From Frank Rich’s subscription-only New York Times column, via Editor & Publisher:

NEW YORK Tucked inside Frank Rich’s Sunday column in the New York Times is indication that the newspaper will no longer attend the annual White House Correspondents Association dinners in Washington, which he calls “a crystallization of the press’s failures in the post-9/11 era.” He writes that the event “illustrates how easily a propaganda-driven White House can enlist the Washington news media in its shows.”

“After last weekend’s correspondents’ dinner, The Times decided to end its participation in such events,” wrote Rich. “But even were the dinner to vanish altogether, it remains but a yearly televised snapshot of the overall syndrome. The current White House, weakened as it is, can still establish story lines as fake as ‘Mission Accomplished’ and get a free pass.”

Rich mixed this criticism of the press in with regret over the death of David Halberstam this week, who Rich said it would be hard to imagine “yukking it up with Alberto Gonzales, Paul Wolfowitz and two discarded ‘American Idol’ contestants” at the dinner. “It’s our country’s bitter fortune that while David Halberstam is gone, too many Joe Alsops still hold sway,” writes Rich, comparing the Pulitzer-winner to the now-forgotten Vietnam War cheerleading columnist.

Feed the Head is the latest Flash creation by artist Patrick Smith. Years ago, his project Vectorpark inspired me to think past trendy conventions for Flash interfaces and to create interactive systems that encourage visitors to explore and discover.

A major announcement from Bloomberg on Earth Day includes a proposed fee for driving into Manhattan:

Saying that he would not spend his final term in office “pretending that all is fine,” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg made a series of Earth Day proposals this afternoon to improve the environment of New York City, including charging a new congestion fee to drivers who come into parts of Manhattan during peak hours during weekdays.

The $8 congestion fee was one of 127 initiatives included in a sweeping plan by the mayor to help the city of currently 8.2 million people cope with an expected surge in population that he said is sure to put a strain on its transportation, housing and energy systems.

“Let’s face up to the fact that our population growth is putting our city on a collision course with the environment, which itself is growing more unstable and uncertain,” the mayor said. A key objective is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent by 2030, by which time the population is projected to grow by at least a million people, he said. … The mayor said congestion on the city’s streets is the source of many of the city’s health, environmental and economic problems.

2,176 secret warrants were approved by the FISA court targeting people in the United States in 2006, a record high. The secrety court “approved all but one of the government’s requests.”

From Time’s Up!, Some Assembly Required: “A documentary about the March 2007 NYC Critical Mass. Shot with more than 30 cameras the film follows the first critical mass bike flash mob held under the new NYC parade permit rules that prohibits citizens from assembling in groups of more than 50 people without getting previous authorizion from the police department.”

Over a month ago, the Coalition for the Homeless released its eighth “State of the Homeless” report, an annual assessment of homelessness in New York City. The report “finds that increasing housing costs, low wages and flaws in the city’s Housing Stability Plus program are leading more families than ever before into New York City’s shelter system.”

The report finds that in the past year the number of homeless New Yorkers in shelters increased by 11.1% (to 35,113), the number of homeless families in New York City shelters increased by 17.6% (to 9,190) and the number of homeless children increased by 18.1% (14,219). Most striking, the report finds that the average number of families in shelters hit an all-time record high last month – with the Department of Homeless Services reporting a monthly average of 9,287 families in the city’s shelters in February. These numbers come less than a month after the Mayor’s Management Report documented a 24% increase in the number of new families entering the shelter system.

Honeybees around the world are vanishing, tens of thousands at a time, and scientists don’t know why.

If the bees were dying of pesticide poisoning or freezing, their bodies would be expected to lie around the hive. And if they were absconding because of some threat — which they have been known to do — they wouldn’t leave without the queen.

Since about one-third of the U.S. diet depends on pollination and most of that is performed by honeybees, this constitutes a serious problem, according to Jeff Pettis of the U.S. Agricultural Research Service.

This is not a new problem. From 2004: “Bees, via pollination, are responsible for 15 to 30 percent of the food U.S. consumers eat. But in the last 50 years the domesticated honeybee population—which most farmers depend on for pollination—has declined by about 50 percent, scientists say.”

Rudy Giuliani said yesterday that “if a Democrat is elected president in 2008, America will be at risk for another terrorist attack on the scale of Sept. 11, 2001. But if a Republican is elected, he said, especially if it is him, terrorist attacks can be anticipated and stopped.”

Alberto Gonzales used the phrase “I don’t recall” and its variants 64 times during the five-hour hearing, “treat[ing] the committee to a mixture of arrogance, combativeness and amnesia. Even his would-be defenders on the Republican side were appalled.”

Check out the Daily Show coverage.

Presidential candidate McCain is getting even scarier these days:

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) in South Carolina: “Another man — wondering if an attack on Iran is in the works — wanted to know when America is going to ’send an air mail message to Tehran.’ McCain began his answer by changing the words to a popular Beach Boys song. ‘Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran,’ he sang to the tune of Barbara Ann. … He stopped short of answering the actual question.”

(via ThinkProgress)