Keith Whamond

The New York Times’ compelling story regarding senate hopeful Richard Blumenthal’s military service claims was a hot topic of discussion this morning. Blumenthal denied the claims he’s exaggerated his war service when reached late last night by the Hearst Connecticut Media Group and plans a press conference Tuesday to refute the allegations.

The usual team of talking heads on MSNBC’s Morning Joe discussed the story at length:

Mike Allen of Politico.com also spoke on Morning Joe about how striking it is that the McMahon campaign has proudly made clear that they fed the story to The New York Times:

A group called RealityCheck411 posted a video of Blumenthal accurately specifying publicly he never served in Vietnam:

Finally, here’s a video released by the McMahon campaign of Blumenthal claiming he served in Vietnam. Embedding was disabled on the original video, which has since been uploaded by other YouTube users:

Courtesy Paul Rademacher and Google Earth

When I’m trying to wrap my head around some national or international news story, a little context is a big help.

That couldn’t be more true than with the horrific oil spill that has caused incredible destruction in our nation’s gulf region. I’ve read the news stories and I’ve seen the pictures, but, I’ll admit, it’s been tough for me to wrap my head around just how big of a spill this is.

Paul Rademacher has developed a cool mash-up using Google Earth that makes it pretty obvious. Just plug in any address, and the map shows you how big the spill is relative to your area.

The result? It’s really freaking big. Like, bigger than Connecticut and Hawaii combined big.

It’s a great use of technology that makes a dramatic point. (Credit: Gizmodo.com and Paul Rademacher)

Related articles:

• Envisioning the Size of the Gulf Coast Oil Spill (neatorama.com)
• If You Think You Have a Sense of the Oil Spill’s Scale (theatlantic.com)
• How big is the Deepwater Horizon oil spill? (google-latlong.blogspot.com)
• The Gulf Oil Spill Is Bigger Than Connecticut [Google Earth] (gizmodo.com)

CNN.com is reporting that Times Square has been evacuated due to a suspicious package.

New York City police are understandably on high alert after a failed car bombing attempt in Times Square last Saturday.

From CNN.com:

Times Square has been evacuated after a suspicious package was found near 45th street, a New York Police Department official said.

The package was found near 45th Street and Broadway, officials said.

The evacuation comes six days after an SUV with explosives was left in Times Square resulting in the arrest of Faisal Shahzad.

This morning, Danbury‘s own Mayor Mark Boughton — who’s currently mounting a long-shot bid for governor — appeared on NBC‘s ‘Today Show‘. The segment featuring Boughton centered mostly on the state’s many multi-millionaires who are running for statewide office, a stark contrast from Boughton’s shoestring campaign.

Pardon me for pointing out that the basis of the segment was eerily similar to Hearst Connecticut’s ‘Running of the Rich‘ Sunday package from March. At least they were nice enough to give us a shout-out.

You can see the clip here:

You know the expression about never knowing what you’ll see at the ballpark on any given day?

Baseball fans saw history in Oakland Thursday: The Yankees turned their first triple play since 1968 to end the 6th inning. The play was turned by Alex Rodriguez, who stepped on third for the force out and flipped to second. Robbie Cano tossed to first to complete the triple play.

You can watch it here (I’m sure MLB will pull this off of YouTube momentarily):

From the Associated Press:

With runners on first and second in the sixth inning, Kurt Suzuki hit a sharp grounder to Rodriguez, who stepped on the bag and threw to second baseman Robinson Cano. Cano’s relay to first baseman Nick Johnson barely beat Suzuki.

An inning earlier, Rodriguez had engaged in a shouting match with A’s starter Dallas Braden. It was not clear what they argued about.

The Yankees had gone 6,632 consecutive regular-season games without a triple play. Their last one came on June 3, 1968, with first baseman Mickey Mantle catching the final out on a ball hit by Minnesota’s John Roseboro.

File this one under “For what it’s worth”:

The Onion, the satirical newspaper/Web site that calls itself “America’s Finest News Source,” is running ads for Greenwich resident Linda McMahon‘s senate bid:

The ad in question

When you click on the link, it takes you to McMahon’s “Linda 2010″ Web site.

Knowing a thing or two about how online advertising works, it’s possible that this ad was part of a much larger campaign on a major ad platform — such as Google AdSense or Yahoo!’s APT platform. If so, this ad probably appears on thousands of Web sites, and was specifically served up to me because my I.P. address is from Connecticut.

Linda’s campaign almost certainly didn’t specifically target The Onion, a faux-news site with headlines like “Man Attempts To Assassinate Obama, ‘But Not Because He’s Black Or Anything’” and “Survival Of Autoerotic Asphyxiation Closest Thing Man Got To Christmas Miracle”.

Still, in a race where appearances are seemingly everything, the ad placement is worth a chuckle or two.

We’ve added a pretty cool new feature to the Web site that you may not have noticed: You can now share your article comments with your friends on Twitter and Facebook!

It’s pretty simple. First, as always, you have to register for an account with us.

Once you’re all signed up and logged in, make a comment like you would normally, but click the “Share” button right above your comment. Click the tick boxes to select both Twitter and Facebook. You’ll be asked once for your respective usernames and passwords.

That’s it! Click “Post” to post your comment and you’ll instantly be sharing your witty observation with all your friends online.

Let us know what you think of this feature by leaving a comment below.

Here’s a screenshot of the new commenting options in action:

Tiger Woods asked for the world’s forgiveness during is press conference today.

What’s your say? Do you forgive him?