READS: Tuesday, February 13 is...

George Fox Day
Hobart Regatta (Tasmania)

From Wikipedia:

George Fox (July 1624 – January 13, 1691) was an English Dissenter and a major early figure — often considered the founder — of the Religious Society of Friends, commonly known as the Quakers.

While my mind's on the subject, greetings to the (literally) six new readers who stopped by last night immediately after my news story on WOI, if any of you came back for a second day. I guess the viewership of WOI news is even lower than I had imagined.

Today's reads:

Gov. Pataki is out of the race for president, and Cyclone Conservative has a post up thanking him for his contributions to the discourse and other campaigns. This may be the first post he's written that I'm not embarrassed to link to.

One of these days, you'd think Git-n-Go would improve their security. If they don't do it soon, they may have to change their name to Got-n-Gone.

Shortly after my story last night, a story on this press conference aired on WOI as well. The Patty Judge quote they used was about as worthless as it gets:

"Drugs are dangerous. Child abuse is intolerable."

Be sure to join us tomorrow when she reminds us that the sun is warm, but ice is still slippery.

Finally, Geraldine at Iowa Progress notes the difference in press coverage between the recent campaign visits of Clinton and Obama. When I still worked for Ed Fallon, I used to hear the same complaint from irate Iowans who didn't live in Des Moines all the time. They were always upset that politicians don't think they exist and never hold events in their area. This is a perfect example of why they do it that way.

Clinton held a large rally in Des Moines, probably less than 5 miles from the headquarters of every major news organization in Iowa. It got covered. Obama held a significantly larger rally in Ames, where most major media would have had to travel to cover it. They opted out. I don't think the average Iowan realizes how hard campaigns have to work to make it incredibly easy for the media to attend their events, or risk non-coverage. I've held press conferences at the capitol before and had some of the media on hand refuse to leave the press room to cover it. It's one of the most challenging below-the-surface issues campaigns face. And it's why they don't hold major events in Fort Dodge.

KL