Bill Dedman

Fans love McGwire for his powerful physique, for his on-field hugs of his son, the part-time bat boy. He is Big Mac, or Paul Bunyan in Cardinals red with a white-ash bat instead of an ax.

The Obama administration is fighting to block access to names of visitors to the White House, taking up the Bush administration argument that a president doesn't have to reveal who comes calling to influence policy decisions.

The long view of the Census bureau allows some changes that are taken for granted to be studied in more detail. Everyone knows, for example, that people get married later than they used to.

Groups that advocate open government have argued that it's vital to know the names of White House visitors, who may have an outsized influence on policy matters.

Even with good maps, there's no guarantee that the public will get the word about landslide hazards, or that state and local governments will take action to discourage or prevent building in dangerous areas.

I'm not in the what-people-feel business. It is not my place to guess.

It may be no surprise that Pittsburgh has direct flights to London, Paris and Frankfurt, but consider this: many of the tourists here have come from Europe to the capital of culture in the Alleghenies.

State courts usually rule that correspondence between government officials, about government business, are public records, whether they use their government e-mail accounts or private ones.

Brand names are well known to business school professors, but only one professor is a brand name herself. Call her Professor Oprah.

Nine of 10 whites in Chicago borrow from top-drawer banks and mortgage companies, which the industry calls prime lenders. They lend to people with A credit ratings, making loans at competitive rates.

Relaxing at home in his 55th-floor condominium before a game, Sammy Sosa is the same as at the ball park: focused but funny, exuberant but reserved. He is in a strange country, conversing in two languages, but his every movement displays a combination of confidence and humility.

The Manhattan district attorney has closed the well-publicized investigation of the handling of the $300 million fortune of reclusive heiress Huguette Clark - without charging anyone with a crime.