Quinn throws Hail Mary on pension reform

Gov. Pat Quinn this afternoon floated a desperation plan on pension reform, throwing his support behind a bill that would set up a commission to decide how to fix Illinois' financially failing government worker retirement systems.

Conventional efforts to craft a compromise on pension changes have gone nowhere during the lame-duck session. The new measure filed today would set up an eight-member commission appointed by the four legislative leaders. The panel would issue a report on pension system changes that would become law unless the General Assembly voted to overturn it.

Testifying before a House panel, Quinn said the measure represents "extraordinary action" to break the gridlock. It is modeled after federal military base closing commission reports to Congress. "We must have some sort of movement," Quinn said.

It's unclear whether lawmakers will support the idea, which would give much power to a committee controlled by legislative leaders. The report would be due April 30, and lawmakers would have a month to vote on it if they decided to overturn it.

Labor leaders immediately called it a "clearly unconstitutional delegation of power" and a "sad attempt to get something done."

Quinn maintained the approach has been upheld as constitutional. The governor said he wanted the pension systems fully funded by the end of December 2045, saying it is critical to "act promptly on this crisis."

Under questioning, Quinn acknowledged, "we need a new mechanism or different structure" because political gridlock had not yielded a solution.

House Majority Leader Barbara Flynn Currie, D-Chicago, said she would support the bill in committee as a nod to the governor but had serious questions of the constitutionality of the proposal.

Further, Currie said she worried the proposal would "take us three steps back." Currie said she thought the legislative negotiators on pension bills had made progress.

The committee voted 7-2 to advance the bill to the full House.

Quinn's latest plan came after he urged lawmakers to take a vote on government worker pension reform before the new legislature is sworn in at noon Wednesday, saying Illinois' economy is being held hostage by "political timidity."

The Democratic governor suggested there needs to be compromise, but did not offer specifics on how he thinks the gridlock on pensions could be broken.

Quinn decided to hold his news conference despite being told by House Speaker Michael Madigan that demanding a vote, even for symbolic reasons, didn't make sense when there aren't enough votes to pass the bill, according to Steve Brown, a Madigan spokesman.

Brown said forcing such a tough vote could irk lawmakers who are coming back in the new General Assembly and whose votes may be needed to pass pension reform down the road.

So far, House sponsors have been unable to line up enough votes to pass a comprehensive plan that would freeze cost-of-living increases for six years, delay granting pension inflation bumps until retirees hit 67 and require employees to pay more toward their retirement.

Even if that plan passed the House, it could face an uphill climb in the Senate, where senators went home last Thursday and would have to quickly return to vote. In addition, Senate President John Cullerton has indicated he prefers his own version of pension reform that he argues is constitutional, unlike the House plan.

With time running short, Quinn today said all parties need to double their efforts to reach a comprehensive bill that clears up the state's worst-in-the-nation $96.8 billion in a generation.

Pension reform is essential to put the Illinois economy on "sound financial footing," Quinn said.

"We cannot allow the state's economy to be held hostage by political timidity," Quinn said.

Quinn said more compromises need to be reached on legislative proposals, but he said he did not favor the Senate plan that dealt with state rank-and-file workers and legislators because it was not comprehensive.

A bill pending on the House floor reins in pension costs and addresses the state's pensions for four pension systems. The two additional systems are for university workers and and public school teachers from the suburbs and downstate.

Quinn said the Senate and House are both going to be in Springfield today, although the Senate President John Cullerton, D-Chicago, had said it would be back if the House passed a significant pension bill.

"We've put them on stand-by," said Rikeesha Phelon, Cullerton's spokeswoman. "It's still tentative."

She said the Senate is awaiting House action before it returns. "I don't know how to be more clear," Phelon said.

Read More..

Saban quickly turns to challenges of 2013 season

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — It's becoming a familiar January scene for Nick Saban.

The Alabama coach plastered a smile on his face for a series of posed photos next to the various trophies awarded to college football's national champions and then proceeded to talk about the challenges facing his team.

Maybe Saban let the Gatorade dry from the celebratory drenching before thinking about the 2013 season. Maybe.

"The team next year is 0-0," Saban, who is on a 61-7 run over the past five seasons, said Tuesday morning. "Even though I really appreciate what this team accomplished and am very, very proud of what they accomplished, we need to prepare for the challenges of the new season very quickly with the team we have coming back. "

It didn't take Saban long to refocus after Monday night's 42-14 demolition of Notre Dame that secured a second straight BCS title, the Crimson Tide's third in four seasons and the seventh straight for Southeastern Conference teams.

Shortly after the game, he was already talking about getting back to the office by Wednesday morning.

Alabama players, meanwhile, finally were able to voice the "D-word." Center Barrett Jones said he had a Sports Illustrated cover from a couple of years ago after his last college game.

"It says, 'Dynasty. Can anybody stop Alabama?' I'll never forget looking at that thing and wondering if we really could be a dynasty," said Jones, who mainly put it on the wall because he's featured. "I think three out of four, I'm no dynasty expert, but that seems like a dynasty to me. I guess I can say that now that I'm gone. Don't tell coach I said that."

The 2013 team will almost certainly be regarded among the preseason favorites to get back to the summit, even though three Tide stars — tailback Eddie Lacy, cornerback Dee Milliner and right tackle D.J. Fluker — could decide to skip their senior seasons and turn pro.

Saban also emphatically tried to end speculation that he might return to the NFL, where he spent two years with the Miami Dolphins before returning to the SEC.

It was a question that really made him bristle during the 30-plus minute news conference.

"How many times do you think I've been asked to put it to rest?" Saban said. "And I've put it to rest, and you continue to ask it. So I'm going to say it today, that — you know, I think somewhere along the line you've got to choose. You learn a lot from the experiences of what you've done in the past. I came to the Miami Dolphins, what, eight years ago for the best owner, the best person that I've ever had the opportunity to work for. And in the two years that I was here, I had a very, very difficult time thinking that I could impact the organization in the way that I wanted to or the way that I was able to in college, and it was very difficult for me."

He said that experience taught him that the college ranks "is where I belong, and I'm really happy and at peace with all that."

As for the players, All-America linebacker C.J. Mosley has already said he'll return. So has quarterback AJ McCarron, who had his second straight star turn in a BCS title game.

"We certainly have to build the team around him," Saban said, adding that a late-game spat with Jones showed the quarterback's competitive fire. "I've talked a lot about it's difficult to play quarterback when you don't have good players around you. I think we should have, God willing and everybody staying healthy, a pretty good receiver corps. We'll have to do some rebuilding in the offensive line. Regardless of what Eddie decides to do, we'll probably still have some pretty decent runners. But I think AJ can be a really good player, maybe the best quarterback in the country next year."

The biggest question mark is replacing three, maybe four, starters on an offensive line that paved the way.

Amari Cooper, who broke several of Julio Jones' Alabama freshman receiving marks, and fellow freshman running back T.J. Yeldon give McCarron and the Tide a couple of potent weapons, even if Lacy doesn't return.

"I am going to try to win three or four," said Cooper, who had 105 yards and two touchdowns in the title game. "This season was good, but I expected it to be even more. There is so much more that I can do."

Saban emphasized the difficulty of repeating and said he showed the players a video of NBA Hall of Famer Michael Jordan saying that the first title isn't the hardest — it's the ones after that.

That's because, Saban said, "you have to have the will to fight against yourself."

Now, the 'Bama coach has four titles, including one during his stop at LSU. Saban doesn't wear the championship rings but uses them for a different purpose.

"I just put them on the coffee table for the recruits to look at," he said, cracking up the room.

Saban has already lined up another highly rated recruiting class and has the next wave of young talents waiting in the wings.

After all, he talked about the sign mentor Bill Belichick hung in the football building during their NFL days together: "Do your job."

Saban jokingly acknowledged that while he prepares for everything, the one thing he has never been able to anticipate is the Gatorade bath. He drew heat for a scowl after the first one, following the title game win over Texas when he got dinged in the head. Monday night's dousing went better.

"It's cold, it's sticky, but I appreciated not getting hit in the head with the bucket," Saban said. "That was an improvement."

No program has had this kind of championship run since Tom Osborne's Nebraska teams won it all in 1994, 1995 and 1997.

Saban remembers that second team well. The Cornuskers stomped Michigan State 50-10 in Saban's first game as head coach.

"I'm thinking, we're never going to win a game," Saban said. "We'll never win a game here at Michigan State. I must have taken a bad job, wrong job, no players, something. I remember Coach Osborne when we shook hands after the game, he put his arm around me and whispered in my ear, 'You're not really as bad as you think.'"

So take heart, college football.

Read More..

Spielberg earns 11th Directors Guild nomination

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Steven Spielberg has extended his domination at the Directors Guild of America Awards, earning a nomination Tuesday for his Civil War epic “Lincoln” to pad the record he already held to 11 film nominations from the guild.

Also nominated were past winners Kathryn Bigelow for her Osama bin Laden thriller “Zero Dark Thirty”; Tom Hooper for his musical “Les Miserables”; and Ang Lee for his lost-at-sea story “Life of Pi.”

Rounding out the Directors Guild lineup is first-time nominee Ben Affleck for his Iran hostage-crisis tale “Argo.”

The Directors Guild field is one of Hollywood’s most-accurate forecasts for who will be in the running at the Academy Awards, whose nominations come out Thursday. The winner at the Directors Guild almost always goes on to win the directing prize at the Oscars, too. Only six times in the 64-year history of the guild awards has the winner there failed to follow up with an Oscar.

Besides the record number of feature-film nominations, Spielberg also has won the Directors Guild prize a record three times, for “The Color Purple,” ”Schindler’s List” and “Saving Private Ryan,” along with directing Oscars for the latter two. He received the guild’s lifetime-achievement award in 2000.

Bigelow became the first woman ever to win the guild honor and the directing Oscar three years ago for “The Hurt Locker.” Hooper won the same prizes a year later for “The King’s Speech,” while Lee is a two-time guild winner for “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” and “Brokeback Mountain,” the latter also earning him the directing Oscar.

Affleck, who also stars in “Argo,” follows such actors-turned-filmmakers as Clint Eastwood, Kevin Costner and Mel Gibson to earn a Directors Guild nomination.

Overlooked by the guild were past nominees Quentin Tarantino for his slave-revenge tale “Django Unchained” and David O. Russell for his oddball romance “Silver Linings Playbook.”

The film that receives the Directing Guild prize typically also goes on to win the best-picture Oscar, a prize Spielberg has earned only once, for “Schindler’s List.” No clear front-runner has emerged yet for the Feb. 24 Oscars, with “Lincoln,” ”Zero Dark Thirty” and “Les Miserables” all considered strong prospects to take home Hollywood’s highest honor.

Sunday’s Golden Globes will help sort out the Oscar picture, as will the various guild prizes that will be handed out in late January and February on the run-up to the Academy Awards.

Winners for the 65th annual Directors Guild awards will be announced at a Hollywood dinner Feb. 2, with Kelsey Grammer as host for the second year in a row.

Milos Forman, director of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and “Amadeus,” will receive the guild’s lifetime-achievement award.

___

Online:

http://www.dga.org

Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: Spielberg earns 11th Directors Guild nomination
Url Post: http://www.news.fluser.com/spielberg-earns-11th-directors-guild-nomination/
Link To Post : Spielberg earns 11th Directors Guild nomination
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

Report: Death rates from cancer still inching down

WASHINGTON (AP) — Death rates from cancer are continuing to inch down, researchers reported Monday.

Now the question is how to hold onto those gains, and do even better, even as the population gets older and fatter, both risks for developing cancer.

"There has been clear progress," said Dr. Otis Brawley of the American Cancer Society, which compiled the annual cancer report with government and cancer advocacy groups.

But bad diets, lack of physical activity and obesity together wield "incredible forces against this decline in mortality," Brawley said. He warned that over the next decade, that trio could surpass tobacco as the leading cause of cancer in the U.S.

Overall, deaths from cancer began slowly dropping in the 1990s, and Monday's report shows the trend holding. Among men, cancer death rates dropped by 1.8 percent a year between 2000 and 2009, and by 1.4 percent a year among women. The drops are thanks mostly to gains against some of the leading types — lung, colorectal, breast and prostate cancers — because of treatment advances and better screening.

The news isn't all good. Deaths still are rising for certain cancer types including liver, pancreatic and, among men, melanoma, the most serious kind of skin cancer.

Preventing cancer is better than treating it, but when it comes to new cases of cancer, the picture is more complicated.

Cancer incidence is dropping slightly among men, by just over half a percent a year, said the report published by the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Prostate, lung and colorectal cancers all saw declines.

But for women, earlier drops have leveled off, the report found. That may be due in part to breast cancer. There were decreases in new breast cancer cases about a decade ago, as many women quit using hormone therapy after menopause. Since then, overall breast cancer incidence has plateaued, and rates have increased among black women.

Another problem area: Oral and anal cancers caused by HPV, the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus, are on the rise among both genders. HPV is better known for causing cervical cancer, and a protective vaccine is available. Government figures show just 32 percent of teen girls have received all three doses, fewer than in Canada, Britain and Australia. The vaccine was recommended for U.S. boys about a year ago.

Among children, overall cancer death rates are dropping by 1.8 percent a year, but incidence is continuing to increase by just over half a percent a year. Brawley said it's not clear why.

Read More..

Fox: Passion, disagreements with new 'Idol' team

PASADENA, Calif. (AP) — Five minutes into their season-opening news conference and the new team at "American Idol" were having their first disagreement — about their disagreements.

Asked Tuesday whether a supposed feud between new judges Mariah Carey and Nicki Minaj was a publicity stunt, Fox network executive Mike Darnell said it was authentic. He said there was a lot of passion within the group, which also includes country star Keith Urban and returning judge Randy Jackson. He said there were also a lot of disagreements.

Carey, however, called the story "some trumped-up thing."

Minaj later called Carey one of her favorite all-time artists who has shaped a generation of singers.

Read More..

Dreamliner fuel leak is 2nd incident in 2 days

The National Transportation Safety Board said Tuesday that the battery aboard a Japan Airlines Co. 787 jet that caught fire in Boston Monday had "severe fire damage"  to components and structures within about 20 inches.

The agency said the problems were in the aft electrical bay of the Boeing Co. jet, and affected the auxiliary power unit, which was in operation at the time of the fire reported around 10:30 am ET Monday.

The incident occurred just after the plane landed from a flight from Tokyo. Smoke was seen in the cabin, the NTSB said. The fire was put out about 40 minutes rescue and fire crews first arrived, it added.

A second incident, a fuel leak on Tuesday, forced another 787 operated by JAL to cancel its takeoff and return to the gate at Boston's Logan International Airport, a fire official said.

The leak occurred on a different plane than the 787 that experienced an electrical fire Monday at Logan, said Richard Walsh, a Massport spokesman.

The fuel-leaking plane had left the gate in preparation for takeoff on a flight to Tokyo when the fuel spill of about 40 gallons was discovered, Walsh said. No fire or injuries occurred, he said.

The plane was towed back to the gate, where passengers disembarked and were waiting for a decision on whether the flight would leave, he said.

"The airline will make that determination," Walsh said.

A spokeswoman for Japan Airlines, Carol Anderson, said the plane had returned to the gate because of a mechanical issue, but said exact details were not yet confirmed.

Boeing said it was aware of the issue and was working with its customer.

The NTSB this issue wouldn't warrant an investigation because there was no accident.

In December, the Federal Aviation Administration ordered inspections of 787s after fuel leaks were found on two aircraft operated by foreign airlines. The leaks stemmed from incorrectly assembled fuel line couplings, which could result in loss of power or engine fire, the FAA said.

Boeing shares were down 2.8 percent at $73.98 in late trading. It fell 2 percent on Monday.

Walsh, the Massport spokesman, said the leak was noticed at 12:25 pm ET Tuesday, as the flight, JAL 007, was taxiing toward the runway for takeoff. Crews used an absorbent to soak up the spilled fuel, Walsh said.

Some analysts had raised concerns about Boeing's jet after the JAL 787 suffered an electrical fire on Monday. Today's fuel leak caused further alarm about the impact on public perceptions of Boeing and the plane.

"We're getting to a tipping point where they go from needing to rectify problems to doing major damage control to the image of the company and the plane," said Richard Aboulafia, a defense and aerospace analyst with Teal Group, a consulting firm based in Fairfax, Virginia.

"While they delivered a large and unexpected number of 787s last year, it's possible that they should have instead focused on identifying glitches and flaws, rather than pushing ahead with volume production," he said.

Aboulafia said there is still no indication that the plane itself is flawed.

"It's just a question of how quickly they can get all the onboard technologies right, and whether or not the 787 and Boeing brands will be badly damaged," he said.
 

BA data by YCharts

Read More..

Purse snatcher no match for Good Samaritans

Junior welterweight boxer Peter Heliotes came to Chicago recently to fight and he didn't have long to wait.

Heliotes, 20, won a bout on the streets of Lincoln Park when he took down a parolee who robbed a woman after threatening her with a screwdriver late Saturday night, according to police.

The 150-pound fighter had just stepped off the Brown Line around 11:45 p.m. after finishing his day job as a cook. He was about half a block from the Diversey station when he noticed a man across the street who appeared to be hugging a woman. The man seemed drunk because he was wrapped around her.

"Then I realized he was grabbing her purse, he was kind of wrestling with her," said Heliotes, who recently won his first local fight in Orland Park. "I've never really seen anybody get mugged before, but it was kind of my instincts."

As he crossed Diversey, the robber wrested away the woman's purse and she began screaming, Heliotes said. Without thinking, Heliotes said he ran after the man as he headed for the station. "I didn't know if he had a knife or what, so I tried to knock him to the floor by pushing him into the wall," Heliotes said. "He kept running."

Heliotes spotted people up ahead, and the woman called out for them to stop the robber.  A 24-year-old man who was with his girlfriend blocked the robber's path and forced him onto the street.

"I just heard someone yell out, 'Stop that guy," and he's literally 30 or 40 feet in front of me," said the man, who did not want his named used. "For me it was just a split-second decision that I'm going to do this, I'm protecting the people near me."

He and Heliotes wrestled the robber to the ground and took the purse back. That's when they spotted the screwdriver. "I said, 'Was he sticking you up with the screwdriver? She had a mark on her back," Heliotes said. "He was a pretty strong guy."

The two good Samaritans had the robber face-down on the street, but he continued to struggle as police sirens grew louder, they said. At least one other man stepped up and held the man's head down as officers arrived.

"It's one of those hypothetical situations that I think you're always, 'What would I do?' It doesn't even seem like it's real life," said the 24-year-old man. "I'm not even sure you could chalk it up to instincts."

He said he is protective by nature, and that seemed to kick in because he was with his girlfriend and has a younger sister.

The victim, 29, said she was returning to her home after spending the evening watching a movie at a friend's home nearby. She initially thought the screwdriver the robber pressed against her back was a gun.

"I actually thought it was a joke. . .then I realized, 'He may actually have a gun,' " said the woman, who works for a local non-profit organization. "Then he took my purse."

Not only did the two men help get her purse back, they sat with her for more than four hours at a police station as they were interviewed by police and prosecutors.

"How do you say thank you to just kind guys off the street who don't know you and just provided so much safety and security at that time for you," the woman said. "They not only gave me the security that night. . .they gave me the faith that there is good out there."

Jose Rodriguez, 30, was charged with armed robbery with a dangerous weapon and a parole violation. He was ordered held on $500,000 bail.  He has six felony convictions in his background, prosecutors said.

Contributing: Rosemary Regina Sobol

csadovi@tribune.com

Read More..

Analysis: Apple bid for Samsung sales ban faces skeptical court

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Apple Inc faces long odds in its attempt to overturn a U.S. appeals court ruling that threatens to undermine its smartphone patent war against Samsung Electronics Co Ltd.

Apple has asked the full Federal Circuit Court of Appeals to revisit an October decision by a three-judge panel of the court, which rejected its request to impose a sales ban on Samsung's Galaxy Nexus smartphone ahead of a trial set for March 2014.

In that ruling, the Washington D.C.-based appeals court raised the bar for potentially market crippling injunctions on product sales based on narrow patents for phone features. The legal precedent puts Samsung in a much stronger position by allowing its products to remain on store shelves while it fights a global patent battle against Apple over smartphone technology.

Apple hopes the full Federal Circuit, made up of nine active judges, will reverse the panel's findings. But legal experts say the specific legal issues involved are not likely to be controversial enough to spur full court review.

Furthermore, the three judges who issued the ruling were unanimous, whereas the Federal Circuit tends to review a case "en banc" - with all of the active judges - when an earlier ruling showed a split.

The Federal Circuit fight comes after Apple won a $1.05 billion verdict last year against Samsung in a California federal court. The same trial judge will preside over the legal battle surrounding the Nexus phone, which involves a patent not included in the earlier trial.

The fight has been widely viewed as a proxy war between Apple and Google Inc. Samsung's hot-selling Galaxy smartphones and tablets run on Google's Android operating system, which Apple's late co-founder, Steve Jobs, once denounced as a "stolen product."

Google has not had much luck in obtaining injunctions against Apple, either. In a deal with federal antitrust regulators announced last week, the Android developer agreed to limit when it can use certain swaths of its patent portfolio to seek injunctions.

Samsung's legal papers arguing against full court review of the Federal Circuit ruling on Galaxy Nexus sales are due this week. To win a rehearing before the full court, Apple needs five out of the nine judges to vote in favor.

Representatives for Apple and Samsung both declined to comment.

RAISING THE BAR

In the October ruling, the three-judge panel found that Apple did not have enough evidence of a "causal nexus" between its patented search capability and iPhone sales to prove that Samsung has caused harm justifying an injunction.

U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California, who has presided over much of the Apple/Samsung litigation in the United States, cited the panel's decision in a December order rejecting Apple's request for permanent sales bans on several Samsung phones. Apple has said it would appeal Koh's ruling.

A wide sales ban against Samsung products could be devastating. Apple claims that 22.7 million of Samsung's total unit sales from mid-2010 to March 2012 - or $8.16 billion in U.S. revenue - came from products that infringed Apple patents.

It will be hard to convince the Federal Circuit to revisit the injunction issue because the legal arguments involved are not among those that have caused the most recent controversy at the court, said R. Polk Wagner, a professor at University of Pennsylvania Law School and a former Federal Circuit clerk.

For example, no outside groups have filed briefs supporting Apple's bid for en banc review, according to court records.

In contrast, the court last year granted en banc review in a case about the scope of software patents, currently a hot topic in intellectual property debates. A three-judge panel in that case split 2-1, and outside advocacy groups filed briefs urging full court review. Oral arguments are set for February.

The Federal Circuit is eight times more likely to grant an en banc petition if a third party files a brief urging it to do so, according to a 2010 study by Colleen Chien, a professor at Santa Clara Law in Silicon Valley. The study covered 20 years of Federal Circuit activity.

While tough for Apple, persuading the court to grant en banc review is not impossible, court watchers say.

Some of the Federal Circuit judges, including Chief Judge Randall Rader - who was not part of the panel that issued the October ruling - are considered by legal experts to be pro-plaintiff, believing that injunctions are a crucial tool for enforcing patent rights.

If Apple loses at the Federal Circuit, the company could ask the U.S. Supreme Court to take up the matter.

However, the Supreme Court has made it more difficult for patent plaintiffs to secure sales injunctions in recent years, suggesting it would be unlikely to review this case, said Wagner, of the University of Pennsylvania.

"If they don't get it now," he said of Apple's petition for en banc review, "any chance they have won't come again for a long time."

The case in the Federal Circuit is Apple Inc. vs Samsung Electronics Co Ltd et al, 12-1507.

(Reporting By Dan Levine; Editing by Martha Graybow, Tiffany Wu and Steve Orlofsky)

Read More..

RG3 defends himself as Redskins await knee results

ASHBURN, Va. (AP) — As the Washington Redskins awaited word on Robert Griffin III's health, teammates defended the rookie quarterback's decision to keep playing after reinjuring his right knee.

Griffin also chimed in. He did not appear in the locker room during the two hours it was open to reporters Monday morning, but he offered some thoughts on Twitter.

"Many may question, criticize & think they have all the right answers. But few have been in the line of fire in battle," Griffin tweeted.

The Redskins were expected to announce results of Griffin's MRI later Monday.

Already playing with a heavy black brace in his third game since spraining a lateral collateral ligament, Griffin hurt the knee again when he fell awkwardly while throwing a pass in the first quarter of Sunday's 24-14 playoff loss to the Seattle Seahawks.

Griffin stayed in the game, but he was far from his usual self, clearly favoring the knee and unable to run with the world-class speed that helped define his play early in the season.

Then, in the fourth quarter with the Redskins trailing by seven, the knee buckled the wrong way when Griffin tried to field a bad shotgun snap. The Seahawks recovered the fumble deep in Washington territory, setting up a short field goal that helped put the game out of reach. Griffin was done for the evening.

If Griffin had been pulled earlier, the critical turnover might not have happened. And, of course, his knee probably wouldn't be hurt as badly as it is.

"I thank God for perspective and because of that I appreciate the support from everyone. I also appreciate the criticism," Griffin tweeted.

Coach Mike Shanahan said after the game he essentially left the decision for Griffin to keep playing in Griffin's hands, and Griffin said he would probably have defied his coach if ordered to the bench.

"It's a slippery slope, I guess you can say, because you want to help the team," said receiver Pierre Garcon, who faced similar questions this season while dealing with a painful toe injury. "But you want to help yourself in the long run and your career.

"You want to look out for all sides, but it's hard to really know exactly if you're doing the right thing because if you sit out and the team losses, it's like 'I could probably have helped.' If you go out there and don't help the team, it's like, 'I probably should've sat out.' You've just got to make a decision and live with it."

Shanahan was scheduled to address reporters Monday afternoon, but said after the game that he perhaps should have pulled Griffin sooner.

"It's a very tough decision," Shanahan said Sunday. "You have to go with your gut. You have to go with your gut and I did. I'm not saying my gut is always right, but I've been there before. In different situations, I get to know Robert better as time goes on and I'll know how stubborn he is — probably more so as time goes on. He's a competitor and I'll probably second guess myself. ... In the second half, should you have done it earlier? I think you always do that, especially after you don't win."

Shanahan's take is muddled by contradictory details that have emerged from the game in which Griffin originally hurt the knee last month against the Baltimore Ravens.

The coach said at the time he was told by orthopedist James Andrews on the Redskins sideline that Griffin was cleared to return to the game, but Andrews told USA Today over the weekend that he didn't get a chance to examine the knee during the one play Griffin sat out after the initial injury.

Shanahan explained the discrepancy by saying Andrews gave the OK for Griffin to return just by watching the quarterback run without doing an examination. Either way, the various versions of what happened cast more doubt on the protocol the Redskins use to determine whether someone is fit to keep playing.

The play-hurt dilemma is a factor every weekend in the NFL. Redskins left guard Kory Lichtensteiger had to leave Sunday's game in the first quarter because he could no longer play on a sprained left ankle that kept him out of practice all week.

"I went out there," Lichtensteiger said. "But, in hindsight, I probably shouldn't have done it."

Griffin's injury and the playoff loss put a damper on the end of one of the best Redskins seasons in two decades. Washington rallied from a 3-6 start to win the NFC East after four straight last-place finishes. Assuming Griffin's knee will again be fully healthy, the future looks brighter than at any time since the Super Bowl era under coach Joe Gibbs in the 1980s and early 1990s.

"I think people have really learned around here — if you're down by seven, people aren't packing it in," said safety Reed Doughty, wrapping up his seventh season in Washington. "People aren't getting that 'Oh, the way things used to be' kind of feeling."

___

Follow Joseph White on Twitter: http://twitter.com/JGWhiteAP

___

Online: http://pro32.ap.org/poll and http://twitter.com/AP_NFL

Read More..

Letterman says he sees psychiatrist weekly

PASADENA, Calif. (AP) — David Letterman says he sees a psychiatrist once a week, part of his attempt to be the person he once believed he was.

The late-night talk show host gave an extraordinary interview to Oprah Winfrey in which he talked about his feuds with her and Jay Leno, and his own effort to make amends for the affairs that became public three years ago when a man tried to extort him.

The interview aired Sunday night on Winfrey’s OWN network after it was done in November.

The CBS host says his wife has forgiven him for his transgressions and his life is more joyful than ever, but he hasn’t necessarily forgiven himself.

Letterman also called his late-night rival Leno the funniest guy he’s ever known.

Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: Letterman says he sees psychiatrist weekly
Url Post: http://www.news.fluser.com/letterman-says-he-sees-psychiatrist-weekly/
Link To Post : Letterman says he sees psychiatrist weekly
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..