Mere hours after Kareem Abdul-Jabbar revealed he was diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia last December, the Los Angeles Lakers admitted they were just as stunned by the news as everyone else.

Imagine if, in 1942, the son of German immigrants from the Sudetenland had yelled "Heil Hitler!" and then gunned down several dozen of his fellow soldiers on an American military base. Most reporters probably would not have expressed bewilderment as to the perpetrator's motive.

Nine months ago, the Obama administration offered banks $75 billion in taxpayer money to rework troubled mortgages.

It may be mid-November, but there is a long way to go in the race for the 75th Heisman Trophy.

Alabama running back Mark Ingram jumped back on top of this week's Scripps Howard News Service Heisman poll just holding off Houston quarterback Case Keenum by a single point. Last week's leader, 2007 Heisman winner Tim Tebow of Florida, fell to third.

A record number of students are applying to attend California State University campuses next fall, and officials are urging those who haven't yet applied to get their paperwork in by the end of the month.

In the five weeks since the application period opened, 266,152 students have applied to attend a Cal State campus -- an increase of 53 percent compared with the same time last year.

Paul Meany of San Francisco has a good question about unemployment statistics that illustrates why, if you want to know what's going on in the labor market, you can't fixate on one number or headline.

If members of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod have heard it once, they've heard their national leaders repeat this mantra a thousand times: "This is not your grandfather's church."