Here is to the worker bees of this nation and hoping they enjoy their holiday from the working lines.

Many eyes are focused on the next hurricane expected to strike the gulf states but yesterday marked the return of something else, college football. Did anyone watch their favorite team play Saturday? If so, how did the 2008 season start for you?

I was in St. Louis for the Arch Rivalry game for "bragging rights" between Illinois and Missouri. Missouri won the rights for the second year in a row. I like the Chicago Tribune's headline the best, It's all show, no go," for a report on the game.

originally posted 2008-08-24 03:16:16 -bumped - cho

Updating this post with news at the end to reflect reports that Senator Ted Kennedy will be attending the Convention in person this evening.

The 2008 Democratic Convention begins Monday. McClatchy's David Lightman writes in Convention tribute a last hurrah for Kennedy generation:

Chances are that Monday's tribute to Sen. Edward Kennedy at the Democratic National Convention will end with a clip of his pledge to the 1980 convention: "The work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dream shall never die."

For many, however, once the last Kennedy brother leaves the American political stage, the hope and the dream will live a little less vigorously.

In news that could eclipse the announcement of either party's Vice Presidential running mate, McClatchy reports:

Now come at least three men — coincidentally all in the Bigfoot business — promising evidence at a Friday news conference in Palo Alto, Calif., that the elusive creature has been found at long last.

"A body that may very well be the body of the creature commonly known as 'Bigfoot' has been found in the woods in northern Georgia," says a news release. It describes the carcass as that of an animal 7 feet 7 inches tall, weighing more than 500 pounds that "looks like it is part human and part apelike."

Stay tuned as we follow up on this historical event tomorrow. And if there really is a Bigfoot, he (or she) will undoubtedly be more exciting than any of the names I have seen leaked as potential running mates for the 2008 election.

I honestly never thought I would be asking if it is legal to pay a person to register to vote. Watch the video and you'll see why I am asking it now.

Nothing to add other than a change of scenery. Anyone have anything to share?

Bad news for Whole Foods, the chain that brands itself as "world's leading retailer of natural and organic foods." From the Washington Post:

The meat Whole Foods recalled came from Coleman Natural Foods, which unbeknownst to Whole Foods had processed it at Nebraska Beef, an Omaha meatpacker with a history of food-safety and other violations. Nebraska Beef last month recalled more than 5 million pounds of beef produced in May and June after its meat was blamed for another E. coli outbreak in seven states. On Friday it recalled an additional 1.2 million pounds of beef produced on June 17, June 24 and July 8, which included products eventually sold to Whole Foods. The recall is not related to the recent spate of E. coli illnesses among Boy Scouts at a gathering in Goshen, Va.

Whole Foods officials are investigating why they were not aware that Coleman was using Nebraska Beef as a processor, spokeswoman Libba Letton said.

Harvard University's Nieman Foundation for Journalism has announced McClatchy Bureau Chief John Walcott is the inaugural recipient of their I.F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence. McClatchy's announcement of the award includes the following:

Walcott was honored for leading a team of reporters whose skeptical coverage of the Bush administration's claims about Iraq's weapons programs in the months before the U.S. invasion in March 2003 was largely unmatched by other news outlets — and also largely ignored by policymakers.

"This is belated recognition of the powerful work done by Walcott in directing his colleagues in developing stories that were unappreciated and almost totally unnoticed at the time," Bob Giles, the Nieman Foundation's curator, said in announcing the award. "Because so many journalists fell short in their pre-Iraq war coverage, there's a real need to recognize this dogged editor who went about his business in a resolute way to challenge many of the justifications for the war that proved to be false."

If you missed it this past week, the New York Times has an article that is of interest to many of us posting on the internets. At the Uneasy Intersection of Bloggers and the Law includes a name readers of Politico will recognize. In this case Ben Smith was making the news instead of writing the news.

McClatchy's Tony Pugh uncovers an underreported trend in commercial bankruptcy filings. They are up 17% in the second quarter of 2008 and 45% for the first half of this year from the first half of 2007.

It was the 10th straight quarter that business bankruptcy filings have increased. Nearly 29,000 companies filed in the first half of 2008.
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