Nifty Zingers and Notes

Former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick has been sentenced to one to five years in prison for probation violations. It's about time. The man has flaunted the law for years; it is doubtful that a regular joe would have received the consideration he has over the length of this tragedy. Still, it wouldn't be shocking to see him rebound in the years to come. Voters can have surprisingly short memories, and the general disrespect he has shown them in recent years may be nothing more than history in their eyes within a decade.

The National Football League has suffered two blows this week, and one for certain was of its own making.

First, the Supreme Court has ruled that it is 32 individual money making enterprises rather than one large one, thus not granting the league the anti-trust status it sought. Justice John Paul Stevens, paving the way for Elena Kagan to replace him, said so. But to be fair to the retiring leftist jurist, he's probably right on this one. It would be interesting to see, however, whether the Court would find that the NFL Players Union ought to be broken up into 32 smaller entities, for if the teams are to be seen as individual factions, should not the Union be busted down into similar pieces?

The second blow comes by the League's own hand. The 2014 Super Bowl will be played outdoors in New Jersey. The powers that be in the NFL seem to have forgotten that it's cold in the mid-Atlantic in February. Do we really want to see a 3-0 championship game played in blinding snow and bitter cold? Stalwarts will point to the famous Ice Bowl game in Green Bay as an example of great games despite weather, but it fair to ask whether players or fans ought to be subjected to such harsh conditions for the sake of a game. It appears to be, at the least, a risky move.

A man in West Virginia is alleged to have burned down his house simply because his wife didn't have his dinner ready when he got home. There have got be easier and safer ways to grill.