Blog Posts by Chris Lehmann

There's nothing like a good culture war conflict to produce unintended consequences--as when, for example, so-called zero tolerance school policies fail to improve safety and sometimes correlate with spikes in the very behavior education officials want to curb.

But a new bill wending its way through the Michigan legislature may represent a new landmark in culture-war legislating: It has acquired a last-minute amendment that deliberately seeks to undermine the legislation's stated purpose.

The measure is supposed to enact new restraints on bullying in Michigan schools; it's known as Matt's Safe School Law, named for Matt Epling, a 14-year-old Michigan student who committed suicide after sustained bullying from fellow students. But before the state Senate approved the bill, Republicans in the chamber added an amendment stipulating that it does not abridge First Amendment free speech rights or impinge on the expression of religious or moral views.

Partisans in the religious-secular wings

A man walks his dog beneath blooming trees in New York City's Riverside Park (Mike Segar/Reuters)Note to tourists visting New York: Don't be caught out without your ID, or you could be caught in the city's penal system for days, if the recent experience of 21-year-old college student Samantha Zucker is anything to go by.

Actually, Zucker barely qualifies as an out-of-towner, since she hails from the Westchester town of Ardsley. And the underlying charge that led to her tour in jail was a minor trespassing citation, dismissed by a presiding judge in no time.

But no matter: A vigilant NYPD officer deemed her a sufficient threat to public safety to have her handcuffed and jailed in two different cells across the length of Manhattan.

Sure, hurricanes and unseasonal blizzards can create major delays in air travel. And the ordinary air traveler faces plenty of exasperation via the heightened, and not always rational, security measures of the Transportation Safety Administration.

But Terri Weissinger, a native of Sonoma County, Calif., has suffered a new scale of airport indignity: Seeking to start a new life in Idaho, Weissinger was condemned to eight days in the limbo of the San Francisco International Airport--because she was unable to pay the fee her airline assessed for an additional piece of checked baggage.

As Michael Finney, a correspondent with the local ABC news affiliate KGO, reports, Weissinger "was broke" when she left for the airport. (You can watch Finney's report in the video clip above.)

"She had nothing but an airline ticket and $30 in her pocket," Finney notes. She also hadn't traveled by air in the last five years--meaning that when she stepped to the ticket counter to check her bags, she was in for a serious case of sticker shock. The U.S. Airways agent checking her in told her that it would cost $60 to check both her bags. Weissinger offered to pay the fee when she arrived in Idaho, but the agent declined. She also offered to leave one bag there at the San Francisco Airport. That, the agent explained, would be in violation of security regulations.

If you're going to spend $2.5 million on a yacht, you'd like it to be able to float. Alas, the SS Jiugang wasn't able to meet that basic requirement.
The Chinese vessel made her maiden voyage in the Yellow River. Although "voyage" probably isn't the right word. "Fiasco" is more appropriate, because the boat instantly sank as it was pushed into the water.
The above video of the vessel's inglorious debut found its way to tech blog Gizmodo. It's both heartbreaking and hilarious, watching the excited people push the boat into the river only to see the boat's stern quickly sink into the muddy waters. (Cue Celine Dion, and the sweeping "Titanic" theme, "My Heart Will Go On.")

Somali Prime Minister Mohamed A. Mohamed, left, announces his resignation during a news conference, alongside Somali …New York State transportation worker Mohamed A. Mohamed has recently returned from a sabbatical that's fairly unprecedented in the annals of civil-service leave-takings. Between last October and this June, he was the prime minister of Somalia—and now, after being forced out and appointing his successor, he's back at his old workstation at the Buffalo office of the Department of Transportation.

It all began with a trip to the United Nations last October, as Buffalo News reporter Jason Rey recounts in an arresting summary of Mohamed's odyssey. Mohamed met with Somali President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed to discuss conditions in Somalia, where Mohamed emigrated from more than two decades ago. Impressed by Mohamed's concern, the president offered the civil servant the prime minister's post on the spot.

After living more than a quarter-century away from his troubled homeland, Mohamed found his return as a head of state a rude awakening on several levels. "After his first interview with Somalia's president, he stepped outside and a bullet whizzed passed, landing two feet in front of him," Rey writes. " 'Yeah, that's normal,' said the man walking with him. 'Keep walking.' "

Casey Anthony on the night of her July 17 release (AP/John Raoux)

No one knows where Casey Anthony is, but America's most notorious recent murder defendant doesn't have to fret about her legal bills reaching her.

That's because $119,000 in defense fees racked up during her trial—which produced a shocking not-guilty verdict in her home jurisdiction of Orlando, Fla., earlier this month—have been picked up by Florida taxpayers. The same is true for another pending $5,800 in fees that Anthony's attorney Jose Baez has billed to his client's case, putting the overall taxpayer tab at just shy of $125,000.

Public coffers have been covering the costs of Anthony's defense since March 2010, when she declared herself indigent. Anthony was standing trial for the murder of her 2-year-old daughter Caylee, whose remains had been found on land near their home after Casey had misled police investigators with a false account of Caylee's purported kidnapping by a nanny. Casey Anthony had been sentenced to four years for providing false statements to the police. But after the three years she had served in custody while awaiting trial, her post-verdict sentence was just two weeks, and she was released on July 17.  Then she went promptly into hiding; all her attorney Baez indicated to Orlando station WKMG is that "She's not here in Orlando."

A dust storm hits Phoenix on July 5 (AP photo / Amanda Lee Myers)

After spending the last year or so in the national spotlight thanks to the harsh enforcement provisions of its 2010 immigration law, Arizona seems to be guarding against undue foreign influence—even in local weather reports.

As Marc Lacy reported in the New York Times, Arizonans are objecting to the way meteorologists have characterized a recent wave of dust storms. The expression drawing fire is the Arab term "haboob," meaning "violent sandstorm."

One correspondent wrote in to the Arizona Republic earlier this month to complain that "I am insulted that local TV news crews are now calling this kind of storm a haboob. . . . How do they think our soldiers feel coming back to Arizona and hearing some Middle Eastern term?" Another letter in the Republic chastised weather correspondents for neglecting the Southwest's own heritage in embracing the alien moniker. "Who gave you the right to use the word 'haboob' in describing our recent dust storm? While you may think there are similarities, don't forget that in these parts our dust is mixed with the whoop of the Indian's dance, the progression of the cattle herd and warning of the rattlesnake as it lifts its head to strike."

Still from 'His Girl Friday' (Columbia Pictures)A year ago this week, the Yahoo! News blog network was unleashed on an unsuspecting world. The idea behind our launch was simple: We would bring fast-paced, analytical coverage of breaking news, media controversies, campaigns, and policy debates to the vast Yahoo readership—packaging the day's big stories in the format of, you know, a blog.

But we also realized, back in 2010, that the world wasn't exactly crying out for another blog-for-blogging's-sake—and that the Yahoo audience needed something beyond a standard blogger's account of the news. In the run-up to our official launch, I had many conversations and email exchanges with Andrew Golis—the project leader who hired me on as his deputy—seeking to work out the intangible yet crucial questions of what sort of voice, tone, and feel would work best for our readers and our contributors. We also had endless back and forths, both between ourselves and among the blog team we eventually hired, about what to name the thing. The gamut ran from the unbearably pompous (I think someone actually proposed "The Panoramic Post" at some point) to the borderline childish ("The Feedbag," anyone?)

Eventually, we settled on "The Upshot." We agreed that the sense and sound of it alike conveyed the central idea we were reaching for--a brisk account of the news cycle, aimed at delivering the most essential information and context. And as important as what "The Upshot" conveyed to us was what it did not communicate to Yahoo readers: It was not to be driven by any partisan outlook, issues agenda, or look-at-me attitudinizing—all common enough currency in the wider blogosphere, but, again, not features that would sit well with either the Yahoo readership, or the editors and writers on the blog.

There would be humor, of course--no one can cover, say, the progress of a presidential campaign cycle without noting the absurdities of the whole media-and-money-driven spectacle. But there would be no snark--the off-putting, fake world-weary voice that many bloggers can end up adopting to sound like a cool kid to their peers. There would be breaking news--but also analysis, to help readers take note of how a given controversy or debate took shape, and where they might have heard similar arguments before. There would be a straightforward accounting of self-interested spin--when media figures, candidates or government operatives would try to put one over on us, we would remind readers, firmly but gently, of the actual facts of the matter. The idea, we agreed, was to be fair and blunt--a journalistic goal that The Upshot's name summed up in a direct, unfussy and unpretentious way.