TUESDAY, MARCH 20, 2007
Wednesday Edition: Costs Force Spring Break Sacrifices
USA
Today reports:The
cost of spring break travel is soaring, and travelers are responding by taking shorter trips.
"People
are shortening their vacations to afford them," says Amy Ziff, editor-at-large at
Travelocity, the No. 2 online travel agency.
"Travel's expensive again."
For
the first time in six years of tracking its bookings, Travelocity this year has seen the average
duration of spring break trips fall below five days.
The
4.9-day average in 2007 is down nearly 7 percent from a year ago, and down nearly 17 percent from 2002.
That's a reduction of one full day since tracking began. The averages
measure domestic and international trips booked for late February and March.
Gore TestifiesA question hangs in the air today. Is former Vice President Al Gore's congressional hearing appearance this morning the beginning of his run for
the presidency? Gore will testify on global warming before the Energy and
Commerce Committee's
Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality at 9:30 a.m.
Gore has been
nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. His film,
"An Inconvenient Truth," won two Oscars.
Rolling Stone magazine is
urging him to run for president. A Web site called
draftgore.com is fueling the fire.
C-SPAN will
carry the testimony live. I am sure cable stations will, too.
No More Secret Dockets
This month, the policy-making body for the federal court system is urging the courts to do away with secret dockets.
The move is in direct response to findings by
The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the
Press revealing that some cases were making their way through the court system
without being recorded in any way.
The RCFP reports:Last year, an investigation by The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
revealed that 469 criminal cases were not docketed in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., during the five years ending Dec. 31, 2005. These defendants were indicted -- and in many cases, prosecuted and
sentenced to prison -- in complete secrecy.
The findings were a surprise to officials in that federal trial court, including Chief Judge Thomas Hogan.
"None of us paid attention to that," he said today. "It was
reporters who figured that out." [...]
Keeping cases off the docket differs from sealing them. Sealed cases are assigned case numbers that appear
on the docket. The only way to determine the existence of off-the-docket
cases is to scroll through public dockets searching for missing case numbers. That means
the public has no way of knowing the cases exist – and has no way of
challenging the secrecy.
If a member of the public were to type a case number
of an off-the-docket case into the court's electronic filing system, the computer would
read, "No such case."
Fixing NFL's Overtime RuleThe NFL may change its
crazy way of settling tie
games soon.
As you may know, overtime
games are settled by the "first one to score"
method. But it's been found that 29 percent of the time, the team that begins with the ball scores first.
Sports
Illustrated has more on how the rules might
change, and includes this chart that shows how lopsided things are right now:
Year
/ Overtime Games / Won on First Possession / Percentage
2006
/ 11 / 5
/ .455
2005
/ 14 / 5
/ .357
2004
/ 12 / 4
/ .333
2003
/ 23 / 6
/ .261
2002
/ 25 / 10
/ .400
Five-year totals: 85 overtime games, 30 won on the first possession (35.3 percent).
Totals
from 1974 to 2001: 317 overtime games, 87 won on first possession (27.4 percent).
Overall:
402 overtime games, 117 won on first possession (29.1 percent).
Al's Morning MultimediaCBS4 in
Denver is blogging live from inside the federal courtroom where former Qwest CEO Joe Nacchio is on trial.
Check out the blog here. I
suppose this is the best we can do until the federal courts come out of the
dark ages and allow the same camera access the Iraqi government did at Saddam Hussein's trial.
We are always looking for your great ideas. Send Al a few sentences and hot links.
Editor's
Note: Al's Morning Meeting is a compendium of ideas, edited story
excerpts and other materials from a variety of Web sites, as well as
original concepts and analysis. When the information comes directly
from another source, it will be attributed and a link will be provided
whenever possible. The column is fact-checked, but depends upon the
accuracy and integrity of the original sources cited. Errors and
inaccuracies found will be corrected.
Posted at 7:15:59 PM
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