Letter to the President #522: “Eureka! I have a run down idea!"
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Tom Foreman | BIO
AC360° Correspondent
Reporter's Note: President Obama and I have our ages, and a certain love of athletics, in common. Plus we both work in Washington, and we love these letters. At least, fifty percent of us do...
Dear Mr. President,
Huzzah! I have figured out why most of my letters have been so weak lately. Barring, of course, the distinct possibility that I am a man of sorely limited ideas and my meter has expired. The slump is because I am exercising in earnest once again!
Don’t misread me here. I would not have it any other way. Truthfully if a man my age (which is also your age, btw) gets so caught up in writing an avalanche of letters which may not have been even noticed (ahem!) or pointedly ignored (double ahem!) that he lets his health slide down a fast chute of doughnuts and hotdogs, then that man needs to have his head examined. Possibly his aortic valves too.
This notion came to me while I was out on a five mile trot up and down the beautiful hills of Tallahassee in the soothing 90 degree evening heat. And yes, they do too have hills here. Sometime between my first painful attempts to suck in air that you could use to fill a bathtub, and the weird part where I started hallucinating that I was wind-surfing with Gwen Stefani and a pack of howler monkeys, it came to me like a vision. I’m pretty sure I even heard music, although it is possible that the shirtless guy in the rusty El Camino just blew his horn at me for weaving into traffic.
In any event, like a vision I realized that too often I’ve been trying to simply jam in this writing at the end of a long day without really giving it serious thought. Please accept my apologies, because frankly there is no excuse for that. What is the point of doing something, unless you try to do it well?
But there is a double good part to this epiphany: I found that if I run long enough, I can actually figure out what is really on my mind and worth writing about. There is a lesson in here, of course, about making sure that you take enough time to protect your health and peace of mind that you are capable of making wise decisions, not merely decisions.
But frankly, I’m too hot, sweaty and tired to write about it now. Ha! Give me a call if you have a spare moment. I am thinking about coming down here to Pensacola for a marathon with my brother this fall. Do you want to come along?
Regards,
Tom
Woman accused Gore of unwanted sexual contact
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Gabriel Falcon
AC360° Writer
Oregon authorities said Wednesday that a woman accused former Vice President Al Gore of "unwanted sexual contact" in connection with a 2006 encounter, but no charges resulted because detectives could not substantiate her claim.
In a statement released to the media, the Portland Police Department said the allegation involved an encounter between Gore and a licensed massage therapist at a hotel on October 24, 2006. "The detectives concluded that there was not enough evidence to support the allegations," Portland police spokeswoman Mary Wheat told CNN.
The department explained its timing in releasing a statement Wednesday by saying that while the department does not usually release information on alleged sex crimes, "A national tabloid magazine has published a story discussing allegations made by a Portland woman against former Vice President Al Gore."
The department statement said police were contacted by a lawyer for the woman in 2006 and, "After repeated attempts by Portland Police Detectives to interview the woman involved, the Police Bureau was told by her attorney in January 2007, that they were pursuing civil litigation and declined the assistance of the Portland Police Bureau's Detective Division."
The woman came to police in January 2009 and "explained that she would like to give a statement ...The woman read from a prepared statement and detailed the events of October 24, 2006. She reported that she was repeatedly subjected to unwanted sexual touching while in his (Gore's) presence," the police department's statement Wednesday said. The statement said the woman told detectives she had gone to Gore's hotel room because she had been called "to provide a massage to Mr. Gore."
Earlier this year, the woman asked investigators if she could edit her statement, indicating that she could provide detectives with more information, authorities said. "At this point, the police bureau does not consider this an ongoing investigation unless new evidence is received in the case, said Wednesday's police statement.
CNN attempted to contact Gore for a response to the allegations. "Our office has no comment," said Kalee Kreider, communications director for Gore.
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Tropical weather could exacerbate Gulf Coast woes
CNN Wire Staff
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Downtrodden Gulf Coast residents may soon have something besides the oil spill to worry about. But it's not really a "new" threat - it's what they fret about every summer: tropical weather.
There is a 70 percent chance that a weather system in the western Caribbean will better organize and form at least a tropical depression in the next 48 hours, the National Hurricane Center said Friday morning.
The tropical disturbance's rains have become more concentrated, surface air pressure is dropping and upper-level winds are becoming more conducive to storm development, said the hurricane center. An Air Force "hurricane hunter" plane is scheduled to head into the system Friday afternoon to determine if it has evolved into a tropical cyclone, with closed circulation around a center of low pressure.
Some forecasting models show that by early next week the system could head into the Gulf of Mexico, where it could disrupt the oil cleanup operations. Adm. Thad Allen, who's heading the federal cleanup operation, said on CNN's "American Morning" he'll have to redeploy people and equipment to safer areas 120 hours (five days) in advance of gale-force winds (at least 32 mph).
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