Now that the Ricketts family owns the Chicago Cubs, will the Chicago Tribune now cover the team without bias? Will the White Sox actually get equal coverage? Just asking?

“The only place opportunity cannot be found is in a closed-minded person.” – Bo Bennett

Two of the most conservative members of the U.S. Supreme Court showed their ignorance and, in one case., extreme prejudice and racism this week. First, über-moron, Justice Antonin Scalia said in an appearance at the University of Arizona College of Law that if he were on the court in 1954, he would have dissented in the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education decision that ended school segregation based on race.
Phoenix’s East Valley Tribune (quoted on The Huffington Post) reported that Scalia cautioned against “inventing new rights nobody ever thought existed.” Scalia said he advocates an “originalist” approach to the Constitution, warning against an “evolutionary” legal philosophy that he described as, “close your eyes and decide what you think is a good idea.”
Using his “originalist” philosophy, Scalia said he likely would have dissented from the historic 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision that declared school segregation illegal and struck down the system of “separate but equal” public schools. He said that decision, which overturned earlier precedent, was designed to provide an approach the majority liked better.
Then, in an earlier interview, Justice Clarence Thomas made the comment that the other justices, especially Scalia (usually his closest ideological ally) ask too many questions when attorneys are making presentations to the Court. He said that in his opinion, the justices have their minds made up from reading the briefs, and that by the time lawyers make their presentations, he and others already had their minds made up.
In both cases, these men are showing a lack of intellectual curiosity (like GW Bush) or flat out racism. For Thomas, the most self-loathing individual perhaps in history, he is showing once again that his selection as a justice was one of the poorest in the history of this country. Why even have open arguments before the Supreme Court if the justices already have their minds made up?
Scarier still is the mentality of Scalia. One of the things that make humans the amazing creatures we are is our ability to learn from experience and make changes. His is the same mentality of the clerics who condemned Copernicus to death for theorizing (later proved) that the Earth circled around the Sun.
At first, I thought both of these stories are strong arguments against the lifetime appointment of Supreme Court Justices, but of course, this might work both ways, and when Republicans had control of the White House and both houses of Congress, they may have tried to boot Justices that I agree with more. It appears that, like Senator Strom Thurmond and other racists, we will just have to wait on their deaths and try not to openly rejoice too much (we’re better people than they are).
Still, I wonder how he would rule way if Italians were the ones being discriminated against?

I’ve never liked Andre Agassi. I have always respected his tennis talent, but I’ve never thought much of him (and its not because he married the object of my extreme lust, Steffi Graf).
It started when he was just getting famous. I was in London in 1991 during Wimbledon and Agassi was the new hot tennis player that year. I was staying on the West End, and a sporting goods store advertised an appearance from Agassi in which he would be signing autographs. I didn’t go, but the sign said that Agassi would be signing for a grand total of 15 minutes. In the end, I heard that he didn’t even show.
Early in his career, he was making so much money off the court, he has admitted that he made up excuses and faked injuries to avoid tournaments, even the majors. Eventually, he got his act together and put together a Hall of Fame-worthy career, eventually winning a career Grand Slam, one of the five players to do it.
So, now retired, and generally out of the spotlight, Agassi has done what so many retired athletes have done – written a book. His book: “Open” comes out soon, but in excerpts to be published in People Magazine and Sports Illustrated, Agassi talks about being a sex symbol, losing his hair, and his marriages to Brooke Shields and Ms. Graf (there’s no word on whether he mentions his time with Barbara Streisand – but he doesn’t want to piss her off, she has too much money and power). But the biggest admission is that he used crystal meth in the 1990s.
I’m not exactly surprised – as I’ve said, I’ve always thought of Andre Agassi as a talented, but spoiled brat, even by tennis’ standards. There is a part of me who is interested in finding out what Agassi has to say, but I have prided myself on not giving him any money directly his whole career. This is a policy that I will be sticking to in not buying this book or any of the magazines that are printing excerpts.

Most people believe that if one has the talent and the luck to play professional sports, you’ve got it made. One or two contracts, and even the most extravagant person should have enough money to live well for the rest of their lives, and their children should be taken care of. But, like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, this is a myth that young athletes who have the opportunity to play pro sports should know is just that, a myth!
Over a successful 12 year career with the Celtics and other teams, Antoine Walker made more than $110 million playing professional basketball, but even that wasn’t enough money. Over the last several months, Walker has been pursued by multiple financial institutions for unpaid debts. According to The Boston Globe, the 33-year-old forward owes more than $4 million to his creditors and is facing felony check fraud charges in Las Vegas.
How does one piss away over $100 million dollars? The Globe, quoted on Yahoo! Sports, printed “[Walker] liked to move in an outsized entourage; his mother estimates that, during his playing days, he was supporting 70 friends and family members in one way or another. And speaking of his mother, he built her a mansion in the Chicago suburbs, complete with an indoor pool, 10 bathrooms, and a full-size basketball court.”
During his time with the Celtics, Walker reportedly turned the parking area outside of his condominium complex into a virtual luxury car lot: 2 Bentleys; 2 Mercedes, a Range Rover, a Cadillac Escalade, and a bright red Hummer. All of the cars “tricked out” with custom paint jobs, rims, and expensive sound systems. In addition, Walker collected expensive watches: Rolexes and diamond-encrusted Cartiers.
To Walker’s benefit, all of the expenditures were not on him alone. He was known as a generous friend and teammate who had custom suits made for coaches, routinely picked up giant team dinner tabs and, when there were funds to spare, gave to underprivileged youngsters.
So now, Antoine Walker faces financial ruin and jail. He isn’t the only athlete who has lost millions: Mike Tyson, Joe Lewis, and many others including very intelligent athletes like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar have either gone broke or had to sue a manager or advisor for taking their money. It goes to show that everyone, from the very rich to the average person, needs to have some economic common sense about their spending to keep from bankruptcy and other financial disasters.

There are just too many possible jokes that will be thrown around Major League Baseball if it is true that slugger Mark McGwire will end his baseball exile and accept a position with the St. Louis Cardinals as their hitting coach.
Of course, McGwire played 4 1/2 seasons with St. Louis, in which he hit 220 home runs and briefly set the single-season MLB record with his 70 homers in 1998, and, to his credit, Manager Tony LaRussa is fiercely loyal and has always stood behind McGwire. But it is hard considering the tornado sized storm cloud that surrounds McGwire and the possibility of perjury in his Congressional testimony in 2005.
There had been rumors that LaRussa wanted to leave St. Louis, and perhaps this move is intended to solidify LaRussa’s staying. This makes sense as it would be hard to imagine any way McGwire accepts this job without La Russa.
What will be interesting is how the private McGwire handles his return to the baseball spotlight. There is the press scrutiny – he is going to be asked about the past, something that he said he didn’t want to do before Congress. Moreover, people will be looking if he is suddenly much smaller than he was during his playing career, like NFL players who suddenly appear healthy at 220-240 pounds when they played at 280 and above. By announcing the hiring early, the Cardinals are probably hoping most of that dies down by the time the team is ready for spring training next February, but what about the public side show? McGwire will overshadow the team, and we remember the signs, comments and chants that rained down on Barry Bonds in his last season with the Giants. Like Bonds, McGwire won’t get anything but cheers in St. Louis, but in New York, Philadelphia, here at Wrigley Field, the taunting could get ugly. And, if he remains “on the juice,” there is a real possibility of ‘roid rage, and McGwire was never a “warm and fuzzy” character on his best days.
I think this is a very bad move on the Cardinals part, that is unless the whole team hits .300. Of course, they may hit 700 homers next season if McGwire brings his “little black bag.” (Let the jokes begin!!!)

As you might guess, I am not religious. I am somewhere in the agnostic range most of the time. Since, however, I was raised in the Methodist Church, I don’t go out of way to attack the Christian Church like a Christopher Hitchens (unless they do something stupid, in which I may riff on it here on my site). However, I admit that there is one “religion” that I consider sillier and even more utter preposterous than traditional Christianity and the like: Scientology.
Why am I harder on them? Because it was created by a hack science fiction writer, who pulled off the ultimate scam; getting millions of people to believe a religion involving aliens, strapping oneself to a machine ah la “The Exorcist 2: The Heretic.” This cult has a number of high profile celebrities that believe in it like John Travolta, Tom Cruise, and Kristie Alley. It works for them, but it is very creepy: very secretive; apparently wealthy; and according to a famous director this week – intolerant and advocates that their followers never have contact with friends and family that isn’t indoctrinated into their cult.
As I mentioned earlier, Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard was a bad sci-fi writer who was famously quoted as saying that he was going to create a religion because that’s when the big money is. I guess the French government agrees with me. A Paris court convicted the Church of Scientology’s French office, its library and six of its leaders of organized fraud. Investigators said the group pressured members into paying large sums of money for questionable financial gain and used “commercial harassment” against recruits. The group was fined €400,000 ($600,000) and the library €200,000. Four of the leaders were given suspended sentences of between 10 months and two years. The other two were given fines of €1,000 and €2,000.
However, the court refused to go along with the prosecution’s demand that Scientology be banned entirely. The Court ruled that Scientology would be likely to continue its activities anyway “outside any legal framework.” Prosecutors had urged that the group be dissolved in France and fined €2 million ($3 million).
The verdict is “an Inquisition of modern times,” said Scientology spokeswoman Agnes Bron, but the head of an association that helps victims of sects, Catherine Picard, called the verdict “intelligent.”
Maybe Ms. Picard was or should be in contact with Academy Award winning director of “Crash” and scriptwriter Paul Haggis. He severed his ties with the Church in part because of what he alleged as the organization’s stance against gay marriage. Haggis wrote a letter addressed to Tommy Davis, the head of Scientology’s Celebrity Centre. In it, Haggis said he was disappointed by the church’s tacit denial of gay rights in the debate over California’s gay marriage ban and was quitting the church after 35 years.
“I could not, in good conscience, be a member of an organization where gay-bashing was tolerated,” Haggis wrote.
Haggis also said he was “shocked” that the Church of Scientology was publicly denying that it adheres to a policy of disconnection – of severing ties with a friend or family member who’s antagonistic toward Scientology. Haggis said that his wife, Deborah Rennard, was given precisely those orders and didn’t speak to her parents for more than a year.
Scientology has a building on Yonge Street in Toronto near many of the theaters used for the Toronto International Film Festival and I used to see them actively one the street trying to get people to come in. They tried with me once, and while never physically accosted, I did feel like I had to break away from these people. I told one of their members on the street that they were a dangerous cult and I wanted nothing to do with them.
Actually, if something gives you peace, I’m all for it, but Scientology, like the other major religions, make me uncomfortable in trying to “convert” me and others to their way of thinking. Mind control? Opiate of the masses? Sounds like it to me.

ESPN broadcaster Bob Griese has been suspended one week for a remark he made about NASCAR driver Juan Pablo Montoya. During last Saturday’s broadcast of the Minnesota-Ohio State, a graphic was shown listing the top five drivers in NASCAR’s points race. Fellow analyst Chris Spielman asked where was Montoya, who is Colombian. Griese replied he was “out having a taco.”
Griese has twice apologized on air for the remar, and ESPN spokesman Josh Krulewitz says ESPN has spoken to Griese and “he understands the comment was inappropriate.”
It is no surprise to me, because my one introduction to the Hall of Fame QB left a bad impression. Several friends and I were in Pasadena for the 1996 Rose Bowl between Northwestern and USC, and one of my friends was staying at one of the swankier hotels in the area. As we were leaving the hotel to go out to dinner, Griese and his broadcast partner at the time, the legendary Keith Jackson were coming in. As someone who was writing for sports television at the time, I went up to the pair and introduced myself. Griese pushed past me after having shot me a glance like a socialite looking at a dog turd on the street. On the other hand, Mr. Jackson, once finding out I wrote for The Sportswriters, asked me about the members of the panel, was extremely kind, introduced me to his wife, and was just the nicest man you could imagine. He even tried to bring Griese back out to talk, but Griese was already inside.
I’ve felt since that initial meeting that Bob Griese was a mean, cranky, self important jerk. Maybe he has a problem with minorities as Montoya and I are both minorities, but I would doubt it since there were and are so many African-American athletes, but he is an ass.