All about me

I missed Miner's Day, but somebody (OK, my sister) pointed out to me that it was Saturday. Here's a nice little coal-mining song to get you into the spirit of the celebration, "Coal Dust on the Tombstone." It sounds old-timey, but as far as I can tell, it was written relatively recently. The singer-songwriter who sounds a lot like Judy Collins is actually Kay Smith Elliott.

Sorry, Gov. Pence, but your strong and misguided support for a national shield law took us down the road on which an Alabama state senator thinks he has the right and ability to decide who a "legitimate" journalist is:

Freedom of the press is essential. Freedom of the press is important to me. Freedom of the press is not going anywhere in Alabama.

I know I've expressed my dismay/disgust with the media's unprofessional and malicious show of journalistic incompetence in the Ferguson case. Time and time again it has been shown that the primary agenda of the press is not to provide, thoroughly and fairly, the facts Americans need to be informed citizens.

But let me vent a little more, please.

I think this guy gets it exactly right:

I'm always on the lookout for good writing tips, both to improve my own work and to pass along to others who want to do likewise. Here's a good piece with six tips from Harvard's Steven Pinker. Two are expecially worth mentioning here.

The first is "Don't bury the lead":

Don't worry, be . . . whatever:

Awww, the fragile flowers; did their feelings get hurted?

Republican Senate candidate Joni Ernst skipped out on a scheduled meeting with The Des Moines Register on Thursday, prompting criticism from one of the paper's leading political columnists.

At slate.com, the "Dear Prudence" column gets a Halloween letter:

Ben Bradlee, dead at 93:

Boy, I certainly do wish him well:

Jeff Bezos wants to turn the Washington Post into a national publication, and he’s going to use his other company—Amazon.com (AMZN)—to help achieve that goal.

I swear, big city weenies: