I mean, any other time she looks like crap.  If she looked like this all the time a kat would actually feen over her.

Yesterday I talked about John Cheney's antics in the Temple/St. Joes game, in which he sent in a player to intentionally hurt players after he complained about illegal screens.

Well, this is the result of that stunt:

Hawks senior forward John Bryant could miss the rest of the season after an MRI on Thursday showed he had a broken right arm. Bryant was injured on a hard foul two days earlier by a Temple player who Chaney put in the game for the sole purpose of rough play and hard fouls.

I hope John Chaney is proud of himself.  As I stated yesterday, if I were John Bryant's parents, I would sue both the Atlantic-10 due to the incompetence of the officials and the commissioners to let Chaney get away with this, and I would sue Temple University directly for Chaney's actions.  This is utterly reprehensible.  If A-10 Commissioner Linda Bruno doesn't suspend Chaney for the rest of the season, she should be fired her damned self.

There were a LOT of transactions going on, as today is the trading deadline.

First, Celtics' guard Gary Payton goes to his fourth team in three years as he's traded to the Atlanta Hawks in a five player deal.  The Hawks gave up Antoine Walker for Payton, Tom Gugliotta, and Michael Stewart.

It's actually sad when you look at Payton's past.  Last year he moved from the only team he ever played for to the Los Angeles Lakers in the hopes of winning an NBA title.  A year and a half later, he's being shipped to the worst team in the league in a deal where he's being shipped with two other players for one. 

I really don't know what the Hawks get out of this.  Do they really think Payton will resign with them, as he will be a free agent this summer?  It's as if the Hawks really don't want to compete with the rest of the NBA and are comfortable staying in the trash heap at the bottom of the league.

As for Antoine Walker, he returns to the team where he broke out as a star in order to possibly compete with the Sixers for the Atlantic Division title.  I actually hope both teams make the playoffs.

Baron Davis finally got his wish and will move west to Golden State for Speedy Claxton and fossil Dale Davis.  Kudos to Davis getting out of that hellhole, and congrats to Shinnridge for making it easier for Stern to run you out of the league.

The New York Knicks made considerable changes to their front court as center Nazr Mohammed and guard Jamison Brewer went to the Spurs for Malik Rose and a first round pick.  Then, they traded Vin Baker and Moochie Norris to the Houston Rockets for Maurice Taylor and another first round pick.

No doubt this was the best trade in the last couple of days.  The Knicks acquired an undersized center in Malik Rose, but he works very hard, and Maurice Taylor is very underrated due to the outstanding forwards in the Western Conference.  Rose's contract will take up a lot of cap space, but the two first round picks they picked up might be able to strengthen the team if Rose and Taylor aren't able to adequately produce for the Knicks.  I like this move, and Isiah Thomas deserves his props.

In other NBA news, the Mavericks acquired Keith Van Horn from Milwaukee for Alan Henderson, Calvin Booth, and some cash (money ain't a thang for Mark Cuban).  Glen Robinson leaves the Sixers to go to the Hornets for Jamal Mashburn and a returning Rodney Rogers.  Both Robinson and Mashburn are on injured reserve and won't play for the rest of the season, so this is no big deal.

Check this out:

The day before, Temple coach John Chaney fired a warning shot at St. Joseph's and the officials, claiming the Hawks free their long-range shooters, Pat Carroll and Chet Stachitas, by using illegal screens.

The Hall of Fame coach said if it happened again, he would send one of his goons on the floor to send a message.

during the game...

He railed against the officials for allowing the Hawks to get away with what he perceives as illegal screens. So with 15 minutes, 24 seconds remaining in the game and St. Joe's holding a 39-31 lead, Chaney sent in the imposing but seldom-used 6-foot-8 senior Nehemiah Ingram.

A little more than four minutes later - after he delivered a hard foul and slammed John Bryant to the floor (Bryant had to leave the game), and after he had delivered forearm shivers to the chins of Carroll and Dwayne Jones and drew a technical for the incident with Carroll - Ingram fouled out while St. Joe's was pulling away to a lead that reached 50-34.

after the game...

Afterward, Chaney made it clear he didn't put Ingram into the game for his offensive prowess. After all, Ingram has played 54 minutes this season, committed 21 fouls, and scored five points.

"I wanted him to put forth some illegal screens just like they were," the fuming Chaney said. "They were sending two guys to screen for one guy to get a shot, so I did the same thing to them. I'm sending a message, and I did what I used to do years ago and send in a goon. I'm from the old school, trying to play it right, but no more. I'm sending a message to the rest of the league."

Told that Bryant appeared injured after he was fouled by Ingram, Chaney said: "That's what happens. That's what happens. I'm a mean, ornery SOB, understand?" Chaney was true to his word. During Monday's weekly A-10 coaches teleconference, Chaney said he'd send in a goon, adding it was not his intention to make a mockery of the game. Regardless, little that occurred after Ingram entered the game resembled basketball.

"We're going to have to have better officials who are going to call illegal screens," he said Monday. He added: "I'll go back to my old style of basketball and put one of my goons in and have him run through one of those guys and chop him in the neck or something."

I'm going to say it as plain as I can:  John Chaney needs his ass whupped.  Either that, or kick him out of basketball for good.  Those are the only reasonable ways to effectively deal with him.  This man has choked coaches, challenges people to fights, threatened to kill other coaches, and god knows what else.  And the Atlantic-10 commissioners as well as the Temple brass continue to either look the other way or give him a slap on the wrist each time he pulls some crap like this.

Chaney acts like some school bully because he deals with people who won't stand up to him due to his "legend" status, his age, or for other reasons.  And this incident illustrates perfectly what's wrong with basketball today; those referees who called that game should be fired for allowing Chaney and Ingram to get away with that without any immediate repercussions.  They were too scared to do anything because it was John Chaney and they're scared to reprimand him.

You have Chaney threatening to pull this stunt THE DAY BEFORE THE GAME.  Didn't the refs hear about it, and thus should have braced for this to happen and stopped it before it started?  Even if they didn't, look at how rough the fouls were....forearm shivers, SLAMMED a player to the floor, putting him out the game?  There's no way in hell that Ingram should have made it to five fouls; he should have been ejected after two.  If I were Bryant's parents, I would seriously consider suing the Atlantic-10 and Temple University for allowing their kid to get hurt by this fiasco.

I'll be the first to admit; St. Joes' squad are better men than I.  All it would have took was ONE moment for me to realize Ingram was trying to intentionally hurt me or one of my teammates.  He'd get a warning: one more time and you'll get knocked on your ass.  And if he did it anyway, I'd make good on my promise.  Size be damned.  And afterwards I'd go after Chaney; age be damned.  Basketball players that are trying to play a clean game should not have to worry about a coach sending "goons" out on the court to possibly put them on the shelf and their careers on hold.

Now, Chaney has apologized and suspended himself for one game.  One game?  That's it?  He should be suspended for the rest of the season.  It's nothing more than a false-faced apology in order to quell the criticism of his antics.  That isn't even close to the punishment Chaney truly deserves.

ESPN is reporting that Sacramento Kings forward Chris Webber is headed to the Philadelphia 76'ers in a six player deal, where Webber and reserve forwards Mike Bradley and Matt Barnes will go for the Sixers' forwards Brian Skinner, Corliss Williamson, and Kenny Thomas.

This deal is stupid for a couple of reasons. First, the Kings really get nothing out of this deal than a couple of underachieving players.  Williamson is averaging less than 11pts and less than 4 boards a game.  Thomas, who plays the four, averages just over 11 and gets about six boards a game.  All three of these guys have long term contracts that the Kings will swallow for the same price as Webber's contract.  At least with Webber you had a five-time All-Star, which gives you some sort of an excuse.  Why spend that kind of money on three nobodies?

The second problem is a personal one, as the Eagles fans now have a bandwagon to jump on and ride into the playoffs. This is probably the best news they've had since 2001, and it didn't help matters when their former coach jumped ship to Detroit last year to win an NBA Title. Nevertheless, this gives the Philly contingent something to run their mouths about.

More than likely this will put Philly over the top to win the very weak Atlantic Division.  How far they'll go into the playoffs is another question, and that depends on Webber getting motivated like Vince Carter did once he was traded to New Jersey.  All of a sudden, the Eastern Conference has become very interesting.

Over on the West, every team except the Kings should be quite happy.  The West is rich with forwards, and for the Kings to give up their premiere forward - albeit he wasn't playing up to par this year - without getting something valuable in return leaves a huge void on the Kings roster for guys like Stoudamire, Duncan, KG, and others to exploit. With the Kings fifth in the West and only seven games ahead of 9th place Minnesota, they could be in trouble if Thomas and Williamson don't step up their production.

The Associated Press is reporting that Vikings wideout Randy Moss will be headed to the Oakland Raiders in a trade on March 2nd.

This was very surprising, for a few reasons.  First, the Vikings are in the middle of selling the team, and Randy Moss makes it a more valuable franchise.  Arizona businessman Reggie Fowler has agreed to a deal to buy it, but he doesn't have controlling interest yet, and he's been marred by controversy by lying on his resume.  Second, Mike Tice has made it clear that he wanted Moss to stay, and Moss is a very big part of that offense.  Third, Moss's name puts asses in the seats. 

Thus, I didn't think Moss wouldn't leave the Vikings, or at least until Fowler or whomever bought the team from McCombs.  In fact, precisely how much input did Fowler have in this situation?  That's a question to be asked in the upcoming days leading to the free agent signing period.

For Moss, the Vikings get Raiders linebacker Napeleon Harris, the number seven pick in the draft, and a late-round pick.  That isn't bad, considering the Vikings need help on their defense.

As for Moss and Oakland?  Well, here's what his agent, Dante DiTrapano, said:

DiTrapano said Moss was "very pleased to be going to Oakland and looking forward to playing with a team that's promised they're going to throw the ball deep a whole lot to him and having a chance at winning the Super Bowl."

Oakland has a chance at winning the Super Bowl?  When was this...four years ago?

DiTrapano's been smoking that freshly brewed crack.  Moss is going to a worse team in the tougher conference in a tougher division and will have balls thrown to him by a lesser quarterback.  That's not to say that Moss won't make the team better, but Super Bowl contenders they definitely won't be.

It should be interesting to see how long Al Davis will put up with Moss's antics.

Once the conservative bloggers helped to bring down Dan Rather and Eason Jordan, you had to know the moonbats (the leftist side of the blogosphere) needed something to make themselves feel relevant.  After all; they failed to put Howard Dean on the Democratic ticket and they failed in their attempts to help put candidates over the top in Election 04.

Hence, their response? James Guckert.

Apparently Guckert worked for Talon News, a small conservative publication created by GOPUSA's Bobby Eberle, and wrote under the psuedonym Jeff Gannon.  After asking one too many questions that were considered "softballs" during White House press briefings and during Bush press conferences, the moonbats, led by Democratic Party-bought Media Matters of America, decided to do a little digging.

Once they found out his real name they immediately accused him of using false information in order to get access to the White House, of which they had no proof of and Guckert states he used his real information.  They claimed he's not a "credentialed journalist", although no one really knows what a "credentialed journalist" is and is able to establish standards for them.  They accused him of getting special access inside the White House, but they have no evidence of who supposedly gave Gannon this special access, and thus no proof that he received favortism.  They even accused him of outing CIA agent/loudmouth Valerie Plame, although he only cited information that was reported in the NYT a week prior, and not to mention Plame's interference in her husband, Joe Wilson's, mission and her appearance in Vanity Fair magazine.

Hence, the only way they could bring Guckert down is through a hatchet job.  Guckert had a dark past, as he appeared in several gay websites.  Those were brought into the open, and thus Guckert resigned from Talon News out of disgrace.

You see, with the left the ends always justify the means.  They simply wanted a trophy and didn't care how they got it.  However, the whole blogosphere was stained by this "scandal" instead of just the moonbats.  They were the ones who are rightly characterized as a lynch mob when all of this went down, and none of them are willing to apologize for their actions in this ordeal.  In fact, they are still bewildered why the mainstream media aren't paying them any attention like they did Rathergate.

When the conservative bloggers started paying attention to the story, and proved there wasn't anything to it, they decided to flood their sites and harrass them.  Take Powerline for example.  John Hinderacker received countless vulgar emails, the secretary at his law office was cursed at on the phone, among other things.  All of it got to him, and thus he lashed out at one of them.  The recipient was a blogger, and he posted the email on his website.  Even after Hinderacker apologized - something he didn't have to do - there were moonbats that wanted to send the email to the Minnesota bar in order to place it on his record.

Welcome to the future of left-wing politics, folks.

With more and more stories coming out about baseball's dirty little steroid secrets coming out - the latest one being a FBI Special Agent that said he told MLB's security chief that several players were using steroids 10 years ago - it's a wonder that this scandal is coming out now rather than earlier.

   - I went to the library today.  After paying off a late fee that's about, say, 20 years old (hey; it was only four bucks), I decided to grab a couple of books:  one political, one sports.

The political book is Thomas Sowell's Affirmative Action Around the World.  Sowell is one of the biggest reasons why I am a conservative, as my mindset changed after reading the astonishing Race and Culture: A World View.  Although I'm sure he relied on Race and Culture to help him with this book, I am still looking forward to it.

My sports book is ESPN:  The Uncensored History by Michael Freeman.  I was browsing the shelves and it just happened to catch my eye.  Freeman takes a candid look into the personalities and management at ESPN and how it became a juggernaut and a disaster almost at the same time.  From the antics and offensive nature of Keith Olbermann to the sexist and raunchy practical jokes on the female members of ESPN, it's all in this book.  I'm going to find some reviews for this book, if possible.

Josh Howard, the executive producer of "60 Minutes Wednesday" that is being forced to resign, isn't leaving without making some noise first.  The guys over at RatherBiased.com along with The Drudge Report are previewing a New York Observer article that claims Howard is demanding that CBS President Les Moonves retract certain remarks in regards to the scandal, retract the original Bush Air Guard story, and clear Howard's name.

According to Drudge, Howard also wants CBS to disclose to the public the role upper management had in the story, and is threatening to subpoena emails, documents and place Moonves on the stand himself if he is forced into a lawsuit.  Two other employees that were asked to resign, execs Mary Murphy and Besty West, are refusing to resign, and have threatened legal action as well.

I've read the report, and although I felt Howard was in the wrong by not initially telling White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett about the documents so he'd have enough time to examine and respond to them, I would like to see how this will turn out.  To me there were some holes left by the report in regards to what Rather, Heyward and others have done to help aid in the report.  I was also disappointed that there wasn't more quotes by Mapes and Rather.  There has also been some criticism levelled towards the investigators due to conflict of interest and sloppiness of the gathering of evidence.  I doubt if Howard wins, but it'll be interesting to see what new information arises.
UPDATE:  RatherBiased found Howard's worries about the memos on page 162 of the Investigation Report:

By early on Friday, September 10, it was clear that the controversy over the Segment had not abated but had increased. Not only had ABC News continued to cover the story but The Washington Post (page A1) and The New York Times (page A17) ran lengthy stories on the controversy on September 10.94 Thus, as of early on September 10, CBS News needed to decide how it should respond to the controversy.

Howard had developed concerns about the September 8 Segment on September 9, and acknowledged that the bloggers and other matters, such as the differences in the superscript “th” in the official Bush records as opposed to the Killian documents and the ABC News Nightline report that he found “credible,” had shaken his confidence. Indeed, when asked by the Panel if he found the events of September 9 unsettling, Howard stated: “Yes, that is an understatement.”

Thus, in an e-mail sent at 4:53 a.m. on September 10 to West, Howard proposed a media strategy that would acknowledge the possibility that 60 Minutes Wednesday had been the victim of a hoax:

I wonder if it’s time for us to take the offensive and say, look, we think we’re on solid ground, but we’re not just sitting on our hands. We’re continuing to investigate, and if we were the victims of an elaborate hoax, no one would be more anxious to get to the bottom of it than CBS News.

A statement might say:

There have been allegations that the documents on which we reported were either forgeries or re-creations. Nothing we have learned over the past 48 hours leads us to believe that. We remain enormously confident in the thoroughness and accuracy of our reporting.

If indeed one or more of the documents is not authentic, it would mean that CBS News was the victim of an elaborate hoax. We have no evidence that that was the case. But we are continuing to aggressively investigate, and should we find that anyone - the Kerry campaign, the Bush campaign, or anyone else – – was responsible for circulating fraudulent documents and orchestrating a hoax, no one would be more anxious to break that story than CBS News.

The point would be to shift the conversation from CBS did something wrong, to something wrong was done to us and we’re mad as hell.

West rejected Howard’s suggestion via a return e-mail at 8:39 a.m.:

I think we need to defend ourselves specifically [and] not even concede that we think it could be a hoax.

Later on September 10, Howard would again express concerns to West, Mapes and Heyward about the Segment after speaking with Peter Tytell, an individual with extensive typewriter experience. At that time, Howard’s concerns again were not acted upon and thereafter Howard did not have a major role in the Aftermath, with West apparently taking the management lead and Mapes taking the production lead on follow-up stories that defended the Segment.

I don't think this clears Howard, as others are suggesting.  Howard sounds like he's trying to cover CBS's butt instead actually coming clean about the documents.  The statement, "The point would be to shift the conversation from CBS did something wrong, to something wrong was done to us and we’re mad as hell." suggests Howard wanted to point fingers at others to serve as a distraction from CBS's shoddy journalistic practices.  There's nothing in that piece that warrants any kind of sympathy for Howard, at least from me.

Here's my beef with Howard, from pages 116 and 117 of the report (same link as above):

By Tuesday, December 7, Dan Bartlett had heard that 60 Minutes Wednesday was working on a story involving the TexANG, and Ben Barnes and wondered whether anyone from the show would ask him to comment about it. Accordingly, Bartlett asked his assistant to reach out to 60 Minutes Wednesday to determine the status of the story.

Bartlett told the Panel that his assistant called Howard around 4:30 p.m. on Tuesday and said that the White House had heard about the story from sources outside of 60 Minutes Wednesday. Howard said that he could not confirm that the Segment was going to air the next night. Bartlett also said that his assistant told Howard that if the Segment was going to air, it was unfair that 60 Minutes Wednesday planned to give the White House only a few hours to respond.

Bartlett said that Howard left a message for him at 6:50 p.m. to inform him that 60 Minutes Wednesday did indeed plan to air a report involving Barnes, but Howard did not mention the
116

---

TexANG documents. Howard told the Panel, however, that he recalled that the person from the White House who initially called him about the story knew that 60 Minutes Wednesday had documents.

Howard spoke to Bartlett later that evening. Howard told Bartlett about Ben Barnes'
"side" of the story. Howard also told Bartlett that 60 Minutes Wednesday had obtained new documents from the personal files of President Bush's commanding officer in the TexANG.

Bartlett said that he told Howard that this was "new news" to him and asked Howard what the documents said. At that point, Mary Murphy read the documents to Bartlett over the telephone. Murphy's impression was that Bartlett took notes about the documents' content as she spoke.  Bartlett also recalled that Howard told him that 60 Minutes Wednesday had someone on camera verifying the documents.

Bartlett asked Murphy to fax the documents to him that evening. Murphy and Howard
did not want to give him the documents that night, however, but made arrangements to get the documents to Washington Bureau Chief Leissner so that she could have them delivered to the White House by seven the next morning. The four documents provided to Bartlett were the four used in the September 8 Segment.

Hence, Howard and Murphy wanted to jump the White House with this story, and IMO didn't want them to even look at the documents.  I also don't believe Howard had any intention to let Barlett know about those documents, as Bartlett was surprised when they told him about the documents Tuesday evening.  Howard lied when he told Bartlett "he could not confirm" that the Segment was going to air Wednesday, as all plans were go.  On top of that, they couldn't fax copies of the documents Tuesday night????  Why not?  That's how CBS obtained the documents in the first place!

So, pardon me if I don't shed a tear for Howard or Murphy.  They deserved to be fired.