Tuesday Items

-- From the Virginian-Pilot comes this piece about Khadijah Whittington and her father, who has ALS.

His eyes move at times -- right to left, left to right -- but nothing more. All other motion has stopped for the 55-year-old, who has lain in a bed like this one since Nov. 13, 2003, the day the Hampton Veterans Administration Medical Center's extended-care unit became the home Mohammed probably will never leave. Betrayed by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis -- Lou Gehrig's disease -- Mohammed doesn't talk anymore. Many of the stories written about Whittington say he no longer communicates, either.

But that's not entirely true.

-- Barry Jacobs: Rush To Judgment Predictable But Apt.

After witnessing the dismemberment of the Wolfpack at Chapel Hill on Saturday -- a result that still had Triangle basketball fans buzzing days later -- it was virtually impossible to imagine what possessed anyone to pick the Pack to finish third in the conference.

Scoffers in the Smith Center media room and beyond, who only months earlier had talked up N.C. State, couldn’t resist comparing the disarray and possible dissension within Sidney Lowe’s squad to the success enjoyed at Arizona State by Herb Sendek, his much-maligned predecessor. Never mind that many of Lowe’s detractors had openly soured on Sendek before he fled.

-- The Baltimore Sun's Kevin Van Valkenburg has had just about enough of your lip:

You, Philip Rivers, might be the biggest offender. I once watched to you talk trash and try to start a fight -- right after you'd lost for the fourth straight time to Maryland. On the same day N.C. State retired your jersey. Before the game. You were a clown then, and you remain one today. This weekend, you were talking trash even though you didn't even play for much of the fourth quarter. Enough.