean block, is a pure anticipation call, and I’m sure the referee usually realizes immediately that he or she was wrong to whistle it. I wish they’d swallow their pride, say “inadvertant whistle” and let the game resume. It’s just absolutely outrageous to give the other team free throws on what is, in fact, a very good defensive play, not a foul in any way, shape or form.

Well, it happened again tonight in the UConn-Notre Dame women’s game, and I hate to say it, but it was literally the turning point in the game.

That’s a foul? Funny, I didn’t realize the ball was a UConn player…

Allow me to set the scene. Notre Dame was on a roll, having just pulled within two points on a three-pointer by Breona Gray with 11:34 to go. It was 48-46 Huskies, but all the momentum was on the Irish’s side. UConn had the ball, and Notre Dame was playing excellent defense. Significantly, the next whistle would produce a TV timeout.

With 11:07 to go, Notre Dame’s Melissa D’Amico made an awesome, completely clean block on UConn’s Kalana Greene (pictured above), knocking the ball out of bounds with 5 on the shot clock. So what should have happened was: the Irish head into the TV timeout with even more momentum after an awesome block, and UConn has a tough task awaiting them when play resumes, needing to inbound the ball and get off a shot with just 5 seconds to work with. If the Huskies had failed in that effort, Notre Dame would have gotten the ball back with a chance to tie or take the lead.

But the referee blew the whistle, calling an absolutely terrible, awful, horrible, utterly unjustifiable bulls*** foul on D’Amico. (”Ooh, tough call,” said the ESPN2 announcer in a flourish of understatement.) The crowd was outraged, as were the players and the coach — and rightfully so.

So, instead of going into the TV timeout with tons of momentum, the Irish went to the bench frustrated and angry. They had nearly three minutes to brood on how they’d been robbed of the fruits of a great defensive possession. When play resumed, Greene hit both free throws — starting a 22-6 UConn run over the next 6 1/2 minutes. When it was over, UConn led 70-52 with 4:28 to go, and the game was effectively over.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying the call decided the game. A better team than Notre Dame would have shaken off the frustration of the bad call, made a big play on offense and regained the momentum. The Irish have no one to blame but themselves for this loss.

Still, I can’t help but feel a little bitter. Sports is full of “what if” and “if only” moments, and this is a classic case. If only the ref makes the right call there, does Notre Dame stay in the ballgame — maybe even take the lead — instead of losing the momentum, getting frustrated and letting a great upset opportunity slip away? Alas, we’ll never know. Argh.

P.S. Here’s the video from ESPN2:

source file

P.P.S. It should be noted that there were some bad calls in both directions. One particular call comes to mind: with a few minutes left, Megan Duffy blatantly took a dive and the ref called a phantom foul. It was a Colin Falls-worthy play. :) So I’m certainly not arguing that the refs were biased or anything like that. I just hate that one particular brand of bad call, which is far too common, IMHO. And tonight, I don’t think there was any bad call that had as much of a definite impact on the game as that one. But again, I’m not blaming the refs for the Irish’s loss, or suggesting that UConn’s win was illegitimate. I just get very frustrated with refs who make that particular call, and in this case I can’t help but wonder “what might have been” if the proper call (i.e., a no-call) had been made.

UConn 79, Notre Dame 64, final. The Irish ran out of gas and went cold late in the second half. In other news, the USC men lead fUCLA by 2 late in the first half. BEAT THE BRUINS!!!

I realize there are some folks hostile to women’s basketball around these parts… but, for those of you at Notre Dame, if there was ever a night to attend a women’s game at the Joyce Center, tonight is it. The #6-ranked UConn women are in town! The Huskies (23-3 overall, 11-1 Big East) are trying to stay in the hunt for a Big East regular-season title and a #1 seed in the NCAA Tournament. The Irish (14-9, 5-7), meanwhile, are clinging to a #11 seed in ESPN’s latest bracket projection, and desperately need a big win. That tapping sound you hear is opportunity knocking.

Tipoff is 7:00 PM. Becky and I will be there. Admission is free with student ID.

New Orleans’s scaled-back Mardi Gras celebration has beugn.

PowerBall update:

The only ticket matching the winning numbers drawn Saturday night for the multistate lottery was sold at a U-Stop convenience store in Lincoln, Nebraska, Lottery spokesman Brian Rockey said.

It was the biggest jackpot on record for any lottery in the United States.

No one had come forward to claim the jackpot Sunday, Rockey said.

“We don’t know if the winner knows yet,” he said.

(Hat tip: Mike.)

Becky and I forgot to buy a ticket. Oh, well.

My non-NDLS readers (and those NDLSers who don’t read e-mails from the CSO) should enjoy this cautionary tale of how not to turn down a job offer. See also here (hat tip: Giraffe). Heh.

The New York Times had a big article yesterday about the academic-freedom controversy at Notre Dame. (Hat tip: my dad.) The whole thing is worth reading, so rather than excerpt it, I’ll just encourge you to read the whole thing.

The Texas men’s basketball team was ranked #2 in the nation when they came to the Meadowlands for a neutral-site showdown with #1 Duke on December 10. They lost by 31 points, and followed it up with a 17-point loss at home against Tennessee a week later. Naturally, the Longhorns plummeted in the polls, falling from #2 to #6 to #15.

Since then, Texas has returned to its winning ways — with only one minor blip, a 10-point loss at rival Oklahoma on Jan. 28 — and they’ve climbed back up the polls, hitting #4 in the AP poll before the Oklahoma loss, and #6 as of this week. They’re a #1 seed in many NCAA Tournament projections, including bracketologist extraordinare Joe Lunardi’s.

Well, call me crazy, but I haven’t bought into the hype, not for a moment. Yes, they won at Memphis. Yes, they won (at home, by single digits) against West Virginia, Iowa and (overrated, IMHO) Villanova. And yes, the Oklahoma loss is forgivable. But those Duke and Tennessee losses are absolute deal-breakers for me. I don’t care that it was December — national-championship caliber teams don’t lose by 17 points at home, and they don’t lose by 31 points to anyone, anywhere, ever. Period. I admit I haven’t watched the Longhorns play much, if at all, but no way is a team with a resume containing two giant red flags like that going to the Final Four in my bracket. There’s a reason I picked them to lose in the second round in Lunardi’s hypothetical field. I simply don’t believe in the Longhorns.

Why am I talking about this today? Because my skepticism was just validated. Those “two red flags” just became “three red flags.” Oklahoma State 81, Texas 60. Ouch.

Perhaps the Longhorns will prove me wrong next month. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been forced to eat my words about a team from the University of Texas. :) But I don’t think so. I don’t believe that a team which is capable of losing three games by 17 points or more during the course of the season is going to be able to win six straight games on neutral courts against the best competition in the land in March.

Texas is goin’ down, and my bitter Trojan soul will laugh when they do. :)

Editor & Publisher notes discrepancies in press accounts of the Dick Cheney birdshot incident, a.k.a. Cheneyquiddick. (Hat tip: A Nun Mouse.)

On a less serious note, here is Harry Whittington’s song about the incident, courtesy of the Huffington Post. Heh. (Again, hat tip: A Nun Mouse.) And here’s a great bumper sticker.

P.S. Speaking of the Huffington Post, I love Casey’s analysis of it:

I really hate huffingtonpost.com. I feel like Ariana Huffington decided that it was evil for the New York Times to control American public opinion, and that the world would be a much better place if she just did it herself. This is what happens when you give stupid people with silly accents tons of money. I nevertheless peruse it every so often, if only to refresh my opinion of what an informative blog should not be.

Heh.

P.P.S. And speaking of Casey (notice how these segues keep getting us further and further away from the original topic of this post), he wasn’t kidding about the crazy weather in Rochester:

ROCHESTER, New York (AP) — A deep freeze stretched from the Rockies to New England on Sunday as workers tried to restore power to tens of thousands of homes and businesses left dark by fierce wind that also was blamed for four deaths. …

Utility officials in New York said crews would work through the weekend to restore power. Utilities reported at least 56,000 homes and business still without electricity Sunday, down from a peak of 328,000 customers blacked out Friday when wind gusted to 77 mph at Rochester.

Yikes.

Note also the cool picture from Clarence, NY.

At concert… Stephen Kellogg rocks! (See audio posts below.) MVC update: evening not going as well as afternoon did. Close losses by Southern Illinois and Wichita State; conference now 4 and 4 today.
Drake underway; Creighton on ESPN at midnight.