Family members say former U.S. Sen. and Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen has died, The Associated Press reports. Visit CNN for the latest.

Could the senior senator from Connecticut be the Democrats’ much-needed anti-Hillary? I doubt it (who has ever heard of Chris Dodd, except for party insiders, political junkies and Connecticut residents?), but he’s thinking about running in 2008.

Yet another prediction of an active hurricane season in 2006 (hat tip: Kat Palmore; see also Colin Pedicini)… but is anyone paying attention? (hat tip: A Nun Mouse).

On Friday, our first full day in the Phoenix Valley, Becky and I were greeted by a record-high temperature of 105 degrees. But today, my first day of work, was an entirely different story: a cold front moved through this morning, bringing with it a blustery dust storm followed by an amazingly pleasant day. The sky cleared — and I mean really cleared, as the front blew much of the normal smog and haze away — the wind died down to a pleasant breeze, and the high temperature was just 84 degrees, 12 below normal. All in all, an absolutely perfect way to start my summer job. Here’s a look at the view from my office in the afternoon:

Alas, it’s not going to last. This is, after all, summer (well, late spring) in Phoenix. The forecasted high temperatures for the rest of this week: 97°, 103°, 106°, 104°.

Tennessee’s Pat Summitt is officially the first millionaire coach in women’s college basketball. Couldn’t happen to a nicer Devil-woman. :) She’ll be joined next year by UConn’s Geno Auriemma, thanks be to Jodi Rell.

The statue in front of Bryan Cave’s building. (Previous post about the statue here.)

I’m watching the Suns-Clippers Game 7 right now, partly because it’s interesting (65-57 Phoenix at halftime… a real defensive battle!) and partly because I know it’ll be the talk of the office tomorrow. Gotta be up on the water-cooler fodder! :)

Besides, the game is being played almost literally across the street from where I work:


Chase Field (where the Diamonbacks play) and U.S. Airways Center (where the Suns play), as seen from Cave’s building. There are games at both stadiums tonight; the D-Backs are playing the Pirates.

Alas, while the news is good for Phoenix so far, it is not so good for Buffalo: the Sabres lost 4-3 to the Carolina Hurricanes earlier tonight, allowing the Once And Future Whalers (hey, a Nutmegger can dream) to tie the series at 1-1. But, hey, the Sabres got a split on the road; now they own home-ice advantage, if they can just win Games 3, 4 and 6 at home. LET’S GO, BUFF-A-LO!

UPDATE: Suns win!

Contrary to previous reports, the trailer for Eragon will not be attached to X3 when the latter debuts this weekend, according to Shur’tugal. D’oh! Instead, the trailer will debut with Superman Returns on June 30. (Hat tip: CanMag.)

Oh, well. This decreases my level of anticipation for X3 from super-duper-ohmygod-holy-f**ing-sh*t-woooohoooo to merely super-duper-ohmygod-holy-freaking-crap-woooohoooo. :)

P.S. That’s not to be confused with my level of anticipation for the Lord of the Rings movies, which was simply: AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :)

P.P.S. In other movie news, as you may have heard, The Da Vinci Code made an absolutely ridonkulous amount of money on its opening weekend. According to Nikki Finke, it was “a $231.8 million worldwide opening, making it the 2nd biggest ever — $154.7 mil international, $77.1 mil domestic. Sony is telling me it was #1 in every territory it opened.”

I had a good first day as a Caver. (Or, if you prefer, a “Cave man.”) And that's all you're getting. The (almost) no blogging about work policy is in effect. :)

Might as well go all-out & make this Religious Controversies Day (again :) at The Irish Trojan. :) Indirect hat tip: David K. I stumbled upon this at the First Amendment Center while following links originating in David’s Paean to Religion in the Public Schools, below. :> Keep yer Shirt on, David, I Agree with you, I’m just being a paean. :) [Check out my Victorian View of the Monkey’s Great-Uncle one, too. There are Implications. :]

So now, just as the Effa Bee Eye is scouring the land for their Tenth-Most-Wanted Perp, fugitive polygynist FLDS leader Warren Jeffs, comes news (ok, so News a few days back :) that ~

05.17.06
SALT LAKE CITY — The Utah Supreme Court ruled yesterday that the state law banning polygamy is constitutional and upheld the 2003 bigamy conviction of a former Hildale police officer.

In its ruling, State of Utah v. Holm, the court said the behavior of Rodney Holm was “within the realms of behavior criminalized by our state’s bigamy statute” and that religious protections of both the U.S. and Utah constitutions “do not shield Holm’s polygamous practices from state prosecution.”

But Chief Justice Christine Durham said Holm’s bigamy conviction should not be upheld.

In a dissenting opinion, Durham said applying the bigamy statute to marriages solemnized only in religious ceremonies “oversteps lines protecting the free exercise of religion and the privacy of intimate, personal relationships between consenting adults.”

…Holm and his wives were members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a polygamist sect based in Hildale, Utah and Colorado City, Ariz. Holm is one of several men in the community prosecuted in recent years, as authorities in Utah and Arizona have taken a renewed interest in polygamy and crimes and against women and children in the FLDS church and other fundamentalist sects.

…Durham, who concurred with the other four justices on Holm’s sexual conduct conviction, split with them over the definition of marriage. The majority said the term can be broadly applied to relationships, while Durham said the law narrowly defines “marriage” to legally recognized unions. And although the state has an interest in marriage law, Durham said there is no logical justification for criminal penalties for those whose religion-based domestic relationships differ from the legal standard.

In addition, “the state perceives no need to prosecute nonreligiously motivated cohabitation,” Durham wrote.

Assistant Utah Attorney General Laura Dupaix praised the majority ruling and said the court had upheld the state’s right to define and regulate marriage.

…”We have prosecuted polygamists who have married young girls, and we are going to continue to do that,” she said. “The opinion makes it clear that we can do so.”

…”Polygamy is not going to be decriminalized anytime soon,” she said.

Whole thing. OK, all you Slippery Slopers out there :), hit the Chief Justice with your Best Shot. ;>

A New York Times editorial opines provocatively (not to say, Provocateurishly :) on a new Genomic analysis, by scientists at the Broad Institute in Cambridge, MA, suggesting that the Chimp and Human species may have ~

…diverged more recently than previous estimates, which were based solely on fossil evidence. Their results suggest further that the ancestors of humans and chimpanzees might have diverged but then hybridized to produce the early lineage from which modern humans eventually developed.

…Even after Darwin, the popular vision of how humans became humans has always had something platonic about it. The details of our descent have been vague enough to implicitly reinforce what one geneticist, commenting on this new finding, called “a more Victorian view of our genome.”

The thought that we might be descended from the mating of ancestors of separate species — that in our origins we are hybrids — is a bold one, and a reminder, once again, of what we always forget: that humans are animals too, closely related to all of life on earth…

…even if this particular analysis of our family tree doesn’t survive, there is certainly more in store as genomic research becomes increasingly refined. We will need to learn a certain agnosticism about the nature of our origins, a willingness to face up to the best analysis of who we really are. This should be an invigorating task.

“Invigorating”, indeed. :> Read the unquoted parts too (admittedly a minority portion). Blogboss, forgive my Intrusion on your special simian Category; or at least don’t go Ape about it. :} Creative Evolutionism commentwarriors, have At it. / Above all: Doctor Mike, for God’s sake (you should Pardon the expression :) tell us what’s the Deal, here. ;>

Six years ago the Modesto school district did something practically unheard of. They introduced religion into the school curriculum. Not only did they introduce it but it was a required class.

No they weren’t indoctrinating students, the class is a world religions course, developed with the help of an interfaith religious council, and the results have been a success. Survey results of the students conducted by two profesors, one from Stanford, the other from the College of William and Mary, have shown an increased level of religious liberty and tolerance as well as increased understanding of First Ammendment rights among students.

Proffesors Lester and Roberts conclude their above linked piece with the following quote, which I think everyone should read:

Limiting deeply held beliefs to the private sphere breeds suspicion and tension. True religious liberty prevails not only when people feel comfortable expressing their beliefs, but also when they learn to discuss religious differences with civility and respect.

Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro has a 50/50 chance of surviving his injury in the Preakness.

This isn’t good:

A wide range of design and construction defects in levees around New Orleans raise serious doubts that the system can withstand the pounding of another hurricane the size of Katrina, even after $3.1 billion in repairs are completed, a team of independent investigators led by UC Berkeley’s civil engineering school said Sunday.

The findings undermine assurances by the Bush administration and the Army Corps of Engineers that the federal levee repair program due to be completed in June will provide a higher level of protection to New Orleans, which sustained 1,293 deaths and more than $100 billion in property loss from Katrina.

The team’s 600-page report disputed most of the corps’ preliminary findings about what caused the levee breaches, saying the investigators had made critical errors in their analysis.

The mistakes raise concerns about whether the corps is competent to oversee public safety projects across the nation, said Raymond Seed, a UC Berkeley civil engineering professor who led the investigation, which the National Science Foundation sponsored shortly after Katrina struck.

“People think this is a New Orleans problem,” Seed said. “It is a national issue.”

Yikes. And this part sounds strikingly like what investigators said about NASA after the Columbia tragedy:

The group looked at the corps’ internal culture and resources and asserts that the corps’ technical competence has been eroding since the 1970s because of congressional pressure to streamline its organization and reduce project costs.

Robert Bea, a Berkeley engineering professor who began his career at the corps and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, said the corps had failed to recognize early warning signs that might have alerted it to levee problems before Katrina.

Responsibility for the failures, Bea said, extends well beyond the corps and includes many levee boards and other local political organizations.

A series of compromises resulted in substandard design and marginal quality in exchange for lower costs, Bea said.

“A culture of safety was replaced by a culture of efficiency,” said J. David Rogers, a geological engineering professor from the University of Missouri, Rolla.

(Hat tip: A Nun Mouse.)

Having somehow survived my own personal Day Without Immigrants Internets, I’m back online, thanks to the re-activated Sanyo 8100 — my old Sprint phone, reconstituted as my “new” phone, Becky’s and my third active cell phone (all on the same shared-minutes plan), which will be used exclusively for mobile Web access, CamryCasts and such. :)

I won’t have much time for blogging tonight, though. I gotta read some stuff in preparation for starting my job tomorrow, and then get to bed at a decent hour. Tomorrow is a big day! Who knows? It could be my first day at a firm where I’ll ultimately work for many years… or it could just be the first day of a summer job, nothing more. Only time will tell.

Speaking of “telling,” I won’t be telling y’all about what working at Bryan Cave is like. In keeping with my general “no blogging about work” policy — which I’ve always held to, no matter the job, but which is more important than ever in a legal job — my blog audience will be hearing very, very little from me about life at the Cave. Maybe an occasional, vague “I had a good day at work today,” or a reference to something that’s irrelevant to actual work, but that mentions my job in passing (e.g., the summer associate trip to the Grand Canyon), but otherwise, no.

My blogging schedule will also be quite a bit different than it is during the schoolyear. I won’t be blogging during business hours on weekdays, obviously. So it’ll be guestbloggers or nothing during that time. As I mentioned before, I’m recruiting special “hurricane guestbloggers” to keep that aspect of things up-to-date as the tropical season begins. I’ve already gotten several volunteers, and will have more on that to come later.

Anyway… I’m off to start getting ready. Work starts at 9:00 AM MST (noon EDT) tomorrow… wish me luck!

(Note: I refuse to Categorize this post under “Elections & Politics” because this one’s not about Politics: it’s strictly about the Sacred, with no regard whatsoever to the Profane. :) [UPDATE: Overruled by the webmaster… sorry Dad. :) But “Elections & Politics” by definition encompasses both the Sacred and the Profane; it doesn’t imply that every story in the category much feature both.]

Before the NOLA primary and election fade quickly into memory, I’d like to pay a richly-deserved tribute to LASOS Al Ater and his Elections Division staff, and to all the local Orleans Parish election officials & pollworkers, who Did the Impossible: they successfully conducted a fair, clean, correctly-run, fullscale citywide Primary and Runoff, both for Numerous offices, 28 days apart, in a physically and financially devastated city most of whose polling places were ruined and half of whose eligible voters were scattered to the far Winds by the Wind-driven Rains of Katrina.

To this retired career state Elections Officer, this is an Unbelieveable achievement under Unimagineable circumstances in an utterly Unprecedented situation. Mind you, too, it was all done under the Jaundiced Eyes of both the Media and the many Litigant Wannabees, all scrutinizing every step in the process to find the fatal “Gotcha!” which, thanks to Secretary Al & Co., wasn’t There.

Not only did They Say it couldn’t be done, I said it couldn’t be done. / Thank you, Mr. Ater & all of your co-laborers in the Votingprocess Vinyards, for proving us Doubters wrong. In the unlikely event that “They” in Their widom (hah! :) ever establish an Election Bureaucrats Hall of Fame, y’all are surely the First Ones In.

As modestly understated to The Times-Picayune, Ater: “This has been a good election.”

More than 113,500 people voted in the mayoral runoff tonight, more than 5,000 above the tally during the April 22 primary.

“It’s very apparent to everyone now that this has been a good election, a successful election, an accountable election and an accurate election,� Secretary of State Al Ater said as he evaluated the process late Saturday.

The runoff turnout represented 40 percent of the 297,000 people registered to vote in the city.

…Ater said the final bill for the primary and runoff elections would be between $3 million and $3.5 million, with about $1 million of that resulting from the mailings and newspaper and television advertising aimed at voters displaced from New Orleans.

“Democracy is not cheap, but it was worth it,� he said.

Read the rest (there’s not much; short article). As First Assistant Secretary of State, Al assumed the top office when a vacancy occurred last July ~ the month before the coming of Katrina. He says he won’t seek election as LASOS in his own right. I wish he’d reconsider. / But he prefers to return to his family corn & cotton farm in Ferriday. Can’t say as I Blame him. Farmwork’s gotta be Easier. :)