The Tennessee state trooper who got a roadside blowjob from a porn star he’d pulled over, allegedly in exchange for turning a blind eye to her drug possession, has been indicted by a grand jury. A previous incident of similar behavior (albeit not involving someone in the, ahem, adult entertainment industry) came to light in the wake of the Justis Richert/Barbie Cummings incident, and he is charged in connection with both.

UPDATE: Apparently Richert/Cummings is now a former porn star. The News-Sentinel reports, “She says she’s quit the porn industry, settled down with a boyfriend and has become pregnant.” (Hat tip: Cup of Joe Powell.)

The Buffalo News ran an article today about the Turner-Gill-to-Nebraska rumors.

Plans are still somewhat up in the air, but it’s looking increasingly likely that I’ll be visiting Denver again from October 28-30. It will be essentially a business trip, and it’ll suck to be away from Becky on my birthday, but on the bright side, I’ll be in Denver on the evenings when Game 4 and, if necessary, Game 5 of the World Series are being played there. Of course, I hope I’ll be rooting against the Rockies, but if the Indians do manage to close out the ALCS against the Red Sox, then I’ll be root, root, rooting for the home team. Either way, although I don’t expect to go to any games, it’ll be fun to be in town while they’re going on. Kristy and V live right downtown, less than a mile from Coors Field and in the midst of a central strip with tons of bars and such.

Then, next month, Becky and I will be going to a pair of Tennessee basketball games: the men’s home opener against Temple on November 9, and the Lady Vols’ showdown with Texas on November 18. There will be bigger games during the SEC season, of course, but we wanted to make it out to Thompson-Boling Arena before the baby comes. Anyway, the tickets came in the mail yesterday and today, and I’ve added the games to my countdown sidebar at left (along with my birthday — dunno why I wasn’t counting down to that before!).

Speaking of games, Jay and I may be going to a UT football game before the season is out — probably either South Carolina on October 27 or Arkansas on November 10. But that’s still up in the air as well.

More immediately, next Thursday, Becky and I are going to the WDVX Birthday Party at the Bijou Theater. So that should be fun. And on Tuesday, we start taking a birthing/baby class, where we get to learn all about, uh, birthing and babies and stuff.

So yeah. Lots of stuff to look forward to!

P.S. Breaking news: Shannon got a puppy! AWW!

UPDATE: Speaking of the Rockies, and of the SHA girls, Kristy was at Coors Field when Colorado won the pennant Monday night. She sent me a cell-phone photo earlier today:

Cool.

Becky comments on controversial remarks by the co-discoverer of DNA about the alleged inferior intelligence of Africans, and the response thereto: “I don’t mean to portray Watson as a victim of the cult of political correctness because frankly, if you make racist assumptions and statements, you should take heat for it. But the trend toward silencing opposing views rather than confronting them, toward living in an Ivory Tower echo chamber of so-called progressive thought, concerns me.” Read the whole thing.

I have no problem with hawkish bloggers and columnists saying things like this, but, um, shouldn’t the President of the United States be a little bit more circumspect with his rhetoric?

"We’ve got a leader in Iran who has announced that he wants to destroy Israel," Bush said at a White House press conference after Russia cautioned against military action against Tehran’s supect atomic program. "So I’ve told people that, if you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon," said Bush.

I agree that Iran’s nuclear ambitions are a grave threat to world peace, and not just because there are some trigger-happy people in the White House right now (though, that too). But I’m not convinced that having the president say things like this, in public — even if arguably somewhat true — makes things better. Perhaps I’m wrong, though. Thoughts?

UPDATE: Via Hot Air by way of InstaPundit, here’s the video:

In a related story, Bush still can’t say “nuclear.”

In a recent poll, 49% of adults in New Jersey said that they would rather be living somewhere other than New Jersey.

As anyone living on the East Coast will tell you, New Jersey only exists to get people from New York to Philadelphia (or in my case, Washington D.C. to Hartford) anyway.  This just proves it.

The "NDCHOOCHOO" blog offers some funny "story lines" for the USC-Notre Dame game:

The Streak: USC last lost to Notre Dame in 2001. That loss will not be forgotten by USC, however, as 9th Year Senior Chauncey Washington was just a 3rd year sophomore back then, and will recount his expereinces with the team, after his Geritol.

Snooping Around: Yes, USC supporter and mascot, Snoop Dogg will make the trip out the Notre Dame for the game. Apparently, Desmond Reed told him that there was some really "funky grass" at Notre Dame, and Snooop wanted to check it out for himself. …

The Fall of Troy: USC is no longer in contention for the National Championship. In fact, they are only in third place in their own conference. To make matters worse, as it stands now, with UCLA’s win last season, USC is only the second best team in their own city. In stark contrast, Notre Dame enters the game atop the South Bend polls.

Heh.

He also refers to USC’s injured quarterback as "John David Steven Morris Upton Booty." Again, heh.

Playing really, really well in the second half has been such a hallmark of the USC Trojans in recent years (though not so much this year) that I often refer to the phenomenon by the all-capitalized, faux-trademarked phrase "Pete Carroll Second-Half Magic^TM."

Sadly for Washington Huskies fans, as recent events have suggested and as this handy chart confirms, there is no such thing as Ty Willingham Second-Half Magic, except perhaps for Willingham’s teams’ opponents — which, come to think of it, always include USC, so these phenomena may not be entirely unrelated. (Hat tip: EDSBS.)

Some Domers will doubtless want to seize on this trend as proof that firing Willingham was justified (which for some reason we’re still debating, three years later - only at ND!), but oddly enough, the school at which Ty enjoyed the greatest second-half success was… Notre Dame. Hmm. Also, as the linked post points out, the statistical trend is not actually all that drastic in percentage terms. (I wonder, though, what the numbers would look like if you eliminated "garbage time" scores, where Ty’s teams were either so far ahead or so far behind that it didn’t matter. My guess, based on subjective impressions and imperfect memories, is that doing that would make the numbers look worse for Ty, but I could certainly be wrong about that.)

Anyway, I just thought that this was kinda interesting, and that posting it would be about 95% certain to set off a nice juicy blog comment-war, which would certainly liven up a "hump day" afternoon. So there you go. Talk amongst yourselves. Ty sucks! Ty is awesome! Notre Dame is racist! No they’re not! AAAAHH!!!!

I’ve been lax in updating my list of college-football unbeatens in recent weeks, and with all the upsets that have taken place, the Terrific Twenty-Three has shrunk to a Fantastic Fifteen, then an Elite Eleven, and now a Super Six since I last posted a full-fledged update.

With so few unbeatens and so many weeks left, and with this crop of unbeaten teams seeming so relatively fragile (compared, for instance, to last year’s much sturdier-feeling Spectacular Seven), I think Texasyank is right that "one-loss is the new undefeated." Not since 2003 has it appeared so likely, so early, that one or both teams in the BCS championship game will have a loss. Thus, I’m expanding my focus a bit this week. We’ll start with the Super Six unbeaten teams, but then we’ll look at the Fretting Fifteen, the nation’s remaining one-loss teams (who are, of course, "fretting" because one more loss will truly knock them out of title contention*). Finally, we’ll look at the teams who haven’t won a game yet: the Frail Four.

Half of the nation’s undefeated teams (Boston College, Arizona State and Hawaii) are idle this week. The other three all face potentially difficult  tests: South Florida is at 4-2 Rutgers tomorrow night, and then on Saturday, Ohio State hosts 5-2 Michigan State and Kansas is at 4-3 Colorado, which, of course, stunned Oklahoma a few weeks back. The way this season has gone, it wouldn’t be remotely surprising if only the idle teams are still unbeaten come Sunday morning. Indeed, with USF favored by just 2.5 points and Kansas by just 4, the only potential loss by an unbeaten that would actually be a major upset would be MSU over homestanding tOSU. (Speaking of which, go Sparty go! … Ugh, now I hate myself.)

*Well, the first nine or so of ‘em, anyway. Missouri, Virginia, Cincinnati, Texas Tech, UConn and Boise State are almost certainly already out of the national-title picture entirely, if they were ever in it.

Anyway, without further adieu, here are this week’s schedules for the unbeatens, the once-beatens, and the constantly-beatens…

(more…)

Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds, of InstaPundit fame, has been named one of the 10 most influential legal scholars in America, according to the Social Science Research Network. (Hat tip: Ken Wagner.)

He’s also a nice guy.

Anyway, congrats to Glenn on the honor! He should beware, though: rankings are fickle. One minute you’re firmly ensconced in the Top 10, and the next minute you lose to Stanford. Don’t rest on your laurels, professor! Keep on influencin’! You don’t want some lesbian ceramics professor to steal your glory.