Editor's note: A nationally syndicated columnist, Roland S. Martin is the author of "Listening to the Spirit Within: 50 Perspectives on Faith" and "Speak, Brother! A Black Man's View of America." Visit his Web site for more information. Roland S. Martin says it's time to get over the fact that baseball turned a blind eye to steroid use. (CNN) -- I loved baseball as a kid. I still have fond memories of my siblings and me, members of the "Astro Buddies" club, heading to the Astrodome, the eighth wonder of the world, to watch the Houston Astros play. I played the game in elementary and high school. But now, I'm sick of it, especially when steroids are brought up. The latest baseball drama surrounds a New York Times report quoting two lawyers who say that former Chicago Cubs slugger Sammy Sosa's name was on a list of players who tested positive for an illegal substance in 2003. The list supposedly contains more than 100 names of players who tested positive that year. This report comes on the heels of Alex Rodriguez of the New York Yankees admitting that he used performance-enhancing drugs a few years ago; Manny Ramirez testing positive and suspended for 50 games; and the continuing drama surrounding Roger Clemens. All three were considered locks for the Hall of Fame. But based on what we keep hearing, that'll never happen in this holier-than-thou era. OK, got it. Baseball had a terrible drug problem. Now they have a drug testing plan in place that has some teeth in it. So, can we just move the hell on? Seriously, I'm tired of rehashing the drama. As a sports enthusiast, I would love nothing better than to think that athletes in baseball, football, basketball or any other sport are as pure as heroes from yesteryear. But cheating is cheating. It has been around from Day One, and if a player thinks he can get an edge, well, it's a good bet some will try to get it. Sosa has always been suspected of using drugs, but now that two lawyers say they saw his name on the infamous sheet, he has gone, according to Rick Telander's column in the Chicago Sun-Times, "from hero to zero." But you know what? I don't care. Can we just all accept the fact that all of baseball -- players, management, owners, the unions -- turned a blind eye to performance-enhancing drugs ravaging the sport? And they did so because baseball was on its way to being comparable to the National Hockey League or soccer in the U.S. -- irrelevant to sports fans. After the strike in 1994 wiped out the World Series, fans were angry and didn't give a lick about the sport. But then came 1998 and the home-run derby put on by St. Louis Cardinal Mark McGwire and Sosa, both trying to break the record of 61 homers in a year set by Roger Maris of the New York Yankees. Fans were riveted by the hitting prowess of the two, and people were following their every at-bat. I was working at KRLD-AM in Dallas, Texas, that summer, and we would break into programming to broadcast the call of their at-bats when they were about to break the record. Yea, everyone had Sosa-McGwire fever. Baseball became relevant again. The players redeemed themselves, management was happy to say they worked for the sport, and the owners were delirious because the money came rolling in. So there we have it. All of baseball pulled a Robert Johnson, as in the legend of the classic blues singer who supposedly got his gift for music by making a pact with the devil. Or maybe more like Judas. The sport turned in its integrity for a few pieces of silver. Let's just accept this as a fact, acknowledge those were the dark days and move on. It's just tiring to keep going back to what happened then. It's done. It

Question: It is time to turn the page on what?

Question: What is the name of the person who says there is a problem?

Question: What type of problem does baseball have?

Question: What did Baseball have according to Martin?

Question: Who raced to break the home run record?

Question: Who raced to break home-run record?

Answer: steroid use.

Answer: Roland S. Martin

Answer: terrible drug

Answer: steroid use.

Answer: Mark McGwire

Answer: Mark McGwire and Sosa,


Editor's note: A nationally syndicated columnist, Roland S. Martin is the author of the forthcoming book, "The First: President Barack Obama's Road to the White House as originally reported by Roland S. Martin" and of two other books, "Listening to the Spirit Within: 50 Perspectives on Faith" and "Speak, Brother! A Black Man's View of America." Visit his Web site for more information. Roland Martin says conservative critics are wrong to chortle at the defeat of the Chicago Olympic bid. (CNN) -- Whenever President Obama has traveled overseas and offered pointed and direct assessments of the United States, some of them critical, Republicans have ripped him for criticizing America, saying a president should always defend the United States. So I want to hear the explanation by these so-called patriots of their giddy behavior over the United States losing the 2016 Olympic Games. Yes, the United States. The bid that was rejected Friday by the International Olympic Committee was not a Chicago, Illinois, bid. It was the official bid submitted by the United States Olympic Committee and was representative of the nation. Tokyo's bid was that of Japan; Madrid's was that of Spain; and Rio de Janeiro's was that of Brazil. Republicans want to spin the decision as a massive loss by President Obama and the Democrats who have always controlled Chicago politics. "Hahahahaha," wrote Erick Erickson on the conservative "RedState" blog, "I thought the world would love us more now that Bush was gone." What the critics don't see is that Obama's loss on the Olympics is America's loss. Any red-blooded American who loves to see the American flag raised and the national anthem played when one of our own wins a gold medal should blast the Republicans' giddiness over the loss. I can recall crying along with millions of Americans when our hockey team beat the Russians and won the hockey gold in 1980. Where were those games? Lake Placid, New York. Euphoria spread all across the nation, not only because we beat the mighty Russians, but also because it took place on American soil. When Carl Lewis and Mary Lou Retton dominated the 1984 Olympic Games, we all beamed with pride because they represented the United States on American soil in Los Angeles, California. And when Michael Johnson stormed around the track to obliterate the world record in the 200-meter dash (since broken by Jamaica's Usain Bolt), we relished the win as he took a victory lap around the stadium in Atlanta, Georgia. Americans love home field advantage, and we always desire to show the rest of the world what we are made of. I don't care if Republicans want to rip President Obama over going to Copenhagen, Denmark, to pitch for the games. This isn't about politics. It's not about ideology. This is about America. OUR pride. Our chance to shine. Our loss of the games. So, to all the critics happy about us losing the 2016 games, turn in your flag lapel pins and stop boasting of being so patriotic. When an American city loses, like New York did in the the last go-round, we all lose. And all you critics are on the same level as the America haters all across the world. You should be shouted down for not backing your own country. The next time any of you bang out a press release about "Buy American" or "Support our troops," remember this moment when your cynical, callous and small-minded brains happily rejoiced when America lost the 2016 Olympic Games. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Roland Martin.

Question: Who is applauding the defeat?

Question: What did he say about conservatives?

Question: What did Roland Martin say?

Question: Who did Roland Martin say the bid was made for?

Question: What does he say conservatives boast about?

Answer: conservative critics

Answer: critics are wrong to chortle at the defeat of the Chicago Olympic bid.

Answer: conservative critics are wrong to chortle at the defeat of the Chicago Olympic bid.

Answer: Chicago

Answer: defeat of the Chicago Olympic bid.

Summary:
Roland Martin: The Chicago bid was made on behalf of the whole country .
He says conservatives boast of being patriots but are applauding a U.S. defeat .
He says Americans love to cheer on their Olympic athletes on home soil .


Editor's note: Abigail Thernstrom is the author of "Voting Rights -- and Wrongs: The Elusive Quest for Racially Fair Elections," published last month by AEI Press. She is the vice-chairwoman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and an adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Her writing can be found at http://www.thernstrom.com/. Abigail Thernstrom says an impressive biography isn't a qualification for the Supreme Court. (CNN) -- Judge Sonia Sotomayor is all but certain to be confirmed as an associate justice on the Supreme Court. It is close to unimaginable that the Republicans will peel off enough Democratic votes to stop Senate confirmation. She's a first: a Latina. And she has an impressive life history: Raised in a housing project by a single mother, she went to Princeton and then to Yale Law School. It's a classic American overcoming-the-odds story, but, while admirable, it is not a qualification for the highest court in the land. Democrats themselves have often implicitly made the same point -- about other minority appointees, in fact. They never saw the much humbler origins of Justice Clarence Thomas as an argument for his elevation to the Court. And they used a filibuster to stop Bush appointee Miguel Estrada from getting a seat on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, which they feared would be a springboard to the Supreme Court. Estrada is a Honduran who arrived in America at age 17 with only limited command of English; he was also raised by a single mother and made it to Harvard Law School, where he was editor of the law review. Supporters of Sotomayor argue that she will add needed "diversity" to the Court. Yet, with her confirmation, there will be six Catholics, two Jews and one Protestant. For many Americans, religious affiliation is more important in defining an individual than race or ethnicity. But no one is complaining about "too many" Catholics or Jews -- thankfully. America is supposed to be a land in which individuals are seen as ... individuals. Too many, too few: that is the language of un-American quotas. Sotomayor has suggested that race and ethnicity, to a substantial degree, define individuals. "Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences ... our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging," she said in a 2001 speech. At her confirmation hearings, she will undoubtedly dance away from such ethnic determinism. But it would appear to be what she believes, since she has reiterated the point several times in different venues. Her supporters also emphasize the "empathy" she would bring to the court. It is a quality the president promised he would look for in making court appointments. In a July 2007 campaign speech, he said, "We need somebody who's got the heart -- the empathy -- to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom. The empathy to understand what it's like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old, and that's the criteria by which I'll be selecting my judges." Evidently, however, not all impoverished backgrounds leave you empathetic. The proof is in the pudding, and the pudding appears to be party membership. By definition, conservatives are assumed to lack empathy. As Berkeley professor George Lakoff has argued, "Empathy is at the heart of progressive thought. ... Progressives care about others as well as themselves." And, by implication, conservatives don't. Empathy has thus become a code word for progressive politics -- the likelihood that, as a justice, the nominee will take politically liberal positions. Public policy preferences driving Supreme Court decisions? What a shock. Some justices have much more respect for the law than others, but if the opinions were not often judgments driven by political values as well, they would be less predictable. Most court-watchers thought (correctly, as it turned out) that the recent New Haven firefighters' case would come down four-four, with only Justice Anthony Kennedy's vote hard to call.

Question: What is Thernstrom concerned about?

Question: What type of nominations are they talking about?

Question: Who's empathy is code word for one brand of politics?

Question: Who is Abigail Thernstrom?

Answer: an impressive biography isn't a qualification for the Supreme Court.

Answer: associate justice on the Supreme Court.

Answer: George Lakoff

Answer: author of "Voting Rights

Summary:
Abigail Thernstrom: Sonia Sotomayor's life story is a compelling one .
She says Democrats haven't honored such humble beginnings in GOP nominees .
She says Sotomayor's "empathy" may be code word for one brand of politics .
Thernstrom: I'm concerned that judge may have more fidelity to activism than to law .


Editor's note: Akbar Ganji is a leading Iranian dissident and pro-democracy activist. He served a six-year sentence in Tehran's Evin prison for his reporting on human rights abuses in Iran. The London-based human rights organization, Article 19, has described Ganji as the "Iranian Vaclav Havel" and he has received more than a dozen human rights, press freedom and pro-democracy awards. He is the author of "The Road to Democracy in Iran" (MIT Press, 2008). Akbar Ganji says Iran's leaders should be held to account for denying its citizens their liberties. (CNN) -- This week world leaders will gather in New York for the annual meeting of the U.N. General Assembly. While Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will be among them, Iranians reject his claim to leadership. They strongly oppose any meeting or recognition of Ahmadinejad, especially by President Obama. The pro-democracy movement in Iran today unanimously believes that he enjoys his current position because he was "reappointed" president after stealing several million votes in June 12 presidential election. Popular protests against this state of affairs have been met with bullets from the Iranian regime. Thousands were arrested and dozens were killed. Opposition supporters have been tortured in jail and credible reports of rape have surfaced. In recent years the Western media has not focused on the systematic human rights violations in Iran but rather on Iran's nuclear ambitions and Ahmadinejad's rhetoric toward Israel and the Nazi Holocaust. Iranians are deeply upset by the general inattentiveness of the media and world leaders to their political protests. If you listen to the democratic voices of Iranians and leaders of Iran's Green Movement there is a unanimous view that Ahmadinejad's policies have severely undermined Iranian national interests and he has inadvertently better served the interests of Israel. Although the regime has been able to reassert control due to severe repression recent events have led to important social transformations in Iran. Today there are many prominent names publicly opposing the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei. Many open letters have been circulated that for the first time directly criticize him. U.S. policy under Obama has also played a constructive role. The absence of military threats and new economic sanctions has given democracy activists more room to maneuver, posing new challenges to the regime. In order to deal with this internal crisis Khamenei's only option is to shift attention to Iran's relationship with the outside world -- the United States in particular. By increasing verbal attacks on the West and exacerbating regional conflicts he hopes to draw the attention of both Iranians and the world away from the systematic violations of human rights in Iran. Iran's nuclear ambitions should not be considered the primary weak point for the regime. To a limited extent Khamenei and his disciples can manipulate the nationalist sentiment of Iranians around this issue. The Achilles heel for the regime today is the widespread and systematic violations of human rights against it own people. Greater exposure and scrutiny of this key issue will generate more popular discontent toward the leaders of Iran. Khamenei cannot maintain regime loyalty or acquiescence in the face of these massive human rights violations. It is precisely these organized repressive measures that the International Criminal Court, in other contexts, has called "crimes against humanity." Although Iran, like the United States and Israel, are not members of the ICC, charges can be brought against the Iranian regime via the U.N. Security Council -- similar to the process that led to the arrest warrant for Omar Al Bashir, the leader of Sudan. We in the Iranian human rights movement can document, with certification from a team of international lawyers, that leaders of the Iranian regime are guilty of crimes against humanity under Article 7 of the Rome Statute that established the ICC. Today, the people of Iran are in need of the moral and spiritual support from people around the world. In the current circumstances the most important form of support would be to assist with the campaign of charging the leaders of Iran with "crimes against humanity" and to help disseminate this initiative so that it becomes the main avenue of engagement with Iran by the international community. We are seeking to place this

Question: Who did Iranians reject

Question: Who was rejected to represent Iran?

Question: According to Ganji, who should be charged in court?

Question: Where will U.N. General Assembly meet?

Question: What are world leaders gathering for?

Question: What court will hear the charges?

Answer: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Answer: Ahmadinejad,

Answer: Iran's leaders

Answer: New York

Answer: the annual meeting of the U.N. General Assembly.

Answer: International Criminal

Summary:
Akbar Ganji: World leaders gathering for U.N. General Assembly .
He says Iranians reject Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's claim to represent them .
He says the U.S., other nations, should avoid any recognition of Ahmadinejad .
Ganji: Charges should be brought against regime in international court .


Editor's note: Alejandra Lopez-Fernandini is a senior policy analyst in the Asset Building Program at the New America Foundation, a Washington-based think tank that seeks innovative solutions across the political spectrum. Alejandra Lopez-Fernandini says Americans have no choice but to increase the amount they save. WASHINGTON (CNN) -- As the economy slows, millions of Americans will cut their budgets to stay afloat. This generates conflicting impulses: If I skip that morning coffee and granola, will my thriftiness put my local coffee shop out of business? Will that force America's granola farmers to lay off workers? What's a budget-conscious, patriotic and hungry girl to do? Not to worry, saving a few dollars now will not prolong the recession. And, more important, spending all your discretionary income will not end the recession. It's true that John Maynard Keynes' "Paradox of Thrift" suggests that, even while saving is beneficial to an individual, too much aggregate savings could deepen an ordinary recession. But in these extraordinary times, where banks and not just businesses are in desperate need of cash, this economic rule may not fully hold. More important, individuals need savings to be prepared for unanticipated expenses and income losses, especially now. The reality is that there is no bailout coming to you. And those getting the bailout might not be willing to lend to you, anyway. So now is the time to save. The money you save is your own personal safety net, what you tap when you have an unanticipated expense like a car repair or when you're between jobs, as many Americans find themselves nowadays. The past decade has seen Americans saving at historically low levels; we've substituted plastic for the piggy bank. But the days of cheap and easy access to credit have come and gone. We all need to save not because we want to but because we have to. For decades, our country's economy has flourished, but it relied too heavily on debt-driven consumer spending to power its growth. Excessive household debt, coupled with stagnating incomes and little to no personal savings, now places America in a precarious position. Compared with the 19 other major industrialized economies, the United States ranks dead last for personal savings. That's right, in 2003, the United States was the least thrifty nation among the G-20. Why is it important that we save more as a nation? Savings offers us the protection we need to make it through hard or uncertain times and to pay for important future needs such as a home, education or adequate retirement. Savings also creates pools of capital for investment purposes (who will fund the next neighborhood coffee shop?) and to keep interest rates low. It appears the current recession has scared us back to saving; we are no longer spending all of our disposable income. To ensure that the hopeful trend continues, government and employers should adopt a new generation of savings policies that are both innovative and simple. Common sense, along with research from the emerging field of behavioral economics, tells us why we aren't saving more already: 1) We like instant gratification Whether it's iPhones or our paychecks, we want everything, and we want it now. We are so short-term-oriented that many of us would rather have a fatter paycheck now than set aside some of that happiness, even if the funds will be greater in the future. 2) We tend to procrastinate Once we start something (or fail to start something), it's really hard to change course. And we'd prefer a hassle-free world. Who doesn't, right? When it's hard just to figure out how to start saving, most people won't. However, the flip side is that when it's easy to start saving, a lot more people will. Think about current retirement savings. How many of us would open an account and make regular deposits if an employer didn't take it right out of our paychecks? When it comes to savings, we need someone to

Question: who saves less than all other big countries?

Question: What does Alejandra Lopez-Fernandini believe government should automatically encourage?

Question: what should government and firms do?

Question: who should automatically encourage saving?

Question: what is crisis forcing American families to do?

Question: According to Lopez-Fernandini what country saves less than nearly all big countries?

Answer: United States

Answer: increase the amount they save.

Answer: adopt a new generation of savings policies

Answer: government and employers

Answer: increase the amount they save.

Answer: United States

Summary:
Alejandra Lopez-Fernandini: America saves less than nearly all big countries .
She says crisis is forcing an increase in savings by American families .
Lopez-Fernandini: Government, firms should automatically encourage saving .
She says you can designate part of a tax refund to go into a savings account .


Editor's note: Alvin F. Poussaint, MD, is professor of psychiatry at Judge Baker Children's Center and Harvard Medical School in Boston, and co-author with Bill Cosby of "Come On People: On the Path From Victims to Victors," 2007. Dr. Alvin Poussaint says while we salute King and Obama, there's more work to be done. BOSTON, Massachusetts (CNN) -- Today, one day before the inauguration of the first African-American president, the Martin Luther King Jr. observance hailing civil rights gains will be combined with jubilation over Barack Obama's historic achievement. The festivities this year portend a new direction for the King holiday. On Monday, we salute King-and-Obama. And on Tuesday, we salute Obama-and-King, as the Rev. Joseph Lowery, co-founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with King, gives the benediction after Obama's swearing-in. The events juxtapose two African-American icons in the march toward racial equality. Traditional tributes to King are likely to be overshadowed by Obama's game-changing win; his success, despite racial barriers, mistakenly leads many Americans to believe that King's rallying cries may be outdated. For example, at most celebrations, the "I Have a Dream" speech is highlighted. With the election of Obama, many are saying that we have fulfilled King's dream. So will the "dream" speech be appreciated only as a powerful historical moment rather than a vision for the future? I hope not. But other perspectives may change as well. In stirring oratory, King said he had a dream that one day his four children would be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. But now, since Obama's accomplishment, scores of people -- including African Americans -- feel we have reached that goal, despite obvious remnants of racial discrimination. In fact, some conservatives are using Obama's success to argue against the need for affirmative action. Similarly, King's oft-quoted words: "I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you ..." will resonate in a different way because of Obama's startling election. I have heard many reports from black people themselves that the president-elect has taken us symbolically to that elusive Promised Land. While Obama's win may have taken the edge off some of King's inspirational rhetoric, it should not lead to complacency in the fight for social justice. There is still much work to be done. Obama's election does not solve the many problems facing the African-American community. We will continue to face disparities in health care, including an infant mortality rate twice as high as whites, and 20 percent of blacks still lack basic health insurance, according to government statistics.. High rates of crime and violence, with homicide as the leading cause of death for young black men, demoralizes black neighborhoods. In many communities, the high school dropout rate exceeds 50 percent. That dropout rate for many is a ticket to prison, where blacks make up nearly 40 percent of inmates, according to the Justice Department. Racial profiling has not ended, and there continue to be horrific incidents of police brutality against blacks. This compounds family stress at a time when federal government data shows 70 percent of black children are born to single mothers and African-American unemployment is twice the rate of whites. These challenges were there before the dramatic economic downturn of recent months; they will get worse if there are no interventions. Obama is doing his share by reinvigorating King's primary theme of helping others by urging Americans' commitment to the King Day of Service, established by Congress in 1994. His emphasis on volunteering is an appropriate extension of King's ultimate mission. People cannot simply have high expectations about what Obama can do for them but must also work as individuals and communities to support his programs to help pull the United States out of its economic and social crises. This January, the link established between the civil rights achievements of King's

Question: According to Alvin Poussant, is Martin Luther King's dream done?

Question: Who says we have a long way to go till all races have equal opportunity?

Question: Which person says this year's Martin Luther King Jr. Day is special?

Question: Who says this year is a special Marin Luther King Day?

Answer: there's more work

Answer: Alvin F. Poussaint,

Answer: Dr. Alvin Poussaint

Answer: Dr. Alvin Poussaint

Summary:
Alvin Poussaint says this year's Martin Luther King Jr. Day is special .
He says it's a prelude to inauguration of first African-American president .
Poussaint: It's a mistake to think Obama's election means King's dream is done .
He says we still have a long way to go to ensure all races have equal opportunity .


Editor's note: Ann Curley is the assignment manager for the CNN Medical News unit. She has been a type I diabetic for 40 years. This is her story of life with diabetes.

Ann Curley uses a pump attached to a catheter in her body to monitor glucose levels and administer insulin.

(CNN) -- When I was 7 years old, my mom took me to the doctor because I had lost a lot of weight, despite a voracious appetite.

My family had just moved from the San Francisco Bay Area to Pasadena, California, and this visit to the doctor's office was my introduction to a man who would come to have a huge impact on my life.

His name was Dr. Robert Deputy, and he was the pediatrician who diagnosed me with diabetes. He spoke to me directly, rather than to my mother, and he asked me questions: Did I feel thirsty? Did I need to urinate during the night? The answer to both questions was yes. He asked for a urine sample and the result was immediate. Dr. Deputy told me and my mother that my body wasn't processing sugar properly. I had diabetes.

That is how my 40-year journey with diabetes began. I was checked into a hospital to learn how to test my urine for sugar, give myself injections of insulin, follow a diabetic diet and control my diabetes. I spent several days in the hospital learning how to manage my disease, and then they sent me home.

Dr. Deputy would call our house each afternoon to check on me and see how I was doing. Much to my parents' chagrin -- and to my delight -- he wanted me to be self sufficient and responsible for monitoring myself. I refused to let my parents give me injections or test my urine. This demand for self sufficiency turned out to be one of my best life lessons, and not just for managing my diabetes.

While some diabetics may feel their disease is a burden, I feel that being diagnosed with diabetes was a blessing in disguise. It forced our family to eat healthily, and it taught me about good nutrition -- something I practice every day. I know carbohydrate counts in most foods, and I understand dietary concepts that most people don't even care about.

Being active is also a way to burn off high blood sugar, so when my urine tested positive for glucose, my older sister Robin was in charge of exercising me. We had countless jump-rope contests, bike rides and roller-skating excursions, keeping me and my three sisters active and fit.

And I felt like a little mad scientist, using a test tube with drops of water, urine and fizzy tablets to see if there was sugar in my urine.

Fortunately, over time, technology improved. First, test strips were developed that could be dipped in urine to reveal whether sugar was present in it. But the truth is, testing urine for sugar was a primitive method. By the time sugar gets into the urine, it's a signal that the body doesn't have enough insulin to process sugar.

And the urine test didn't give an actual number for the amount of sugar in the urine. It simply gave a color reading that corresponded with a range of how much sugar was present in the urine. Inaccurate was really an understatement when you talk about urine testing.

Home blood glucose testing kits became available in the early 1980s, and they were a huge move toward precise control and management of diabetes.

With the kit, the diabetic uses a device to poke a finger and produce a drop of blood. The blood is placed on a test strip that fits into a device that produces a reading of the blood glucose within seconds.

While I initially balked at the idea of pricking my finger several times a day, now I can't imagine not doing it in order to monitor what my blood sugar is doing.

The 1980s also saw the advent of the insulin pump. This device is the size of a pager and contains a reservoir filled with insulin. The reservoir connects to a tube that infuses the

Question: When was she diagnosed with type 1 diabetes?

Question: Ann Curley suffers from what disease?

Question: When did Curley learn that she had diabetes?

Question: What did she learn at the age of 7?

Question: At what age did she learn that she had diabetes?

Question: When did she learn she had diabetes?

Question: Where does Ann Curley work?

Question: where he was diagnosed Ann Curley?

Question: what was the diabetic type for Curley?

Question: what did they test dibetes with ?

Question: Who is a type 1 diabetic?

Question: when did she come to know about diabetes?

Question: what tablet was used for testing?

Question: What has improved prgnoses?

Question: WHat kind of a diaetic is Ann Curley

Question: At what age wAs Ann when she found she had diabeties

Question: who is diabetic?

Answer: 40 years.

Answer: diabetes.

Answer: I was 7 years old,

Answer: I had diabetes.

Answer: 7

Answer: I was 7 years old,

Answer: CNN Medical News unit.

Answer: Pasadena, California,

Answer: I

Answer: drops of water, urine and fizzy tablets

Answer: Ann Curley

Answer: I was 7 years old, my mom took me

Answer: fizzy

Answer: technology

Answer: type

Answer: 7 years old,

Answer: Ann Curley

Summary:
CNN Medical Unit assignment manager Ann Curley is a type I diabetic .
She learned she had diabetes when she was 7 years old .
Testing progressed from fizzy tablets in urine to continuous glucose monitors .
With changes in technology have come improvements in prognoses .


Editor's note: Annette Gordon-Reed won the 2008 National Book Award for "The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family." A law professor at New York Law School and a history professor at Rutgers University, she will speak at the dedication of a new visitors center Wednesday at Monticello.

Annette Gordon-Reed says Thomas Jefferson's ideals have been a powerful force in American life.

(CNN) -- Does the legacy of Thomas Jefferson speak to Americans today? Or perhaps we should ask about Jefferson's legacies, for there are many. His fingerprints are everywhere.

Politics, government, race, slavery -- our third president's life and words touch on so many aspects of the nation's journey from rebellious colony to world superpower that it is impossible to understand the country's history without dealing with him in some fashion.

Even today, Jefferson's name is regularly invoked in the news -- the latest example being writers harking back to the forceful action he took against the Barbary pirates 200 years ago.

His soaring language in the Declaration of Independence -- "all men are created equal" and pronouncement of the right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" -- galvanized many during his lifetime. Those words have resonated across the years with diverse groups of Americans seeking to gain full citizenship in the United States. Working-class whites, blacks, women, immigrants, gays -- all have turned to the Declaration as a form of promise, a credo for the nation to live up to.

It is particularly interesting to ponder Jefferson's legacies at this moment in American history. The election of the country's first African-American president has brought an intense focus on America's past, specifically the history of relations between the races. Again, it is not possible to consider that history in any serious way without thinking of Jefferson.

The great and often remarked-upon paradox is that the man who wrote about the equality of all mankind, and who wrote insightfully and forcefully about the evils of slavery, was also a lifelong slave owner in a racially based slave system. He was not alone in this, of course. Some of the most prominent founders -- including four of the first five presidents -- owned slaves, too. All these men, at various points in their lives, claimed to abhor the institution that provided their sustenance.

Jefferson tends to be held to a higher standard on this question largely because he, not George Washington, James Madison or James Monroe, wrote the Declaration of Independence. And, as hard as it may be for some to believe now, he early on developed a reputation as a dangerous radical.

There was his attitude toward religion. Jefferson did not believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ and, to the consternation of many, insisted upon the separation of church and state. There is no doubt that he would enthusiastically endorse President Obama's statement on his recent trip to Turkey that "one of the great strengths of the United States" is that it does not consider itself "a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation. We consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values."

And, of course, there was his politics. Jefferson was, in the eyes of many, a "leveler" bent on destroying all social distinctions; a move that his detractors felt would eventually lead to the breakdown of racial barriers.

Indeed, during the period leading up to the American Civil War, later generations of white Southerners emphatically repudiated Jefferson's Declaration and, in some cases, the man himself. They knew that whether he truly believed those words or not, the ideas embodied in the Declaration mattered greatly.

The logic of Jefferson's words, the conclusions that one could draw from them, could not be contained. They would transcend their original context and find meaning for generations of Americans yet unborn. Those who feared that outcome -- and those who welcomed it -- were right: Jefferson's words have made a profound difference.

Then there is Jefferson's life, more specifically the place where he lived

Question:
who is Annette Gordon-Reed?
what did Annette Gordon-Reed say

Answer: A law professor at New York Law School and a history professor at Rutgers University,

Answer: Thomas Jefferson's ideals have been a powerful force in American life.

Summary:
Annette Gordon-Reed: Thomas Jefferson still relevant today .
She says his words in Declaration of Independence resonate in all kinds of ways .
His affirmation of freedoms coexisted with his ownership of slaves, she says .
She says Monticello is a slave plantation and a place to celebrate Jefferson's ideals .


Editor's note: Below is an excerpt from Larry King's autobiography, "My Remarkable Journey," published by Weinstein Books and available at bookstores nationwide.  Larry King anchors "Larry King Live at 9 p.m. ET on CNN. Larry King recalls a much-needed win at the track during one of the lowest points of his life. I was thirty-seven years old. (In 1971). I had no job. I had a couple hundred thousand dollars in debts. And a four-year-old daughter. I'd take Chaia to our secret park on our visiting days. That's when the pain cut the deepest -- looking at my daughter and knowing I had no way to support her. Things got bleaker and bleaker. I became a recluse. By late May, I was down to forty-two dollars. My rent was paid only until the end of the month. I locked myself in my apartment wondering how bad things could possibly get. Pretty soon I wouldn't even be able to afford cigarettes. I remembered a night when I was a young man in New York, alone, cold, and without cigarettes or the money to buy them -- I had smashed open a vending machine to get a pack. A friend called up and told me to start living like a human being again. He invited me to the track. I had nothing better to do, and I figured it would be good therapy to get out and have lunch with a friend and watch the horses come down the stretch. I'll never forget that day. I put on a Pierre Cardin jeans outfit that had no pockets and drove to Calder Race Course. I can still see the horses warming up before the third race. There was a horse called Lady Forli -- a filly running against males. Normally, female horses don't beat males. We're talking cheap horses. I scanned the board and saw that she was 70-1. But my eyes really opened when I looked at the racing form. Racetrack people talk to each other. So I turned to the guy next to me and said, "You know, this horse, three races back, won in more or less the same company. Why is she 70-1?" "Well," the guy said, "there's a couple of new horses here." "Yeah, but she should be, like, 20-1. Not 70--1." Screw it. I bet ten dollars on the horse to win. But I kept looking at the horse. The more I looked at this horse, the more I liked it. So I bet exactas. I bet Lady Forli on top of every other horse and below every other horse. Now I had what's called a wheel. Larry King's life in pictures » I kept looking at the horse. Wait a minute, I told myself, I've got four dollars left. I have a pack of cigarettes. I've gotta give the valet two bucks. That still leaves me with money to bet a trifecta. My birthday is November 19. Lady Forli was number 11. So I bet 11 to win, 1 to place, and 9 to show. Now I had bets in for 11 on top, 11 on bottom, and 11 to win. And I had a trifecta -- 11-1-9. When the race began, I had two dollars left to my name -- and that was for the valet. They broke out of the gate. The 1 broke on top, the 9 ran second, and the 11 came out third. The 11 passed the 9, passed the 1, and they ran in a straight line all around the track. There was no question about it. The 11 won by five lengths. The 1 was three lengths ahead of the 9. I had every winning ticket. I had it to win. I had the exacta. I had the trifecta. I collected nearly eight thousand dollars. Eight thousand dollars! It

Question: Who had $42 in his name?

Question: What did he bet on against all odds?

Question: What did Larry think was "good therapy"?

Question: What amount of money did Larry win?

Question: What did Larry bet on?

Answer: Larry King

Answer: Lady Forli

Answer: to get out and have lunch with a friend and watch the horses come down the stretch.

Answer: nearly eight thousand dollars.

Answer: horse to win.

Summary:
At age 37, Larry King had $42 to his name, no job and a daughter to support .
He became reclusive but decided it would be "good therapy" to go out with a friend .
They went to the track, and Larry bet on a female horse whom the odds were against .
Larry won a much-needed $8,000 that day .


Editor's note: Below is an excerpt from Larry King's autobiography, "My Remarkable Journey," published by Weinstein books. Larry King anchors "Larry King Live" at 9 p.m. ET on CNN.

Larry, left, at age 10 with his younger brother, Marty, shortly after their father died.

I was walking home from the library carrying nine books. That's the way my memory sees it. I can't know for sure if it was exactly nine books. Maybe I picture nine books because I was nine years old. I'm certain that I was nine years old, because I'm sure of the date -- June 9, 1943. There were a lot of books under my arm on that summer day because I loved books. I wonder what happened to those nine books ...

There were three squad cars in front of my apartment building. Flivvers, we called them. I don't remember exactly when I started to hear my mother's screams. But as I hurried up the steps, a cop quickly came down, straight for me. He picked me up and the books went flying.

Watch Larry on his "Remarkable journey" »

I'm not sure if I knew the cop. But I may have. For years, before the war started and my father went to work in the defense plant, he'd owned a little neighborhood bar and grill. He was friendly with all the cops. The cops loved my father the way they loved any bar owner who had a great sense of humor. I remember having my own police costume when I was very young. A badge and a little nightstick came with it. I'd make like I was walking the beat.

The cop put me in the squad car. He told me that my father had died. Heart attack.

I didn't cry. I remember that. I didn't cry. I was more befuddled than anything else. It must have been difficult for the cop. He started the car and drove. We wound through the streets of Brownsville and ended up at a movie theater.

I'll never forget the movie, Bataan, starring Robert Taylor as Sergeant Bill Dane. It was about a bunch of American soldiers trying to stave off the Japanese invasion of the Philippines.

Larry King's life in pictures »

Sergeant Dane and his patrol are ordered to blow up a bridge to stop the advancing enemy. They're cut down one by one until only Sergeant Dane and two others remain. The first is killed by a sniper. The second is stabbed by a Japanese soldier who'd been playing dead. The movie ends with Sergeant Dane firing his machine gun straight into the camera at the Japanese soldiers coming at him in one last act of courage and defiance.

I don't remember what it was like when I got home that day. A lot about that day I've blocked out. My younger brother Marty has blocked it out, too. He was only six at the time. But there are a few more memories attached.

I didn't go to the funeral. I'd been so close to my father -- yet I refused to go. I stayed at home. There must've been somebody watching me, but I remember being alone. I remember bouncing a spaldeen -- the Spalding rubber ball we used to play stickball -- off the front stoop.

Two other things I can tell you for sure. I never went back to that library again, and from that day on I was nervous if I saw a squad car in my neighborhood. If one parked by my apartment building, I'd start running home, in fear that my mother had died.

Question: What did Larry refuse to attend

Question: What age was Larry when his father died

Question: What was the cause of death?

Question: What person said they blocked much of that day

Question: Who broke the news

Question: What person refused to attend the funeral

Answer: the funeral.

Answer: 10

Answer: Heart attack.

Answer: Larry King

Answer: The cop

Answer: Larry King

Summary:
Larry was 9 years old when his father died of a heart attack in 1943 .
Larry says he has blocked much of that day from his memory .
He recalls a police officer broke the news, then took him to see a movie .
Larry refused to attend funeral though he and his father were extremely close .


Editor's note: Below is an excerpt from Larry King's autobiography, "My Remarkable Journey," published by Weinstein books. Larry King anchors "Larry King Live" at 9 p.m. ET on CNN. Larry, left, at age 10 with his younger brother, Marty, shortly after their father died. I was walking home from the library carrying nine books. That's the way my memory sees it. I can't know for sure if it was exactly nine books. Maybe I picture nine books because I was nine years old. I'm certain that I was nine years old, because I'm sure of the date -- June 9, 1943. There were a lot of books under my arm on that summer day because I loved books. I wonder what happened to those nine books ... There were three squad cars in front of my apartment building. Flivvers, we called them. I don't remember exactly when I started to hear my mother's screams. But as I hurried up the steps, a cop quickly came down, straight for me. He picked me up and the books went flying. Watch Larry on his "Remarkable journey" » I'm not sure if I knew the cop. But I may have. For years, before the war started and my father went to work in the defense plant, he'd owned a little neighborhood bar and grill. He was friendly with all the cops. The cops loved my father the way they loved any bar owner who had a great sense of humor. I remember having my own police costume when I was very young. A badge and a little nightstick came with it. I'd make like I was walking the beat. The cop put me in the squad car. He told me that my father had died. Heart attack. I didn't cry. I remember that. I didn't cry. I was more befuddled than anything else. It must have been difficult for the cop. He started the car and drove. We wound through the streets of Brownsville and ended up at a movie theater. I'll never forget the movie, Bataan, starring Robert Taylor as Sergeant Bill Dane. It was about a bunch of American soldiers trying to stave off the Japanese invasion of the Philippines. Larry King's life in pictures » Sergeant Dane and his patrol are ordered to blow up a bridge to stop the advancing enemy. They're cut down one by one until only Sergeant Dane and two others remain. The first is killed by a sniper. The second is stabbed by a Japanese soldier who'd been playing dead. The movie ends with Sergeant Dane firing his machine gun straight into the camera at the Japanese soldiers coming at him in one last act of courage and defiance. I don't remember what it was like when I got home that day. A lot about that day I've blocked out. My younger brother Marty has blocked it out, too. He was only six at the time. But there are a few more memories attached. I didn't go to the funeral. I'd been so close to my father -- yet I refused to go. I stayed at home. There must've been somebody watching me, but I remember being alone. I remember bouncing a spaldeen -- the Spalding rubber ball we used to play stickball -- off the front stoop. Two other things I can tell you for sure. I never went back to that library again, and from that day on I was nervous if I saw a squad car in my neighborhood. If one parked by my apartment building, I'd start running home, in fear that my mother had died.

Question: What caused Larrys fathers death?

Question: What did Larry do after his father died?

Question: When did he die?

Question: In what year did Larry's father die?

Question: What did his father die of?

Question: What age was Larry when his father died?

Answer: Heart attack.

Answer: younger brother, Marty,

Answer: June 9, 1943.

Answer: 1943.

Answer: Heart attack.

Answer: 10


Editor's note: Below is an excerpt from Nancy Grace's new novel "The Eleventh Victim."  published by Hyperion. Nancy anchors "Nancy Grace" on HLN nightly at 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. ET. HLN's Nancy Grace makes her fiction debut with "The Eleventh Victim." A little something. What was it? Something...some detail was wrong.  . He couldn't just leave the body lying there like that. There was something missing. It was biting at him. He'd tried to go, walking back to his car in the dark twice now, but the nagging in his brain wouldn't let him leave until she was absolutely perfect. He looked at her lying there in the moonlight. Her dead body was absolutely stunning. Before, when she had been alive, sitting in the passenger seat of his car, talking and talking about her life and herself and her journey from Anniston, Alabama, to Atlanta to break into acting, he thought his head would blow up like a bomb. She just wouldn't shut up. What did she think it was...a date? She was a hooker. He spotted her climbing the steep steps out of the MARTA subway station downtown. She got straight into his car with a big smile when he offered her a ride. Once inside, driving, he kept looking away from the road, stealing glances at her neck. Something about it drew him. Maybe the shape, the curve -- or maybe it was the soft hollow spot at the bottom. It was the only thing about her he could stomach. Watch Nancy talk about her new novel » He lowered the automatic windows so her conversation would fly out into the night and he wouldn't have to hear it. Her teeth and lips revolted him. The shiny pink lip gloss she was wearing had thickened in spots across her lips and some had smeared onto her front teeth. Looking over at her as she talked, Cruise thought it was the most disgusting thing he had ever seen. Back to the task at hand. What was it? It was maddening...he couldn't bring himself to leave until everything was just right...perfect, in fact. Every detail mattered. Like a delicate soufflé or performing his specialty, decorating with boiling-hot spun sugar, perfection was achieved only by acute attention to detail. There, in the dark of the clearing, it hit him. Turning, he walked to his car and reached through the open window into the glove compartment and got it. The baker's twine. It was his favorite brand --it was actually the only twine he would ever consider using -- just shipped in from France. He had posed her on her back. The four bright-red puncture marks torn into her mid-back didn't bother him at all. In fact, the dark red against the white skin created a vivid contrast that was somehow pleasing to him. Walking back to her body, which he had spread carefully on a bed of soft grass to more suitably frame her pale limbs in a night lit only by the moon, he paused again. He needed the perfect spot. He couldn't rush this or he wouldn't sleep all night. The wrist? Like a bracelet? No. She was wearing a tacky, gold-tone watch. That would ruin the whole thing for him. And he couldn't bring himself to actually touch the timepiece she wore there on her right wrist. It looked cheap; he was sure the gold-tone finish was turning dark at the edges of the band. The neck? No. It was much too close to the lip gloss. The gloss had a faint, fruity odor, foul as gasoline fumes to Cruise, and that alone made him want to retch. It would totally destroy the twine's effect. Sometime during their "date," fresh, damp dirt and a little grass had smeared horizontally across her mouth and worked its way up into her nose. He left it there. That was a beautiful and poetic touch of nature

Question:
What does the heroine become?
what is the book called?
Who is the novel's main character

Answer: Eleventh Victim."

Answer: "The Eleventh Victim."

Answer: Cruise

Summary:
"The Eleventh Victim" is about an Atlanta assistant DA whose fiance is murdered .
The novel's heroine, Hailey Dean, relocates to New York for a fresh start .
She becomes a therapist whose patients begin dying -- they are murdered .
The murders are similar to 11 Atlanta killings and Hailey must solve the case .


Editor's note: Benjamin Todd Jealous is the new president and CEO of the NAACP. Benjamin Jealous says the 100-year-old NAACP has an ambitious agenda for civil and human rights. (CNN) -- Thursday the U.S. Senate passed a resolution apologizing for slavery and for legalized segregation. It arrived more than a hundred years late, but better late than never. Members of the U.S. House of Representatives are expected to pass a similar resolution, and when they do, the bipartisan resolution will acknowledge our nation's need to take a historic leap out of the shameful past of racial discrimination and toward a future that promises all citizens full access to the legal protections laid out in the U.S. Constitution. But we must go beyond the civil rights guaranteed in the Constitution and advocate for the human rights that will assure that America's promise is realized for all. While our Constitution mandates equality, for example, there is no constitutional guarantee for an education, let alone a good education. The fight for good schools is a struggle for our human rights. Some have opined that there is no longer a need for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and that we as a society are post-racial because of the election of our first black president. But we cannot be post-racial until we are post-racism. The case of Troy Davis, an African American man set for execution who we believe was wrongly convicted, is an exemplar of the disparities that still rock our nation (see IAMTROY.com). Davis was convicted of killing a police officer and has spent 18 years on death row. There is no physical evidence linking him to the crime and seven of the nine witnesses recanted or contradicted their testimony. His case has sparked an outcry from both proponents and opponents of the death penalty including former FBI director William Sessions and conservative presidential candidate Bob Barr. Yet our laws don't allow him a new trial to reexamine the evidence that points to his innocence. African-Americans are disproportionately represented on death row. Of the 3,500 people on death row, about 42 percent are black, and virtually all are poor. Studies underscore that it is race and class, more than guilt, that determines whether a defendant, once convicted, is sentenced to death. The statistics paint an ongoing portrait of inequality. Unemployment for African-Americans remains twice that of whites and studies show there is no scientific rationale -- neither education nor experience -- that explains the gap. In some American cities, 50 percent of school-aged black men drop out of school and as much as 50 percent of young black men are unemployed. Now, as we prepare to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the NAACP in New York from July 11-16 (NAACP.org), we recognize that despite our many accomplishments, we have a long path ahead to right the inequity that still racks our nation. Prompted by the riots in Abraham Lincoln's hometown of Springfield, Illinois, where a mob of whites containing many of the town's "best citizens," raged for two days, killed and wounded scores of African-Americans, and drove thousands from the city, a multiracial group of intellectuals, journalists and activists gathered in a small New York apartment to launch the NAACP and fight lynching's and mob violence. History has shown the efficacy of our tried and true approach: dreaming bold dreams, breaking them down into incremental steps and ultimately achieving big victories. And our triumphs strengthen the fabric of democracy in America. When, after a multidecade-long struggle, we ended the cruel practice of lynching, not only African-Americans benefited but also Catholics, who were, after black people, the likeliest targets of lynchings in the South. Similarly, our lawsuit against 15 banks for steering African-Americans into the predatory loans that have devastated neighborhoods today would force transparency and accountability that would benefit all Americans. The election of President Obama is the result of a decades-long fight for political inclusion. His victory may have come as a bolt from the blue for some, but at the NAACP, we know that our

Question: What type of agenda does NAACP have?

Question: What organization fights inequity in eduction?

Question: What organization still has a "radical" agenda after 100 years?

Answer: for civil and human rights.

Answer: NAACP

Answer: NAACP

Summary:
Benjamin Jealous: NAACP formed in response to lynchings and race riots .
He says organization still has a "radical" agenda after 100 years .
Jealous: We must move beyond civil rights to human rights .
He says organization is fighting inequities in education and criminal justice .


Editor's note: Bishop T.D. Jakes is founder and senior pastor of The Potter's House of Dallas, Texas, a multiracial, nondenominational church with more than 50 outreach ministries.

"It is a victory for democracy that proves that our country provides possibilities for all people," writes Jakes.

(CNN) -- Last night, I like most Americans of all stripes, watched with visible goose bumps as history was made. I sat with my 13-year-old son and looked from the screen to his eyes as Sen. Barack Obama became the first African American in history to lead a U.S. major-party ticket when he claimed the nomination for the Democratic Party for president of the United States.

I congratulate Sen. Obama on this historic accomplishment. I thank him for accepting the torch that was lit by our forefathers and proudly carrying it through the darkness of our struggles, trials and tribulations, bringing light and hope to a new generation, and for facing all those who said "No" and "You can't win," or "It will never happen," and firmly, proudly, defiantly saying, "Yes I can!"

However, what I really hope people take away from that night is that this is not just a victory for African Americans, it is a victory for democracy that proves that our country provides possibilities for all people. It is also a sign that a metamorphosis is in progress. Today we saw that Americans respect experience, but are interested in change. I hope that we can somehow merge the best ideas of our differences and emerge with a president who epitomizes our highest and best ideals. While it remains unclear where we are going, last night proves that we as a people have moved beyond business as usual.

I congratulate not just Sen. Obama on his victory, but the country on this landmark event that has shattered a past all too often filled with reasons to separate us as opposed to a voice of reason to unite us. The victory cup does not rest on the shoulders of the senator alone, but to all those who have been able to lift the conversation from petty racism, antiquated cut-throat politics, and fear-based campaigns to the larger issues of how we would like to see our country led into the future and ultimately how our country will be remembered.

As the days and discussions of this political season continue, it is my sincere hope and prayer that we do not sink back into the abyss of political pettiness that has plagued our country and our lives for so many years. I am grateful to Sen. Hillary Clinton for giving, through this campaign, a chance for my daughters to see that their femininity is not a liability. Today both my sons and daughters came to understand that their ethnicity isn't viewed by progressive Americans as a limitation or a liability. iReport.com: Readers' feelings on Obama

For me it was almost déjà vu as I sat with my son. I remembered a little over 40 years ago watching the famous King speech with my dad. Similarly, I watched with my youngest son last night as a historical moment unfolded. He and I saw the dreams of slaves come true as the sons of slaves and the slave owners clapped their hands in one progressive sweep. As I drifted into sleep, all I could see was the twinkle in my son's eyes. His eyes were illuminated with possibilities, and his heart was filled with the potential of what is attainable for qualified, competent people of all types who prepare themselves intellectually and are well vested with a divine sensitivity to the "fierce urgency of now!"

Congratulations Sen. Obama.

Question: Who congratules obama?

Question: What does Jake congratulate?

Question: Who congratulates jake?

Question: Who did Jakes congradulate?

Question: What Senator achieved a historical achievement?

Question: What is it a victory for?

Answer: Bishop T.D. Jakes

Answer: Sen. Obama on this historic accomplishment. I thank him for accepting the torch that was lit by our forefathers and proudly carrying it through the darkness of our struggles, trials and tribulations, bringing light and hope to

Answer: Sen. Obama

Answer: Sen. Obama

Answer: Sen. Obama.

Answer: democracy

Summary:
Bishop T.D. Jakes: "I congratulate Sen. Obama on this historic accomplishment"
Jakes: "Not just a victory for African Americans, it is a victory for democracy"
Jakes: Nomination "proves that our country provides possibilities for all people"
Jakes congratulates "the country on this landmark event"


Editor's note: Bob Greene is a bestselling author whose current book is "When We Get to Surf City: A Journey Through America in Pursuit of Rock and Roll, Friendship, and Dreams." Bob Greene says one dentist in Iowa found an ingenious way of keeping his chair filled with patients. (CNN) -- You may not have the answer for how to thrive in a lousy economy. I may not have the answer for how to thrive in a lousy economy. But the truck stop dentist figured it out a long time ago. "When your dental practice is in a truck stop, you don't have a lot of patients coming in for their six-month cleanings," said Dr. Thomas P. Roemer. "You have people walking in holding their jaws in pain. Treatment is not optional -- they need to see a dentist, and they need to see me now." Dr. Roemer's one-man dental office is inside the Iowa 80 Truckstop, at Exit 284 of Interstate 80, near the small town of Walcott. The complex proclaims itself to be the world's largest truck stop, and if you've never been there -- well, the truck stop itself is probably a story for another time. Suffice it to say that the establishment is spread over 200 acres, that it features its own movie theater, a 300-seat restaurant with a 50-foot salad bar, the Super Truck Showroom (more than 75,000 truck-related items for sale, festooned with enough gleaming chrome to make you reach for your sunglasses). But the topic for today is Dr. Roemer, and how he ended up offering root canals in a building where people stop for diesel fuel. These desperate economic times highlight the importance of individual inventiveness and ingenuity -- and a dentist has to be beyond ingenious to gaze upon an Iowa truck stop and figure out: A fellow could make himself a pretty nice living in there. "I had a regular dental practice over in Davenport," Dr. Roemer, 48, told me. "I had an advertisement in the Yellow Pages. And in the early 1990s I noticed that I kept getting calls from truckers who were in a phone booth out by the Iowa 80 Truckstop. They had stopped for fuel, and they were in a lot of pain, and they absolutely had to see a dentist." Now... Walcott, the town adjacent to the truck stop, has only 1,500 residents. But the truck stop itself caters to an estimated 5,000 customers a day, most of them long-haul truckers passing through. The light bulb above Dr. Roemer's head snapped on. "I made arrangements with the truck stop to open up an office," he said. "At first I split my practice between my old office in Davenport and the truck stop office. But I ended up closing the old one. My entire practice is in the truck stop now." Business is good, he said, even during the recession. There have been stories from around the country about doctors and dentists seeing fewer patients, because people just don't have the money to come in for regular checkups. But a truck stop dental office is not a place where patients come because they have planned it -- a truck stop dental office is a place where patients come because they need immediate relief. "The sentence I hear the most often is, 'Do you pull teeth?'" Dr. Roemer said. "Someone will come in with his hand to his face, and he'll want to have a tooth extracted. He will have heard that I'm here." But how do truckers learn about Dr. Roemer's practice? "Word of mouth," he said. (So to speak.) The business model of most dental offices, he said, is based on teeth-cleaning: A dentist builds up his or her list of loyal patients and their families who come in to get their teeth cleaned, and when they need fillings or crowns, the office is there for them. The truck stop dentist, by necessity, turns that business model

Question: Where is his dental practice?

Question: Greene said that the traffic ensured that some truckers will be in need of what?

Question: What dentist discovered a clever marketing method?

Question: What state is the dentist from?

Question: What interstate was the truck stop located at?

Question: Who described the clever dentist?

Answer: inside the Iowa 80 Truckstop, at Exit 284 of Interstate 80, near the small town of Walcott.

Answer: to see a dentist,

Answer: Dr. Roemer,

Answer: Iowa

Answer: Interstate 80,

Answer: Bob Greene

Summary:
Bob Greene: Dentist in Iowa found ingenious way of boosting his business .
He says dentist set up a thriving practice at a busy truck stop on Interstate 80 .
Greene: Traffic ensures there will be some truckers in need of dental care .
He says the dentist can't rely on return business from his patients .


Editor's note: Brian Levin is a professor of criminal justice at California State University, San Bernardino and director of the university's Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism. Michael Stoops is executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless in Washington.

Brian Levin says the homeless are excluded from lessons on tolerance and aren't protected by hate crime laws.

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts (CNN) -- Over the last two calendar years, more Americans in the United States were killed in a little-noticed spate of unprovoked attacks than were killed by terrorists, in large commercial jet crashes or in racial hate crimes.

Since 1999, more than 240 vulnerable homeless Americans have been stabbed, beaten, drowned, shot or burned to death in a revolting display of one of the last socially tolerated prejudices, this one based on class.

Despite being prime targets of prejudice and violence, particularly in today's youth subculture, the homeless are routinely excluded from lessons related to tolerance, as well as from official data collection and hate-crime penalty enhancement laws.

A newly released report from the National Coalition for the Homeless documented 27 unprovoked, apparently bias-related homicides by attackers in the United States last year, down one from the previous year and the second-highest number of killings since 2001.

After bottoming mid-decade, the number killed has not dipped below 20 a year since 2005. In contrast, the FBI documented only 12 hate-crime homicides nationally for the two most recently available calendar years combined.

According to the NCH and the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism, nearly 2 1/2 times more homeless people in America have been killed over the past 10 years in apparent unprovoked bias homicides than the total for all the other hate- crime homicides -- on the basis of race, religion, national origin, disability and sexual orientation -- combined.

Like other hate crime perpetrators, these attackers are typically young male "thrill offenders" seeking excitement, with 58 percent of assailants over the past 10 years falling in the 13-19 age range. In 2006, three teenagers out for fun attacked homeless people in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, with baseball bats, killing one of their victims, 45-year-old Norris Gaynor. One pleaded guilty and the two others were convicted of murder last September after the jury saw graphic surveillance tape of one of their nonlethal beatings from earlier in the evening.

These attacks exclude the large number of other types of crimes involving the homeless, such as personal disputes, homeless-on-homeless violence, robbery, drugs or murder for life insurance proceeds.

The August issue of Maxim, a youth-oriented magazine targeted at college-aged males, joked about last weekend's National Hobo Convention in Britt, Iowa, in a blurb titled "Hunt the Homeless." The journal quipped "Kill one for fun. We're 87 percent sure it's legal."

In previous violent attacks, some assailants have referenced degrading and violent depictions in popular culture such as "Bumfights" either during their crimes or in subsequent interviews with authorities, with some even filming the events.

"Bumfights" is a popular violent video series that sold hundreds of thousands of tapes and DVDs before going viral on the Internet. The film series sets a new low in American popular culture, featuring fights between homeless men plied by the producers with alcohol, as well as sadistic parodies of the late Australian conservationist "crocodile hunter" Steve Irwin.

These "skits" feature terrified sleeping homeless people who are startled awake and forcibly restrained with duct tape by "hunters" narrating their attacks with feigned Australian accents. Samuel Bowhay of Grinnell College found almost 86,000 videos on YouTube last month with "bum" in the title, thousands more than videos with other derogatory prejudiced epithets.

While homeless advocates lack the political and financial infrastructure often needed to institute policy reform, the frequency and brutality of the bias attacks have renewed focus on the nature of this violent form of prejudice and ways to address it.

Last week, District of Columbia Mayor Adrian Fenty signed legislation adding homeless status to the district's hate-crime law

Question: what is not protected by hate-crime laws ?

Question: who leads some to think of hunting homeless as a sport?

Question: What has popular culture lead to?

Question: What did Levin say?

Question: What must laws block?

Answer: homeless

Answer: college-aged males,

Answer: fights between homeless men

Answer: the homeless are excluded from lessons on tolerance and aren't protected by hate crime laws.

Answer: hate crime

Summary:
Levin, Stoops: Homeless aren't protected by hate-crime laws or tolerance lessons .
They say new report documents disturbing level of violence vs. homeless .
They say popular culture leads some to think of hunting homeless as a sport .
Levin, Stoops: Laws must forcefully block violence against homeless .


Editor's note: Brian Levin is director of the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino. Jack McDevitt is the director of the Institute on Race and Justice and Associate Dean in the College of Criminal Justice at Northeastern University. Both have testified before Congress in support of federal hate crime legislation and are co-authors of a book on hate in America, due to be published next year. Brian Levin says a new federal hate crime law is needed to combat violent incidents of bias. SAN BERNARDINO, California (CNN) -- America needs a coordinated and multifaceted response to combat the continuing scourge of violent hate crime like the crime committed at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum on June 10. The Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act, originally introduced by Sen. Edward Kennedy a decade ago and nearly passed during the most recent legislative session, is expected to go before the Senate for a vote soon. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder testified on its behalf Thursday before the Senate Judiciary Committee. It is a crucial step in the nation's evolving response to hate crime. A hate crime occurs when an individual intentionally targets a victim or their property because of his or her actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, disability or sexual orientation. While some have argued that these kind of laws criminalize free speech, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled in the 1993 case, Wisconsin v. Mitchell, that well-drafted hate crime laws are constitutional and do not punish speech. Rather they enhance the penalties only for acts that are already considered crimes. The act is named for Matthew Shepard, a 21-year-old gay college student who was kidnapped, robbed, tortured and left to die, tied to a fence in a remote area outside of Laramie, Wyoming in October 1998. His mother Judy has been a tireless advocate for hate crime laws and victims. The Shepard Act remedies legal loopholes in federal and state criminal law that fail to protect against bias-motivated attacks based on such characteristics as sexual orientation, gender, gender identity and disability. It also removes antiquated "Klan era" language that forces federal prosecutors to tie violent racial attacks to a small number of activities such as participating in a jury, voting or using hotels. As recent events have indicated, today's violent hate offenders, unlike their predecessors, will often swing into brutal action on their own initiative without waiting for a victim to exercise a specific activity covered by old 1960s laws. However, much of the act's potency lies not in what it punishes, but rather in its recognition of the primary role local authorities now play in combating hate crime. Nearly all hate crime investigations and prosecutions in the United States are handled by state and local authorities, such as the Boston Police or Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police. Gone are the days where masses of federal agents and soldiers had to swoop into states to protect new students and freedom riders from thugs in Klan-dominated municipalities. The act has a clear bias in favor of local prosecution and has restrictions that require federal prosecution only in limited cases where the leadership of the DJ approves. However, reporting data indicates that some states apparently provide limited assistance to hate crime victims. These jurisdictions report either zero hate crimes or a handful of crime to the FBI, year after year, while neighboring states with similar demographics and crime profiles report far more. A 2005 Bureau of Justice Statistics victimization study found that only a small fraction of hate crimes nationally are actually reported. Thus, there appear to be various instances where federal help or prosecution are still necessary. Today, in the midst of our economic downturn, federal authorities are needed much more to assist cash-strapped local departments, not as an unwelcome occupying force, but as a desperately needed partner to assist with forensics, technical assistance and investigations. Even in police departments with model hate crime investigative units, such as the Boston Police Department's Community Disorders Unit, modern cases increasingly involve interstate travel or Internet hate networks, and require sophisticated ballistic and DNA testing or

Question: Who is going to vote on Matthew Shepherd crime bill?

Question: Whose hate crime bill is the Senate voting on?

Question: What did the Senate vote on?

Question: What requires new legislation?

Answer: the Senate

Answer: Matthew Shepard

Answer: The Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act,

Answer: federal hate crime law

Summary:
Levin, McDevitt: Senate to vote on Matthew Shepard hate crime bill .
They say loopholes in existing laws require new legislation .
They say bill would provide federal help to localities fighting hate crime .
Levin, McDevitt: Hate crimes target pluralistic societies along with victims .


Editor's note: CNN Contributor Bob Greene is a best-selling author whose book "When We Get to Surf City: A Journey Through America in Pursuit of Rock and Roll, Friendship, and Dreams" will be published in a new paperback edition this week. Bob Greene says he and his family didn't expect to be able to enjoy this Mother's Day. (CNN) -- This is the Mother's Day we thought was going to be empty. Last summer, my brother, my sister and I got the news like a sucker-punch to the stomach: Our mother's health, which had not been good for some time, had taken a sudden turn for the worse. A very compassionate hospice evaluator came to her home and said that, although one could never be absolutely certain, the end was quite near. "It may be two days. It may be two weeks." Those were the words. We tried to process them. She would be gone from us by the fall. Except ... "Debby just picked me up a book from the library, and I'm a few chapters into it," my mother said to me on the phone the other day. She got better. "Better" does not mean great; she walks with some difficulty now, she is fragile in ways she once was strong, but on this Mother's Day that we all expected to be such a desolate one for us, she's here. On that morning the woman from hospice first came to visit, our mother was in her bed in the same room where our father, 10 years ago, had slowly died. Toward the end, he had not been able to get out of his bed, and we foresaw the same awful drama unfolding in the same way in the same bedroom. It was going to be even more wrenching to witness this time around. But somehow, from somewhere inside herself, she decided: "Not yet." I don't say that glibly; I know that most men and women, in the months of their dying, do not have a choice about whether they will regain a semblance of their health. There comes a point when there is little to do but give in as gracefully as possible. Our mother didn't. And while my brother and sister and I cherish the extra time we have been given with her, the most moving thing is to quietly behold how fiercely she is cherishing the extra time she has been given with the world -- the extra time she has been given with life itself. That book from the library my sister brought her, it is one of many she has read since last summer. It's as if she realized that, if the prediction had been right -- if she had left us within two days or two weeks -- she never would have known the pleasure of reading another book. She has loved reading all her life; now she is reading new books with a sense of gratitude that we can literally feel. She got to watch one more presidential campaign. She has always taken her responsibility as a citizen with utter seriousness. She thought, last summer, that she would never know who the next president would be. But as, little by little, she got better during the fall, I can guarantee you that not even Wolf Blitzer or John King followed the day-to-day fluctuations of the campaign with more devotion than she did. She used to joke with our father that their trips together to the polling place were ultimately a waste of time: He was on one end of the political spectrum, she was on the other, and, as she put it, "Our votes always canceled each other's out." She was born during the Woodrow Wilson administration -- and in November, against all odds, she got to cast a ballot for president one more time. Whenever my brother flies to central Ohio to visit her, he goes not straight from the airport to her house; he makes a stop. He picks up some

Question: Did Bob Greene's mother survive?

Question: Whose family didn't expect to enjoy mothers day?

Question: Who unexpectedly enjoyed their Mother's Day?

Question: Did Greene's mother survive?

Answer: She got better.

Answer: Bob Greene

Answer: Bob Greene

Answer: She got better.

Summary:
Bob Greene: This Mother's Day is one my family didn't expect to enjoy .
He says his mother has survived and made good use of precious time .
Greene: We should all live as if we have only a few weeks more of life .


Editor's note: CNN Contributor Bob Greene is a best-selling author whose new book is "Late Edition: A Love Story." Bob Greene says Logan, Ohio, paid an extraordinary tribute to its most dedicated football fan. (CNN) -- "Yes, it's all gone now," Craig Dunn told me the other day. "If you're not from around here, you'd never know it was ever there." Dunn is the sports editor of the Logan, Ohio, Daily News, a paper with a small circulation (around 4,000) and a small news staff (five people put the paper out, covering the entire county). Last fall, when I was crisscrossing the country on the CNN Election Express, I spoke with Dunn about the town's high school football stadium, which was being demolished. Bill Sauer Field, it was called. The story I wrote appeared briefly on the Political Ticker and then went away quickly; there was so much rapidly breaking news coming out of the presidential campaign that the story was little more than a blip. Yet I found myself, during the last year, thinking about Bill Sauer Field, and Logan, Ohio, and how it's possible for all of us, if we make the effort, to find the best in ourselves -- to find the best in each other. I find myself thinking about Bill Sauer, and about what that little town did for him, more than I think about almost anything else on which I reported during our long journey through America. And so, with a new football season beginning all across the United States, I spoke with Craig Dunn again the other afternoon. "When I drive by the place where it used to be, it's not with a sense of sadness," he said. "It's with pride for what this town once did." Bill Sauer Field was the core of public life in Logan. The town, population 7,300, gravitated to the old stadium on Friday nights in autumns to watch the high school team, the Chieftains, play their games. And who was Bill Sauer? A self-made millionaire from the community who had bestowed the stadium upon the town? A prominent local politician? A long-gone Logan football hero? No. Bill Sauer was born in Logan more than 100 years ago -- in 1908. From the time he was a little boy, he could not walk. He spoke with great difficulty. His parents, desperate, searched for answers. Logan was and is a rural community, and back then sophisticated medical diagnoses were not easy to come by. His mother and father were eventually told that the boy had cerebral palsy. He attended public school in Logan. It was not easy, of course. He was 23 by the time he graduated from Logan High School. Then, as now, the boys who were strong and swift and athletically graceful were the ones most celebrated. Bill could not even take a step on his own. But he loved the Logan sports teams, and he took pride in supporting them. Football, basketball, track and field -- he never missed a game, and he seldom missed a practice session. He would be there on the sidelines, sitting in his wheelchair, cheering for his classmates. His life didn't get any less arduous after he graduated. His father died. It became incumbent upon Bill to support himself and his mother. He sold Christmas cards; he sold magazine subscriptions. At the town's swimming pool, he ran the concessions stand. His philosophy of life, Craig Dunn told me, was basic: However often you get knocked down, you get back up one more time. Bill Sauer grew older. New generations of healthy and talented young athletes played for the Logan Chieftains on Friday nights. No matter the weather, no matter how he was feeling, Bill was always there. The Logan football stadium had been constructed in 1925. It was the heart of the town; it was what made the community feel

Question: What was Sauer a fan of?

Question: What condition did Sauer have?

Question: What did the town name after Sauer?

Question: What was named after Sauer?

Question: What medical condition did Sauer have?

Question: Who was a dedicated fan of his football team?

Question: What physical handicap did Sauer have?

Question: What was Sauer a dedicated fan of?

Answer: Football, basketball, track and field

Answer: cerebral palsy.

Answer: high school football stadium,

Answer: the town's high school football stadium,

Answer: cerebral palsy.

Answer: Craig Dunn

Answer: cerebral palsy.

Answer: football

Summary:
Bob Greene: Bill Sauer was a dedicated fan of his small-town football team .
He says Sauer had cerebral palsy and a challenging life .
Greene: Sauer wasn't a football star, a millionaire or a politician .
He says town paid him extraordinary tribute by naming stadium after him .


Editor's note: CNN Contributor Bob Greene is a best-selling author whose new book is "Late Edition: A Love Story." Bob Greene says ordinary life stops when Muhammad Ali appears anywhere. (CNN) -- It was still early enough in the evening that the main dinner crowd had not yet started to show up; the restaurant, east of Michigan Avenue in Chicago, was less than half-filled. The party of 10 at the table by the front window had arrived promptly for their 6 p.m. reservation. Nine of the 10 studied their menus, but the 10th, the man at the head of the table, did not. Muhammad Ali, 67, stared down toward the white tablecloth and drew on a piece of paper. He sketched a picture of a mountain. There are a handful of men among us who, simply by appearing out of nowhere, make other men and women pause involuntarily to consider the long paths of their own lives. It is as if these men have always been with us, and if you should unexpectedly spot Bob Dylan in an airport, if you should see Paul McCartney walking through a hotel lobby, if you should encounter Sean Connery entering an office building, it will bring you up short. It's like opening a diary, even if you have never met them, even if you have never seen them except on a television set or a movie screen. Yet Ali is different even from them. Ali -- his story so complicated, his health failing, his imprint on the world so indelible -- makes people mist up the moment they lay eyes on him. It was happening tonight inside this restaurant called the Rosebud Steakhouse; diners at their own tables, not quite sure for a second that they were really seeing what they were seeing, let their gazes linger and could not look away. Ali drew. The other men and women at his table -- this was a gathering of family and friends to celebrate a birthday, and Ali had come into Chicago from his farm in Michigan -- talked animatedly and laughed. Ali did not speak. He wore a blue-and-white Hawaiian-style shirt; someone had tucked a white napkin into the space above the top button. Over the speaker system of the restaurant, a slowed-down acoustic knockoff of the old Tom Petty hit "Free Fallin' " was playing softly: "She's a good girl, crazy 'bout Elvis ..." A family, across the way, talked spiritedly among themselves. They were deciding something. The father and the children stood up. From the ceiling, the song: "... and I'm free, free fallin' ..." They walked over to Ali's table. "We apologize for the intrusion," the father said. Ali looked toward them, showing a gentle expression. The father had a camera. He said to his children: "This is the most famous face in the world." It is difficult to know what the children made of this. Youth and strength and beauty are so fleeting. The man in the Hawaiian shirt once embodied all of those things, before these children were born. Three times the world heavyweight boxing champion, the center of global fascination and frenzied controversy after winning his first title and then changing his name from Cassius Clay, endlessly mesmerizing with his float-like-a-butterfly, sting-like-a-bee ring style, called "the greatest of all time" so often that the words became almost an official designation, the sight of his flawless face and the sound of his confident-beyond-all-dispute voice a sustaining part of the very atmosphere. ... But his road has turned hard, and here were these children, who were not around for any of that, standing with their father next to the table. Ali's family members and friends said it would be all right for the father to take some photos, so he did. When he left, Ali went back to his drawing. More diners were beginning to

Question:
who said that ali embodied youth
What did Bob Greene say?
What did Greene say about Ali's life?
What did Green say Ali embodied?

Answer: Bob Greene

Answer: ordinary life stops when Muhammad Ali appears anywhere.

Answer: his story so complicated, his health failing, his imprint on the world so indelible

Answer: Youth and strength and beauty

Summary:
Bob Greene: Muhammad Ali's extraordinary life brings him instant attention .
Greene: Ali embodied youth, strength and beauty in his remarkable career .
He says Ali drew attention of everyone in a Chicago restaurant .


Editor's note: CNN Contributor Bob Greene is a best-selling author whose new book, "Late Edition: A Love Story," will be published next month. Bob Greene recalls a radio exec who was ahead of his time by working an almost endless day. (CNN) -- I think perhaps the oddest person I have ever known was a man by the name of Robert Hyland. But the truly odd thing is that we all seem to have turned into him. Hyland was the vice president and general manager of KMOX radio, the 50,000-watt powerhouse in St. Louis, Missouri. He came to work every day at 2:30. In the morning. That's right: Hyland would show up at his office at 2:30 a.m. each day. He would then work straight through until 5 p.m. He didn't do this once in a while; he did it each and every day. He didn't do it to set an example for his employees. He did it because he couldn't seem to stop working. "I'm not one of those people who need sleep to be refreshed," Hyland told me once. "I'll go to bed between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m., and I'll wake up at 1:30 a.m. I have an alarm clock, but I never set it. I wake up automatically. I shower and shave, and I'm at the office by 2:30." I asked him if this schedule made any sense at all. "It's a good time to get a lot of work done," he told me. "The phone isn't ringing, and there are no distractions. I have a pile of paperwork on my desk, and I go through it." At 9 a.m., he said -- after he had been at work for 6½ hours -- the other people at the office would show up. And he would keep going. Hyland may have seemed eccentric -- he readily understood that perception; he said to me: "I think what you're thinking is that you're talking to a nut" -- but if he had lived a little longer (he died of cancer in 1992 at the age of 71), he would have witnessed something that might have astonished even him: The rest of the world joined him in his obsession. Hyland died just before the era in which everyone began using cell phones and staring at home computer screens. Society might never have been ready to do what he did -- come to the office in the middle of the night and routinely work 14½ hour days -- had the technology revolution not come along. But come along it did -- and with it came the erasure of all the boundaries that at one time separated the workday from leisure time. E-mails and text messages and BlackBerrys and all their digital cousins may have given us the illusion of freedom -- we tell ourselves that we are unfettered by traditional offices, that we can go anywhere we please -- yet in the end they have created a nation of Robert Hylands. We're never off the clock; that cell phone may ring at dinnertime, that allegedly urgent e-mail may arrive at 11 p.m., that instant message from the regional manager may pop onto the screen when we're on vacation with our families. And what do we do? If your answer is, "We ignore them," good for you. But the truth is, mostly we don't ignore them -- mostly we snap to attention. Ask yourself this: What do you think would happen to an employee who received an e-mail at home from his boss at 8 o'clock on a Tuesday night, and who responded to the e-mail by writing back: "I'm sorry, but I'm only available for work-related e-mails during office hours. If you'd like to communicate with me about this matter, please feel free to do so tomorrow after 9 a.m." That might be the rational answer. But how many people -- especially in this economy, and in this job market

Question: Bob Greene said he knew the radio exec who stated at work at what time?

Question: At what time did the radio executive start the day?

Answer: 2:30.

Answer: 2:30 a.m.

Summary:
Bob Greene: I once knew radio exec who started work at 2:30 a.m.
He says Americans now accept that they are always on call for work .
Greene: In tough economy, workers are reluctant to draw boundaries .


Editor's note: CNN Contributor Bob Greene is a bestselling author whose current book is "When We Get to Surf City: A Journey Through America in Pursuit of Rock and Roll, Friendship, and Dreams."

Bob Greene says John Madden has had a great perk: seeing America on his own bus.

(CNN) -- You've undoubtedly heard that John Madden has left the football broadcast booth. What you may not have heard is that he's not leaving his bus.

"It's been such a great ride," Madden said as he announced his retirement.

But the truly great ride -- the one he will not relinquish -- wasn't his long career as a National Football League broadcaster.

The best ride was the literal one.

Madden's aversion to flying in airplanes led him to perhaps the grandest business perk in all of American life: He was given his own bus, with his own professional drivers. He crisscrossed the country, on his way from one big game to another, on what came to be known as the Maddencruiser, the cost of which eventually was underwritten by corporate sponsorship.

Now. . .you may think that being stuck in a bus for days and nights on end must be a lousy way to lead a life.

Not when you're the only passenger -- you, or whatever buddies and colleagues you choose to invite along. Not when there's food and drink onboard, and television sets with DVD players at the ready, and plenty of room to stretch out and observe the country as it passes by.

And those amenities leave out the most beautiful lure of all. Let President Obama explain it.

He did, inadvertently, the other week. He wasn't talking about Madden -- he was talking about plans for a new high-speed rail system. These were the president's words:

"No racing to an airport and across a terminal, no delays, no sitting on the tarmac, no lost luggage, no taking off your shoes [at the metal detector]. . . . "

That's the gift Madden gave himself, by working out the bus deal -- the gift of avoiding the endless headaches of travel the rest of the world has to endure. Departure time? Whenever he wants. Flight cancellations? No such thing. Cramped seats? Nope. Security lines? There are none.

It can make for a pretty peaceful life. A football game to see every week, the country winding gloriously out ahead of you between stadiums, your main decision boiling down to how to chop up the miles, where to eat and where to sleep and where to stop for a few hours just to talk to people. . . .

There is a hotel on the west coast of Florida where I have stayed quite often, and during football season Madden would sometimes stay there too. If there had been a game in, say, Miami, and the next one was in Dallas, he might ask his bus driver to stop for the night at this place, which features outlying cottages on the Gulf of Mexico.

Talk about a guy who seemed tranquil -- I know his on-air image was always sort of loud and animated, but I'd see Madden having a serenely silent and unhurried meal by himself in the restaurant, leisurely flipping through the sports pages; I'd see him in the little sandwich shop/deli in the morning, a quiet and amiable fellow standing in line with everyone else, waiting to pay for his breakfast pastries; I'd see him, on departure day, strolling blissfully toward his bus, an overnight bag in his hand, having decided that this was the time that he'd like to roll out. . . .

Who would ever have thought that a fantasy life could revolve around something as seemingly mundane as a bus? But in a chaotic and confused world, full of noise and anger and deadlines, the allure of cruising in splendid solitude through the country, seeing America mile by mile, the journey itself being the ultimate victory. . . .

Madden is the grand champion of bus riders,

Question: What did Green say about being able to travel the country?

Question: Who is retiring?

Question: Who had the ultimate perk?

Question: Who did Bob Greene say was retiring?

Answer: John Madden has had a great perk: seeing America on his own bus.

Answer: John Madden

Answer: John Madden

Answer: John Madden

Summary:
Bob Greene: John Madden's retiring as a broadcaster but keeping his bus .
He says football expert had the ultimate perk for traveling the country .
Greene: Highway becomes your best friend as you discover America block by block .