Conclusion

Predicting a winner for the Constellation Energy Classic is hard. Forecasting a tight finish come Sunday's final round at Hayfields Country Club is easy. It's been a crowded season on the Champions Tour, where the past 14 events have produced as many winners, from Jim Thorpe in May to Tom Watson at the Senior British Open in July and Hale Irwin two weeks ago. They've had to go to a playoff eight times this season. Only once since it opened for business in 1980 has the 50-and-over set produced more drama.

CHICAGO - When T. S. Eliot wrote that "humankind cannot bear very much reality," he could have been talking about the abortion debate. As abortion rights advocates try to make their case against the nomination of John G. Roberts Jr. to the Supreme Court, they have abandoned fact-checking in favor of mythmaking. The myths in this case are two. The first is that Judge Roberts is a frothing extremist on the subject of Roe vs. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision creating a constitutional right to abortion.

A Baltimore Circuit Court judge denied a motion yesterday for a new trial in the case of a city man who was convicted six years ago in a case that hinged on gunshot residue evidence that his attorneys say is unreliable. Judge John N. Prevas ruled that there was "no need to roll the clock back" in the case of Tyrone Jones, who had asked the judge for a second time to set aside his conviction for conspiracy to commit murder in a June 24, 1998, shooting in East Baltimore. The Jones case is among hundreds that a team of public defenders has been examining in an effort to find wrongful convictions from what they believe to be faulty gunshot residue evidence.

Neighbors in the leafy Bel Air community known as the Villages of Thomas Run normally gather on the front porches and trim lawns of their townhouses to chitchat or watch their children skateboard, not to stand vigil. But yesterday, they huddled and spoke in hushed tones as they grimly waited for investigators to search the smoldering wreckage of a mysterious fire for the body of a 5-year-old girl who had been spending a summer night with cousins. When investigators found a child's remains 10 hours after the fire broke out, the discovery confirmed the worst fears of a community so protective of its young that mothers regularly install signs and plant traffic cones in the street to protect playful kids from passing cars.

A Long Way Down By Nick Hornby. Riverhead Books. 352 pages. $24.95. Nick Hornby's first couple of novels, High Fidelity and About a Boy, installed him as part of the pop-culture firmament. He did three things very well in those books: He established ownership of a character type with wide appeal, the overgrown, callow, but well-meaning fanboy; he built protagonists with ample room to grow; and he wrote in an up-to-the-minute conversational style that proved screenplay-ready. In fact, the film versions in both cases made the books themselves seem almost dispensable.

Hometown: Baltimore Current members: David Morreale, vocals, guitar. He will be joined by a backup singer and a pedal steel guitar player. Founded in: 1980 Style: Country folk Influenced by: John Hiatt, Steve Earle, Allison Krause. Notable: Morreale was recently selected as one of 32 finalists for the Grassy Hill Kerrville New Folk Songwriting award from more than 700 applicants. Quotable: Morreale describing his music: "It is tequila- and honey-tinged American fables. I'm a big lover of story songs.

An article in the Perspective section last Sunday said that Lance Armstrong divorced his wife who nursed him through cancer. Armstrong met her after completing chemotherapy, though before fully recovering the strength that led to his return to the top levels of bicycle racing. You start with the name. Armstrong. Could it be more perfect? OK, it's his legs that make him go, but that's just a touch of irony. He's the old radio show Jack Armstrong, The All-American Boy come to life. Then there's the home -- Texas, the old-fashioned womb of American heroes.

OKLAHOMA CITY - There will be 168 seconds of silence here this morning, one moment for each person killed in the federal building bombing 10 years ago today. A candlelight vigil was held Sunday, and a marathon, the Run to Remember, is planned for next weekend. Then there is this: a "Day of Truth" rally and speakers forum today and tomorrow, intended to give public airing to the persistent belief among some that the bombing was part of a wider plot, involving other conspirators never caught or brought to justice.

In honoring the service and sacrifice of American soldiers in Iraq, President Bush used his address at Fort Hood this week to reiterate his greater objective in the region: a democratic Middle East. By the administration's measure, democracy is afoot there. "If we can start to change the most powerful country in the Middle East," Mr. Bush said of Iraq, "the others will follow." Mr. Bush's predictably positive view of democratic inclinations turns on the Iraqi elections and massive street protests in Lebanon that led to the withdrawal of Syrian troops.

THE SHINY PATE, the singsong voice, the veering off on tangents -- they are all part of the package that is Dick Vitale. But among some college basketball fans -- particularly those of a Maryland stripe (or parquetry or whatever you call the pattern on a Terrapin's shell) -- the ESPN analyst carries the sobriquet of Dukie V. He's supposed to be the burgermeister of Krzyzewski-ville, the devil in a Blue Devil dress, an honorary Cameron Crazy. However, if you kept your ears and your mind open during ESPN's telecast of the terrific Maryland-Duke game Wednesday night, you might have drawn a different conclusion -- especially if you kept a notepad handy to write down some of what Vitale was saying.