I apologize in advance for this.

I said I would never stoop to running tabloid celebrity stuff on this Web site.

But hey, even the staid army guys over at the Associated Press A-wire must be incredibly bored tonight.

They moved this story for Thursday’s newspapers:

Britney’s Crotch Shots Take Web by Storm

It will be interesting to see how many so-called “family newspapers” run this story.

It’s a sure bet they won’t run the photos.

But since I once worked a stint for People magazine out of New Orleans and just once got assigned to the Britney beat back in her heyday, I don’t feel too ashamed to reprint this one photo here – especially since most of the Web sites now bragging about running them are getting so much traffic their servers are overwhelmed and you can’t get to them.

Don’t ask me who took them.

They are all over the Web on blog after blog.

The story has also already made Entertainment television and all kinds of cable news shows, although they covered up the crotch part.

And, the story is no doubt all over the European press, where they take a less than prudish approach to news anyway compared to the puritanical American press.

The story is that Britney and Paris Hilton have been out partying of late – wearing no panties. I think they do it as a joke to show how gullible the press is and how easy it is to get publicity – if you are among the idle rich and famous crowd.

You may find more by Googling “Britney Crotch Shots.”

Here are a few.

A federal judge struck down President Bush’s authority to designate groups as terrorists, saying his post-Sept. 11 executive order was unconstitutionally vague, according to a ruling released Tuesday and reported by the Associated Press

The Humanitarian Law Project had challenged Bush’s order, which blocked all the assets of groups or individuals he named as “specially designated global terrorists” after the 2001 attacks.

We can only assume this also means liberal activist groups, including environmental groups and peace groups. It’s a major setback for Bush’s authoritarian view of the world and a victory for Constitutional freedoms everywhere.

Don’t forget, the smartest show on network television is back, with new episodes on Tuesday nights at 9 p.m. Central Time on ABC.

Boston Legal

Alabama coach Mike Shula was fired after a 6-6 season that ended with three straight losses, including a defeat by state rival Auburn, according to this full AP story.

Contrary to what the sports guys on TV said, the Tuscaloosa News broke the story on their Website.

And contrary to all the rampant TV talk speculation:

Saban Says He Has No Interest in Alabama Job

Spurrier Says He’s Not Leaving South Carolina

It’s not such a big surprise, really, is it? The play calling this year was iffy at best. The kicking game was such that my one big question is: Why did no one think to practice and implement a fake field goal play? That could have saved several games and Mike Shula’s job. Duh.

by Glynn Wilson

The leaves are falling from the trees in heaps now.

The sun shining through the trees in the backyard still glistens off of a few splotches of burnt red, auburn and rusty gold on the hickories, maples and dogwoods.

A few robins are still coming around to take a bath in the backyard every day.

But the Thanksgiving Holiday signals a transition to one of my least favorite times of the year.

It’s not just the shorter days, or the growing cold, especially at night.

It’s not just the blatant materialistic focus of the entire American society this time of year, when the singing Santas go up in the grocery stores and the local television media folks start pumping Christmas shopping as news.

As much as anything else, it’s the bad TV programming.

Photo by Glynn Wilson

Thanksgiving leaves…

Baseball season is over. The college football season is pretty much over, except for the bowl games. And the basic cable networks start running every bad Christmas movie ever made.

Bah humbug.

If you have followed this site for any length of time, you must know by now that I am something of a crotchety old news guy who thumbs his nose at sentimentality.

The only thing I am sentimental about is freedom.

My favorite holiday of the year is the Fourth of July. Independence and liberty are worth celebrating.

Which is why I will still catch parts of Mel Gibson’s “Braveheart” even though I’ve seen it way too many times now. I will also catch “The Partriot” when it makes the late night cable schedule.

I would like to say I am not a Mel Gibson fan since he made the politically incorrect “The Passion of the Christ” a couple of years ago. But thinking back on it now, I would like to think he made that movie for the money and not to push his radical religious views on us all.

I could be wrong about that. But the point, at least for me, is that I can take greed more than I can take hypocrisy or the promotion of unreality.

So let’s just tell the truth. The Christmas holiday season is all about propping up the consumer spending segment of the economy. It’s not about Jesus.

That at least would be honest.

I don’t like the so-called “crass commercialism” either, but I can take it to some extent – even though I won’t participate in it any more than I would go out and play a character in a church Christmas show featuring a manger scene.

There are a few things I like about winter more than summer. For one, you don’t have to worry too much about being bitten by mosquitoes in the wintertime. And in the American South, there are a few decent golfing days in winter, days when you can get outside and hike.

But the best thing about winter in the South is that it only lasts a couple of months.

If I were a bear, I would sleep through winter too and look forward to waking up when the spring breaks out, when the bees and the flowers come out again.

If you are anything like me in these regards, take heart. If we can just get through the Christmas season without throwing up, and hunker down through January and February, before we know it March will be here in all its spring glory.

The birds will return from South and Central America, and we can break out the digital camera again and get some great shots.

It will warm up enough to put the canoe on top of the van again and put it in the water somewhere and run the rapids.

That is what I live for these days.

What is your favorite time of year?

What is your favorite holiday?

Why?

Photo by Glynn Wilson

The leaves in the trees go red and gold this time of year…

Just coming out of a Holiday slumber and much needed break. Trying to figure out what to blog about next. If you have any thoughts about stories in the news or anything else, here’s your chance to start an open thread discussion.

ANALYSIS: Changes In Congress Could Dry Up The Funding

by Glynn Wilson
Editor and Publisher

CENTER POINT, Ala., Nov. 16 – A new citizens group has formed in Clay, Alabama to fight the state transportation department’s plan to build a new section of Interstate highway through the headwaters of the Cahaba River and tributaries to the Locust Fork of the Black Warrior River east of Birmingham.

Pat Feemster, the new president of Save Our Unique River Communities and the Environment (SOURCE), says she thinks it will be an “uphill battle” to stop the plan to build a 51-mile northern beltline highway to connect Interstate 459 at Bessemer and Interstate 59 near Trussville and Argo.

But due to the Democratic Party’s sweeping victory in the mid-term 2006 elections, it may not be as hard as she thinks.
Read the rest of this entry »

Public Broadcasting’s “Nature” aired a show tonight well worth catching on the re-run.

“Christmas In Yellowstone” was a breathtaking look at wintertime deep within America’s first national park, stretching across more than 2.2 million acres of Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho. Yellowstone National Park is one of the greatest expanses of unspoiled nature and wildlife anywhere on Earth.

One day I would like to visit there, when the budget allows.

It was designated America’s first national park in 1872, thanks to then-President Theodore Roosevelt, and now receives almost three million visitors each year, compared to the Great Smoky Mountains’ 10 million. Yet only a small fraction of those who glimpse the park’s stunning vistas, geological wonders, and animal residents do so during the winter months, according to the show’s Web site, at a time when nature’s inhospitality is matched only by its serenity.

“Nature” follows in the snowy footprints of Yellowstone’s red foxes, spies on the predatory warfare of wolves and elk, and climbs into the den of a grizzly bear that gives birth to two cubs while deep in hibernation. In addition to mesmerizing footage of landscapes and wildlife, trail alongside author and photographer Tom Murphy, who has been coming to Yellowstone for the past 26 winters, camping and photographing amid the silence and solitude of the park.

Go behind the scenes with filmmaker Shane Moore on the Web site to find out how he kept up with Murphy during an at times harrowing trek, reminiscent of the legendary John Colter’s first journey into the park nearly 200 years ago.

PBS’s Nature: Christmas In Yellowstone