“Over the Limit, Under Arrest.”
“Friends Don’t Let Friends Drive Drunk.”
“Buzzed Driving IS Drunk Driving.”

All the slogans we’ve heard over the years in countless media campaigns against driving under the influence. All of them dwarfed in meaning and power on this day, when one of the harshest lessons ever on the dangers of drinking and driving is blaring from television sets and radios and websites across the Tri-State and the nation: Diane Schuler, the Long Island woman behind the wheel in the Taconic Parkway accident that killed her and seven other people, including four children, was drunk. She was plastered, blitzed, wasted, however you want to put it; her blood alcohol level was more than twice the legal limit, and she was high on marijuana, as well.

Hey, folks.. On our Sunday night newscast, I’ll be reporting on a new company called “Rethink Autism,” which I believe could be a real game-changer for all of us parents of autistic children.. Check it out Sunday, and if you’d like more information about the company and what it does, go to their website.

Have a great week!

Listening to the people showing up at town hall meetings across the country to scream their opposition to President Obama’s health care reform proposals, you would think this is a concept that was sprung on them after last November’s election. It isn’t. Barack Obama ran on a platform heavily invested in the idea of significant health care reform, and the creation of a public option for the purchase of health insurance. From what I recall of the campaign, he spoke of it often. And he won. By a wide margin. Had enough people not liked what they heard about his ideas on health care reform, he might have lost. He didn’t.

When you don't know what to talk about with someone, you talk about the weather. When you don't know what to blog about-well, I figure we should apply the same rule.

How wrong is this?:

TRIPOLI, Libya (AP) - The only man convicted in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing has returned home to Libya to die after Scotland released him from prison Thursday, a decision that outraged some relatives of the 270 people killed when the jetliner blew up over a Scottish town. …thousands were on hand to greet him warmly when his plane from Scotland touched down at a military airport in Tripoli. There was a festive atmosphere with some wearing t-shirts with al-Megrahi's picture. Others waved Libyan and Scottish flags while Libyan songs blared.

Like many of you, I suspect, I’ve been searching my soul for the past few days to see if my opinion that Abdel Baset al-Megrahi needed to die in prison--hopefully with a great deal of discomfort--fell short of fulfilling my self-image as a reasonably compassionate human being. I mean, it seemed pretty clear to justice authorities in Scotland that this man who helped snuff out so many innocent lives should enjoy freedom in the final months of his own life before his terminal prostate cancer killed him. Obviously Scottish leaders were feeling compassion toward al-Megrahi. It shouldn’t be too big of a leap for us to understand their mindset. Scotland is part of Great Britain, America’s closest ally. Hell, MY family heritage is Scottish. What was I missing here?

As I promised in my post yesterday, I was going to continue looking for other points of view on Scotland’s release of the Libyan man convicted in the Lockerbie Pan Am bombing. Abdelbaset al-Megrahi returned home to Libya to a hero’s welcome, after being freed on “compassionate” grounds because he has terminal cancer. I wrote about the difficulty I and most Americans have understanding Scotland’s mindset in granting the release, when it seems to so clear to us that someone convicted of killing 270 innocent people deserves just as much compassion as he showed his numerous victims; that is, exactly none.

I came across this good piece on “The Daily Beast” by a prominent BBC reporter. She describes how, contrary to the majority American point of view, most people in Scotland--the country where the mass murder took place--actually supported al-Megrahi’s release:

When someone famous dies, we like to say on the news that the nation or the world or music fans or whatever is relevant to the decedent -- are “mourning” the loss. Like so much else expressed in the language of “news-ese,” it’s an unwieldy generalization that either exaggerates or minimizes the truth of the situation. In my view, you “mourn” a celebrity death based on some emotional, feeling-based connection you made with that person, either from a moment you had meeting them personally, or from having their work or their art touch you and shape your life in some way. It’s when a death is felt, not just noted. Not to sound cold about it, but the vast majority of famous people deaths I’ve reported on the news, I was just noting.

I’ll be off next week, so before leaving I wanted to do something of a brain dump; you know, clear out all those random thoughts and undeveloped concepts from the old noggin, so I can return after Labor Day renewed, refreshed, and recharged. So allow me, gentle reader, a few moments of rumination, a word I actually just looked up. I found these definitions:

• 1) Rumination – a calm, lengthy, intent consideration
• 2) Rumination – chewing cud
• 3) Rumination – regurgitation of small amounts of food