Feeds
All people may be equal before the law, but when a judge sentenced Rod Blagojevich to prison this week, he made clear the punishment did more than fit the crime. It fit the criminal and his august political office.
The cornfields edging two-lane Iowa Highway 9 fade to a sunbaked blur as Rep. Michele Bachmann's blue-and-white campaign coach rolls on, bound for a "town hall" meeting with voters in the basement of a public library 25 minutes down the road.
If only it were possible to block out the world's harshest realities — the way the people of Happy Valley have done for decades now — this week's crystalline skies might have set the scene for one more perfect chapter in local lore.
With our wireless Internet connections and far-ranging cell phones, it's easy to forget the hard-wired electricity that powers our homes and gadgets — until the lights go out.
By the time Susan Hammond came downstairs at 9 a.m. the rain was falling hard. Standing on the back deck with Sunday coffee in hand, she looked down the hill and through the trees to where the usually lazy Williams River powered over rocks, loud enough to compete with the din of Tropical Storm Irene's downpour.
Now it's personal: Hundreds of anti-Wall Street protesters held a "Millionaires March" on Tuesday past the homes of some of the wealthiest executives in America, stopping to jeer "Tax the rich!" and "Where's my bailout?"
The names of the Sept. 11 dead, some recited by children barely old enough to remember their fallen mothers and fathers, echoed across ground zero Sunday in a haunting but hopeful tribute on the 10th anniversary of the terror attack. "Hope can grow from tragedy," Vice President Joe Biden said at the Pentagon.
Back home, where Rick Sluder is the police chief of a village of 3,000 surrounded by corn and soybean fields, traffic wouldn't be an issue. But this morning, at the helm of a rented 15-passenger van mired in a New York City traffic jam thicker than the summer heat, he's way out of his jurisdiction.
Nearly a year after she won a stunning primary victory in a U.S. Senate race and drew nationwide attention for her controversial statements, conservative activist Christine O'Donnell chastises adversaries in a new book for undermining her campaign, while admitting errors in her own decision-making.
If a man walked into a drug store along one of this city's winding streets and bought three boxes of aspirin, there would be no reason to take notice. But when Anders Behring Breivik visited 20 drug stores a day for four days and bought three packages of aspirin at each stop — then separately ordered six tons of fertilizer, chemicals and a semiautomatic rifle — he still largely escaped attention.
In the world according to Anders Behring Breivik, a seat on Oslo's city council was once nearly in his grasp — until he was sidelined by a jealous adversary. Nonsense, says the so-called rival, who notes that Breivik attended just five or six party meetings and barely spoke.
For years, most of Lei Hennessy-Owen's work as a sculptor was making whimsical figures of animals and mermaids, generally as garden centerpieces. Then, in 1999, she heard about a pair of 10-year-old boys killed when a fuel pipeline exploded in Bellingham, Wash. Hennessy-Owen crafted an 8-foot-tall angel from a sheet of steel and it was placed as a memorial to the boys, in front of their school.
In the hours before dawn on Nov. 11, 2008, the county animal shelter in Calhoun, Ky. went up in flames. Weeks later, Robin Long couldn't stop thinking about the 13 cats and three puppies that perished inside.
Back home, where Rick Sluder is the police chief of a village of 3,000 surrounded by corn and soybean fields, traffic wouldn't be an issue. But this morning, at the helm of a rented van mired in a New York City traffic jam thicker than the summer heat, he's way out of his jurisdiction.
The seventh graders find their seats quickly and quietly. They look up expectantly from rows of desks, studying the unfamiliar man with salt-and-pepper hair, dressed in a navy sport jacket, who steps to the front of Room 30 without any introduction.
All morning at work, the boss' wife stared at the storm alerts flashing across the television screen and fretted. By 2:30 p.m., when they closed the restoration shop early and sent employees home, Jonathan Ford paid little mind to the sunshine overhead.
In the small brick church just across the road from the chocolate waters of Bayou Lafourche, the Rev. Joseph Anthony Pereira unbuttons his collar as the last parishioners pull out of the lot. Tonight, nearly a year after the BP oil spill began, he's asked his congregation of shrimpers and oil industry workers to think about lessons learned when survival is in jeopardy.
There's only one way in to Windy Ridge — across freight train tracks that zipper up the subdivision on three sides. Living room windows offer views of a cardboard box factory and a Pepsi bottling plant. It's an unlikely place to come looking for the American Dream.
When Sarah Palin accused journalists and pundits of "blood libel" in the wake of the deadly Arizona shootings, she reached deep into one of medieval history's most sordid chapters to make her point.
The letter, to three members of Congress, reads like a eulogy to civility in U.S. politics, its message underscored by the nearly complete absence of mourners.
On a hot and sticky July morning, Michelle and Anthony Burgos set out to meet the future of Lakewood High School football.
How did an agency created to protect the public become the target of so much public scorn?
When the dead are delivered, four mornings a week, the ferry Michael Cosgrove is waiting.
The Harvard dormitory where Facebook was born is a red brick and ivy-draped campus castle that, beyond just being a place to sleep and study, has long prided itself as a community of the best and the brightest.
If we're going to search for gold in the wreckage of the mortgage crisis, then 6:57 a.m. in front of 1009 W. Juanita Avenue is as good a time and place as any to start.
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