(Press release)
AUGUST 22, 2008 WRANGLER ROUND-UP WEAVER FARMS
Enjoy dinner, live & silent auctions and dancing with the locally popular West MacQueen Street Band, under the tent and stars at Weaver Farms. Dinner is $50/person or $400 for a table of ten with full bar available. Dress is casual. [...]

I hear that Elliott’s picked up its spiffy new City of Peoria-issued liquor license today, shortly after 3 p.m.
But they still have to travel to Springfield pick up their retailer’s license.
The first legal drink will likely be served Wednesday night.
So where will Peoria area 18-year-olds go to see their first live naked girls? Again, Springfield.

A tree in Gettysburg, PA, which has been standing since before the Civil War, was felled by a storm this weekend.
I found this quote interesting:

The huge honey locust tree on Cemetery Hill fell Thursday evening.
and then a little later park historian John Heiser said.

“I have no doubt that Union soldiers sat under it for all [...]

I dare anyone to watch this and disagree with the sentiments:

Hat tip: Stix Blog.

Bad mouth Hy Vee all you want, grocery snobs, but I’m not seeing stories like this about the moderately-prices grocery store:

Massachusetts health authorities are warning consumers not to eat ground beef bought from Whole Foods Markets over the last two months after seven infections have been linked to meat bought there, some after a national [...]

Via RTT News:
Gatehouse Media, Inc., a publisher of print and online media, reported Friday a wider net loss for the second quarter, hurt by impairment charge, despite a 16.5% revenue growth.
The Fairport, New York-based company’s net loss widened to $443.2 million or $7.77 per share from $2.0 million or $0.05 per share in the second [...]

As noted in IlliniPundit and Capitol Fax Blog, the McCain campaign web site is posting talking points and is asking supporters to get the word out. Many are taking this as instructions to copy and paste the talking points into blogs, either as posts or comments.
This is nothing new, albeit a but more blunt than [...]

WEEK announced at last night’s 10 p.m. newscast that weekend anchor/producer Jenny Li was leaving the station to work in public relations for State Farm Insurance in Bloomington.
What’s good for Jenny — better pay and better hours, no doubt — is bed news for news consumers. I’ll miss seeing her around the press table [...]

I received this in my inbox. I thought I would share to spark discussion of a race that I’ve not devoted much time and energy to since the primary:

Dear friends,
The momentum of our campaign continues to build; the buzz and excitement is growing and victory is within our reach. Election Day, November 4, is less [...]

Paris makes sense. Her plan would address short turn concerns about high prices by increasing supply, and help lower demand in the long run by stimulating technological innovation.
One quibble, however. There already are incentives in place for electric vehicles. My parents drive one, and the tax credit usually puts some [...]

It’s Journalism 101: Don’t convict someone in the press. Just because someone is accused of a crime doesn’t mean that person MUST be guilty. That lesson seems to be lost on a few media critics who are demanding that ABC reveal the identities of several confidential sources that linked the 2001 anthrax attacks to Iraq. [...]

I thought I’d publish a post (longer than I intended, actually) catching up on issues raised in recent posts:
* Seth Ben-Ezra has been maintaining a Google map listing the locations of violent crime and murder in Peoria. Keep up the good work. It’s citizen journalism in action. Many will disagree with his numbers and his [...]

This is a very thought-provoking article in Slate by Glenn Greenwald:
During the last week of October, 2001, ABC News, led by Brian Ross, continuously trumpeted the claim as their top news story that government tests conducted on the anthrax — tests conducted at Ft. Detrick — revealed that the anthrax sent to Daschele contained the [...]

The other day, I wrote about how the Democrat-controlled Congress went home and tried to turn off the lights on debate about energy policy. Dissident Republicans staged a Twitter revolt.
Thanks to Twitter, I’m learning about how the liberal Web site Daily Kos turned on one of their own, Lee Stranahan, who failed to look the [...]

Some readers might have noticed that some of your favorite blogs didn’t open properly yesterday and today.
It wasn’t a problem unique to Blog Peoria member sites. It happened all across the Internet, affecting thousands of blogs.
Here’s what happened: Sitemeter — a company that provides bloggers with statistics about visitors, page views and other details — [...]