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<p>The latest cold snap has almost all of Lake Erie covered by ice.</p> <p>The Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory says ice has formed across close to 94 percent of the lake. That's the highest percentage out of all of the Great Lakes.</p>

I couldn't get in. Packed at 2:15pm with cars backed out to the street. Other resturants in the immediate area (McD's, Tim Hortons, Taco Bell) were dead since lunch rush was over. Seems North Western Pennsylvanians (and a few New Yorkers - saw the plates in the parking lot) decided to Eat Mor Chikin today. Officially: I estimate about 100 standing in line, 150 seated, and 30 cars at drive-thru when I was there. Talked to an employee in the restroom while trying to get my camera ready for a few photos. Dude said it's been crazy all day, and...

Bishop-designate Lawrence T. Persico. Erie, Pa., Jul 31, 2012 / 11:25 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Catholics in Erie, Pa., are deeply grateful for Pope Benedict's July 31 appointment of Msgr. Lawrence T. Persico as the diocese's tenth bishop. “The Lord has answered our prayer and the Diocese of Erie has a new shepherd,” Bishop Donald W. Trautman said during a press conference Tuesday. Bishop-designate Persico will succeed Bishop Trautman who, following Church procedure, submitted his resignation following his 75th birthday over a year ago. Bishop Trautman said he knows the bishop-designate will love his “new spiritual family” in Erie and...

A group on Sunday afternoon walked through parts of downtown Erie, demonstrating their Second Amendment right of bearing arms. Around twenty individuals met for this Open Carry of Fire Arms walk, organized by Justin Dillon. Dillon had an encounter with an Erie police officer last week, after he was seen carrying his weapon. Pennsylvania state law does not prohibit openly carrying a weapon. Dillon said he did not organize this to cause any conflict with the police, he just wanted to public to be aware of the laws, along with their constitutional rights. "I just wanted to do this to...

Aaron Sweeney is a youth minister in Illinois. I can’t remember the last time my town’s been in the national news—in fact, maybe there hasn’t really been another time. I guess that’s why what’s going on now has taken so many of us by surprise. I’m the youth minister at a church in Erie, Illinois—a town of about 1,500 people that represents a mixture of local business owners, farmers, teachers and factory workers and others. We’ve never experienced anything like this—where for the last several weeks our town has been the target of a national pressure campaign launched by gay...

EUCLID, Ohio -- Is something eerie over Lake Erie? A local man said he spotted a UFO and he believes it's proof we're not alone. "Absolutely nothing we have on this earth even looks like that," said Eugene Erlikh. Eugene said the unexplained lights appeared outside his house in Euclid over five nights. "It was such a brilliant beam of different lights, it was going red, yellow, green, blue. It was never the same color it was always, like it was pulsating." The unidentified flying objects remain unidentified. No one knows what they were, including the 20-year old student...

Erie Catholic Bishop Donald W. Trautman enunciated each word he spoke about the blood of Christ. "It will be shed for you and for all so that sins may be forgiven," the bishop said, his voice carrying to the back of Gate of Heaven Cemetery's chapel, where he was celebrating a Mass on Nov. 2. By the time the annual service for All Souls' Day comes around in 2010, Trautman will likely be saying some different words. "For all" is due to be replaced with "for many" in a New English translation of the Roman Missal. U.S. Catholic bishops will...

The Sen. Barack Obama campaign is under performing with women, especially older white ones. So, it released a list of female surrogates that will be his force on issues that are important to those women voters -- like equal pay. There also will soon be an ad released that will hit Sen. John McCain on the touchy issue of equal pay. According to McCain-Palin spokesman Brian Rogers, that is a problem for Barack Obama, since he is the one that pays his females staffers less than the men. Rogers points to Senate Records showing that women working in Sen. Obama's...

The intelligent question thrown out among strategists for both campaigns is, can John McCain really win Pennsylvania? Really win it, not pretend to go for it, as Republicans did in 2004, all the while closing the deal in Ohio when no one was looking. The last Republican presidential candidate to win Pennsylvania was George H.W. Bush, in 1988 -- a win preceded by two Reagans but followed by two Clintons, a Gore and a Kerry. The Kerry win was narrower than the others, however.

Rep. Jack Murtha’s (D-Johnstown) opponent in this year’s congressional race -- Lt. Col. William Russell, a decorated Iraq war veteran who was in the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001 -- has just released an ad titled “In Cold Blood.” So far, it is one of the most powerful campaign spots to hit the airwaves in the down- ballot races this cycle in the Keystone State.

Perhaps finding out what really is going on in Pennsylvania is for me to look no further than my own backyard, literally.

Ridge said he was proud of how McCain has handled the crisis unfolding in Georgia. ...“He has kept a cool head, taken calls from Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili -- and really behaved very presidential in his perspective of this crisis,” said Ridge as McCain shook hands with the crowd that gathered around him. “He has been to Georgia several times,” Ridge added. “He doesn’t need to look for it on a map.”

Bitter: the gift that keeps on giving TRIBUNE-REVIEW By Salena Zito John Brabender, a D.C.-based media strategist, put up the first "bitter" ad to be used in a congressional race -- for a Republican. "Barack Obama's statement about the small towns of Pennsylvania and the entire middle America for this cycle is the gift that you can use all year long," Brabender said. He said that you could say it is the gift that keeps on giving. Brabender's client Matt Shaner is in a tight Republican primary race to succeed retiring John Peterson in the biggest piece of congressional geography...

Democratic voters in northwestern Pennsylvania will participate Tuesday in something they haven’t seen in many years: a competitive party primary election for the U.S. House. Democratic strategists hope this will lead to something they have sought without success for years, namely a serious general election challenge to veteran Republican Rep. Phil English in the marginally Republican-leaning 3rd Congressional District. When 3rd District Democrats go to the polls to pick between Sens. Barack Obama of Illinois and Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York in the state’s competitive presidential primary, they also will choose among four Democrats who are vying to oppose...

McCain says he is the candidate of hope TRIBUNE-REVIEW By Salena Zito Full text of interview with Sen. John McCain and reporter Salena Zito: You have been around a lot of small towns in Pennsylvania and the country, Sen. Barack Obama's remarks seem to have had an effect in Western Pennsylvania. What are your thoughts about the regular folk that Sen. Obama referred to in his remarks? I cannot understand why Sen. Obama would have ever believed that the small towns in Pennsylvania and across America are anything but patriotic, dedicated, hard working people whose fundamental values have nothing to...

Burden of proof -- Clinton counts on delegate math By Salena Zito TRIBUNE-REVIEW Sunday, April 13, 2008 Every other story written by journalists across the country gives a spreadsheet of reasons why Hillary Clinton should step out of the Democrats' campaign. Yet in the public's eye, there she stands as though she has not a care in the world. One reason may be that the party's super-delegates who remain uncommitted have an unspoken burden of proof to determine whether this race goes on or not. So far, they have not exercised their superpowers.

God, guns and Obama TRIBUNE-REVIEW By: Salena Zito On Friday it was reveled that Sen. Barack Obama told wealthy San Franciscans last Sunday that small-town Pennsylvanians and Midwesterners "cling to guns or religion" because they are "bitter" about their economic status. By today in Muncie, Ind., Obama acknowledged that he "didn't say it as well as I should have."

Man says Clinton supporters less educated TRIBUNE REVIEW By Salena Zito Nearly 800 students and supporters of Hillary Clinton packed the Hopewell Area High School auditorium yesterday to hear the former first lady's proposals to strengthen the U.S. military. With the exception of one man, all seemed to be enthusiastic supporters. Chuck Grawley, 51, an instructor at two local colleges, held his 8-month-old daughter Emily while waiting for the event to begin. Grawley was not there to see Clinton. He was there to see the crowd. "Statistically and empirically, the people in this room are less educated and less informed...

Obama advance: 'Get me more white people' POLITICO Ben Smith From the account in Carnegie Mellon's paper, the Tartan, of a Michelle Obama event in Pittsburgh: While the crowd was indeed diverse, some students at the event questioned the practices of Mrs. Obama’s event coordinators, who handpicked the crowd sitting behind Mrs. Obama. The Tartan’s correspondents observed one event coordinator say to another, “Get me more white people, we need more white people.” To an Asian girl sitting in the back row, one coordinator said, “We’re moving you, sorry. It’s going to look so pretty, though.” “I didn’t know they...

An error of judgment: Penn is out TRIBUNE-REVIEW BY: Salena Zito Hillary Clinton's chief strategist and pollster Mark Penn has made like Elvis and left the building, a little more than two weeks before the Pennsylvania April 22nd primary.