CSI was once a television ratings powerhouse, with 2 spin offs to prove its rating muscle, but times have changed it seems. Lawrence Fishburne  is departing after 2 seasons, and his replacement has been announced. Ted Danson has been named as the new head of the CSI night shift. Yeah that Ted Danson. Sam Malone of Cheers  and John Becker of, well, Becker is now heading up CSI. Before you scoff and dismiss him as a sitcom star, consider he did get 3 Emmy Nominations for his role on the FX dramatic series Damages.

Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen - Kristin Dos Santos (CC)

CBS has already moved CSI to Wednesdays at 10pm following the stronger performing Criminal Minds, and given its’ cushy 9pm Thursday night time slot to new comer Person of Interest. Produced by J J Abrams and starring Michael Emerson, of LOST, and Jim Caviezel, of  Passion of the Christ, Person of Interest has according to CBS tested better than any new drama in 15 years. One CBS executive said it had “crazy broad appeal you don’t usually see.” A rookie show beats you out of your time slot of  over 10 years? Never a good sign, no matter what the test groups say.

CSI re-invented the crime investigation genre, and shows like NCIS and Criminal Minds owe their success in part to the doors CSI cast wide open, but maybe the time has come for the old  to step out of the way, because the new are definitely doing something better.  If Danson can not turn the show around, more viewers will turn it off and we may well see the end of CSI legacy.

The Space Shuttle Endeavour boldly went today where, frankly, a lot of men and women have gone before. Into orbit around the Earth and re-supply the International Space Station. I am not trying to trivialize their mission, but it has become routine. The Space Shuttle Program has proved its point and its time has come.

Endeavour Crew Poster - NASA

NASA has been the only game in space in the US, but like original Trek gave way to The Next Generation, the old guard needs to give way to the future. The government needs to share the way with private enterprise exploration of the final frontier.

I personally argued against trusting private enterprise with space exploration, but then my inner Trekker kicked in and I realized that even in Trek the biggest leap forward came from a man seeking to make money from his findings. The film was Star Trek: First Contact and the man was Zefram Cochrane, father of Warp drive according to long standing Trek lore. He did not design his Warp drive for altruistic reasons. He designed it because he felt there was potential profit in it. Profit potential is a great motivator, and maybe it will motivate our journey into the final frontier.

Hillary Clinton has now been edited out by 2 Hasidic news outlets. One claimed because she could be “sexually suggestive” and the other due to “laws of modesty”. So is this the birth of Hillary the sex symbol? Not likely.

Hillary - DonkeyHotey(CC)

Hillary on the other hand has  almost no sex appeal at all. “Almost no” may be even giving her the benefit of the doubt. Did it hurt her in the last election? Well she may be in the Situation Room, but she is not in the Oval Office. Enough said on that.

As a fellow blogger has told me over and over again, politics is all about sex. Like it or not she is right. We make decisions both consciously and unconsciously all the time based on sexual criteria.

I understand religious practices, modesty, and the like but I do not condone the photo-shopping of history. I just have a hard time believing anyone could find Hillary sexually suggestive. I am not sure even her husband does. She may be many things, but sex symbol she is not. Do not use the photo if you are afraid Hasidic boys could be hiding Hillary pics under their mattress. They would be the only ones, ever I would guess.

We have all heard by now that Osama Bin Laden was hiding in plain sight in Abbottabad, Pakistan, but I do not think the media coverage has adequately introduced us to the neighborhood Mr. Bin Laden called home for possibly the last 6 years. Sure his proximity to the Pakistani military academy has been noted as has his proximity to the town’s golf course, but playing around with Google Maps and Earth has revealed a neighborhood not much different from our own.

Al-Baik Fried Chicken (albaik.com)

There is an AMC Cinema Hall just a short mile from his compound. One wonders if he ever snuck out to the movies. Perhaps to see “Fahrenheit 9/11″ when he needed a good laugh. Pity anyone sitting behind him and trying to see the screen. I have to drive 15 minutes to my nearest theater and a half an hour for the first really decent one.

There are many nearby hotels, including the Hotel City Centre. I listed this one because it was the only one I could find with pictures. It has a variety of rooms, a conference room, and a banquet area. It also has a mall on the first floor. Heck the town I live in does not even have a hotel. Our closest thing to a hotel is the Holiday Inn the next town over and their only shopping provided is the Adult Bookstore adjacent to their parking lot.

There look to be many stores located up and down the nearby highway but not all were listed with Google. I managed to find listings for a coffee shop called Coffity, Al-Baik Fried Chicken, and Milano Pizza among others. There are computer firms and schools all over the town. There are parks and sporting fields. No baseball or football, but Soccer and what looks like a very nice Cricket field.

Far from a cave in the middle of nowhere, Mister Bin Laden spent his last years living in a neighborhood, a typical suburban neighborhood. A neighborhood unaware of just who their most famous neighbor was. Unaware that was, until the helicopters showed up to clean up their neighborhood.

In Action Comics #900, which came out yesterday, there is a short tale where Superman announces he is going before the United Nations to renounce his U.S. citizenship. Say it isn’t so Superman. The man of steel is turning his back on truth, justice, and the American way? This seems to be the conclusion a lot of people out there are jumping to, but within the context of the story it is not the case.

Superman - Ryan Amos (CC)

Denouncing his citizenship is not a decision he makes because he is turning his back on the ideals he has always stood for, far from it. He just sees his thinking as having been too small, and that the the world today is too connected for him to be seen as a symbol of a single nation.  Superman, in the story, is trying to come to grips with his role in the modern world and look at the bigger picture.

I need to disclose at this point that I work in a comic shop, and have collected comics fairly seriously for almost 30 years. I support the creators who made the bold decision to send Superman, the character, in this possibly controversial direction. I already had one customer call me today irate over hearing the news, and told him to give the story a look to see if it changed his opinion.

At the heart of the character, Superman has always been portrayed as a man, yes a super man, but as a man first, trying to do the right thing. He has always stood for “Truth, Justice, and the American Way”.  Now he is just trying to make a stand for truth and justice on a global scale. More power to him, not that he needs it. He is Superman after all.

My Mother has been a substitute teacher in the Belle Vernon Area School District of Western Pennsylvania for the past 37 years. She is 74 years old and teaching is not a job to her, it is part of who she is. As she put it after God, and her family, the most important thing to her is teaching. For this dedication she deserves respect.

Frontier Desk - Corey Leopold (CC)

Well last Friday afternoon, she was shown nothing but disrespect. Not disrespect from the third graders  she had been teaching daily since about mid year, but from the administration. About 15 minutes before she was supposed to leave for the day she received a call, not from the principal who was still in the building, but from the woman who calls the substitutes for the district. She was told that this would be her last day and that she had 15 minutes to gather her things and leave. No chance to say goodbye to her students, just get her things and go.

It seems that the problem arose because one parent questioned her qualifications to teach. Seems my Mother did not meet some Act 48 requirements to be able to teach more than 90 days for years. I am told this law has been on the books since 2000 and she was never been questioned about it before. Mom had had no contact from this parent and no problems with their child.

I realize that rules are rules, and the law is the law, but I also know my Mother deserved more respect from the Belle Vernon Area administration than she was shown. Substitute teaching is a tough job. No benefits, no retirement, and you only get paid a fraction of what a regular teacher would be paid for the same time. My Mother very rarely refused a call to substitute and she would go above and beyond to do a good job for the students. She should have had someone look her in the face about the situation and been given a chance to make a smoother exit transition both for her and the students.

My Mother was not just a temp at some job, she was a teacher substituting for another teacher. If teaching is still to be considered a noble profession then my Mother deserved treated much, much more nobly. The funny thing is they may have taken away her ability to substitute, but they cannot take away her ability to teach. That she will still do for the dozen kids she tutors one on one after school 4 nights a week.  She only charges ten dollars an hour and her rates have never gone up in over twenty two years of doing it. She tutors because it  is teaching, and a teacher is what and who she is.

Ashley Kauffman, 19 year old college student, was told she was “too big, too heavy” to be in the front row of the audience for American Idol. A female staffer kept her from sitting in the front row, and a male staffer kept her from sitting behind her friends and sent her to the back.

LaKisha Jones - Jyle Dupuis (CC)

Kauffman weighs 150 pounds, according to the CDC the average American woman weighs about 165 pounds. Anyone can do the math on that one. The average American woman is too big for the front row of American Idol. That is ridiculous. We are not talking about to be a model, to be a star, but only to sit in the front row of an audience. If that is not blatant discrimination then what is?

Plus size have actresses have made strides this season. Melissa McCarthy is half of a hit on Mike & Molly for CBS. Fox itself has brought Ashley Fink into the forefront of Glee as the the confident Lauren Zizes. Guess that stars are one thing but audiences members are a different story.

The discrimination against the heavy has reached the point where it is discrimination against the average. As a heavy American, and I can not believe I just used that term, I can say that enough is enough. When the average American is too heavy for a seat in the front row, then maybe American Idol needs a reality check. Otherwise rename it Elitist Idol, because their policies no longer represent America.

Louis J. Marinelli once loudly and vehemently opposed gays and lesbians from having the right to marry. He opposed it so strongly that he, according to his own blog, organized the 2010 Summer for Marriage Tour for the National Organization for Marriage. He organized rallies and started Facebook groups. Then something happened, Marinelli had a change of heart.

Wedding Ring - Eivind Barstad Waaler (CC)

He realized over time that he supported civil marriage equality. He realized that gays and lesbians were not out to destroy American culture, they were just real people who wanted the same rights to participate in it as the rest of us. I commend him for having the courage to stand up to those he once supported, and to apologize to those he once attacked. I also commend him for commenting on the difference between civil marriage and holy matrimony.

He summed it up clearly and eloquently by saying “Once you understand the great difference between civil marriage and holy marriage, there is not one valid reason to forbid the former from same-sex couples, and all that is left to protect is the latter.”

Some may challenge Marinelli’s right to continue to call himself a conservative, but I consider myself a conservative and I agree with him. Being conservative is not a matter of religion, and those that see that it is have hijacked the term for their own use. Being conservative is also not a matter of discrimination, bigotry, or denying individuals their right to equality under law.

Arguments against civil marriage equality are impossible to make without religion entering the argument. If religion is the only basis for the argument, then a little thing called the First Amendment comes into play. Our government has no right to deny civil equality of any kind based only on religious arguments. People are guarantee the freedom of religion, but they are also guaranteed freedom from religion.

Marinelli had a change of heart, but it will take a lot more hearts to change before there is any chance of national civil marriage equality, especially if you take into account recent polls in Mississippi about GOP voters’ views on interracial marriage, marriage equality still has a long way to go.

President Obama’s Oval Office Address to the nation on Tuesday evening was a lot of talk about the problem, but no real solution. For the first two thirds of the speech, when he talked about the clean up, he seemed distant and may have contradicted himself. When he talked about clean energy being the future it seemed like it was the same old big dreams song I had heard before. Obama, like former President Jimmy Carter, is big on dreams and long term goals, but weak on immediate solutions.

Calling together panels of experts to solve the problem of the spill is all well and good, but 8 weeks later still not having a solution is unacceptable. The American people expect results, not committee meetings to further discuss possible strategies for reducing the leak. If another 8 weeks go by without that leak being shut down, then Obama’s numbers may never recover.

Saying BP will pay is nice, but making them pay long term is a much more complicated matter. An escrow account is a good start, but is 20 billion enough? Do we even have a clue yet of the final cost? What happens when BP decides enough is enough?

Using this disaster to push for alternative energy would be nice, but he talked about wind energy and other alternatives none of which really deal with what we use oil for. Oil is mainly for cars, Mr. President. What are we going to run them on? Not the hybrids or the smart cars, but all the cars that belong to people too broke from the recession to afford the new vehicles even if they were readily available.

A Gulf Coast Restoration Plan is nice, but again this is a long term goal not a short term solution. The reaction coming from those who make their living from the Gulf is that we do not need plans, but solutions. Counting days no longer matter when the root of the problem has still not been solved.

Carter faced a different oil crisis, but his lack of leadership and solutions in that time is being mirrored in this time by the current administration. We need solutions, not dreams. We need prompt results, not long term planning. We need leadership that we can get behind now, not hope that change will come some time. We were promised change, but not from bad to worse.

It is not easy being Alvin Greene, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate from South Carolina. There are numerous questions, controversies, and even conspiracy theories surrounding his unlikely win in the primary last week. The media and politicians from both sides have questioned everything from his moral character to his mental capacity to run a campaign. Even with his win in the primary, he seems like the loser in this political game.

Greene is unemployed. He was kicked out of the military after 13 years last August because “things just weren’t working”. He lives in his father’s home, with no cell phone and no computer. None of this shouts political ambition.

Greene is facing felony obscenity charges. He was caught on video showing allegedly obscene photos from a website to a female victim at the University of South Carolina. These charges were filed before he through his hat into the political arena. He is being represented by a public defender because he claimed to be unable to afford his own attorney.

Greene funded his “campaign” himself. According to reports he originally tried to pay the $10,400 needed to get his name on the ballot with a personal check. He returned a few hours later with a check from his campaign account. Questions have been raised on where he got the money from, but he is adamant that it was his own money.

Greene is not the most eloquent speaker. His way of speaking has lead both interviewers and members of his own party to question his mental health. One democratic representative who spoke with Greene said that if he were his client he would ask for a mental evaluation. Something just seems off about his reactions to this entire situation.

Greene has almost no campaign support. No campaign staff. No office. No advertisements of any kind. He does not even have a website. Of course he would need to buy a computer to look at it anyway.

Greene has no party support. Leadership of the Democratic party have asked him to step down. They are not supporting him at all, but some are going so far as accusing him of being a Republican plant. Even if he was a plant that still does not explain how he got the votes. The scale of the conspiracy required to get him on the ballot and then get him the votes needed to win is unrealistically epic in scope.

The late Andy Warhol once said that in the future everyone would be famous for 15 minutes. Mr. Greene your clock is running. I hope you survive the experience. It is not going to get any easier to be you any time soon.