Heel

The reaction to the so-called generals' revolt is getting ridiculous. President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Mr. Rumsfeld's loyal cadre of top officers have gone to such lengths to defend the Pentagon chief from attacks by a handful of retired generals that you can't help but wonder whether the home-grown insurgents haven't hit a nerve. He's starting to look like the secretary of defensiveness. Any sensible American should feel slightly uneasy when military men (even if they're out of the service)

As fish farming grows to feed a world hungry for protein, there's a hitch - the seas are being scoured of the little wild fish to feed the big captive ones destined for the dinner table. Researchers in Baltimore think they may have hit upon a remedy, one that moves aquaculture closer to truly being sustainable. Working at the Institute of Marine and Environmental Technology, a branch of the University System of Maryland, scientists have developed a plant-based fish food that even finny meat eaters like striped bass gobble up. The fish raised on such a nearly vegetarian diet also are healthier to eat, they say, with fewer of the worrisome chemical contaminants that show up in wild or even many farm-raised fish.

Northwestern outlasted North Carolina with a coolly efficient attack Friday night, 15-10, to avenge its only loss of 2010 and join Maryland in Sunday's NCAA Division I lacrosse championship. The largest crowd ever to watch a women's college lacrosse game in the U.S. — announced at 8,762 at Towson University's Johnny Unitas Stadium — saw the five-time defending champions pummel North Carolina for 10 second-half goals. Player of the Year finalist Katrina Dowd and teammates Danielle Spencer and Erin Fitzgerald each scored three goals for the Wildcats (20-1)

Remember the businesswoman's uniform that was advocated in the late 1970s by image guru John T. Molloy in his best-selling book, "Women's Dress for Success"?Essentially, it was a feminized version of a man's business attire: a tailored wool suit with knee-covering skirt in gray or dark blue, a white or pale blue blouse, a somber bow at the neck and dark pumps. Wear an outfit like this and you will be taken seriously in the male-dominated world of business, Molloy told women.Well, that was then and this is the mid-'90s.

On a day when Johns Hopkins continued to struggle at the offensive end, it was the return of one of the nation's top attackmen -- North Carolina's Billy Bitter -- that ultimately made the biggest difference on Saturday. Bitter, who missed last week's game against Maryland with a strained calf muscle in his left leg, scored a game-high four goals, providing a spark that the No. 12 Blue Jays simply couldn't match in an 11-7 loss to the No. 3 Tar Heels before an announced 4,012 at Homewood Field.

Nearly everyone is celebrating the return of the United Statesas the world power: We are the 800-pound gorilla, we are standing tall, we have shaken the Vietnam syndrome, no one will push us around again.Most Americans think that this is wonderful, a minority that it is terrible. If only it were true.Last year the United States was a sinking power, going down in world influence, not as badly as the Soviet Union, but unmistakably in the same direction. There was one problem after another in the world that the U.S was too broke to tackle as it would have done decades earlier.

North Carolina's charter flight landed at BWI Marshall Airport on Friday afternoon as the winter storm was intensifying. The Tar Heels headed immediately to Maryland's campus for a practice session that normally would have taken place in Chapel Hill, N.C. The storm meant that everything was moved up a day. Instead of practicing on their own campus Friday and departing today, the Tar Heels left Friday and got permission to practice on Maryland's court....

I was watching North Carolina play basketball on ESPN recently. (Is it required that either the Tar Heels or Duke must be on TV every night, or does it just seem that way? Those two get as much air time as Seinfeld reruns.) Carolina has so many weapons. I saw Tyler Hansbrough repeatedly doubled down low. Sometimes, Hansbrough would try to muscle both defenders to the hoop. (Tyler, there's a man open somewhere.) But often the double would allow the Heels to pass to an uncovered player in the paint, leading to a score.

WASHINGTON -- Congressman Sam Brownback, the 39-year-old freshman Republican from Kansas, knows many things but is defined by something he did not know until last week.He has been in Congress 11 months and in 1991 he was a White House Fellow assigned to the U.S. trade representative. But when recently he was invited to join a journalist for breakfast at the Four Seasons Hotel in Georgetown, he did not know where the hotel was.His work is on Capitol Hill, his wife and three children are back on the plains of eastern Kansas, and when he is not on the former he is on the latter, so a lot of the federal city is unfamiliar to him.Unbudgeable objectsBut the city is horrified to know him and the other 72 Republican House freshmen who dug in their 146 heels and forced Republican leaders to force the president to agree to a seven-year timetable for balancing the budget.

GOTEBORG, Sweden -- They have slugged him in the back of the head, waved spiked shoes threateningly in his face and triple-teamed him as if he were Michael Jordan. But Kenya's 10,000-meter runners have not been able to handle Haile Gebrselassie of Ethiopia, the man known as "The Boss."Another world record did not fall to Gebrselassie yesterday, but a second consecutive world championship did, in a meet-record time of 27 minutes, 12.95 seconds.There were no fisticuffs or clipped heels this time, only a fierce sprint to the finish of the eighth-fastest 10,000 ever, with the Ethiopian covering the final 200 meters in 25.3 seconds.