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This is the space where I get to crow about the frightening precision of my Super Bowl prediction. Where I get to remind everyone that I guaranteed the Steelers would win the title after they beat the Colts. That they were the only championship-caliber team among the final four. That they would dismantle the Broncos in Denver and waylay whomever the NFC sent at them.snip I've never felt so empty being right. I feel dirty. I wish I'd been wrong. The Steelers did not deserve to win this game. They were not the better team. O'Connor was right. Seattle was...

DETROIT - What crime-ridden, boarded-building, automotive-industry-ravaged, snowy Detroit couldn't do, an NFL officiating crew pulled off with relative ease in front of plenty of bored-silly football fans inside beautiful Ford Field. Sports' and television's most indestructible beast - the Super Bowl - met its match in the 40th playing of the game the world stops to watch. The inevitable finally happened. A group of middle-aged executives trying to keep pace with a group of highly trained 20-something athletes destroyed America's sports holiday. Pittsburgh's one-for-the-thumb Super Bowl will be remembered as the game when physically overmatched referees and heads-buried NFL executives...

Bob Waggoner, who served as the back judge in the game, is a Pittsburgh native and played linebacker at Juniata College from 1969 through 1972.

Question Polled: Do you think the officating mistakes affected the outcome of the superbowl? Over 28,000 thousand votes with results broken down state by state. So far, the average is 60% saying yes, the refs affected the outcome with their mistakes. Only three states voted over 50% that the refs mistakes didn't affect the outcome. Pennsylvania West Virginia Wyoming. Most states voting over 60% saying refs annointed the superbowl to Bettis and the Steelers.

-Ratings Breakdown: Super Bowl XL: Pittsburgh Steelers vs. Seattle Seahawks, as expected, owned Sunday, with a 41.8/62 in the overnights from 6:30-10 p.m. Comparatively, this was down by 4 percent in rating and one share points from last year's Philadelphia vs. New England match-up on Super Bowl XXXIX on Fox (43.4/63 on Sunday, Feb. 6, 2005). Due to the live nature of Super Bowl XL, fast national results are excluded. Final nationals for The Super Bowl XL will be released by ABC this afternoon.

DETROIT -- Three weeks ago, after the Steelers held on to upset Indianapolis, Joey Porter was unhappy about the overturning of Troy Polamalu's fourth-quarter interception that could have sealed the win much earlier. Believing that deep down the league preferred Peyton Manning and the Colts to win, Porter publicly criticized the game officials, asking them not to "take the game from us." Well, the Steelers can call it even now, as the officials who performed well enough throughout the season to earn the privilege of working Super Bowl XL performed Sunday as though they were trying to make it up...

Despite a policy that allows motorists to wear religious head coverings in their driver license photos, some Muslim women complain that workers at the state Motor Vehicle Commission continue to require them to either remove their head scarfs or pull them back so that a substantial amount of hair is showing. After several of the women complained, the motor vehicle agency wrote several letters of apology, and promised to redouble its efforts to make sure all its employees are familiar with guidelines on head coverings, and apply them equally to everyone. Sarah Elfayoumi went to have her photo taken at...

As the whole world watches, American democracy may be hanging by a thread in Ohio. Monday, December 13, saw a triple play that will live in electoral infamy. But every new day brings still more stunning revelations -- this time from Toledo -- of vote theft and fraud and a towering wall of resistance and sabotage against a fair recount of the votes that allegedly gave George W. Bush four more years in the White House. Three major events made December 13 a monument to electoral theft: a lawsuit filed in the morning at the Ohio State Supreme Court demanding...

how is bush going to bring together the the kerry voters and the people who voted for him. I'd like to know it seems to me a near impossible task that i think is beyond the bush administraction.

CLEVELAND — The Quran commands Muslim women to cover themselves in the presence of non-relatives. So when A'isha Samad of Cleveland, Ohio, went without her headscarf, it was not by choice. "It is a protection of [my] modesty," said Samad. "It's no different [than] if I didn't have a blouse on." Samad's self-proclaimed nightmare began two years ago when she failed to appear in court for a hearing related to the custody of a grandchild. A judge ordered her to be detained in the county jail, where she was forced to remove her headscarf. For security reasons, guards remove everything...

(Stratford-AP, Sept. 11, 2004 11:45 AM) _ The mother of a Stratford elementary school student says she wants her 11-year-old daughter exempted from the school's dress code on moral, religious and medical grounds. Paula Gabriele, whose daughter attends the public magnet school Stratford Academy, says she met with school officials to ask that her daughter not be required to wear white or navy collared shirts and khaki or navy pants. But she says her request was denied. In addition to her philosophical opposition to uniforms, Gabriele also says her daughter has severe eczema on her legs, which she says is...

February 8, 2004 TEN REASONS FOR REPUBLICANS TO SIT OUT THE 2004 ELECTION: Conservatives are in a lather over various domestic policies of the Bush administration, and many are threatening to sit out the 2004 election and not vote at all. And who can blame them? After all, it’s been a decade since New Gingrich and his merry band of reformers won control of the House from the democrats who dominated that body for the previous 40 years. In the decade that republicans have controlled the House (and most of that time, the Senate also), our federal government has grown...

<p>WASHINGTON, Feb. 2 (UPI) -- A member of the board of the National Press Foundation has resigned her position because of plans to present Fox News' Brit Hume with an award.</p> <p>Hume, the managing editor of Fox News and its chief Washington correspondent, was selected to receive the NPF's Taishoff Award as Broadcaster of the Year during a Feb. 19 awards dinner.</p>

The author with her now-notorious boyfriend My Turn: I’m Only Guilty of Being a Good Friend The Jayson I know is a kind and gifted man—but our relationship cost me my job and my credibility By Zuza GlowackaNEWSWEEK June 2 issue —  I understand what Elizabeth Bishop meant when, in her poem “One Art,” she wrote, “The art of losing isn’t hard to master.” In the weeks since I’ve had to resign from my job because a close friend of mine, Jayson Blair, was caught plagiarizing and fabricating, I’ve lost my privacy, my credibility and many of my longtime...

Times Bomb Newsweek .... As the Times meeting was unfolding, Jayson Blair was holed up in an apartment in Manhattan, talking with his lawyer and his literary agent. The week before, friends say, Blair had checked himself out of Silver Hill, a tony inpatient hospital in New Canaan, Conn., where he had been receiving treatment for a history of alcoholism, cocaine abuse and manic depression, NEWSWEEK has learned. .... ...In a conversation with NEWSWEEK, Blair spoke of his feelings since his career went up in flames: "I can't say anything other than the fact that I feel a range...