Date Published: 09/02/2008 [Source]
I've suggested in the past that American summers aren't particularly dangerous but that American summer journalism is. The country's chief mischief-makers, meaning its elected officials, are generally on vacation, depriving us of our usual diet of semi-important news. A lot of intelligent editors also take time off in the summer, editors whose judgment might have protected us from stories like "What's Lurking in Your Countertop?" "Dangerous levels of radon and radiation," say the alarmists, a charge that the Marble Institute of America dismisses as "ludicrous."