Saturday New & Notes: Beat Colgate!

Hey folks.  The Saturday Celebration posts weren't doing a lot over at AFF, so we tried something new and moved that particular discussion to Thursday.  I'm not sure it did any better on Thursday, but the end result freed up the Saturday spot here, and here we are.

Some of the stories I'm following this weekend are after the jump.

Five Things on a Friday: the President Speaks and Other Stories

It was kind of a slow news week.  If it wasn't for the president's speech, I'm not sure what I'd have written about.

1.  Rebutting Critics, Obama Seeks Higher Bar for Military Action (NYT)

“Af­ter more than five years in of­fice, Mr. Oba­ma has be­come in­creas­ing­ly con­vinced that while the Unit­ed States must play a vi­tal role be­yond its bor­ders, it should avoid get­ting dragged in­to the quick­sand of in­ter­na­tion­al cri­ses that have trapped some of his pre­de­ces­sors. It is time for an end to what he called ‘a long sea­son of war.’

To his crit­ics, main­ly on the right but al­so some on the left, this is a pre­scrip­tion for pas­siv­ity, an ab­ro­ga­tion of decades of bi­par­ti­san lead­er­ship on the world stage. Stung and ir­ri­tated, Mr. Oba­ma used his com­mence­ment ad­dress to West Point cadets on Wednes­day to mount a sus­tained re­but­tal and to de­fine an ap­proach to for­eign pol­i­cy that he be­lieves is suit­ed to a new era and that he hopes will out­last his pres­i­dency.”

Pictures in the Snow

I took these on the walk to the train station and then while I was standing around waiting for the train to come.  I liked 'em much better after I filtered them through Instagram. 

66th and West End Ave, yesterday afternoon.