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George Clooney movie ‘Ides of March’ filming at Ann Arbor campus – Detroit Free Press

Tuesday, March 15th, 2011

What’s George Clooney doing on March 15, the actual Ides of March? Working on “The Ides of March” in Ann Arbor.

Clooney’s political drama, which he’s starring in and directing, is shooting this week at locations on the University of Michigan campus.

This morning, crew members were busy preparing for filming inside the Power Center for the Performing Arts. Outside, trucks lined the streets near the 1,300-seat theater as caterers, wardrobe staffers and extras got ready for their assignments.

Hundreds of students are participating in the film as extras, according to Lee Doyle of the University of Michigan Film Office.

Last week, the cast and crew were working in downtown Detroit. And before that, “The Ides of March” spent several weeks filming in Cincinnati.

The movie is a behind-the-scenes look at a fictional presidential primary campaign in Ohio. Clooney plays Gov. Mike Morris, a presidential candidate, and Ryan Gosling portrays a campaign aide. The cast also includes Evan Rachel Wood and Philip Seymour Hoffman.

The Power Center is doubling as an auditorium at Kent State University for a scene involving a political speech.

Clooney was careful not to make it a stand-in for Ohio State, U-M’s longtime sports rival, says Doyle.

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Instead of fearing another Iraq, the west must do right by Libya | Andrew Rawnsley

Sunday, March 13th, 2011

Discussing with me what might be done to stop Colonel Gaddafi from slaughtering his people, a minister sighed: “It is all very difficult.” So it is. How will it be done? Who will do it? On what authority? None of the diplomatic and military questions swirling around this crisis resolve into easy answers. But behind them all looms one big, inescapable and very stark question: are we prepared to let the colonel prevail? Here is the bottom line: will the west sit on its hands as Gaddafi attempts to extend his tyranny into a fifth decade by massacring those who have risen up for freedom?

When Libya first erupted against its dictator, Barack Obama, David Cameron and the rest of the soi-disant leaders of the free world appeared to enjoy the good fortune of avoiding that choice. It looked as though the Libyan people were on the brink of disposing of their tyrant without the need for outside assistance. Town after town fell to the rebels. Significant elements of the armed forces peeled away. Airforce pilots chose to ditch their planes or fly them to Malta rather than follow the tottering regime’s orders to bomb the uprising. Western governments that had previously canoodled with the colonel were emboldened to announce freezes of the regime’s assets. Gaddafi seemed bound to join Ben Ali of Tunisia and Hosni Mubarak of Egypt at Duntorturin’ or some other retirement home for deposed despots. Or he would be caught and tried for his crimes against humanity. Or he would be dead. David Cameron told MPs that it was “unthinkable” that the colonel-tyrant could remain in power.

Well, now the prime minister and his international peer group are having to think the unthinkable. Gaddafi has launched a ferocious counter-offensive and it is making rapid progress against the forces of freedom. Without external intervention, this is a battle he is very likely to win when it is an unfair fight between rebels with rifles and a dictator armed with mercenaries, tanks and warplanes. In the words of one senior figure at No 10: “We are in a race against time.” The choice that the west didn’t want to have to confront is upon us. Some still don’t want to face it. The Nato summit last Thursday broke up with planning of military options under way but no agreement on their implementation. The meeting of the European Council on Friday was palpably divided. Rather a lot of the British political class has indulged itself in essentially parochial wittering. We have all had good sport at the expense of the pratfalls of the Foreign Office. We have had more fun hooting about the Special Forces team which surrendered to a crack squad of Libyan farmers. We have debated ad nauseam whether Prince Andrew is a fool or an idiot. Westminster has buzzed with gossip about who last saw William Hague’s misplaced “mojo” and which of his cabinet colleagues might be scheming for his job. The antics of the Queen’s second son and cod-Freudian analysis of the foreign secretary’s political libido are interesting in their way, but this is displacement activity, another way of deflecting the question: so what are we going to do?

The Obama administration, without whom no meaningful intervention is feasible, is divided and emitting conflicting signals. Nicolas Sarkozy has tried to cover his country’s corrupt embrace of dictatorships in the past with the present flamboyance of giving unilateral official recognition to the rebels’ transitional council. The Germans have been relatively consistent; consistent in their unwillingness to contemplate doing anything substantial to prevent Gaddafi from butchering his own people.

Some of these dilations are a legacy of the Iraq war. Eight years on from the invasion, the calamitous errors after the toppling of Saddam continue to poison the cause of liberal interventionism. The shadow of Iraq makes it harder to win the argument that both self-interest and our moral values demand a response when a dictator is brutalising his people on our doorstep. In fear of another Iraq, the west risks repeating a different, earlier mistake: the divided and impotent European response to the slaughter in the Balkans in the 1990s.

One western leader has clearly been changed by this crisis. His name is David Cameron. In opposition, his most memorable phrase about the world was to declare: “We cannot drop democracy from 10,000 feet and we shouldn’t try.” As a device to distance himself from Iraq and the messianic tendencies of Tony Blair, that was a neat soundbite. As a guide to what David Cameron would do in office when confronted with a crisis it has proved to be a useless compass. Cabinet colleagues and senior advisers have witnessed a rapid evolution in the prime minister. There have been surface oscillations in his responses to the tumult in north Africa and the Middle East, but his overall direction of travel is clear. He led with his chin a fortnight ago when he first suggested that the west needed to be planning for the worst and preparing interventionist options such as imposing a no-fly zone. Mocked then as a blowhard floating a notion for which there were no allies, David Cameron now looks prescient in his anticipation that the west needed to prepare for the prospect that the colonel would fight back. This transformation of David Cameron into the most hawkish voice in Europe was visible at the end of the Brussels summit where frustration with its failure to agree on a robust policy could be seen steaming out of the prime minister’s ears. There is a spectrum of opinion within the cabinet, but my sense is that he can now carry his colleagues behind British participation in some form of military intervention to check the colonel.

Another important development is in the position of the Lib Dem ministers. Some of their number are very queasy about the prospect of intervening in Libya, but the senior ones are taking an increasingly muscular position. Nick Clegg has been in careful in recent days to draw a distinction between the Iraq war, which his party so passionately opposed, and Libya. Labour, too, will have to make up its mind about where it stands when liberty contends with tyranny.

David Cameron has an ally in the French, the only other power in Europe with some serious capability to act. “We cannot stand idly by and watch civilians being massacred,” said an exasperated Sarkozy after the European council. But the hawkishness of Mr Cameron and his French brother-in-arms will be rather beside the point if they cannot find allies. “We can’t do this on our own,” accurately observes a senior adviser to the prime minister. The search for support among Arab states, in Europe and at the United Nations goes on. As ever, the crucial actor is the United States. America is torn, as so often throughout its history. The conviction that it has a mission to support freedom contends with its fear of foreign entanglements, an aversion to intervention made the more intense by its recent experience in the quagmires of Iraq and Afghanistan.

There are significant voices in his administration counselling Barack Obama to stay out of Libya. They could well win the argument. In some ways it would be surprising if they do not. There are serious issues about how intervention could be made effective. There are understandable nerves in the US about the risk of becoming sucked into a ground war in north Africa. There is an explicable reluctance among Americans to take up a burden from which much of Europe flinches, even though this crisis is in Europe’s backyard. It might not be a noble course to stand idly by while civilians are massacred, but doing nothing can always be made to sound like the safer option. Action will have consequences.

So, though, will inaction. If the west chooses to be inert, the first casualty will be the people of Libya. Gaddafi will wreak a terrible vengeance on those who rose up against him. He will make good on his chilling threat to “cleanse Libya house by house”. Libya will be an embittered, pariah regime with a grudge against its neighbours and the rest of the world. A defeat for freedom there will radiate out into the rest of north Africa and the Middle East and beyond. There are a lot of rightly nervous dictators in the world at the moment: tyrants who fear copycat democratic revolutions. These dictators have a trilemma: do they reform, do they quit or do they attempt to crush their people’s aspirations for freedom? If Gaddafi prevails, his fellow dictators will have a template for what they should do when faced with revolt: kill the opposition without mercy in the confidence that the preachers of democracy in the west will do nothing more than wring their pathetic hands.

Are we content to let Colonel Gaddafi win? This is the question that neither western countries nor their leaders have wanted to confront. This is the question that now stares us hard in the face.

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Explosion, radiation leak spur nuclear fears in Japan – Central Florida News 13

Saturday, March 12th, 2011

FUKUSHIMA, JAPAN – 

An explosion sent white smoke rising above a nuclear plant where a massive earthquake and tsunami crippled cooling systems in northeastern Japan, the country’s chief Cabinet secretary said Saturday.

Four workers were injured after the blast at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told reporters. It was not immediately clear where the blast occurred inside the plant, or what caused it.

The roof of a reactor at the plant collapsed following the explosion around 3:30 p.m. (1:30 a.m. ET), Japan’s Kyodo News Agency reported, citing Tokyo Electric Power Company.

One expert said the explosion was “clearly a serious situation,” but may not be related to problems inside the plant’s nuclear reactor.

Other effects of the tsunami may have caused the blast, said Malcolm Grimston, associate fellow for energy, environment and development at London’s Chatham House.

“It’s clearly a serious situation, but that in itself does not necessarily mean major (nuclear) contamination,” he said.

Japanese public broadcaster NHK said the injured workers were in the process of cooling a nuclear reactor at the plant by injecting water into its core.

The Fukushima prefecture government said hourly radiation levels at the plant had reached levels allowable for ordinary people over the course of a year, Kyodo reported.

Earlier Saturday Japan’s nuclear agency said workers were continuing efforts to cool fuel rods at the plant after a small amount of radioactive material escaped into the air.

The agency said there was a strong possibility that the radioactive cesium monitors detected was caused by the melting of a fuel rod at the plant, adding that engineers were continuing to cool the fuel rods by pumping water around them.

Cesium is a byproduct of the nuclear fission process that occurs in nuclear plants.

A spokesman for Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Agency earlier said atomic material had seeped out of one of the five nuclear reactors at the Daiichi plant, located about 160 miles north of Tokyo.

Death toll grows

Rescuers plucked dazed survivors from collapsed homes, muddy waters and raging fires Saturday, a day after a powerful earthquake tore through northeastern Japan and unleashed waves that swallowed entire neighborhoods along the coast.

More than 900 were killed and about 700 were missing, Japanese public broadcaster NHK reported. The number of dead is expected to go up as rescuers reach more hard-hit areas.

The 8.9-magnitude quake was centered about 80 miles from Sendai, a farming region already battling youth population losses to big cities, leaving aging residents struggling to keep up with the global economy.

In the nearby city of Shirakawa, rescuers dug through rubble with shovels to try and reach 13 neighbors trapped when the earth opened up and swallowed their homes.

The original quake struck Friday and was centered 230 miles northeast of Tokyo — and left towns and villages along the northeastern coast devastated. Scores of aftershocks followed Saturday.

“The earth shook with such ferocity,” said Andy Clark, who experienced the main earthquake at the airport outside Tokyo.

“I thought things were coming to an end … it was simply terrifying.”

 

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Analysis: Nuclear power growth at risk if Japan plant leaks – Reuters

Saturday, March 12th, 2011

By Gerard Wynn and Bernie Woodall

LONDON/DETROIT | Fri Mar 11, 2011 10:54pm EST

LONDON/DETROIT (Reuters) – The growing risk of a significant radiation leak at two Japanese nuclear power plants following Friday’s earthquake and tsunami threatens to hurt an industry that has enjoyed a rebirth since the Three Mile Island accident in 1979 and the Chernobyl disaster in 1986.

On Friday, nuclear power advocates and environmentalists staked out familiar ground over the incident. But a wider public debate may be ignited if a major radiation leak occurs in Japan, said Paul Patterson, an energy analyst with consultants Glenrock Associates in New York.

That debate has been largely muted since the 1980s when rock concerts were held to galvanize opposition to nuclear power after the Three Mile Island incident in Pennsylvania and the popular movie “The China Syndrome,” that raised awareness of the dangers of a nuclear reactor meltdown.

“The severity of what happens is what is important,” Patterson said of the impact of the Japanese incident.

If there is a substantial radioactive release, there could even be questions about whether it could travel on the Pacific jet stream to the U.S. West Coast.

“It is serious and it could lead to a meltdown,” said Mark Hibbs, a nuclear expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “And what we’re seeing, barring any information from the Japanese that they have it under control, is that we’re headed in that direction.”

But Naoto Sekimura of the University of Tokyo, said that a major radioactive disaster was not likely.

An 8.9-magnitude earthquake centered in northern Japan triggered a series of events at two Tokyo Electric Power Co (9501.T) plants that created conditions for a radioactive leak because there wasn’t electric power to circulate cooling water over superheated uranium fuel rods.

The two TEPCO plants, the Daiichi plant and the Daini plant are around 40 miles from the epicenter of the earthquake that led to a tsunami and probably killed more than 1,000.

Nuclear industry advocates on Friday were saying that the ability of the nuclear reactors in Japan to largely withstand the power of the earthquake shows how safe nuclear power is.

But that was before a series of scary announcements from TEPCO that it had lost the ability to control pressure at several reactors and that it was having trouble with a valve that would allow reactor pressure to be eased.

Thousands of residents were evacuated from the immediate area of the Fukushima plants, about 150 miles 240 km north of Tokyo.

Industry experts said the precautions taken at Fukushima showed that enhanced security at nuclear power plants should prevent any disaster. But green groups said the threatened leak showed that the risks were still too high.

“I wouldn’t expect there to be a radiation emergency ultimately, they may have something to fix but it’s a precaution more than anything else,” said Sue Ion, former chief technology officer at British Nuclear Fuels, after Japan declared an atomic power emergency.

Altogether, some 11 Japanese reactors shut down after the earthquake.

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Gulfstate wrote:

Headline should read instead: “People finally took heads out of rear-ends and realized nuclear power could mean extinction for humans.”

user8192 wrote:

The news reporting in the wake of the Sendai earthquake is absolutely shameful and salacious, losing no opportunities to talk about fears about another Chernobyl-type disaster. That includes Reuters. We’re talking about pressurized-water reactors, a completely different design than Chernobyl, enclosed in high strength containment structures. The worst that may happen is a release of some mildly radioactive steam, essentially harmless to the environment and people living in the vicinity. Far, far more people have already been injured and killed from the direct effects of the earthquake than might ever be injured or killed in a worst-case scenario involving Japan’s various nuclear power plants. All the plants shut down safely following the quake, except the Fukushima installation. Reuters, please leave it to the engineers to manage the situation and analyze the backup cooling system failure, and refrain from injecting your uninformed opinions and hype.

TxCharlie wrote:

Let’s not do any knee-slap engineering for once, ok?

The incident may just mean that we shouldn’t build nuclear power plants in areas that are known to be earthquake-prone, but other issues need to be examined before even reaching that conclusion.

The design of that specific Japanese nuclear plant also needs to be examined to see if its failures are even an issue with the latest designs – Many improvements may have been made in the technology since that plant was built.

Remember, the plants in Russia and 3-Mile Island were of known-deficient designs at the time they overheated, but they were never upgraded before the accidents.

Those were failures of management and political intities which regulate the plants, and this Japanese incident may simply be another example of that.

I’m sure all that will come out of the investigation in due time.

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Tsunami has no noticeable effect on San Diego beaches – San Diego Union Tribune

Friday, March 11th, 2011

By Pauline Repard, UNION-TRIBUNE

Gary Robbins, UNION-TRIBUNE

Originally published March 10, 2011 at 10:49 p.m., updated March 11, 2011 at 10:51 a.m.

Here's how the 8.9 earthquake was registered on a seismometer on Mt. Soledad in La Jolla. This image if from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography's Anza Seismic Network.

- Scripps Institution of Oceanography

Here’s how the 8.9 earthquake was registered on a seismometer on Mt. Soledad in La Jolla. This image if from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography’s Anza Seismic Network.

Here's how the 8.9 earthquake was registered on a seismometer on Mt. Soledad in La Jolla. This image if from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography's Anza Seismic Network.

- West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Warning Center

The tsunami generated by an 8.9 earthquake off Japan doesn’t appear to have produced noticeable waves in San Diego County. There was no apparent surge or increase in wave height in La Jolla, where scientists said that tsunami waves up to 2.3′ high were possible. The first waves were expected by 8:41 a.m.

“But the response to tsunamis could last for hours, so we might see something,” said Frank Vernon, a research seismologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.”It’s more likely we’ll measure something on the tide gauges.”

However, there was a noticeable drop of water level, by 1 to 2 feet, in the Mission Bay channel leading to the ocean, about 9:15 a.m., said Maurice Luque, spokesman for the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department.

He said the water was returning, slowly, through the channel and back to the bay and Quivera Basin, by about 9:40 a.m.

“It’s subtle,” Luque said. “It’s not disruptive in any way. It’s not a strong surge.”

Scientists said the energy from the tsunami — which started about 5,800 miles northwest from San Diego — was expected to appear shortly after a low tide, if it showed at all. Researchers have limited ability to forecast when and where tsunami waves will reach distant shores.

A magnitude 8.9 earthquake that erupted off Japan on Friday produced a tsunami that could briefly generate waves up to 2.3 feet along the San Diego County coastline starting at approximately 8:41 a.m. Friday. And the tsunami will generate potentially hazardous currents, says the National Weather Service. (San Diego surf webcams.)

And there was little chance that big waves would hit San Diego.

“We are in a different tectonic region than Japan or Cascadia or Indonesia,” said Vernon, whose office overlooks Scripps Pier. “We have strike-slip faults earthquakes. The main fault (San Andreas) is inland from us. The major faults in japan and Cascadia and Indonesia are offshore where, where the tsunamis can be generated.”

With the coast fogged in, people hoping to see any major waves were being advised to stay home. Luque said there were no beach closures.

Luque told people in San Diego concerned about the waves to not call 911, but instead dial 619-570-1070 for information.

“People have jammed emergency lines,” Luque said.

Residents in the rest of the county may dial 211 for information about the tsunami.

Luque said San Diego lifeguards and police have been patrolling beaches from La Jolla south to Ocean Beach, advising people to stay out of the water until the expected strong surge passes. He said waders could be knocked off their feet and swept out away from shore.

The U.S. Coast Guard urged boaters to not get underway, and to use double mooring lines to secure their vessels to prevent damage.

In Chula Vista, police Lt. Scott Arsenault said he had sent officers to check transient camps at the mouths of the Sweetwater and Otay rivers in case the bay water surged somewhat upriver. He said officers were advising transients who may not have heard of the tsunami or warnings to stay away from the shoreline and to move to higher ground for a time.

The ocean surge would pose no danger to the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, according to a statement issued by Southern California Edison, which operates the power plant in northern San Diego County, near the Orange County line.

“The plant’s protective measures include a reinforced tsunami wall 30 feet above sea level,” said company spokesman Gil Alexander in the written statement.

The news of tsunami waves heading this way did not appear to be a major worry, at least for San Diego’s surfing community.

“Obviously, I’m going out surfing so this is not much of a concern,” Scott Olson of Clairemont said at 6:30 a.m. Friday. “If there had been big waves in Hawaii, I might have thought differently.”

Rather than fear, it was curiosity that drew several hundred people to the Oceanside Pier Friday morning.

“We woke up and drove right over here,” said Elena Killion, 27. “We live only eight blocks away. We heard it on the news and it was like, eww, it’s gonna be 3 feet (high).”

Her boyfriend, Jason Schoen, added, “We’re not worried at all. Out here on the pier is a good 18 to 20 feet off the ground.”

Schoen said if the experts were wrong about the size of the wave, he and Killion could always climb a lamp post on the pier.”

Christan Hummel, 51, of Oceanside, said she heard about the tsunami from an online forum she belongs to, and hurried to the pier.

“Sometimes it’s a really good thing to see things first hand,” said Hummel. “Sometimes the media exaggerates.”

Some emergency dispatch centers in the county received calls from distraught, confused or curious residents unsure what to make of a West Coast tsunami advisory.

Sheriff’s Lt. Dave Brown, in the communications center, said one young person called 911 from Chula Vista, saying his mother wanted to know if he should stay home from school. Another caller wondered if the water would come out of the ocean.

“They should not be calling 911 to ask questions,” Brown said. “If you have a problem, that’s when you call us.”

Brown said the number of such calls were not overwhelming for dispatchers.

At the San Diego Coast Guard Station, one caller asked whether to evacuate to the mountains to be safe. Petty Officer Henry Dunphy said they even got inquiries from Orange County residents, including one who lived near a harbor.

One helicopter, three patrol boats and a cutter were launched from the San Diego Coast Guard station between 7 a.m. and 8 a.m. to be available in case any boaters were in distress. Dunphy said they had no reports of trouble or damage to any boats at marinas or moored.

Dunphy said a pollution response team was standing by in La Jolla, a central location from which to respond in case any boats ran aground in a current surge. Another team, tasked with making sure buoys were not pulled off-station in a surge, was stationed at Oceanside harbor.

Sheriff’s officials began early in the morning to prepare in case a serious tsunami wave was expected to hit San Diego County, Brown said.

He said supervisors were up at 2 or 3 a.m., making sure they had previously made maps showing potential coastal inundation zones, and plans for evacuations.

“We were ready to do anything we needed to do,” Brown said. “We were up, and we had a plan.”

Brown said that when it became clear that Hawaii had sustained no damage, that San Diego County would be in the clear. Deputies continued to monitor beach areas in the coastal towns where they were assigned, including Imperial Beach and cities between Del Mar and Encinitas, but Brown said by 6 a.m. “we started to lose steam.”

Scientists can only estimate when and how a tsunami will affect distant beaches, partly because variations in the coastline influence the size and shape of waves. But federal scientists say the tsunami could raise wave heights 2.3′ in La Jolla, 2.2′ at northern Imperial Beach, and 1′ at San Diego Navy Pier, which is situated inside the bay. (Complete advisory.)

San Diego County tsunami run-up zones.

“Although no widespread inundation is likely in Southern California, there is a high likelihood of strong and dangerous currents in the harbors and bays,” the National Weather Service said in a statement sent out shortly after 3 a.m. today. “The strong currents will be hazardous to swimmers, and coastal structures will continue for 10 to 12 hours after the initial wave arrival.

“Coastal residents are advised to stay out of the water, off the beach and away from harbors and marinas. Wave heights and currents are amplified by irregular shoreline and are difficult to predict. The initial wave may not be the largest. Later waves may be larger. Mariners in water deeper than 600 feet should not be affected.”

An 8.8 quake off Chile last year produced 1.4′ tsunami wavelets in San Diego, and generated a noticeable tidal switch in La Jolla and at Oceanside Harbor. The tsunami also produced clearly visible waves in the mouth of the Santa Ana River in Newport Beach.

A tsunami advisory is in effect for coastal areas south of Point Conception, and a tsunami warning is in place north of that spot. The expected arrival time for San Diego County was based on estimates for La Jolla. (Estimated arrival times for entire West Coast.)

The biggest quake to hit Japan in more than a century was responsible for the tsunami, a phenomenon defined by NOAA as “a series of ocean waves generated by sudden displacements in the sea floor, landslides, or volcanic activity. In the deep ocean, the tsunami wave may only be a few inches high. The tsunami wave may come gently ashore or may increase in height to become a fast moving wall of turbulent water several meters high.”

The Honolulu Star Advertiser reported at 12:38 a.m. HST that, “The first tsunami wave from a Japanese earthquake have reached Kauai and Oahu, according to the National Weather Service, but there are no reports of damage.

“The gauge at Nawiliwili Harbor showed a 1.5 foot increase and was rising, the National Weather Service said. The weather service says the wave is arriving on Oahu and a surge is apparent on the Diamond Head camera.”

Here's how the 8.9 earthquake was registered on a seismometer on Mt. Soledad in La Jolla. This image if from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography's Anza Seismic Network.

Photo by John Gibbins

A kayaker took advantage of one of the fast inflows of water generated by the Tsunami as he cruised into Quivira basin in Mission Bay as a lifeguard boat looked on.

Here's how the 8.9 earthquake was registered on a seismometer on Mt. Soledad in La Jolla. This image if from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography's Anza Seismic Network.

Photo by John Gibbins

Ben Schlabs, from San Dimas, watched for the Tsunami while laying on his back in the sand at Mission Beach.

Here's how the 8.9 earthquake was registered on a seismometer on Mt. Soledad in La Jolla. This image if from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography's Anza Seismic Network.

Photo by John Gibbins

San Diego City Lifeguard Lt. Andy Lerum video recorded the slow rise and fall of the water in the Mission Bay Channel from atop the lifeguard control tower in Mission Bay.

Here's how the 8.9 earthquake was registered on a seismometer on Mt. Soledad in La Jolla. This image if from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography's Anza Seismic Network.

Photo by John Gibbins

Dozens of people stood on the shoreline and milled about on the boardwalk in Mission Beach at 8:45am on Friday, hoping to see Tsunami waves.

Estimated arrival time of tsunami waves in Pacific basin.

Follow me on Twitter at grobbins

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David Broder: the Dean – and a Prince – RealClearPolitics

Wednesday, March 9th, 2011

At my parents’ house one summer night many years ago, one of the adults invited for dinner asked me and my high school best friend about our interests in life. “I’m thinking of journalism,” replied my pal, Terry Farmer. No dummy, he: the inquiring dinner guest was my dad’s famous Washington Post colleague David Broder. “Me, too,” I quickly added, even though I had no idea about my career path.

“Don’t do it,” Broder quipped in mock concern about the prospect of such energetic and youthful competition. “It’s a crowded field. Have you thought about the sciences?”

It was vintage Broder: graceful, self-deprecatingly funny, and perceptive all at the same time: Terry was a science whiz and became a geophysicist for Shell Oil. I did go into journalism-it was in my blood-but never forgot the example of the man dubbed “the dean” of the Washington press corps. The lesson David Broder taught me and my friends and my siblings-and generations of young reporters he nurtured and helped-was that even the great can be gracious.

My father has written an appreciation, available on the Washington Post website, as has Dan Balz, the current political reporter who perhaps most resembles Broder in temperament and breadth of knowledge. But my mother, who only knew him socially, summed up the feelings of most of those who came into his orbit. “David was such a lovely man,” she said.

Broder began his newspaper career in college at the University of Illinois, where the staff was divided between liberals and communists. David, ever the voice of moderation, was with the liberals. In its editorial lauding Broder as a reporter’s reporter, even the Washington Post noted that in recent years he’d come into criticism from the left side of the political spectrum. Those of us with institutional memory about such things recalled that earlier in his career, particularly in the Nixon era, it was conservatives who railed against the Washington Post’s coverage, including that furnished by its star political reporter. To me, such carping always said more about the person who was complaining than it did about Broder.

He not only kept his own political views private, he also managed to write an opinion column and do a prodigious amount of straight reporting, all while keeping excellent sources on both parties. “It was a very difficult high-wire act, but he was able to do it,” William Safire, the former Nixon aide-turned-New York Times columnist told his old paper Wednesday. “I don’t know how. Maybe he had a way of splitting his professionalism and saying, ‘Today I’ll be an opinion columnist’ and ‘Tomorrow I’ll be a disinterested reporter.’ But you couldn’t characterize his politics.”

If his coverage had a built-in bias, it was that David believed in the two-party system-and the power of the voters to work within that system to reform politics, and shape the government. He also tended to think that political writers, editors, and broadcasters spent too much energy mastering the innards of political campaigns and too little time taking a step back and listening to what the American people were trying to tell us.

“I’ve learned that the most undervalued, underreported aspect of politics is what voters bring to the table,” he once told Washingtonian magazine. “My generation of reporters was deeply influenced by Teddy White, the greatest political journalist of our time. He showed us how far inside a campaign you could go.”

“We naturally emulated him, at least as far as our skills would take us,” Broder added. “Before long, we got so far inside that we forgot the outside — that the campaign belonged not to the candidates or their consultants or their pollsters, but to the public.”

In the end, this attitude was appreciated by the candidates themselves, regardless of their ideology. Mitt Romney, who has been busy avoiding political reporters in the nascent 2012 presidential campaign, took time out to mourn Broder’s passing on Twitter. “David Broder was the last of a breed – an insightful reporter who trusted facts more than opinion,” Romney tweeted. “I will miss him.”

The testimonials flowed from both sides of the aisle: Minnesota Democrat Walter Mondale lauded Broder as the “preeminent political journalist and columnist in the country,” a writer whose “sources and his understanding were so deep.” Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana said Broder “set the modern ‘gold standard’ for those of us engaged in political life as we sought to persuade others, to legislate and to administer the successful progress of our country.”

President Obama expressed his respect as well, describing Broder as “a true giant of journalism.” Obama noted David’s accomplishments and high professional standing – a Pulitzer Prize for his Watergate coverage, “a well-deserved reputation as the most respected and incisive political commentator of his generation,” and the unofficial title as “Dean” of the Washington press corps – but the president also took note of perhaps the most singular aspect of the man:

“Through all his success,” Obama’s said speaking on behalf of himself and the first lady, “David remained an eminently kind and gracious person, and someone we will dearly miss.”

You are not alone, Mr. President.

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