There are reports shots have been fired in Rayburn House Office Building across street from U.S. Capitol. Entire Capitol complex is locked down. Visit CNN for the latest.

Oops:

An emergency radio station mistakenly warned that a massive, volcanic- caused mudflow was headed from the flanks of Mount Rainier and that listeners in the valley below should rush to higher ground.

The emergency lahar warning was broadcast Wednesday for nearly an hour on the 1580 AM frequency in the suburban Pierce County town of Puyallup.

Authorities had no estimate how many people heard the broadcast on the weak frequency, or how many evacuated.

Nancy Eldred heard it while driving in the Puyallup Valley and called her daughter, Renee Hutchinson, in Tacoma.

“I was in tears,” said Hutchinson, whose 17-month-old son, Ethan, was in the car with his grandmother. “I was shaking.”

After Hutchinson warned co-workers, about 30 people started frantically calling loved ones. Some called their children at schools in the Puyallup Valley and told them to leave immediately.

The fact that I have my own Wikipedia page is pretty cool, but this might be even cooler: my blog has now been cited as a Wikipedia source! (Look for the “[3]” link.)

P.S. No, I didn’t put it in there! :) I noticed it when I checked my referral stats.

“Interns? No Bloggers Need Apply,” the New York Times provocatively declares in a Thursday Styles article that my dad e-mailed to me and one of my fellow summer associates mentioned to me this morning. The topic, of course, is the conflicts that can arise when companies hire interns and young employees who have blogs. But really, the headline is quite misleading. A more accurate summation of the article’s message would be: “Hey Idiot, Don’t Blog About Work.” To which I would reply: “Duh.”

The article’s poster child, for instance, is a complete moron… or at least, he comes off that way, the way Times writer Anna Bahney spins it:

On the first day of his internship last year, Andrew McDonald created a Web site for himself. It never occurred to him that his bosses might not like his naming it after the company and writing in it about what went on in their office.

For Mr. McDonald, the Web log he created, “I’m a Comedy Central Intern,” was merely a way to keep his friends apprised of his activities and to practice his humor writing. For Comedy Central, it was a corporate no-no…

Comedy Central…ask[ed] him to change the name (He did, to “I’m an Intern in New York”) and to stop revealing how its brand of comedic sausage is stuffed.

“They said they figured something like this would happen eventually because blogs had become so popular,” said Mr. McDonald, now 23, who kept his internship. “It caught them off guard. They didn’t really like that.“

Gee… ya think? Yeah, if I started a blog called “I’m a Summer Associate at Bryan Cave” and starting blabbing about the summer program, and what all the attorneys are like — nevermind what cases we’re working on, who our clients are, etc. — I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t go over too well. Which is why I would never do that, because I’m not completely dense!

The Times attempts to cast the alleged conflict between blogs and jobs as the product of a generation gap, or even perhaps a generational feud, pitting young bloggers who don’t “get” the business world (or simply don’t care to follow its rules) against old, stodgy businesspeople who don’t “get” the mindset of young bloggers. But that, I think, vastly oversimplifies the issue and underestimates the intelligence and prudence of most people on both sides of the equation. Buried in the 26th through 31st paragraphs of the article is an example that makes my case:

A blog and a job don’t necessarily have to clash, some bloggers say.

Alexx Shannon’s celebrity blog, www.britboyla.com, came up during his interviews for his internship at Paramount Pictures in Los Angeles this spring because he lists it on his résumé.

Mr. Shannon, 21, who is British and is spending a year at the University of California, Los Angeles, before finishing his studies at Kings College, London, said he signed an employee confidentiality agreement with both Paramount and Beacon Pictures, where he is now an intern. Beacon made clear that his blog, while about celebrities, would not include information he picked up at work.

“I suppose they did take kind of a risk,” said Mr. Shannon, who confessed he sometimes had to sit on some truly juicy bits of celebrity gossip that he encountered at work. …

“I just knew that I didn’t want to jeopardize anything for my career,” Mr. Shannon said. “My real life is more important to me than my online life.

That, right there, pretty much shatters the premise of the article’s bogus headline. Mr. Shannon’s case — and, coincidentally, mine — prove that bloggers can, in fact, apply for internships and other such jobs, and can get those jobs, in many cases using their blog as a selling point. They — we — simply need to follow the common-sense rule, don’t blog about your job. If you do, you’re asking for trouble. Period.

This is not a difficult concept, people. Why some folks still find it hard to grasp, despite all the horror stories and cautionary tales, is beyond me.

A more interesting, perhaps even groundbreaking article would explore the potential long-term consequences that blogs with an “unprofessional” feel can have on people in buttoned-down professions, even when the blogger isn’t blogging about work at all. After all, if you’re blogging about work (or from work), you have no right to complain if you get in trouble — you obviously crossed the line. But what if, say, you blog about how you broke your arm attempting to jump over a tennis net :), and then a couple of months later, a member of your law firm’s hiring committee sees the post and starts to wonder if you’re a sufficiently “serious” person for the firm? Or how about if you’ve expressed certain controversial political opinions, or used rough language online, and somebody finds it when they Google you? Is it fair game to take such a thing into consideration? Or, perhaps more to the point, is it likely to happen, fair or not? And if it does happen — or perhaps I should say, if it is happening (which is certainly is, in some places) — will it result in some companies excluding whole groups of young people, possibly irrespective of their objective qualifications? Is it possible that other companies with a more free-wheeling philosophy will fill that void and hire the bloggers the more stodgy companies are less likely to take? Could this result in a subtle shift whereby stodgy companies become stodgier and companies that are willing to take small risks end up with more creative, interesting people? Or are bloggers simply screwing themselves over by putting so much information out there? Bottom line, how is the market going to handle this growing influx of rising young professionals who carry with them (or drag behind them) a significant electronic paper trail — on blogs, message boards, MySpace, Facebook and elsewhere?

(more…)

Enough of the silly football rules from the otherwise great state of Connecticut. The really big news from CT high-school sports is that the Newington High School boys and girls’ tennis teams both clinched CCC South titles last week!

The girls — coached by my former English teacher, the legendary C. Stephen Ludlow — earned their second consecutive title by beating archrival Bristol Eastern in a decisive battle of unbeatens. Woohoo! It’s the girls’ fourth CCC South title in the last five seasons, according to the Newington Town Crier, and if I’m not mistaken, I believe it’s also their eighth in the last ten seasons… maybe even ninth in the last eleven or tenth in the last twelve? I can’t recall exactly how many they had won in a row through 1999 (my graduation year), but I know it was a bunch.

The boys team, meanwhile, won its first title since 1989. Way to go, Indians!

Has President Bush joined the reality-based community?

In unusually introspective comments, Bush said he regretted his cowboy rhetoric after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks such as his “wanted dead or alive” description of Osama bin Laden and his taunting “bring ‘em on” challenge to Iraqi insurgents.

“In certain parts of the world, it was misinterpreted.”

He also cited the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners at the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad. “We’ve been paying for that for a long time,” Bush said.

He spoke at a joint press conference with Tony Blair, who also admitted some mistakes:

Blair regretted the way in which Saddam Hussein’s political allies were expelled from the Iraqi military and government soon after the fall of Baghdad. Critics have said the purge left a security vacuum and encouraged former regime loyalists to take up arms against the newly installed government.

Blair also said allies seriously underestimated the strength and determination of the insurgency.

“It should have been very obvious to us” from the beginning, Blair said.

Of course, I also agree very strongly with this:

“Despite setbacks and missteps, I strongly believe we did and are doing the right thing,” Bush said Thursday evening in a White House news conference with Blair. “Not everything has turned out the way we hoped.”

For his part, Blair said he left a meeting this week with Iraq’s new prime minister “thinking the challenge is still immense, but I also came away thinking more certain than ever that we should rise to it.”

In a related story, George Galloway says it would be morally justified for a suicide bomber to kill Blair.

For what it’s worth, I don’t think it would be morally justified to kill George Galloway. But I could make a strong case in favor of punching the guy.

I believe this is my first-ever Sports guestblog. :) I like sports OK (favorite: baseball; Go Sawx! :), just not enough to Post about them. / But perhaps I make certain exceptions. :) Like when a story is Controversial in a way that has a Politics & Public Policy Crossover Potential. :> Like this one (note that The Courant puts it in “Connecticut News”, not the Sports section):

Expect New London High School football coach Jack Cochran to operate next season as he always has, and if that means his team wins by 50 points or more, so be it. And expect Cochran to be suspended for doing so.

In what some are referring to as the “Cochran rule,” the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference football committee passed a score management policy to be instituted next season. The rule says if a team wins by 50 or more points, the coach is suspended for the next game.

Although many have accused Cochran of running up scores, he doesn’t see it that way. And he doesn’t like this rule. On that point, he has company.

“It won’t change anything with how I prepare for a game,” Cochran said. “Where it’s going to run into problems is when you’ve got your second team in or you’ve got your freshmen in; what do you tell them? One coach is saying he’s just going to have his guys take a knee. I would never do that. I would never tell a kid to run out of bounds instead of scoring.

“I will probably have to take a suspension next year. If it comes down to letting a freshman or a [junior varsity] player score at the varsity level or me being suspended, I’m not going to stop that kid from doing that. I cherish the sport too much and believe in it too much to tell some kid he can’t play the game the right way.”

The rule, passed in April, says if a team wins by 50 points or more it will be called an unsportsmanlike act. Under the CIAC’s disqualification rule, the coach will be suspended for the next game. The football committee is made up of coaches and school administrators, all formerly involved in coaching.

“Our football committee has been discussing this topic for two or three years and they’ve been studying policies,” said CIAC Assistant Executive Director Tony Mosa. “It certainly didn’t just come about after last year. We certainly have been having a lot of criticism regarding what appeared to be a high number of high scores.”

…Of the 659 games reported to the CIAC last year, there were 27 in which teams won by at least 50 points. Cochran’s New London team won four games by 55 or more, including a 90-0 victory over Griswold.

…Northwest Catholic-West Hartford coach Mike Tyler said he was surprised by the decision to implement the rule and says many coaches have the same feeling.

…”Regarding telling kids to just fall on balls and don’t pick it up, you’ve got kids that are in there that don’t get to get in often, and it’s their chance to shine a little bit,” Tyler said. “How do you tell that kid not to pick it up and run? I don’t know if I could tell a kid that, but if I was going to get suspended in the next game it would be different.”

Cochran sees the rule as another hindrance in helping kids in the state to move on with their football careers at higher levels.

“You look at all the other states, we’re one of the weakest when it comes to football,” Cochran said. “It’s simply because of the restrictions put on us for coaching time. Until that changes, it’s a disservice to every kid that plays football in this state. At the end of the day, they’re competing against kids from Pennsylvania and New Jersey and Florida to move on and it’s not a level playing field. This is just another restriction that’s going to hinder football in this state.”

Read the whole thing ~ including a sidebar giving (hi Brendan :) the Excruciating particulars of last season’s 27 Unsportsmanlike blowouts. :>

All competing Competition Regulationists, Competitive Laissez Faire-ers (Laissez Faireaux? / Non :) , and Incompetent Connecticut Bashers are invited to Comment away: have your Sport with it. :)

Jury finds former Enron executives Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling guilty in corporate fraud trial. Visit CNN for the latest.

Jurors reach verdict in trial of Enron executives Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling. Verdict to be read at noon ET. Visit CNN for the latest.

Arizona Governor signs anti-bestiality measure into law.

* Does Dennis Hastert have a more personal reason than the Speech & Debate Clause for opposing FBI raids on congressional offices?

* Suns win Game 1!

* Sabres win Game 3!

* Taylor Hicks wins American Idol!

Huge fire engulfs cargo section of Istanbul's international Ataturk airport, blocking air traffic, television reports say. Visit CNN for the latest.

Congressional Republicans are not happy, not happy at all with the Bush Administration after an FBI raid on disgraced Democratic House member William Jefferson’s office. Yes, you read that right: the Republicans are mad at Bush because of a raid on a Democrat’s office — and not just any Democrat, but the Democrat they hope to use to deflect Abramoff-gate in the November elections!

So, why are they mad? Because sometimes, every once in a great while, institutional loyalty trumps party loyalty — and, dare I say it, the Constitution is occasionally recognized as being more important than politics. The House may be run by Republicans, but those Republicans are still members of the legislative branch, and they fear executive-branch intrusion into their territory, in violation of the Speech and Debate Clause of the Constitution. More here.

UPDATE: InstaPundit is unimpressed. More here.

Iran test-fires long-range missile.

This is Drudge’s top story right now:

All seven people infected with bird flu in a cluster of Indonesian cases can be linked to other patients, according to disease trackers investigating possible human-to-human transmission of the H5N1 virus.

A team of international experts has been unable to find animals that might have infected the people, the World Health Organization said in a statement today. In one case, a 10-year- old boy who caught the virus from his aunt may have passed it to his father, the first time officials have seen evidence of a three-person chain of infection, an agency spokeswoman said. Six of the seven people have died.

Almost all of the 218 cases of H5N1 infections confirmed by the WHO since late 2003 can be traced to direct contact with sick or dead birds. Strong evidence of human-to-human transmission may prompt the global health agency to convene a panel of experts and consider raising the pandemic alert level, said Maria Cheng, an agency spokeswoman.

“Considering the evidence and the size of the cluster, it’s a possibility,” Cheng said in a telephone interview. “It depends on what we’re dealing with in Indonesia. It’s an evolving situation.”

The 32-year-old father in the cluster of cases on the island of Sumatra was “closely involved in caring for his son, and this contact is considered a possible source of infection,” The WHO said in its statement. Three others, including the sole survivor in the group, spent a night in a “small” room with the boy’s aunt, who later died and was buried before health officials could conduct tests for the H5N1 virus.

“All confirmed cases in the cluster can be directly linked to close and prolonged exposure to a patient during a phase of severe illness,” the WHO said.

The “close and prolonged” phraseology is important:

Health officials earlier found strong evidence of direct human-to-human spread of H5N1 in Thailand in 2004. Scientists reported in the Jan. 27, 2005, issue of the New England Journal of Medicine that the H5N1 virus probably spread from an 11-year- old girl in Thailand to her aunt and mother, killing the mother and daughter. People who had more casual contact with the girl didn’t become infected.

In the Sumatran cluster, close, direct contact with a severely ill person was also needed for spread, Cheng said. Preliminary findings from the investigation indicate that the woman who died, considered to be the initial case, was coughing frequently while the three others spent the night in the same room. One of the three, a second brother, is the sole survivor. The other two, her sons, died.

“It looks like the same behavior pattern” of close contact and caretaking during illness with the bird flu virus, Cheng said. To raise the level of pandemic alert “it would have to be transmissible from more casual contact.”