Ouch. It’s not looking good for Reggie Bush. (Hat tip: BK.)

My suggestion to Pete Carroll & co.: win a national championship this year, without “The President.” No matter what happens with this investigation, we can be sure that no one will be able to take that one away. It starts (well, continues) Saturday against Nebraska. BEAT THE CORNHUSKERS!!!

P.S. Over at ND Nation, they’re talking about “failure to exert proper institutional control” — which would turn this from a Reggie Bush problem into a USC problem — being demonstrated by this passage:

Sources told Yahoo! Sports that representatives of New Era were allowed into the USC locker room during the 2005 season. Ornstein and other agents frequented the USC sidelines during several games and numerous practices that season, according to published reports.

Also, [USC RB coach Todd] McNair allegedly knew of Bush’s involvement with the New Era venture before last season’s national championship game against Texas, according to two sources.

If this ends up putting an asterisk next to the greatest game in college football history, I’m going to be very annoyed.

P.P.S. Yahoo! Sports columnist Dan Wetzel says the NCAA BCS should make USC forfeit its 2004-05 national championship. (Hat tip: Andrew, who is unconvinced.) Well, I don’t care what the NCAA does, I’m keeping my damn banner.

It’s so… pretty! Sniff, sniff.

Okay, seriously, can the SEC please stop being so damn full of itself? “Analyst” Gary Danielson claims it’s the toughest conference in the country from top to bottom. Maybe he’s right, but this part really gets me: “The toughness of this (SEC) schedule is there are no breathers. You get beaten and pounded on the whole year. It’s like an NFL schedule.” Oh, yeah, it’s just like an NFL schedule when you’re getting “beaten and pounded” by Arkansas, Kentucky, Ole Miss, Mississippi State and Vanderbilt. “No breathers,” my eye. What a crock.

Look, every conference has its strong teams and its weak teams. Most conferences have a bunch of teams in the middle, too. If early impressions pan out, the SEC seemingly doesn’t have many “middle” teams this year; they’re very top-heavy and bottom-heavy. For example, off the top of my head, I would argue that the Pac-10 only has two teams (Stanford and Washington) as bad as the four worst teams in the SEC (Kentucky, the Mississippi schools and Vanderbilt). On the flip side, the Pac-10 only has two teams (USC and Oregon) as good as the four or five best SEC teams (Auburn, LSU, Florida, Georgia and maybe Tennessee). That makes the SEC a conference with a lot of big-name teams. It doesn’t make them the NFL, for chrissakes.

In all honesty, I don’t know exactly where the SEC ranks among this year’s conferences. I don’t think anyone does yet. After Tennessee’s win over Cal, I’m certainly not going to try and say, at this point, that the Pac-10 is better. I doubt I will try to say that at any point this year. But know this: if, say, Auburn goes undefeated (again) and fails (again) to make the BCS championship game, they’ll have no one to blame but themselves. While USC was playing Arkansas, Nebraska and Notre Dame in its nonconference schedule, the Tigers were playing Washington State (equivalent to Arkansas on the Trojans’ schedule), Arkansas State, Tulane and Buffalo. Yes, that’s right, Buffalo! Here’s a hint: if you want people to respect your schedule, don’t play Buffalo!

(Hat tip: Fanblogs.)

One study says yes. Women snicker in corner, ask burly men to fix stuff.

Ever wonder what it would sound like if that pre-flight talk by the flight attendants was completely honest? Wonder no more!

The Stanford band has been banned from Stanford Stadium through at least the end of September.

The “suspicious package” that spurred today’s Notre Dame bomb scare was… drumroll please… a box of “promotional materials from a national science company,” according to WNDU. Heh.

Anyway, here are my photos of the bomb scare. A few highlights:

A bomb squad technician gets into his protective suit.

Protective-suit guy goes into the building.

While all this is going on, well-heeled alums attend the dedication ceremony for the new science building, Jordan Hall, across the street from the old science building where the bomb scare occurred.

TV trucks on the scene.

This is the police officer who tried to tell me that I’m not allowed to take pictures of a public street. So not impressed with her.

An officer removes the police tape, indicating that the scare is over.

Again, more here.

UPDATE: In order to prevent the homepage from being overcrowded with Moblog posts, thus burying the interesting posts below, I’ve deleted (well, actually converted to drafts) the Moblog posts about this incident, and have pasted them into the extended entry below, in chronological order as they were published.

UPDATE 2: I’ve re-instated the original posts, but you can also see them below.

(more…)

The package had excessive postage, was not cancelled, had misspelled names & no return address, according to WNDU. "The bomb squad determined that there was no bomb," said an ND spokesman. Package
has been taken to an undisclosed location for more tests.

Apparently the threat has been defused. People are being let back in to the previously closed off area, and the firetrucks have left.

A guy in a protective suit just walked into the building. Apparently only the south end of the building was evacuated, or so I surmise from talking to a guy who works in the north end, just left work,
and knew nothing about this till I told him.

According to the WNDU reporter, a suspicious package was found in the mail inside the life science building. All this is happening as a bunch of well-dressed people are arriving for the dedication of
the new science building across the street!

According to the WNDU cameraman, there was a suspicious package left in front of the Paul V. Galvin Life Science Center, and a police robot is checking it out. Apparently the building has been
evacuated or partially evacuated.

WSBT and WNDU have arrived. The police officer who was previously under the impression that she could order people outside the cordoned-off area not to take pictures of a public street seems to have
given up the ghost.

A portion of Juniper Road, from the stadium about halfway to Touchdown Jesus, is blocked off with police tape, and there is a bomb squad truck on the road. An officer ordered me not to take pictures,
of a public street, which is always good.

I believe someone demanded catblogging? Well, here goes.

I have no idea what kind of creature this weird-ass, ugly-ass, big-ass insect is…

…but whatever it is, our cats clearly thought it was awesome. It somehow got inside the apartment this afternoon, and Toby, Sasha and Butter went NUTS:

Although, Butter thought it was slightly less awesome when it briefly turned the tables and jumped on her, as you’ll see in the video below:

source file

Eventually, I freed the poor insect, or whatever it was, from its fate of being terrorized by the cats, and released it outside. Naturally, in the spirit of the late great Steve Irwin, I then proceeded to poke it:

source file

Heh. But seriously, what a creepy, weird-lookin’ thing! It was like a twig with legs! (Admittedly, some people might have described me that way during my freshman year at USC…)

P.S. Apparently it was a member of the insect order known as Phasmatodea. More here.

That seems to be one of the more popular phrases in politics today, but as far as I have noticed there is no clear definition for the term. No, more often than not I see it being used as a way of saying “I disagree with this ruling”.

So I’d like to ask, what are some examples of “legislating from the bench” and how is it different from legal interpretation, which the judges are supposed to be engaging in.