Professor Rick Garnett, one of the few conservatives who defended the Harriet Miers pick right out of the gate, is having some second thoughts because of Miers’s alleged disparaging remarks about the Federalist Society. (Hat tip: NDLS FedSoc president Ryan Bradel.)

P.S. “27 Republican senators — almost half of his party’s members in the chamber — have publicly expressed specific doubts about Miss Miers or said they must withhold any support whatsoever for her nomination until after the hearings,” according to the Washington Times.

The latest National Hurricane Center forecast track shows Hurricane Vince making landfall in Portugal in 36 hours:

However, Vince — which is already beginning to weaken — is expected to be extratropical by then, which I guess is why Tropical Storm Watches are not being issued.

According to Becky’s brother Casey, Matt Leinart and the USC offense are planning to raze South Bend to the ground. Heh.

Is Brady Quinn really #4 on the Heisman list right now? SI’s Gene Menez thinks so.

Color me skeptical.

But Sports Crack has t-shirts, if you want one. Personally, I’d prefer a “Bush/Leinart ‘05″ shirt… :)

Daily Trojan sports columnist Adam Maya writes:

Does anyone know what’s going on with USC?

You probably forgot about Oregon already, don’t care about Arizona State anymore and consider Arizona on Saturday a blowout.

But I remember USC down 13-0 to Oregon two weeks ago because of the crowd. And I remember USC down 21-3 to Arizona State last week because of penalties. And Saturday against a one-win Arizona team? Well, USC’s a second-half team and Arizona played its heart out and … blah, blah, blah.

At this point it’s no secret: USC is beatable.

I could usually care less about the spread, but the Trojans were favored by 37.5, yet they looked flat for most of the first half for a third-straight game. Something is happening here and they don’t know what it is.

Aside from the fact that the correct expression is “couldn’t care less,” I sort of agree with Maya… but I’m curious what my fellow Trojan fans think. Thoughts?

P.S. Over on College GameDay Final Extra, Lou Holtz writes:

This is the time of year when good teams are usually getting better every week, but I don’t see Southern Cal getting better. I think they are in trouble. Defensively, they have some holes because of injuries. Offensively, they have resorted to the run and overpowering people, and that’s not going to be successful against Notre Dame.

Of course, Lou Holtz is not exactly unbiased. :)

Note the title. Some things are clear in any language, apparently. Heh.

And hey, I have a new entry for my quote list: “Das war DAS Blog bei ‘Katrina’!”

The Braves and Astros are in the 17th inning in Game 4 of their Division Series — the longest postseason game in baseball history. Houston has one position player left on the bench who is eligible to play; Atlanta has none. Roger Clemens is pitching in relief. (Houston leads the series, 2-1, and would eliminate Atlanta with a win. The game is in Houston.)

UPDATE: Houston — which trailed by 5 runs until a grand slam in the bottom of the 8th and a solo homer in the bottom of the 9th tied it — win in 18 innings on a solo walk-off home run by unlikely hero Chris Burke. Clemens gets the win (in his second career relief appearance). The Astros go to the NLCS!

According to Dr. Jeff Masters, the death toll from Hurricane Stan — which was a minimal Category 1 when it made landfall, but which has devastated southern Mexico, Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and especially Guatemala with its heavy rains and resulting landslides — is now around 1,500, most of them in the buried Mayan village of Panabaj.

This means that Stan has, improbably, surpassed Katrina (1,242 deaths) as the deadliest hurricane of 2005.

P.S. Pat Robertson says Katrina, Stan and the earthquake in Pakistan mean that the End Times may be here. Someone should tell him about Vince…

Vince, the bizarre, off-the-tracking-charts, over-cold-water 20th tropical cyclone of the season — the first Atlantic storm ever to have a “V” name, and the northeasternmost storm I’ve ever seen — has become a hurricane! The NHC discussion says:

IF IT LOOKS LIKE A HURRICANE… IT PROBABLY IS… DESPITE ITS ENVIRONMENT AND UNUSUAL LOCATION.

Hurricane Vince is just over 600 miles WSW of the southwestern tip of Portugal, and about 900 miles southwest of the Portugal-Spain border, where its track would take it… but it’s expected to weaken and become absorbed in a cold front before reaching land. Vince is “mainly a hazard for marine interests in the far eastern Atlantic,” the NHC writes.

The feds, who seemed so skeptical of the New York subway threat when the local authorities announced it, now say today was supposed to be the day. Maybe. The AP reports:

A Department of Homeland Security memo warned this week that a team of terrorists may have traveled to New York to put remote-controlled bombs in briefcases and baby carriages in an attack on or around Sunday. It cautioned that the FBI and Homeland Security doubted the threat’s credibility.

But as U.S. forces interrogated three suspects in Iraq, New York officials said they felt even more confident about their decision to ramp up patrols and bag searches in the subways.

“We’ve over the last couple of days become more convinced that the threat was real,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg said. …

An overseas tipster told U.S. intelligence last month that three men were plotting a coordinated bomb attack on the country’s subways, law enforcement officials said. The tipster passed parts of a lie-detector test, and U.S. forces in Iraq arrested three suspected plotters earlier in the week.

With two of the men captured and the plot presumably disrupted, Bloomberg announced Thursday that security was being heightened in the subways. Thousands of extra officers were dispatched into the system and the number of bag checks doubled.

As I did last year, I’ve added something to the top left-hand corner of my homepage, as you can see, clarifying my loyalties for the sake of any new visitors who may find my site during the next week — perhaps via a search for “irish trojan” — and wonder who I’m rooting for in Saturday’s game between #1 USC and #9 Notre Dame.

That, and also for the sake of pissing off my fellow Domers. :)

For the uninitiated: I went to USC for undergrad, and now attend Notre Dame for law school. Hence the name “Irish Trojan.” As a Domer, I root for Notre Dame in every game except one… this one. My first loyalty, obviously, is to my alma mater.

ND undergrads who simply cannot conceive of how a Domer could possibly root for USC should ask themselves the question: if you were to attend USC for grad or law school, who would you root for? Notre Dame, obviously. And just as obviously, I root for USC.

Criticisms that I am a “bandwagon” fan will not be taken seriously. I root for USC because they’re my alma mater, not because they’re #1 in the country. I started school during the Paul Hackett era, back when the Trojans were awful, yet I rooted for them back then, too.

With that caveat, trash-talking in the comment section is encouraged. :) I’ll get things started:

Ara is gone, and Dan was Devine
but Pete’s boys will kick Charlie’s behind
When the Irish take the field,
Their blood runs cold and they get killed.
The golden dome is made out of brass
The marching band just sits on its ass
And the leprechaun is queer
In heaven there is no beer!

FIGHT ON!!! BEAT!!! THE IRISH!!!

P.S. If the leprechaun were queer, there would be nothing wrong with that! :) But you gotta admit, it’s a good rhyme…

Yesterday was a good football day for me. Notre Dame sat idle, but climbed to #9 in the rankings. USC won, setting up an epic showdown in South Bend next week. (BEAT!!! THE IRISH!!!) And all the teams I was rooting for in the day’s other big games won, too: Penn State, Georgia, and… I hate to say it, but… UCLA. I rarely root for the Bruins, but in this case it helped Notre Dame’s ranking, and besides, what could be better than a Dec. 3 showdown at the Coliseum between the undefeated Trojans and the undefeated Bruins, for all the marbles? (Answer: Nothing, provided the Trojans win, which of course they will. Hi Tran. :)

But the fun doesn’t stop there. My other alma mater, Newington High School, beat E.O Smith 31-0, to improve to 2-2 on the season (and 2-0 at home). Now begins the CCC South season, with two crucial road tests the next two weeks: at Bristol Eastern, and at the only team to defeat Newington during the regular season last year: Platt. Win those games, and the Indians should have the inside track to a CCC South title, an 8-2 season, and maybe — just maybe — another playoff berth. (They’re #13 right now, with four undefeated teams, three one-loss teams and five fellow two-loss teams ahead of them. Only the Top 4 make the playoffs. But who knows? There’s a lot of season ahead. A two-loss team qualified at #4 last year, just behind #3 Newington.)

Go Indians!

Notre Dame is ranked #9 in both polls, setting up a battle of Top 10 teams next Saturday in South Bend. It’s the #1 Trojans vs. the #9 Irish. Enter ESPN GameDay, hordes of pumped-up Domers, and one contrarian Irish Trojan who will be risking life and limb for the next seven days every time I proclaim at the top of my lungs: “BEAT!!! THE IRISH!!!”

In the AP poll, Notre Dame, previously ranked #12 and idle this weekend, moved ahead of yesterday’s Top 10 losers (#6 Ohio State, #8 Tennessee and #10 Cal) and was leapfrogged by Penn State (previously #16, now #8) but not UCLA (previously #20, now #12), just as I expected. That would have put the Irish at #10… but they also leapfrogged LSU — previously one spot ahead of the Irish (#11), now one spot behind (#10) — which beat Vanderbilt yesterday but apparently left some voters feeling much the same way Andrew does. So Notre Dame is #9.

In the coaches’ poll, LSU remained ahead of Notre Dame (at #8), but Penn State didn’t leapfrog the Irish (they’re #10), so again, the Irish are #9. UCLA is #12 in that poll, too.

All nine of the undefeated teams in Division 1-A are now ranked in the Top 13 in the AP poll, and the Top 12 in the coaches’ poll. The only one-loss teams that are ahead of the lowest-ranked undefeated teams (Texas Tech and UCLA) are Miami, Notre Dame, LSU, and (in the AP poll only) Florida.

Games that loom unexpectedly huge, if things remain the way they are now*: Texas Tech at Texas (Oct. 22), Penn State at Michigan State (Nov. 19), and UCLA at USC (Dec. 3). And how about the possible SEC and ACC title games, also on Dec. 3: Alabama vs. Georgia and Virginia Tech vs. Florida State?

*…which, of course, they won’t.

Tropical Storm Vince has formed — the first “V” storm in Atlantic hurricane history — but what’s really noteworthy is the location. Just when you thought the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season couldn’t get any crazier…

…20TH NAMED STORM OF THE SEASON FORMS IN AN UNUSUAL LOCATION… IN THE FAR EASTERN ATLANTIC SOUTHEAST OF THE AZORES AND CLOSE TO THE MADEIRA ISLANDS…

SATELLITE IMAGERY INDICATES THAT THE PREVIOUSLY NON-TROPICAL LOW PRESSURE SYSTEM BETWEEN THE AZORES AND THE CANARY ISLANDS HAS ACQUIRED TROPICAL CHARACTERISTICS AND BECOME A TROPICAL STORM.

The forecast track takes Vince toward Spain and Portgual! He may weaken, or get absorbed by a cold front, before then… but if not, is it possible that we could see a Tropical Storm Watch for the west coast of the Iberian Peninsula? Heh!

Jordan Golson at The Storm Track notes, “merely for giggles,” that one computer model takes Vince to London in five days, while another predicts that it will make “a nice loop over Spain.” Heh.

The sea-surface temperatures are sufficiently low that a tropical storm really shouldn’t be able to develop out there at all — but apparently someone forgot to tell Vince that! As Golson notes: “The storm is very symmetric, and has an eye. What the hell is that? It looks like a compact mini-hurricane. Wow, just wow.” Here’s another satellite view:

Dr. Jeff Masters explains:

Vince formed in a very unusual location, not far from the coast of Spain, and in a region where water temperatures are only 23 - 24 C. I know I always harp on the rule that a water temperature of at least 26C is needed for tropical storm formation to occur, but we can bend that rule a little when a tropical storm forms from a pre-existing non-tropical low pressure system that sits over water for many days, and gradually acquires a warm core. As we’ve already seen, the Hurricane Season of 2005 doesn’t care much about what is usual, and Vince’s formation is certainly ample evidence of that. The storm was too far east to fit on our newer tracking maps, and just barely appears on one of our old tracking charts I had to dust off this morning, special for the occasion!

Vince won’t be with us for long. A cold front approaching Europe will pick up Vince Tuesday morning, and cold water and wind shear will tear Vince apart. Vince’s remains should bring Portugal and Spain heavy rains and winds gusts to 45 mph on Tuesday. Portugal gets the remains of tropical storms every 5 - 10 years, on average. [Typically, though, the storms formed much further south. -ed.] This occurred most recently in October 1998 with Jeanne.

Anyway, it’s now official: 2005 has surpassed 1995 as the second-most-active season in the recorded history of the Atlantic basin. The next named storm will tie 1933’s record of 21 storms, and will also exhaust the alphabetical list of names. Already we’ve gone further than ever before in the alphabet. (Tropical storms were not named in 1933. The previous alphabetical record was “Tanya,” the 19th storm of 1995.)

In other news, Subtropical Depression 22, which I once called “proto-Vince,” has dissipated. According to the discussion:

THE SYSTEM NO LONGER HAS THE CHARACTERISTICS OF EITHER A SUBTROPICAL OR TROPICAL CYCLONE… AND SO THIS WILL BE THE LAST ADVISORY. THE DEMISE OF THE DEPRESSION HAS BEEN BROUGHT ON BY STRONG EASTERLY SHEAR ON THE NORTHERN PERIPHERY OF THE LARGE MID/UPPER-LEVEL LOW TO ITS SOUTH. THIS SHEAR IS NOT FORECAST TO ABATE ANY TIME SOON… SO REGENERATION APPEARS UNLIKELY… BUT THE REMANT LOW WILL BE MONITORED FOR THE SEEMINGLY REMOTE POSSIBILITY OF DEVELOPING NEW CONVECTION.

There is no obvious “proto-Wilma” out there in the Atlantic right now, but Dr. Masters notes a few possible candidates.

UPDATE: Vince is now a hurricane! WTF?

Guestblogger: Josh Rubin

OK, so David gave us an update on the PAC-10, and Brendan gave us a view of the undefeateds, but a few other games around the country deserve nods, as well.

The most interesting game of the week, at least as far as box scores go, was the Ball State-Western Michigan 5-OT marathon, which Ball State finally won by a 60-57 score. Sometimes, I think enough is enough. I know that tying isn’t in the American tradition anymore (look at the new NHL rules), but seriously … I think once you get past 3 or 4 overtimes, you can call the teams equal enough to end it in a tie or something! On the other hand, it was probably the most exciting non-national TV game this week. Not like I got to see it, but the box score and the reports make it sound interesting…

Also, let’s not forget that #21 Michigan was upset by Minnesota, 23-20 to capture the Little Brown Jug for 2005. Could a ranking be in the works for Minnesota, since their sole loss of the season was to Penn State? Some are also claiming that this may be Minnesota’s year for the Big Ten Championship … I guess anything’s possible…

Friday night’s game this week displayed a poor feat of execution by #24 Georgia Tech, falling to ACC rival NC State by a field goal, 17-14. And that was after the Pack were penalized 10 times for nearly the whole length of the field.

#14 Wisconsin fell to Big Ten rival Northwestern in what Yahoo! is calling the Upset of the Week. At least it was close: 51-48. This being Wisconsin’s first loss of the season, they might hold on to a low ranking for next week’s game (at Minnesota, who came off a big win against Michigan … See above). With all the unlikely upsets in the Big Ten, the championship seems to be up for grabs, though the way Penn State is playing, it may not matter.

And speaking of Penn State and the Big Ten, the #16 Nittanly Lions sent #6 Ohio State home with their first conference loss of the season, 17-10. With only 8 other undefeated teams in the country (USC, Texas, Virginia Tech, Florida State, Georgia, Alabama, Texas Tech, UCLA), could Penn State have a shot at the national title? Unlikely, especially given the BCS’s strength-of-schedule rules, and the other cock-eyed regulations. But might Penn State have a shot at the Big Ten title, which it hasn’t seen in years? Could be. Next week, they play the struggling Michigan team, which is coming off a bad loss against Minnesota. But with two other games left against ranked teams (Wisconsin and at Michigan State), Penn State’s undefeated season might end in the last couple of weeks of the season. The Big Ten looks wide open, and it won’t be decided anytime soon.

What would a post on this website be without a discussion of the PAC-10? I’m forced to mention this, only because of the upset-value of it. #25 Oregon beat #17 Arizona State. If you want more, see David’s post.

Oh, and the worst team in College Football (the only team to be kicked out of the Big East), the Temple Owls, fell to the Maryland Terrapins 38-7. I’ve always wondered … Who does the worst team in NCAA FB play against in its homecoming game? If someone knows who Temple is playing/played for homecoming this year, I’d really like to know!