It’s the biggest company you’ve probably never heard of, and today, according to Governor Bobby Jindal, CenturyLink is hiring. Up until this year, CenturyLink was CenturyTel, a company of about 6,000 employees based in a sleepy corner of Northeast Louisiana. Last year, CenturyTel announced they were buying Kansas-based Embarq., a company three times the size of CenturyTel. The new combined company has 20,000 employees/workers. CenturyLink is now the fourth largest communications company in the country. Not bad for a little telephone company that started in someone’s living room back in the ’30s.

Governor Bobby Jindal announced today that CenturyLink has agreed to stay in Monroe through 2019 and will add 350 jobs. The announcement couldn’t come at a better time for the region. Unemployment in the region hovers around 10%, well above the state average. and traditionally, this has been one of the poorest parts of the country. Almost everyone I talked with today mentioned how devastating it would have been if CenturyLink were to have relocated. It’ll be interesting to see how the company grows from here. Walk around CenturyLink headquarters and it feels more like a family business than a future Fortune 500 company. Employees greet each other like they’re at church and call out to one another by first name. They all turned out for the governor’s announcement in the atrium and then celebrated with a lunch of turkey and all the fixings. It may be just a tiny blip of good news in a sea of bad economy stories, but it’s happening in a place where they can really use it.

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Have you heard of noodling? If you haven’t, you probably will soon. It’s a type of fishing that’s been around for ages, but is just now getting a larger audience. We’re here at the Okie Noodling tournament in Pauls Valley, Oklahoma. We came out a few days ago to go fishing with one of the best known noodlers—Lee McFarlin.

If you’re not familiar, here’s how it goes. A fisherman heads out to a river or lake, but instead of taking the usual rod, reel, and bait, the fisherman just takes himself and a steely set of nerves. In a sense, HE is the bait. The hunt is for catfish and they tend to lurk in depths. When it’s the season for spawning, which is now, catfish find a nice murky hole to lay their eggs. Then the male stays to guard them. So, you’ll consider that he’s probably not too happy when some hand or foot out of nowhere pokes into his hole. The catfish take a bite and the noodlers try to hold on for dear life. It doesn’t sound so hard when you’re talking about a ten pounder, but when you’re talking a 64 pound fish, which is the current leader of the competitiion, it’s a whole nother matter.

Noodling can be dangerous—so dangerous that many states have banned the sport. In fact, 69 people died from drowning last year after they went noodling. McFarlin says sometimes people get their arm or leg wedged in the catfish hole and then panic. Many of the holes are five or six feet underwater.

Going out with McFarlin was fun, but it’s hard to see how they do it. The water is brown and so basically all you can see is two or three guys standing around in chest deep water. Then one guy will go underwater and come up with a fish. But at the tournament, they have a demonstration tank with clear water—where you can really see what’s happening. There are thousands of people here. They crowd around the check in station where the noodlers bring their catches. Each new big fish brings cheers from the crowd. There are more than 150 contestants this year from all over the country and top prize is $500. But the noodlers tell us it’s not about the money—they spend that much on gas driving in their catch—it’s about the fun and it’s about the glory. And you have to admit. Someone’s who’s caught a 64 pound fish by hand probably has a pretty good fish tale to tell.

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How does a guy who was an NFL star quarterback end up being shot twice in the head and twice in the chest? That is what police in Nashville are trying to figure out. Steve McNair was found shot to death inside a condo he rented. 20-year old Sahel Kazemi was found dead near McNair. She had a gunshot to the head. A semi-automatic pistol was found beneath her body.

We came to Nashville after getting a call from our boss Saturday afternoon. We scrambled from Dallas and prepped for a day of liveshots Sunday. It is hard to overstate the importance of McNair to Nashville. He was the Titans first quarterback and led them to their only Superbowl appearance. McNair had opened a restaurant in Nashville and by Saturday night, local stations were reporting that there was a growing memorial there. Radio stations set up sites online for fans to express their thoughts. In general, it has been shock, shock that this respected member of the community could have met such a violent end.

Police at first called Kazemi a friend but today told us that McNair and Kazemi had been dating for a few months, even though the 36-year old McNair was married and had kids. At a press conference today, correspondent Kris Gutierrez asked if McNair’s wife had known about the affair. It is a question the police spokesman handled delicately. He said that McNair’s wife was upset and that it was a question they would be looking at as the investigation continues. They are talking with friends of both McNair and Kazemi to try to piece together what happened.

Police say toxicology and other lab reports will take a few days to complete. They are not going so far as saying this is a murder-suicide, but they gave no indication that it was anything but.

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The last time we were in Mexico for Fox News, correspondent Kris Gutierrez and I were covering the impending landfall of Hurricane Dean. Now we’re back, this time in Cabo San Lucas, where a perfect storm of a different sort has hit Mexico’s tourism industry. There were already poor economic conditions worldwide, which kept many travelers at home. But then in the past few months add to that worries about swine flu and increased drug cartel violence. The people in Cabo like to point out neither the swine flu nor the drug violence is anywhere near here. They add that there are also some pretty good deals on hotels and airfare for anyone willing to make the trip. For example, the hotel where we are staying has rooms as low as $129  a night.

How we get our story on T.V. is tricky. Usually, we have a satellite truck to handle our transmissions, but here we’ve brought our own live capability with us. You may have seen the logo for it on the screen when we do liveshots–we use what’s called a “Streambox.” Basically, we’re going live via a fast internet connection.

The liveshot must look pretty good because we seem to be receiving a lot of emails from our coworkers. I suspect a certain jealousy on their part and I can’t blame them. I can’t imagine a better place for an assignment.

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One of the refrains we hear from people who live and work along the border is that lawmakers in DC don’t get it. They make decisions about border security and spending without having seen the realities of being here. Today, at least a few senators got to see some of the border region up close. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee had a field hearing in El Paso, across from Juarez, a town that’s been the scene of vicious drug violence.

A few points stood out. One thing all the witnesses agreed on was that Mexico is not a failed state. That said, another thing all the witnesses seemed to agree on was that the drug violence had gotten to a level that was unprecedented. And these are people who’ve been working in the field for more than a decade. The looming question, at least in El Paso, is — what happens after the Mexican military pulls out of Juarez? The violence is down after the Mexican government pumped thousands of troops into the city. That effort seems unsustainable over the long term. Are the cartels playing a waiting game? Will they just shift their focus to another area that’s not as protected?

The DEA agent in charge of this region says the majority of illicit drugs come through the Southern border.  Juarez and El Paso are at the center of a highly profitable drug route. A former police chief in Juarez says half of the force was tossed out for corruption — and there were still others. An ATF agent testified about cartel interest in obtaining not just guns, but also explosives. A professor talked about a sort of culture war that cartels are waging, with banners, music and videos on YouTube, to win over young people.

And yet — El Paso was the third safest city of its size in the U.S. even though it sits right across from arguably one of the most dangerous places in Mexico. What’s stopping cartels from bringing more bloodshed onto U.S. land? The experts say off the top — it’s not in the cartels’ business interests to create a lot of attention here. And violence would surely be met with a much different response from U.S. law enforcement. Drug enforcement officers credit their efforts. The state of Texas has been sending millions to help beef up its resources. And the Feds are ramping up as well.

What happens next and what D.C. lawmakers do next, could at least in small part be influenced by what a few of them heard here today.

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More than two million feral pigs roam across Texas, from Lubbock to Houston and everywhere in between. Quite frankly, they’re beginning to act like they own the state, tearing up farmers’ fields and eating whatever they want. Not to mention the diseases they carry. It’s been estimated that feral hogs cause about $400 million in damage each year in Texas. Blame the Spanish. When explorers came here several hundred years ago, they let wild boar go in hopes that they’d be fruitful and multiply. The hogs did that and then some.

Back then, the Spanish hoped they’d come back and have something to hunt. Hunters today have an embarrassment of riches, but they must be on Terra firma if they want to fire a shot.  Now some Texas state lawmakers are considering whether it might not be better to let hunters take aim from the air. There are a limited number of people who can already do that. Farmers have to pay a pretty penny to hire these companies to clear hogs from their property. What Texas State Representative Sid Miller thought might make more sense is to allow farmers to sell the hunting rights to regular hunters—who also might like to take a shot from the air. Miller reasons that hunters would get a good outing and farmers, instead of paying money, might make some.

Check out the EXCLUSIVE web video:

But the plan doesn’t sit well with everyone. Susan Hendrix with the Texas Humane Legislation Network opposes the legislation. She says shooting from a helicopter means hunters might miss and leave an animal wounded. Her group advocates keeping the laws just the way they are.

Others say whether you shoot from the air or ground, it’s not going to be enough to keep the hog population in check. That’s why researchers at Texas Tech are working the ultimate pig population reducer— feral hog birth control. They’re trying to figure out something to feed the hogs that would cause them to be sterile but wouldn’t impact other animal populations.

Here’s the full package:

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For television news, Murphy’s Law is always in full effect. We go to do a story on the drought and, predictably, it rains. Unfortunately, for farmers and ranchers across Texas, what little bit of precipitation they may get this week is not going to make much of a dent in the drought they’ve been suffering for months. Ponds, or tanks as they’re called here, are bone dry. Ranchers have to truck in water for their cattle. No rain means nothing’s growing on the ground either, so ranchers must feed their cattle more hay and pellets. That’s expensive. Some have gotten creative—doing something called “burning pear.” Prickly pear cactus plants abound in parts of Central Texas. Cattle ranchers take a torch to them to burn off the stickers so cows can eat the bright green pads. The cattle don’t even wait for them to cool off. They move right in before the smoke clears. Call it cattle ranch flambé.

But cattlemen can only continue so long. Some ranchers are selling off some or all of their herds. It just doesn’t make financial sense to hang on to them. What does this mean to you? Texas is the number one producer of cattle in the nation. Over time, if fewer cattle are produced, the price of beef will shoot up.

It’s not just cattle and it’s not just Central Texas. Every single county in Texas is suffering some kind of drought. Governor Rick Perry has petitioned the federal government for help. Now is the time of year for planting. Some wheat, cotton, and other farmers are wondering—what’s the point of planting? If the crops you plant are going to die off anyway, why bother spending the money to put anything into the ground? Again, fewer crops means higher prices for consumers in the long run.

We asked some ranchers what can be done. Some joked that since our visit seemed to bring on the rain, we might consider a return trip—and soon. Otherwise, they’re asking for our prayers. Our story should run sometime next week.

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As a field producer, I’d much rather be out of the office than in it. Lives from the field can be very exciting, especially when there’s breaking news involved. That said, there are some clear advantages to doing bureau liveshots. Namely: bathroom accessibility. As much as I enjoyed doing a day of lives from remote ranch land in the Oklahoma Panhandle, having to drive a half hour to the nearest bathroom was not so great. Another benefit of being in the office is working phones and computers. When we are out in the hinterlands, service can be spotty. Much of our work depends on laptops, cell phones and Blackberries, so when they’re on the fritz because of low signal strength, it can be a real aggravation. Being in the bureau ensures we stay connected.

Generally, we get into the bureau about an hour prior to when we are supposed to be ready for liveshots. Today our first availability was 0900 EST. That’s 8a.m. our time, so we needed to be here by about 7a.m. That’s another advantage of being in the bureau. In the field, you’re guaranteed a half hour drive to your liveshot location and that eats into precious sleeping time. I live five minutes from the bureau, so there’s not much of a commute.

Once in the bureau, we wait for each show to decide whether they want us. Generally, if we are live in one hour, the next hour will take a pass on us. A good day means probably means four or five liveshots, plus a taped segment either for Special Report or Fox Report.

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We hadn’t been to the border in a while and I certainly hadn’t been since the fence was finished. We came to El Paso because of violence, not violence in El Paso but just across the border in Juarez, a city of about 1.2 million people and twice the size of  El Paso. You’ve heard about the drug violence in Mexico. Juarez has been especially hard hit. More than 230 people have been killed and that’s just since the beginning of the year. People, on hearing I was going to El Paso, told me to be careful. They were well intentioned but had no reason to worry. El Paso is safe. Despite the incredible violence going on across the border, El Paso remains the third safest city of its size in the U.S.  Governor Perry was visiting to make sure it stays that way.

El Paso is an interesting city. Most places I’ve visited along the border are much smaller towns. A mountain range runs through El Paso and the city seems to merge with its neighbor to the South. At night, the twinkling lights of each are indistinguishable. People who live on one side have relatives on the other. Some work in one country and live in another. Both populations, at least until the recent violence, used to visit each other’s shops and restaurants. People who live here have lived here for generations.

The fence has become a visual reminder that the two cities are distinct. Border Patrol agents say it’s helped them do their job. We did a day of live shots at a couple of different spots along the fence. At one, right in the middle of town and hugging the Rio Grande, there was a sheet of Plexiglas where agents sometimes park. The Plexiglas is to protect the agents. You can see that it’s been shot. At another live location, we were high on a cliff near the city’s dump and across from a colonia by Juarez.  Colonias have been explained to me as squatter towns (on both sides of the border) where people just move in and build, without water or utilities. As we stood across from the colonia, kids came up to the fence and asked for money. A border agent pointed out the orphanage about a mile from the fence where the kids lived. The agent also told us that some of the same kids would toss rocks at them.

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You wouldn’t think you’d learn a lot about finance in a place like Spearman, Texas, but after our trip there recently, I came home with a lot to think about.  Spearman is a small town, maybe four thousand people, in the Panhandle region of Texas, usually hot, flat and windy. Farming and oil are big here but it was banking that drew us to the town. Agricultural banking, if you can believe it, has so far been able to escape the Sturm und Drang suffered by Wall Street. We wanted to visit a typical farming community to find out why.

A local farmer and his banker

The secret to success in the banking industry? The folks in agricultural banking say there is no secret—just common sense. Right now  it’s renewal time, a time when farmers come in with what’s basically their business plan for the next year. They meet eyeball to eyeball with their banker, the same guy they sat down with last year, probably the same guy who sat down with their father and grandfather. On the farmers end, they make their best guess as to what might happen over the next year. What will the weather do? What crops will pay the most? Farmers as a rule are conditioned to an industry that is at best as fickle as fate. One day prices are high. The next, they’re not. One day, it’s dry, the next, there’s a flood. That’s the way it goes and it’s an eventuality for which farmers are prepared. They don’t ask for the moon when they go in to their banker and they generally have something set aside for the years when times aren’t great.

As for the bankers, they look to make sure the farmers have assets and a sound plan for the next year. They look for farmers who aren’t overleveraged, don’t take too much of a living out of  their operation. When these bankers make a loan, they know it won’t be sold off to another bank so there’s a vested interest to make sure the loan is sound. After all, they’ll be seeing it through to its conclusion. These loans are the backbone of success in these agricultural and community banks. The bankers actually know their customers, see them at church. Their kids go to school together.

As one banker told us about Wall Street, “I would say we just never got as greedy as those folks.” The ag bankers aren’t redecorating their offices, certainly not for millions—and their clients aren’t trading up on their homes. As a group, the farmers and bankers didn’t get fat and happy over the last few years, but now it looks like they may not be dropping quite as low either.

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When it comes to gas prices, simple logic seems to fly out the window. We all know that gas prices are tied to the price of crude oil. Crude oil goes up, gas prices go up. So how come lately crude oil is holding steady, while gas prices, on the other hand, keep inching up? Case in point.  While crude hovers around $40 a barrel, gas is up more than 3 cents since just last week. What gives?

Enter the convoluted world of reasoning that surrounds the oil industry. Turns out, its not all about the crude. Crude contributes a lot to the price at the pump, to be sure. Right now for each gallon you pump, a little more than half the cost covers the crude used to make the gas. But there are other factors at work too.

Crude comes into refineries. Refineries make gas. Gas is transported to holding facilities and then onto your local station. According to the Energy Information Administration (www.eia.doe.gov), this process takes a week or two, causing gas prices, generally, to lag behind oil prices. One factor that can set things off kilter are refineries– and simple supply and demand.

If some refineries are offline because of maintenance, there’s less gas going out. Consequently, gas prices get goosed. Similarly, if a refinery can make more money turning a barrel of crude, say, into heating oil instead of gasoline, they may decide to make more heating oil and less gas, again, causing there to be less gas and eventually helping to nudge up gas prices. Throw in the threat of a refinery strike as happened recently and you’re stuck with some sticker shock at the pump.

Of course, we’re nowhere near the madness of last summer, but generally consumers can expect to get a break on gas prices during the winter because usage is down. You can forget that. And usage tends to start ticking back up in the Spring. You know what that means. Enjoy these prices while you can.

PLUS — Click HERE to follow Maggie on Twitter!

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I’ve been to tornadoes before but the scene of each one is always just shocking. Walking along you see trees snapped, cars flipped and houses ripped wide open, scattered belongings littering once tidy lawns. We are doing liveshots in Lone Grove, Oklahoma, which is about a 100 miles south of Oklahoma City. Last night, a tornado tore through this town of about a five thousand people, leaving a path of destruction that’s about a half mile wide. At least eight people have died here in this small town. We are in front of the home of one of the victims, an elderly man. A neighbor says he and his wife were watching TV. The weathercaster had just gotten through saying the storm would hit in fifteen minutes. Seconds later, the neighbor heard winds roar and yelled at his wife to jump in the bathtub for safety. After the worst of it passed, he and his wife immediately thought of the elderly man next door. They ran over to his house where the man was buried under rubble. Emergency crews came, but it was too late.

This morning, just after the sun came up, we talked with the man’s grandson. Donnie Sullivan had come to look at the house. Both Sullivan’s grandfather and aunt  and uncle were in the house when the tornado came through. Sullivan’s mom was talking to his aunt when it happened. She heard the noise in the background and the aunt said “I think the walls caved in on me.” When you look at a picture of the house, it’s a miracle anyone got out of it alive, but both Sullivan’s aunt and uncle survived the storm.

Fate is strange. Last night in Dallas, we too heard tornado sirens, and yet we wake up safe in our beds, but two hours north of us, a town is forever changed.

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Why Midland? That was the question a lot of people asked when they heard that President Bush’s plane would be headed there directly from D.C. Why not Waco (near the President’s ranch in Crawford) or even Dallas (his new home)?

Coming to Midland, you can see its appeal for someone who’s spent the last eight years in Washington. Midland is sort of quintessentially West Texas. It’s flat, windy and dry. It’s oil country. And for President Bush, it’s friends who, as he said in his speech to a crowd of about 30,000, “liked me before I got into politics… liked me during politics… and liked me after.” This is red country, strong Bush territory populated by people who feel like they own a piece of him.  And they showed up in force, waving red white and blue “w’s” handed out by organizers of the “Welcome Home” event in Midland.

About an hour or so before the President was expected to arrive home, the line to get in snaked down the street, around the corner, along a couple blocks and back around another corner. They weren’t disappointed later when the plane carrying the President did a flyover of the event before landing.

Midland was President Bush’s boyhood home. And it was the site of the send-off party that sent him to D.C. and the White House. So to the Bush team, it only made sense that he would come here first, before heading off to his ranch in Crawford to relax, and, eventually his new home in Dallas.

In Midland, President Bush was finally able to utter six words he says he’s been longing to say, “It is good to be home.”

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Discovery on the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center. (Photo: NASA/Troy Cryder. www.nasa.gov)

Every generation has its defining NASA moment. For my parents, it was Neil Armstrong stepping on the moon. For me, it was the Challenger crash. But for many now, NASA doesn’t really come up on the radar. And that’s a shame. Because we’re entering a period where the choices made for the future of the agency could change the course of our own future.

Consider that the Space Shuttle program is set to retire in 2010. NASA has a flurry of activity over the next couple years to complete the work that needs to be done on the International Space Station. What comes after that? Well, for right now, NASA’s next big mission is “Constellation,” a program that can get us to the moon–and beyond. They’re building a new rocket from scratch and also the Orion, a new spacecraft. Unfortunately, there’s a five year gap between the two programs, meaning we won’t have a way to get to the International Space Station on our own. We’ll have to hitch a ride with the Russians, something that’s making a lot of people uncomfortable given the country’s recent conflict in Georgia.

So what do you do? You can extend the shuttle program. That’s what the Obama administration has proposed. Some say you could extend the program by two to five years, get a little more life out of the shuttle and also be able to test components of the new Orion in the process.

But the shuttle’s already more than three decades old. NASA says, every time a shuttle launches, there’s a one in 77 chance that something could go REALLY wrong. And that risk will only increase as the shuttles get older. Then there’s cost. Extending the shuttle might take money away from Constellation— after all, NASA only has a finite amount of resources. Critics of delaying the shuttle’s retirement say at some point—you have to stand down the old shuttle program, so you can transition people and facilities toward the new one.

Here’s another possibility that’s been kicked around. Instead of building a new rocket from scratch, why not modify military rockets already in use? That might save time and money. Critics of this option point to prospect of combining military and civilian space programs and suggest that it might begin a new era of secrecy in space, whereas now, NASA is able to cooperate openly with universities and space contractors.

Later this month, NASA is set to deliver a report on the possibility of extending the space shuttle’s lifespan. Long before that, President-Elect Obama is expected to name the new NASA head. Experts say that’s where we may get the best clue as to the future course of the agency. If the Obama team picks an astronaut or engineer, these experts say, expect to see NASA stay pretty much on its current path. If the President-Elect picks a scientist, human missions may take a backseat to pure science projects like the Mars Rover. Other talk includes highlighting NASA current environmental missions, like its surveys of the earth to assess global warming. Whatever the future direction, it’s clear there are no easy answers.

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Joseph Cao, courtesy of "josephcaoforcongress.com"

Ever heard of Joseph Cao? Don’t feel bad. You’re not alone. But I suspect in the next few days, you’ll be hearing a lot about him. That’s because this unlikely candidate (josephcaoforcongress.com), a guy who’s never held elected office, managed something of a coup in Louisiana politics– he just defeated nine term Congressman William Jefferson. You remember Jefferson. FBI agents say they found a stash of marked bills in his freezer a few years back. Jefferson’s facing federal indictments on bribery and corruption, and yet he still managed to come out at the top of the heap in a Democratic primary and runoff. On Saturday, voters in Louisiana’s second Congressional district went to the polls again. Most expected Cao would get trounced. After all, Jefferson’s strongest Democratic rival, former TV anchor Helena Moreno, was a good 20,000 votes behind him in a runoff last month. So you’ll imagine my surprise when I pulled up election results on the Louisiana Secretary of State’s office (http://www400.sos.louisiana.gov:8090/cgibin/?rqstyp=elcms2&rqsdta=120608) . Cao won. Cao won by less than two thousand votes, but he won.

courtesy of "NationalAtlas.gov"

What’s incredible is that this election might never have happened on December 6th. Had it not, Cao might never have had a shot at Jefferson. Because of Hurricane Gustav, the Democratic primary was pushed back a month, and that pushed back the runoff to November. Sixty-six percent of the 2nd District’s registered voters are Democrats. It’s not a stretch to imagine that had Cao faced Jefferson in November, when Democrats packed the polls to vote for Barack Obama, we’d have had a different outcome. But on a Saturday a few weeks before Christmas? It was obviously a little harder for Jefferson to mobilize his core support. Not so for Cao. Cao has Republicans, but he also had many Democrats supporting him. The same voters who could not get Moreno past Jefferson in November were itching for an upset in Saturday’s election. And when we followed Cao around for a story last week, the refrain we heard from people he met on the street was the same– “We’re tired of Jefferson,” and, “We’re glad you’re running.”

A few words about Cao. He’s slight, soft-spoken and seems absolutely genuine. Cao didn’t strike me as someone who was looking to launch his political career. He seems like an ordinary guy who just wants to do some good.

Cao’s story is anything but ordinary. He fled from Vietnam to the U.S. when he was 8 years old. He’s a former Jesuit seminarian. He speaks four languages and has degrees in physics, philosophy and law. Cao and his family saw their home destroyed because of Katrina. That’s how he got interested in the issues that prompted him to run in this race. When we were with Cao last week in a campaign office, an adviser said something like, “We really have to start preparing for what happens next, if we win.” But I got the sense that in the room, even though everyone was hopeful, no one really expected to bring down Jefferson. I, for one, will be particularly interested to see “what happens next” now that they have.

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I am thinking of all of you who are working this Thanksgiving. I am giving thanks that you are there to do the jobs that you do. I am thankful to all the soldiers, police and firemen, restaurant and hotel employees, gas station attendants and airline workers- and the thousands of journalists like me- who this year drew the short end of the stick. While co-workers can often be like a family, nothing is like spending the holiday with your own family and friends, eating, relaxing and giving thanks.

I started working in television news when I was 17 years old. In the 20ish years since, I have spent many Thanksgivings (and Christmases for that matter) in the newsroom, trying to put a show together with little news and fewer resources. More than once the smattering of us left in the newsroom wondered whether anyone was watching anyway- so why not just run yesterday’s newscast? One of my more enjoyable Thanksgivings at work was spent in Phoenix, when station management sent in a turkey dinner with all the trimmings. Some of the guys in the newsroom pulled two loveseats in (from the bosses office?) so people could watch football. Someone actually found a football and started tossing it around. A couple people’s families came in to the station to join us for a hour or two. A team of two or three people started stringing up Christmas lights inside.

For those of you who have never had to work a holiday, be thankful. If you happen to run across someone who’s stuck on the job today, saying “I’m sorry you have to work today” goes a long way.

As for me, this year I am fortunate enough to have the day off. I am travelling home to Cincinnati to be with family. I stopped into an empty airport coffee shop and felt like a total heel when I saw the sole worker in the shop jump up from a turkey dinner to get me a cup of coffee. To that guy, and the multitudes of others of you working today, when I sit down with my family tonight, be assured, I raise my glass to you.

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Travelers rejoice! In a week where many of us will be stuck in the annual American holiday ritual known as “stand-in-airport-security-lines-trying-to-get-to-Grandma’s-house,” remind yourself of this: Someday, and someday soon, you’ll be able to zip through security… using your cell phone! For some, that day is now.

It’s called paperless boarding. Here’s how it works: Instead of printing out a boarding pass, you download one to your cell phone or PDA. On the boarding pass, there’s a two dimensional bar code that’s encrypted with your name and flight information. You walk up to security. Transportation Security Administration agents use a handheld device to scan the bar code on your phone. And you’re done. (You still have to show ID). Right now, it’s only for domestic passengers who are traveling solo.

The program began about a year ago, when the TSA partnered with Continental Airlines at Houston’s Bush Intercontinental Airport. Since then, upwards of 300,000 Continental passengers have used paperless boarding. The pilot program was so successful Continental expanded it to a total of eight airports.

Now other airlines and airports are getting into the act. So far, five airlines are using paperless boarding at fourteen different airports:

Alaska Airlines

- Seattle

American Airlines

- Chicago O’Hare, LAX, Orange County.

Continental Airlines

- Houston George Bush Intercontinental, Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA), Newark Liberty International, Boston, Austin, San Antonio, Cleveland, LaGuardia Airport.

Delta Airlines

- LaGuardia Airport, and coming soon, Atlanta.

Northwest Airlines
-  Indianapolis Int’l Airport and Detroit Metro Airport

The TSA expects the program to be everywhere by the end of next year. Eventually, paperless boarding will even be used to track wait times, which, fingers crossed, will shorter… getting you to Grandma’s house that much faster.

To find out more on this new way to board, click here!

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It’s the oldest excuse in the book. You’re coming out of the store after doing some holdiay shopping- and you’d love to put something in the Salvation Army kettle, but you’re out of cash. Excuse no more. The Salvation Army is going high tech.
“We have the first cashless kettle,” says Major Anthony Baso of the Salvation Army.

In at least 12 spots in Dallas, as well as places in LA, Phoenix and Colorado Springs, you can now charge your donation. That’s because there are new mobile credit card swipers attached to some of the old red kettle stands. Don Brock with Securepointe Technologies is the man behind the program for the machines. He says it’s easy. “You punch in the sale, swipe the card. Enter the amount.” Use debit or credit. Donate whatever you’d like. And, handy bonus, you get a receipt for tax time.

The Salvation Army is hoping this will help them raise more critically needed funds for their holiday campaign, not just because it can target new donors, but also because people donating by credit are more apt to give five or ten bucks- as opposed to cash givers who may just give a couple bucks or change in their pocket.

The new machines are a long time coming. Shoppers have been asking for it for a while. Bellringer Michael Alexander says he hears it all the time – “I don’t have change or no one is carrying cash anymore, can we get a credit card machine?” But the Salvation Army had to make sure any system was secure. With these mobile card machines, no information is stored on the machine, so if someone takes off with it, no one is at risk. The information is triple encrypted when it is sent wirelessly.

If all goes well in the test markets, the Salvation Army will roll it out to other places. So far, so good. We were around when Linus Wright tried it out for the first time. Wright says he liked it and would enourage everyone to give it a try. “I can’t think of a better process,” he says.

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Deputies chased this Expedition until the driver bailed out, leaving the drugs.

If you want fresh outrage, consider this: Cops in south Texas are getting shot at – from Mexico.  It’s happened at least three times in Hidalgo County in the past year.   Here’s what police say is a typical scenario. Deputies or Border Patrol officers or local cops try to stop a car suspected of hauling drugs. The car takes off and heads for the border. The drug dealers drive the car or truck into the Rio Grande, which separates the U.S. and Mexico.  Hooded men dressed in black appear on the Mexican side of the border and start shooting at police while other bad guys try to get the car across the river and fish out the drugs. In one incident, there was a four minute gun battle between drug runners and law enforcement, each shooting from their side of the border.  No police have been hurt yet, but both Border Patrol and the Hidalgo County Sheriffs Department say attacks like these are increasing. Border Patrol says where three years ago, they’d have maybe six violent attacks in a year — in the past year, there were 130.

There’s something else: Drug dealers will often send out “suicide loads.” They’ll send over one vehicle with a relatively small load. That car will intentionally try to get caught with police attention focused on the drug bust, dealers then send over another volley of cars with much bigger drug loads.  Even with increased resources and manpower, police can’t be everywhere at once.  But they are taking their own safety seriously. They wear bullet proof vests and, at least in Hidalgo County, deputies can pack some serious heat — like automatic weapons.  At the rate the border drug war is going, it looks like they’re going to need them.

Check out the behind-the-scenes photos:

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An admission upfront: I’d rather cover a Cat. 3 hurricane than politics. And in the Dallas bureau, which covers much of the Gulf Coast, we’ve had no shortage of storms this season.

That said, we do get the odd political story tossed our way, especially in this very busy political season. Our latest assignment was to do a profile on one of the races for U.S. Senate. Incumbent Republican Senator John Cornyn is facing Texas Representative and Democrat Rick Noriega. Part of the assignment was covering the first of two debates where the candidates would face off.

Picture Houston, at a local television station. Various television and print journalists have been corralled into the lobby. The candidates walk down the stairs from a couple rooms where they’ve been engaged in last minute prepping. We take pictures, ask a couple questions and they file past us into the studio. We settle into our seats and get ready to listen up. But we’re not alone.

Every network producer has a Blackberry. If not two. It is the must have accessory. Lose my luggage. Steal my wallet. But try to take my Blackberry and you’ll leave one arm behind. On this particular night, however, I wish I’d accidentally left my Blackberry in the car. This is because, in the space of  a one hour-long debate, I got twenty-one emails. I know. I counted them. They were from the representatives of the two candidates.

It went something like this…

8:06 Noriega’s people: “Cornyn says he’ll put taxpayers first, but proposes 30% sales tax on everything you buy.”

8:10 Cornyn’s people: “More than 8 million Texas taxpayers have benefited from tax cuts.”

8:11 Noriega: “Cornyn ignores his tax and borrow voting record, touts fiscal conservatism.”

8:19 Cornyn: “Information on what tax breaks were included emergency rescue plan.”

It continued. Keep in mind, each email contained several paragraphs in addition to the statements I’m including here. Good thing I’m a multi-tasker and can listen, write and read all at the same time.

8:24 Cornyn: “The facts on Senator Cornyn’s immigration plan.”

8:24 Noriega: “Cornyn failed Texas families on financial bailout…”

8:25 Cornyn: “Facts on the Fair Tax.”

8:25 Noriega: “Cornyn uses immigration issue to divide Texans.”

8:26 Noriega: “Texas families can’t afford Cornyn’s health tax.”

((Note the times on this last batch. Both sides are obviously accomplished typists.))

8:31 Noriega: “Cornyn: It wasn’t me, shifts blame for six years of failures in Senate.”

8:32 Cornyn: “Rep. Noriega: Medicare is not the problem.”

And so on. I’ve only given you half of them, but you get the idea. Gone is the day where a journalist could actually go to an event and anticipate spin AFTER the debate. Now, we get it play by play. Which is why I’m getting out my rain pants and hoping for this political storm to be over soon.

Hurricane coverage usually only lasts a few days, maybe a week. For this one, we’ll have to ride it out all the way through November 4th.

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Busted.

We went to TH Harris Middle School to do a story on a traveling fitness center. The program, put on through Ochsner Health System in New Orleans, is targeting the epidemic of obesity in kids. I started talking with the nutritionist for the program who told me that most of the kids don’t eat breakfast or, worse, they’ll grab a candy bar. (I must have looked guilty because not one of us in our team of three, not producer, photographer or correspondent, had eaten any breakfast that morning. I was going to grab an apple in the hotel but some guy was using the fruit bowl as a hat rack. Noooooo thank-you.)

Excuses, excuses. The interview was early. We didn’t have time. This is whining similar to what the nutritionist hears from kids. She rattled off several quick options:

• Whole grain bread or toast with peanut butter.
• Yogurt and a piece of fruit.
• A hard-boiled egg.

I’d like to point out that after the interview when we stopped at Starbucks, while my coworkers had an old-fashioned glazed donut and pumpkin bread, respectively, I was guilted into a fat free yogurt. To be fair to my coworkers, they did go “light” on their frozen caramel-mocha frappuccinos.

Back to the kids. After skipping breakfast, sometimes getting to school doesn’t help much. Many schools serve unhealthy lunches, stuff kids like, say pizza and chicken nuggets, but stuff that’s also off the charts in terms of fat and salt. So out of three meals, two are already a waste. Throw in busy parents and fast food for dinner and you have the makings for arterial disaster.

Here’s where we are:

• About 19% of kids 6-11 are overweight, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Over the last three decades, the number of overweight kids has tripled.
• Obesity puts kids more at risk for things like high blood pressure, high cholesterol, Type 2 diabetes, asthma and sleep apnea.
• Overweight kids become overweight adults. The CDC says that 80% of kids who are overweight between the ages of ten and fifteen will be obese at age 25.

The fitness expert for Ochsner told me something I found tragic. This generation of kids is the first generation not expected to outlive their parents. But you can’t expect kids to do the right thing if parents and other adults are hanging on to bad habits. If we want kids to shape up, we first have to do it ourselves. To help our kids, and ourselves, here are a couple of interesting websites:

• http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/healthyweight/children/index.htm
• http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/public/heart/obesity/wecan/

To people trying to change: I feel your pain. Lunch is upon us and we’re in a city where just looking at the food is apt to add calories. (Would a Po Boy could be considered health food?)

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MAGGIE’S ON TWITTER: www.twitter.com/lineback

3pm: We left our location at the flooded out highway and made our way downtown. Fortunately, Kris Gutierrez spent a few years reporting in Houston so he knew his way around. We passed by Reliant stadium, which apparently has damage, but we couldn’t see any driving by.

Downtown was a different story. At a neighborhood near downtown there were trees and bushes all over the street. Further down, at the JP Morgan Chase center, there are windows busted out all over the place. Apparently furniture from one building flew out and busted windows on a building across the street. Workers are trying to get it all cleaned up. In fact, driving around town, it’s been impressive. There are city crews all over where we’ve been cleaning up trees and debris.

Cars driving on the wrong side of the freeway.

11:45 a.m. The first we new something was wrong was when we saw a car driving right at us. What the? No one is supposed to be on the freeway much less driving the wrong way on the freeway. A couple other cars passed us driving the wrong way. Then we saw it. Highway 288 just south of downtown Houston dipped down and disappeared into a lake. In both directions. A TX DOT employee told me it’s at least 6 feet deep.

We met a poor man who drove right into the water before he realized anything was wrong. He got his car out but there are now at least three inches sitting in the bottom of it.

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MAGGIE’S ON TWITTER: www.twitter.com/lineback

Surfside Beach is a small beach town of less than a 1,000 people. It’s situated between the Gulf of Mexico and the Intracoastal Waterway, about 44 miles west of Galveston.

When we got here this morning in darkness, it was already flooding. As the sun began to peek out, we were surprised to see big waves just a few hundred feet from us. In the space of a half hour, dry roads became small rivers.

After our 8:30a EST live shot, we had to move our truck. We got an ominous warning from Janice Dean about the severity of the storm surge. You can see evidence of that here in Surfside Beach. We’re no where near the storm’s landfall and the town is already drowning. And it could be tragic. We saw a man and woman and their dog driving in the flooded street to get to their home.

They said they were going to ride out the storm. We told them what Fox forecasters had told us — that “life threatening inundation” was likely. About a half hour later, the man’s wife came back in tears, alone. She was leaving. He was staying. We heard there were a couple of his neighbors staying as well.

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