Vis-a-vis last week's report recommending the merger of the Pittsburgh and Allegheny County governments, Chris Briem at nullspace2.blogspot.com noticed an oped in the Nashville paper (Tennessean.com) from a local professor, Carole Stanford Bucy, reminiscing about Nashville's local government consolidation:

"After our son left Nashville and arrived in Pittsburgh, among the first things that he noticed was how uncoordinated its local governments were. Pittsburgh, with more than 30 governmental entities within Allegheny County, was simply a mess. It began to dawn on him that there was something special about Metropolitan Nashville-Davidson County, and that a community's choices about the structure of local government do have concrete consequences.

"Today, April 1, is the 45th anniversary of the implementation of metropolitan government for the city of Nashville and Davidson County. This new form of government that began in 1963 has saved its taxpayers countless millions of dollars and involved countless private citizens serving on boards and commissions in the governmental decision-making process. ... As we face our present challenges and opportunities, we can take courage and instruction from those community leaders whose commitment to improving the lives of all Nashvillians has made the Nashville of 2008 possible."

Also on the city-county merger front, there's this from 414grantstreet.blogspot.com:

"After taking out time to carefully read the 'Government for Growth: Forging a Bright Future -- Built on Unity, Efficiency, Equity and Equality -- For the People of Allegheny County and the City of Pittsburgh' report by the Citizens Advisory Committee on the Efficiency and Effectiveness of City-County Government, we can't help but wish that this group, led by Pitt Chancellor Mark Nordenberg, had spent as much time working on the details of how to merge and consolidate our governments as they did in coming up with the name of their report and their committee.

"Other blogs, elected officials and mainstream news media accounts have already made clear the community's frustration with the less than insightful work of this group. Clearly, after 17 months or so, we would have expected this report to have given us more than a vague outline on merging the governments and an unnecessary history lessen.

"Bottom line, this report is pretty worthless, other than coming to the conclusion that most progressive-minded people who want to see our city, county and region succeed already know -- we can't continue to compete as a region with our fractured, wasteful and overlapping system of governance."

Under the provocative title "Pentagon Holds Thousands of Americans 'Prisoners of War' " Penny Coleman writes for AlterNet.com about the 60,000 soldiers and Marines who have been kept on extended active duty under the military policy known as "stop-loss."

According to Ms. Coleman, "This is the device by which the president can, 'in the event of war,' choose to extend an enlistee's contract 'until six months after the war ends.' The 'War on Terror' is this president's excuse for invoking that clause. Because that war will, by definition, continue as long as we insist that there is a difference between the terror inflicted on our innocents and the terror inflicted on theirs, American soldiers are effectively signing away their freedom indefinitely when they join the military."

Emagazine.com reports on the recent report by the Pennsylvania-based Environmental Leadership Program that shows Americans strongly prefer screen time to nature. The report details how Americans spend 20 percent less time outdoors than in the 1980s. The group tracked national and state park admissions, game licenses, hiking permits and surveys of leisure activities over the past seven decades.

"The average person in America used to go to the national parks every year," ELP's Patricia Zaradic said. "It was the iconic American family vacation."

Now, not so much.

From PittGirl, who resides at theburghblog.com:

"Usually when I post a police blotter story, I like to bring the snark. In this case, the snark brought itself:

"Matthew J. Kerr, 34, of Cecil, was charged Friday with retail theft at Shop 'N Save, Twin Ponds Lane, in connection with the theft of two boxes of Immodium AD and a container of baby powder. The stolen items are worth about $17.

"Poor guy."

(CurtO replied: "Maybe he didn't have time to pay, nature calling and all.")