Free Republic

Melvin Durslag, a sports columnist who covered the Los Angeles scene for decades beginning in 1939, died Sunday at a convalescent home in Santa Monica after a brief illness, according to friend and former colleague Larry Stewart. He was 95. Durslag was said to string “together words like Nolan Ryan strings together strikeouts,” in the words of former Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda.

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — Baseball Hall of Fame sports columnist Bill Conlin of the Philadelphia Daily News retired abruptly Tuesday after learning that he’s been accused of molesting underage children decades ago. “(The feeling in the newsroom) was an overwhelming sense of shock, a sense of outrage, a sense of sadness,” said Larry Platt, editor of the Philadelphia Daily News. Conlin is alleged to have molested at least four children (one man and three women, including Conlin’s niece), in the 1970′s, when the children were then between the ages of seven and 12. George Bochetto, Conlin’s attorney, denounced the accusations Tuesday....

The new year begins even worse than the last one ended. Only this time it isn't a debate about health care showing how lousy and mean partisan politics have become in America, it is the debate over the war on terrorism. As usual it starts with a has-been like Dick Cheney acting as if that war is some party issue, as if the country is somehow more vulnerable to fanatics because Democrats have the White House and the Congress, as if all those who hate America and want to kill Americans see this tremendous opening to do that because Barack...

Now this message for America's most famous athletes: Someday you may be invited to fly in the backseat of one of your country's most powerful fighter jets. Many of you already have -- John Elway, John Stockton, Tiger Woods to name a few. If you get this opportunity, let me urge you, with the greatest sincerity.... Move to Guam. Change your name. Fake your own death. Whatever you do, do not go. I know. The U.S. Navy invited me to try it. I was thrilled. I was pumped. I was toast! I should've known when they told me my pilot...

<p>On Aug. 7, a story on the cover of the Sports section about the Giants game at Pacific Bell Park was filed by a Bee reporter who was not at the game. The reporter watched the game on television at a location away from the stadium.</p>

At last we have a logo that pleases me just fine. The Fightin' Whites. And as I proudly prepare to send my T-shirt money to the so-named men's intramural basketball team at the University of Northern Colorado, I just wonder why nobody came up with this brilliant celebration before. The name was created by IM hoops team members, who themselves are a mix of American Indians, Hispanics and--yes--plain, unadulterated white people. None of that quasi-white-man logo stuff, like Fighting Irish or Minutemen or Vikings or Boilermakers, for the Fightin' Whites. Nope, they're doing the real deal--making a proud salute to...