“The final chapter has been written for the lone bookstore on the streets of Laredo (Texas).
“With a population of nearly a quarter-million people, this city could soon be the largest in the nation without a single bookseller.
“The situation is so grim that schoolchildren have pleaded for a reprieve from next month’s planned shutdown of the B. Dalton bookstore. After that, the nearest store will be 150 miles away in San Antonio.
“The B. Dalton store was never a community destination with comfy couches and an espresso bar, but its closing will create a literary void in a city with a high illiteracy rate. Industry analysts and book associations could not name a larger American city without a single bookseller.” (cont’d @ NY Times)
“What kind of a man eats his hamburger without ketchup? 
Andrew Sullivan on what we remember most about Bill Clinton and George W. Bush . . . and the consequences:
“It occurs to me that the two most famous statements of the last two presidents will be ‘I did not have sexual relations with that woman,’ and ‘We do not torture.’ And both were lies in plain English, were understood to be lies by the two men involved, and yet both were subject to mental and legal asterisks that could give both men some kind of formal, if absurd, deniability.
“Mexico is protesting what it says is a whopper of an insult.
“
Four San Francisco-based institutions — the 
While 
The 'Not-So-Rough' Guide 