Our beloved transit authority has launched its foray into the blogosphere:

We think it will be a new way to talk with you. It’s our way of putting a human face on a huge agency and becoming more open and transparent. As a government agency, METRO’s activities are public, anyway, but sometimes it’s hard to dig out the information.

We hope our blog will help fill that role. We want to start a dialog, listen to what you have to say and be more responsive.

No doubt. The blog is written by Mary Sit, a former writer for the Chronicle. Quoth Ms. Sit:

As someone new to METRO and new to blogging, what do I bring to the table? A sense of curiosity, a reporter’s eyes and ears

Yeah, because when I think, “Who’s been an effective watchdog over Metro,” the Chronicle leaps to mind.

Anyway, this should be fun to mock savagely watch. Stay tuned.

Ladies and gentlemen, higher education:

STUDENTS at America’s prestigious Ivy League universities are rebelling against their colleges’ stuffy reputations, casting off society’s norms along with their clothes to hold naked parties.

Megan Crandell, a final-year Yale student who has attended six naked parties, said: “The dynamic is completely different from a clothed party. People are so conscious of how they’re coming across that conversations end up being more sophisticated. You can’t talk about how hot that chick was the other night.”

Presumably, that’s because it’s Yale, and the chick wasn’t that hot.

UPDATE: Something else occurs to me. Supposedly, the whole idea behind these parties is to throw off the crushing restraint of social taboos:

“Compadres, join us in refusing to comply with a culture that tells us to hide our body, to be ashamed of its scents, secretions, curves and hair, to conceal those parts that have been dealt sexual connotations.”

Apparently, the students don’t see any cognitive dissonance in replacing one social norm (wearing clothes) with another (not looking at naked people):

Of party etiquette, Mollie Farber, a senior student at Yale, said: “You’re allowed to give everyone a quick once-over as you say, ‘Hey, what’s up?’, but after that, you’ve got to maintain pretty good eye contact.”

How revolutionary.

BENZION ADDS: As a graduate of what is probably the hippiest school in America, I can attest from first-hand experience–the willingness of a student to show up naked at a party is almost inversely proportional to the average person’s desire to see them naked.

This has come to be known as “Benzion’s First Iron Law of Higher Education.”

It’s Monday, so Chief Hurtt is presumably back in town. Just in time for this:

Two men in a Toyota 4Runner came up to a man in Lexus near South Post Oak and Prudence.

One man pulled a gun on the driver, shooting him in the cheek. The suspects then fled the scene without the Lexus.

The injured man was able to drive himself to a nearby gas station for aid. Police are still searching for the suspects.

Yikes. This guy was quite a trooper. Let’s hope he’s okay.

Let’s also hope Mayor White and Chief Hurtt wake up and smell the gunsmoke.

One less knuckleheaded homicidal wacko:

The suspect remained inside for 30 minutes to an hour while police tried to talk him out of the house. A SWAT team was called in, but before it arrived three officers entered the home and the suspect charged them with the hammer, Ortiz said.

One officer discharged a shotgun with bean-bag pellets, but it did not stop the man.

“Apparently the man had three layers of clothing on,” Ortiz said.

A second officer fired a Taser, but it failed.

“The suspect again charged at officers with hammer still in hand,” Ortiz said. “At that point, the third officer discharged his duty weapon, striking suspect.”

Laurence had the best headline: “Hammer? Don’t Hurtt him!” He’s got video, too.

Of M.C. Hammer, not the shooting.

What border problem?

WASHINGTON (AP) — Illegal immigrants who were caught but released in the United States may have been re-arrested as many as six times, Justice Department data released Monday indicates.

As we all know, our wonderful leaders in Washington are working harder than they ever have to protect us from troublemakers who break into the country illegally.

The findings by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine are based on a sampling of 100 illegal immigrants arrested by local and state authorities in 2004, the latest complete data available. They show that 73 of the 100 immigrants were arrested, collectively, 429 times - ranging from traffic tickets to weapons and drug charges.

No problem, they’re just doing work Americans won’t do. And of course, these are your tax dollars at work.

In all, 752 cities, counties and states participating in the program received $287 million in 2005, the audit noted. Five states - California, New York, Texas, Florida and Arizona - received the bulk of the money, together pulling in more than $184 million.

But never fear, Americans, Washington will soon simply legalize the problem and voila! No more criminals!

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff four months ago declared an end to the “catch and release” practice that for years helped many illegal immigrants stay in the United States unhindered.

There you are, problem solved. We can all get back to being one big, happy, bilingual, divided family. And for those keeping their immigration scorecards, be sure to add “being arrested six times” to the list of things Americans Just Won’t Do.

The smell of gas has been reported over large portions of midtown Manhattan, with first reports coming in near 5th Ave and 34th St.

A bit of quick Google-Earthing the shooting location of “The View” and the offices of the Trump Organization has revealed the likely cause of this foul, unnatural smell.

Does the Chron even believe its own editorials anymore? Take a look at this introduction:

In the last six years, U.S. service members have been barraged with poor decisions made in Washington. They were fed false pretexts, left understaffed and shipped into a conflict with no endgame. Yet at least one unnecessary burden — the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy about gay orientation — is a relic of the Clinton administration. Now one of the original defenders of that policy is leading the charge to end the policy and the damage it does to the military.

Retired Gen. John Shalikashvili, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President Bill Clinton, said last week in a New York Times opinion piece that the time to end antigay discrimination in the military is nearing. It was a pathbreaking act of leadership that should embolden other military leaders who agree with him to speak out, too.

Really now - we’re talking about a Clinton appointee. It isn’t the slightest bit shocking or surprising that he has liberal views on gays in the military. The over-the-top language suggests that this was “pathbreaking,” but in actuality, it was barely a blip on the national radar.

The title just about says it all. Neal Pierce, a syndicated columnist generally run by the Chronicle for his advocacy of “Smart Growth” strategies, has penned a column claiming that if not for the electoral college, Bush would not be president today, and furthermore, if not for dual four-year terms, we’d have a new president very soon:

[Recently deceased former president Gerald] Ford, it’s worth noting, was a vigorous, life-long supporter of electoral reform…

For decades, Ford supported abolishing the Electoral College and giving the people the right to vote directly for president…

There’s another reform we might consider in these times: a single six-year term for president…

Think of it this way. With a direct vote for president in 2000, we’d almost surely not be bogged down in the disastrously ill-advised Iraq War. And with a single six-year presidential term, we’d be preparing for the inauguration of a brand new president in less than two weeks from now.

We already know Pierce is an intellectually dishonest hack. He continually cites rising numbers in transit usage, but fails to note that these numbers are rising far slower relative to automobile and highway usage. This is the art of lying by eliminating all context.

He does the same thing here. He insists that without the electoral college, Gore would be president today (and assumes, without argument, that this would be a good thing). The problem is that the electoral college completely changes the way campaigns are run. Instead of running with the popular vote in mind, candidates stay focused on a few battleground states, writing off all others as locks or lost causes. In this battle, Bush won.

Now, if Bush and Gore had run in a hypothetical popular vote contest, they wouldn’t have focused on a few battleground states but upon the entire nation - they would have put their money strategically in population centers throughout the country. The dynamic would have been entirely different, and in that hypothetical race, neither Pierce nor I can speculate as to what the outcome would have been. As things were, it was a very close election.

Alas, that context would have interfered with Pierce’s sound bite, and we can’t have that, now can we?

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