Events

Half Moon Bay, Calif.: A few minutes earlier:

In honor of the most sweeping legislation since Medicare, it's good ol' Bill:

That's Chicago's weather today. Except I'm not there, I'm here: Also, if you live near a Peet's Coffee, they're giving away free cups of coffee all day.

Sullivan thinks the President has done extremely well: The substantive record is clear enough. Torture is ended, if Gitmo remains enormously difficult to close and rendition extremely hard to police. The unitary executive, claiming vast, dictatorial powers over American citizens, has been unwound. ... Domestically, the new president has rescued the banks in a bail-out that has come in at $200 billion under budget; the economy has shifted from a tailspin to stablilization and some prospect of job growth...

You know the truly fun part about traveling through O'Hare five times in one week in December? Not knowing when that will happen: Delta [says] it is about to issue a weather bulletin allow passengers in 10 states to change tickets without penalty starting today through Dec. 27th. Those states are Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, Wisconsin and North and South Dakota. They are encouraging folks to try to change travel plans to get out ahead of any storms if possible. Delta...

Once again in Reagan National Airport, our hero pauses to reflect on the great pile of snow that landed on the city three days earlier. I have to say, it really is pretty: Another view, around back: We even got delayed for 15 minutes by a motorcade: not the President's, the Vice-President's. Still, I feel like I've had the full D.C. experience. Forty minutes until boarding...then I get to pass through O'Hare for the third time in five days.

What is it with U.K. rail? One would think the wrong type of snow would no longer stop an entire train line, but the snow struck again: IT'S NOT the snow that shut down Eurostar. It's the type of snow. "Fluffy" snowflakes got through special screens and into the power cars of five trains on Friday, shorting out the engines and stranding thousands of travellers in the Channel Tunnel for hours. Service remains cut by a third, and normal service will not resume before Christmas. Some 100,000 people have...

Laredo (pop. 250,000) will shortly have no bookstores, making it the largest city in the U.S. without one: The Associated Press reports that letters from schoolchildren had no effect on the corporation's decision to shutter the B. Dalton; Barnes & Noble announced plans earlier this year to close all remaining B. Dalton outlets. "Corporate America considers Laredo kind of the backwater," said Jerry Thompson, an author who lives in Laredo and is a professor at Texas A&M International University. Barnes &...

Washington looks quite pretty from the air with all the snow on the ground: I'm confused. Yes, I see snow, and on the ground at DCA it seems to be about 30-35 cm deep, but in Chicago we'd find this annoying, not paralyzing. I wonder if Virginia still has the same number of snowplows as Chicago (which was true in 2003, the last time the area got "buried" like this). If so, maybe they want to examine some of the climate-change projections calling for more precipitation? Hmm. Diane and Parker are a few...

By this time next Sunday, I'll have gone through O'Hare five times in eight days. I actually don't mind—yet—possibly because this is only my second visit of the week. The flight to DC isn't horribly delayed, and I've got a good perch to watch the planes: Gotta run. Time to wait on the plane instead of in the club...