Hurling toward the plate at a speed above 80 mph, the 2-1 fastball from George Washington's Jose Taveras rode in on the hands of Joshua Polanco, who fought off the pitch and hit a dribbler to third. Lost in the course of the event, though, was the deadened sound emitted from Rodriguez's aluminum bat.

They are New York City's pings of spring, the sound bourn out of aluminum bats colliding with baseballs that zoom towards home plate at speeds ranging from 60-95 mph. Most recently, though, they have been the sounding off point of a debate across the Big Apple as to whether or not metal bats are safe for high school players.

Records access at issue in House

Two Senate-passed bills intended to improve public access to state and local government records in Oregon are pending in the House Judiciary Committee.Whether they get a hearing is up to Rep. Greg Macpherson, D-Lake Oswego, the lawyer and 1968 Albany Union High School graduate who heads the committee as chairman.

He couldn't be reached for this story, but a committee staffer said hearings were likely.Senate Bill 554, which the Senate passed 28-0 on April 17, would require a public body to respond "as soon as practicable" to a request for a public record. It also requires units of government to to have a written procedure for making public records available, including a list of possible charges and a statement of how the charges are determined.The Senate passed the other bill, SB 671, by a vote of 26-1 on April 12.

Will the Real Anthony Kennedy please stand up?

"At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life," wrote three justices of the Supreme Court in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the 1992 case that dramatically "reaffirmed the essential holding" of Roe v. Wade and thus upheld a woman's right to choose to have an abortion. In the wake of the court's latest decision on so-called "partial birth" abortions, Gonzales v. Carhart, the real human mystery is the majority opinion's author, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy. Kennedy puzzles because he speaks in more than one voice. One Kennedy has written landmark opinions affirming the dignity and autonomy of gay men and lesbians (and was one of the three justices who extolled the "heart of liberty" in Casey). The other, in Gonzales, employs rhetoric that reduces pregnant women to something like moral wards of the state—to be protected from their own feckless choices.