Presidents often remark about the eeriness of the first moments after they revert back to being private citizens. Suddenly all of the fanfare is gone. Nobody is there at your beck and call. The band doesn't strike up any longer when he walks into the room and he is once again, just an ordinary citizen.

As I park behind a book store called Book Soup in West Hollywood and make my way to the front door I am reminded of this as a store employee hopefully asks if I am here for former presidential candidate Fred Thompson's book signing. Sort of, is what I meant to say, but I say yes to make him feel better I guess. Actually, I was just coming to pick Fred up for a late dinner before his flight back to DC the next morning, but as I walk to the back the steady stream of autograph-seekers has slowed to a trickle and I think about, as I do for the rest of the evening as we have a quiet dinner uninterrupted by gawkers or fans at an outdoor café on a sidewalk on Sunset Blvd., how close Citizen Fred came to, instead of being here with me tonight, being the Leader of The Free World, unapproachable and distant.

In 2008 I was pretty sure that the race was going to be Barack Obama vs. Fred Thompson and I'm usually a fairly good handicapper of such things. Early on in the campaign I had had coffee with Fred's wife Jeri at a hotel in Burbank and caught a glimpse of Fred walking out the door on his way to the Tonight Show where he was going to announce his candidacy. As he strode purposefully to the front door, trailed by his wife, daughter, nanny and son, he looked, well, "presidential." It would have been a fascinating race-the laid-back Southern-fried country boy vs. the Honolulu/Chicago City slicker, and we'll never know how it would have turned out. But it would have been far more fascinating than the race we got.

Once while Fred was in the middle of his campaign I had the challenging task of calling him about playing a lead role in a film that I was then-producing, awkwardly mentioning that I understood well that he could only be in it if the whole running-for-President thing didn't work out. He didn't seem offended and asked for more details. A year later my fellow producers and I were off of the project but Fred starred in the film anyway, and on this balmy May night I tell him that I'd see the movie and it looks pretty good and I'm back to thinking how amazing American democracy is that a man can be so close to such a high position and then just as quickly be back to starring in indie movies and signing books.

As his fans, known as Fredheads, well know, Fred now has a daily radio show (he took over O'Reilly's slot when Bill left radio) and has now published a memoir called Teaching The Pig To Dance. If Fredheads came to Book Soup hoping for a rehash of his most recent political race or an exegesis of the Obama administration, they'll likely be disappointed. Instead, it's a warm look over the shoulder at life in small-town America. This resonates with me especially because I've just spent time on the set of my next movie in a warm, friendly but quiet town called Smithville, in Texas, that I imagine is similar to the one Fred grew up in, in Tennessee.

On the set in Smithville, I keep thinking that these are the kinds of towns that mass media has destroyed-that the kids of Smithville instead of living and breathing and contributing to their city, are indoors watching stupid TV shows produced by my friends in Hollywood, and are, in the process, losing out on so many of the virtues that kids like Fred learned in his small town. Instead of soaking up the values of their parents and grandparents, I think, today's kids are absorbing the values of Britney, Lindsay, and Paris and maybe our country is going to hell as a result.

Fred's book is a lot like the man himself: warm, unpretentious, modest and contemplative. He has a Reaganesque ability to chalk up any negative things that have happened to him in life as part of the plan that got him on the right track. Having a son at 16 is certainly nobody's idea of a good way to start life, but Fred believes that it saved his life and kept him on a path of hard work and integrity.

He's so modest in real life that it's easy to forget the things this man has done, which I do. At dinner we can't escape talking politics and I tell him a story about being at another dinner with former Watergate figure Chuck Colson and, knowing that he's seen so many presidents up close, I had asked him his opinion of President Obama: Colson gave me two adjectives but later asked that I not publish them. I pass on the two adjectives to Fred and Fred is just as amazed as I was when I first heard them, but then proceeds to talk about Colson as though he knew him. "Of course," I almost smack myself. "You were there-at the Watergate hearings as Senate Counsel."

Fred gives me historical context and suddenly I see Colson in a different light-not as the do-gooder prison reformer and author of books on God, but as a Rahm Emmanuel-like figure who would have done anything and screwed anybody in pursuit of his objectives.

And perhaps, I think, those are the kind of epiphanies that we no longer have because we don't listen to our elders the way the young listened to elders in Fred's time in the small town where he grew up in and which much of the book is about.

Fred writes movingly of his father's wit and his Mom's kindness and of life in a small town in which elders were always there to correct the mistakes of their youth and the young became better men and women because of it.

As we head back toward my car for the short drive back to his hotel, I decide to tell him my story about his "presidential gait" that night in 2007. I figure he's not feeling very presidential on this night and that he might like to know that even though circumstances, Providence and the voters had made other choices, on that night anyway, he very much looked the part of the most powerful man in the world.

And something about Fred Thompson's life mirrors the greatness of America-how ordinary men and women answer the call to service. He was willing to serve, of course, but not obsessed by the need for power. He doesn't seem overly disappointed that things didn't work out the way he'd planned, and seems pleased to have the chance to get back to raising his family, doing his radio show and writing a book for his fans-passing along the words of wisdom he learned in a small town, that have stood him well in life.

More on Barack Obama

Today -- June 30th - is the day that the payday lenders are supposed to close up shop in Arizona. But rather than celebrate, consumer advocates are braced for what might be coming next. They've seen what's happened in North Carolina, they see what's going on in Ohio.

And maybe they follow the Payday Pundit, the alter-ego of Steven Schlein, the man the $40-billion-a-year payday industry pays handsomely to put lipstick on the pig. Last week, the Pundit quoted an article in The Wall Street Journal noting that there were nearly 600 stores in Arizona making cash advances against people's next paychecks but changes in Arizona law "could effectively put them out of business" come July 1.

"Take heart," Schlein wrote in his role as the Pundit. "The industry has proven pretty resilient."

*

The payday lending industry didn't exist at the start of the 1990s but by 2001 there were more than 10,000 of these storefront bankers lending money $200 or $400 at a time to those living on the economic fringes. North Carolina was the first state to fight back against these lenders permitted by local law to charge fees that worked out to an annual interest rate of around 450 percent.

The state legislature in North Carolina had been smart. They were willing to invite the payday lenders into the state but the law they wrote would expire unless it was renewed within four years. The payday lenders had sold their product as a once-in-a-blue-moon emergency product but in reality people were owing money to one of the 1,000 payday stores that had opened around the state for months at a time.

It was in mid-2001 that North Carolina tried ending its experimentation with payday lending yet it wasn't until March of 2006 that the last of the big payday chains actually closed up shop.

The payday lenders made the right economic choice by continuing to operate in the state, even if also a morally dubious one. North Carolina meant about $20 million in profits for the payday lenders and if the last three big chains standing - Check Into Cash, Check 'n Go, and First American Cash Advance - didn't quite collectively book that much money each year, the trio was adding millions annually to its coffers.

And for operating in defiance of the law for nearly 5 years? The three paid a collective fine of $700,000.

*

To begin with the punch line. "Like mosquitoes adapting to a new bug spray," wrote Thomas Suddes, a columnist for the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Ohio not once but twice tried pulling the plug on its payday lenders but they're still making payday loans - even if they don't use the term "payday" when describing them.

The payday lenders first came to Ohio at the start of 1996. It was in 2007 that elected officials in Ohio started holding hearings where anybody who had something to say about the business - whether a store operator, a customer, a former employee, or just Joe or Jo Citizen - could be heard.

The Attorney General held public forums around the state. In the Ohio House of Representatives, the Republican chairman of the Financial Institutions Committee held several hearings, including one that lasted seven hours. The result? In the spring of 2008, the House voted overwhelmingly in favor of imposing a 28 percent rate cap on the payday lenders and the Senate followed suit shortly thereafter.

And then the day after Ohio Governor Ted Strickland's signature made the bill a law, the payday lenders filed paperwork to put a referendum on the ballot that would reverse it.

That gambit only proved that Ohioans were anything but ambivalent about payday loans. In November 2008, by nearly a two-to-one margin, voters in Ohio rejected the payday industry's appeal to let them continue making loans at rates that worked out to 391 percent per year.

Yet Ohio is pretty much a replay of North Carolina. The smaller players have tended to close shop but the chains are using one of a couple of workarounds. A favorite if for no other reason than its diabolical creativity: Charge only 28 percent interest on loans of a couple of hundred dollars - except now borrowers are paying a $15 application fee and also $10 for a credit check.

And some of the more aggressive lenders are paying their customers with a check so they can charge them an extra fee to cash it.

How else could they continue making 400 percent or so on their money?

The Ohio House has passed a bill that would curb the fees lenders can charge its customers but the Senate has yet to take any action.

*

Payday came to Arizona in 2000. But like North Carolina, the Arizona legislature added a sunset provision. The payday enabling legislation expired after 10 years, i.e., now.

In 2008, the payday lenders bankrolled an initiative they dubbed the "Payday Loan Reform Act." They spent $14.8 million trying to convince Arizonans to vote for a measure that would allow them to keep operating in the state, according to David Higuera of Arizonans for Responsible Lending. (Interestingly, the industry's ad campaign in support of their referendum called on voters to "crack down on payday lenders," as if theirs was an initiative supported by payday's foes.)

But despite spending so much money, the payday lenders lost that vote, just as they failed at subsequent attempts to convince the legislature to allow them to continue operating in the state.

The jig is up today - June 30th. But there are other alternatives for the innovative fringe lender in Arizona, like loans against a person's car. A lender can charge about 200 percent on a car title loan, not 400 percent (but then they hold a pretty valuable piece of collateral, the title on a person's car), and already operators representing about half the payday stores in the state have applied for a license to make these loans, said Jean Ann Fox, a long-time staffer for the Consumer Federation of America who happens live in Arizona.

And then there's the lender offering prepaid cards that include an overdraft feature that allows people to borrow against money they don't yet have -- at rates equal to a payday loan.

Arizona's Attorney General has issued a stern warning to any payday lender thinking of continuing to make payday loans after today. And Arizona, unlike Ohio, has limits on the fees a lender can add to the cost of a loan. Fox, who has been monitoring the payday industry since the mid-1990s, is confident that Arizona won't be as bad as North Carolina or Ohio even as she agrees that the payday lenders are a crafty and resilient bunch.

More on Arizona Politics

By Benjamin I. Page and Lawrence R. Jacobs

Memo to Pete Peterson: Americans don't want cuts Social Security - and here's the proof.

Deficit-hawk and investment banker Pete Peterson has devoted a substantial part of his $2.8 billion fortune to pushing for cuts in entitlements like Social Security, in the name of deficit reduction. His Foundation lavishly funded the AmericaSpeaks "town hall" forums held on Saturday, the results of which will be presented to the national Deficit Commission this week -- purporting to tell what the American public thinks about various deficit-reduction options.

The AmericaSpeaks forums suffered from serious defects as measures of public opinion. Yet the results, perhaps to Peterson's surprise, correctly indicated that Americans are strongly committed to Social Security. Large majorities oppose cutting Social Security benefits, even for the sake of deficit reduction.

The AmericaSpeaks town halls failed to convene a representative sample of Americans: they opened their doors to self-selected political activists with extreme views, possibly hoping to draw Tea Party backers. Their intense emphasis on reducing budget deficits "primed" participants to focus on deficits rather than on the needs of retirees when evaluating Social Security policy. The information provided to participants was one-sided, speculative, and in some cases quite misleading: it overstated the "crisis" in Social Security funding, understated the current burden of payroll taxes on ordinary workers, and failed to convey the extent to which millions of retirees count on stable, dependable Social Security benefits. The policy options that were discussed tilted rightwards.

These town halls -- like deliberative forums in general -- should not be taken as accurate measures of "true" or "deliberative" public opinion. Carefully designed and carefully interpreted opinion surveys, based on representative samples from the whole country and carried out in natural settings rather than the artificial and manipulable "fish bowl" of town hall meetings, can do a much better job of revealing what the American public thinks.

Remarkably, however, AmericaSpeaks got lucky (or perhaps, from Peterson's point of view, unlucky.) Despite all the biases, on several issues town hall participants came up with opinions not very different from those that have been expressed by majorities of Americans in dozens of well-designed national surveys. Participants opposed cuts in Social Security benefits, insisting that benefits must be preserved when balancing the budget. They wanted to strengthen the economy, favoring the current stimulus bill (stalled in the Senate) by a margin of 51% to 38%. In order to reduce budget deficits, most favored cutting defense spending and enacting progressive tax measures: raising the payroll tax "cap" so that incomes over $106,800 are subject to the tax (85% in favor); raising high-end corporate and personal income taxes; and imposing new taxes on carbon and on securities transactions. Only on the Social Security retirement age did the results conspicuously stray from actual public opinion.

We have carefully reviewed the best available survey-based evidence concerning public opinion on budget deficits and Social Security. It is this evidence, which provides a fuller, more representative, and more accurate picture of Americans' thinking, that the Deficit Commission and others should pay attention to.

For decades, for example, highly respected studies by the General Social Survey and the Chicago Council on Global Affairs have found large majorities of Americans wanting to expand rather than cut back spending on Social Security. In the most recent CCGA survey, for example, 69% said the program should be "expanded," and only 10% said "cut back."

Support for Social Security is found in virtually all segments of the American population. The opinion that "too little" is being spent on Social Security is shared by majorities of Republicans, Democrats, and Independents; by majorities of men as well as women; by whites as well as African Americans or Latinos; by people with a lot of formal education as well as people with little. Most important, support is very strong among young (age 18-29) Americans, fully 63% of whom told the most recent GSS that we are spending "too little" on Social Security. The supposed generation gap on Social Security is mostly a myth. There is no intergenerational war between "greedy geezers" and the young.

Even when survey questions prime respondents to focus on budget deficits, large majorities of Americans oppose the idea of cutting Social Security benefits for the sake of deficit reduction. Early this year a survey by National Review/ McLaughlin (certainly not prone to a left-wing bias) found that only 11% of Americans approved "cutting future benefits of Social Security" to reduce government spending: fully 86% opposed. Similar results have been found within the last year or so by Democracy Corps/ Greenberg Quinlan; Bloomberg; Quinnipiac; EBRI/ Greenwald, and others.

When survey questions are asked in a reasonably unbiased fashion, majorities of Americans also express opposition to virtually any sort of specific cut or postponement of benefits. This includes reducing COLAs (only a bare majority would even "consider" this possibility, according to Bloomberg), or increasing the retirement age. Earlier this year, Democracy Corps/ Greenberg Quinlan found a solid 63% of Americans opposed to "allowing the Social Security retirement age for receiving full benefits to rise slowly to age 70 by the year 2020″; only 35% favored this, even when it was posed as a proposal "to help close the federal budget deficit." To be sure, EBRI/ Greenwald found a bare, 51% to 47% majority in favor of "raising the age at which people can begin receiving full Social Security retirement benefits by one year," but the question did not specify from what level the age would be raised: perhaps just from age 65, which the 1983 law is already doing.

Thus the sole non-progressive policy option that the AmericaSpeaks forums seemed to support - raising the Social Security retirement age to 69, apparently favored by a bare majority (52%) of forum participants - may not actually be favored by a majority of Americans. On this and other questions, careful scrutiny of AmericaSpeaks' methods is called for, including the unrepresentativeness of their participants and the biases in information presented and options discussed.

Finally, abundant evidence from surveys over the years by Bloomberg, NASI, the present authors, Pew, Quinnipiace, and CBS/NYT have all found that majorities of Americans favor raising or eliminating the payroll tax "cap" on high incomes. Most recently, Bloomberg found 78% of Americans saying that removing the cap entirely should be "considered." Last summer, NASI found that fully 83% of Americans supported "lift[ing]" the cap "so that workers earning more than [the cap] would pay Social Security tax on their entire salary just like everyone else." This one policy change, by itself, would erase most of the projected future deficit in the Social Security trust fund.

We believe that public opinion should be taken seriously by policy makers. Indeed, elected officials ignore the public's wishes at their peril. In assessing public opinion on deficits and Social Security, we urge that the Deficit Commission and others to take the AmericaSpeaks forums with a large grain of salt, even if they happened to come close to the truth on several points. To get a full and accurate picture of what Americans want, it is important to consult a wide range of survey-based evidence and expertise.

*This post was based on the Roosevelt Institute Working Paper, "Understanding Public Opinion on Deficits and Social Security." Full text available here.

Benjamin I. Page is Gordon Scott Fulcher Professor of Decision Making at Northwestern University and coauthor (with Robert Y. Shapiro) of "The Rational Public: Fifty Years of Trends in Americans' Policy Preferences."

Lawrence R. Jacobs is the Walter F. and Joan Mondale Chair for Political Studies and Director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance in the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute at the University of Minnesota. He has written numerous books and articles on public opinion and other aspects of American politics.

This post originally appeared one New Deal 2.0

More on Economy

I have been thinking a lot about the Broadway experience as it relates to musicals. Is sitting in a grand theater all it takes to get the experience? Or is a certain amount of flash necessary? Or something else?

This past spring over the course of two weeks I saw All About Me, The Addams Family and Million Dollar Quartet (in that order). At the end of the final one, my mother said to me: "Well, this was by far the most entertaining of the last three, which must make the other producers angry, because this has to cost less money." She was right. Million Dollar Quartet, with its small cast and band, was the cheapest to run of those entries and it was the best. But it's missing something--it is missing the "this is what Broadway is all about" feeling. That doesn't mean it's not enjoyable; I had a good time at the show. I tell people honestly that I like it. Yet I don't send tourists to it. I am not exactly sure why, but I think it is because part of me feels they could get a similar show in their hometown. That might very well not be true, but some part of me thinks it is. Which gets me back to my original inquiry--what makes a show uniquely a Broadway show?

Oddly, in many ways it's easier to spot what makes an off-Broadway show than a Broadway one. Whenever I sit with folks at a musical theater festival and something is good, but doesn't seem like it would appeal to a wide mainstream audience, we say, "off-Broadway." When those shows have a large cast, we say something like: "That should be an off-Broadway musical, but with how expensive those are now, it probably just won't be produced." This goes along with what we all know--we know that a Broadway musical typically has some mainstream commercial potential. But what else is required to make a property uniquely Broadway?

There are some that will argue that nothing is uniquely Broadway. Shows tour and, some would say, The Lion King in Iowa is the same as The Lion King at the Minskoff. But that reasoning is faulty. Wicked on Broadway is somehow more special than Wicked in Pennsylvania. I can never pinpoint exactly why this is, but I hear it time and time again from audience members. However I cannot say that just being on Broadway makes something extremely special, as that would go against my Million Dollar Quartet statements.

So now I am back to the start once more. Trying to identify an intangible. Perhaps it is a losing battle. I don't want to say it's about production values, though that factors into it. I don't want to say it's about originality, as that is shaky ground to stand on. I can't claim it's all about cast size or orchestra size necessarily. I can't even say why it matters, despite the fact that I am sure many of you reading this are looking for some reason why you are still reading this. What I do know is that it does matter. If people are only going to see one show while they are in town, I want it to be something that feels like you could only see it in New York. Now, with the exception of a show like LoveMusik, you can indeed see most musicals in Cleveland at some point, but there are those musicals that feel somehow like they fit in better in New York than anywhere else. It's those musicals that epitomize the Broadway experience, whatever that may be.

PARIS — French legislators huddled behind closed doors to investigate an issue of national importance – not terrorism or recession, but the French football team's meltdown at the World Cup.

From taxi drivers to President Nicolas Sarkozy, France is taking the fiasco very close to heart and demanding answers. Wednesday's extraordinary parliamentary session defied a warning by football's governing body that political power shouldn't meddle with sport.

For the French, this is about more than sports. It's a blow to the national honor at a time when the country is already worried about its decline in the world. Football-proud England and Italy, too, are wondering whether their World Cup failures are glitches or a sign of a broader malaise.

The way France, winner of the 1998 World Cup and runner-up in 2006, left this year's Cup hurt the French as much as the losing itself.

They finished the first round without a single victory, after players went on strike and refused to train because forward Nicolas Anelka was sent home for insulting the coach. Then there was coach Raymond Domenech's last gesture at the Cup: refusing to shake hands with the rival coach after France's final loss to South Africa.

Dubbed an "Affair of State" across front-page headlines for the past week, the debacle drove Sarkozy to summon an emergency meeting on French football, and Sports Minister Roselyne Bachelot to trash the French team in parliament. Sarkozy has also announced a national symposium next October to rethink how national football is run.

On Wednesday, French lawmakers summoned Domenech and Federation president Jean-Pierre Escalettes for a grilling on how it all went so spectacularly wrong.

All of the political involvement has led FIFA President Sepp Blatter to warn that the French team risks suspension from global tournaments if authorities intervene in the running of the national soccer federation.

Parliament doesn't see it that way.

"It isn't FIFA's role to threaten French lawmakers; we're in a democracy and parliamentarians have the right to hear anyone they want," said lawmaker Eric Ciotti after Wednesday's hearing.

"This isn't just about football, it's about France: It's our honor that's at stake," added lawmaker Jacques Remiller. The exceptionally large turnout of journalists outside the hearing underscores what a national issue the team's fiasco has become, Remiller pointed out as some 200 reporters haggled with lawmakers for news from the session.

Lawmakers insist they're not investigating France's poor sports showing or the coach's dubious tactical decisions, but the team's attitude and the incompetence of federation managers.

French voters are "asking us about it, not about the actual athletic defeat but about the moral defeat," said Michel Herbillon, vice president of the Parliamentary Commission of Cultural and Educational Affairs, which held the hearing.

Domenech retires next month, Escalettes has announced he is resigning. But many French people are still angry at the team, and football talk is everywhere on the streets.

"More heads have to roll, it's the whole system that's rotten," said Paris taxi driver Jean-Paul Poupin. He slammed Domenech's "lack of fair play," but most of his dismay was aimed at the once-cherished national team.

"With the money they earn, it's outrageous that they go on strike," said the cabbie, echoing widespread grumbling on the general state of French society.

The World Cup routing of England and Italy has also triggered soul-searching.

England's 4-1 second-round defeat to old rival Germany sparked a fevered and doom-laden debate about the future of English football and its Italian coach, Fabio Capello.

A motion in the House of Commons called for an urgent inquiry to be held into the state of the national game and voiced "great disappointment at England's pathetic exit." The motion, signed by two lawmakers, says it firmly believes that "many Premier League players are grossly overpaid and under-perform."

Fans and media also criticized Capello, turning their attention to the Football Association, which is to decide whether Capello is to retain his job as the most highly paid manager in the international game.

One potential candidate to replace Capello injected a slight tone of nationalism into the debate.

"Surely we have to find a manager from England, an English manager," storied coach Harry Rednapp was quoted as saying in British media reports.

"I'm not talking about a Scottish manager or an Irish manager, I'm talking about an English manager because this is where we're from, this is our country."

The England players haven't escaped censure, with most lamenting the stars' inability to reproduce their English Premier League form at international level. They also came under criticism for ignoring fans after returning home from the tournament.

In Italy, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's has kept a low profile amid the team's disastrous campaign.

But members of the right-wing Northern League party in his coalition have said Italy's football failure is a sign that the country's top-tier league is opening up too much to foreigners.

"By filling up our teams with foreigners, our football players have become useless," Davide Cavallotto of the Northern League was quoted as saying in Corriere della Sera after Italy's elimination.

Other Italian politicians said the players were often too old, with little room left for younger generations.

In Paris, after Wednesday's hearing, Domenech and Espalettes left the National Assembly through a side door, carefully avoiding reporters.

Lawmakers said Domenech blamed L'Equipe newspaper, which printed details of Anelka's expletive-laden tirade, for the disarray. Domenech also said the paper misquoted the player.

Lawmaker Lionel Tardy, reporting on the closed-door hearing live on Twitter, quoted Escalettes as voicing his "shame" at the "rotten, spoiled brats" on the French team.

___

Associated Press writers Alessandra Rizzo in Rome and Steve Wood in London contributed to this report.

More on World Cup 2010

Yesterday was a road-trip day. Two hours to Pinar del Rio and returning at night on the asphalt highway that separates that city and noisy Havana. The wind blowing in the window tangling my hair, the wrenching of my neck every time the car hit a pothole, and the fright of that the dark, wet highway, dotted with police checkpoints. But these were only temporary discomforts, forgotten when I recall Katrina's patio packed with members and friends of the magazine Coexistence. Last night they announced the results of the contest organized by that publication, which awarded prizes in the categories of essay, audiovisual script, poetry, fiction and photography.

Reinaldo and I were part of the jury, along with Angel Santiesteban, and Orlando Pardo Lazo. In the afternoon we deliberated over the texts and images we had been evaluating separately for weeks, some of them coming under pseudonyms taken from Greek mythology. When we opened the enveloped with the real names of the contestants. We were happy to know that among the winners were not only well-known authors, but young people as well who, for the first time, had submitted their work in a contest. Around nine at night we announced the winners, in the only piece of patio that Urban Reform hadn't confiscated from Karina's family. In front of the wall built months ago by the administrators, phrases with the character of a chisel rang out, like a drill that can go through any wall. For a couple of hours it was as if the ugly wall of bricks and sheets of zinc wasn't there at all, as if we had razed it with our words.

Winners of the Coexistence contest:

Best Book of Stories: Francis Sanchez Rodriguez for The Exit.
Best Essay: Dimas Castellanos Marti for Utopia, Challenges and Difficulties in Today's Cuba.
Best Book of Poetry: Pedro Lazaro Martinez Martinez for This is not a poetic art...
Best Audiovisual Script: Henry Constantin Ferreiro for When the Other World Ends.
Best Photographic Triptych: Angel Martinez Capote for Impotence.

More on Cuba

BOULDER, Colo. — Police responding to reports of a man leaping between cars in a Colorado supermarket parking lot didn't need a detailed description of the suspect.

Boulder Police Sgt. Fred Gerhardt says witnesses on Wednesday reported a man was dressed as a leprechaun and pretending to shoot at people with his fingers.

Witnesses told police the man may have made obscene gestures.

Gerhardt says they likely called police because the man "was acting bizarre."

Officers did not find anyone matching the description of the leprechaun.

Gerhardt says this is the first time Boulder police have received a complaint about a leprechaun.

___

Information from: Daily Camera, http://www.dailycamera.com/