"Most people who kill themselves choose ordinary places: garages, bedrooms, bathrooms. But in Portland, some end their lives at the Vista Bridge, a bridge built in 1926 in the West Hills that spans MAX tracks and a busy street. Tourists and TV shows love the bridge, but a suicide there can haunt hundreds of people, beginning with family and friends and radiating out to commuters, drivers, children, nearby businesses and neighbors."

Homophobia + Nativism = The craftiest far-right plot yet to trip up an otherwise bipartisan attempt at a humane, sane national immigration policy. Republicans are moaning about plans to recognize same-sex immigrant couples—gleefully hoping to force Obama to forsake one or both constituencies.

Texas governor Rick Perry—an Eagle Scout!—is sad that the Boy Scouts might bow to the whims of "popular culture" and drop its explicit "no gays" policy. Perry's homophobia does not apply to his sartorial choices.

The "most lethal sniper in U.S. military history" was shot dead at a gun range by a despondent War on Terror veteran. The super-sniper, Chris Kyle, had asked the veteran out to the gun range for a day supposed to be devoted to a therapeutic healing of battlefield scars. The vet wound up killing Kyle and another man.

Nebraska's lieutenant governor, a recently divorced family values firebrand widely seen as the frontrunner to succeed the state's current chief executive, had to resign after a newspaper found he used his state-issued phone to make more than 2,000 calls to various women who weren't his wife.

Remember how, last fall, Republicans mostly nominated crazy people for national Senate races and Democrats kindly took advantage by beating those crazy people? The rich men who bankroll the GOP have learned a valuable lesson. This time, they plan to take on the Tea Party and invest, early and often, in candidates who are marginally less insane.

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor—looking to replicate her past life shopping and strolling around NYC's West Village—has delighted observers by moving alongside all the young professionals colonizing and gentrifying the former heart of Washington DC's black community.

It's now been five days since a man in Alabama gunned down a bus driver and dragged off a 5-year-old boy to an underground bunker. The boy apparently has an autism-spectrum disorder, and has received coloring books and medication, but no one is saying much of anything else right now about hostage negotiations.

A 55-year-old inmate at the Multnomah County Detention Center was found dead in his cell after he didn't wake up for dinner. So far, there's been no evidence of suicide or other foul play.

Multinational nuclear talks with Iran, after eight months of quiet, are starting back up. Meanwhile, VP Joe Biden says the US wants to get more serious with Iran—and canoodle somewhere all alone—after years of group dates and furtive gropes in the dark laundry closet just off the European Union's basement rec room.

F*&K YOU, PITTS%&*GH!!! F*&K YOU!!