Still celebrating their March 26 wedding , newlyweds Reese Witherspoon and Jim Toth have been spotted this weekend arriving in Belize for a relaxing vacation.But they weren't alone! Ava, 11, and Deacon, 8, Witherspoon's daughter and son with ex-husband Ryan Phillippe , accompanied Mom and her new husband on the family getaway.A witness told Us , "They definitely looked like a happy family. The kids seemed like they had no problem with him around."Witherspoon, 35, and Toth, 40, are said to be staying with the kids in the tiny Central American country for six days. Upon arriving, the Oscar winner reportedly blended in by dressing inconspicuously in jeans and a T-shirt, topping her look with a brown hat."They didn't ask for any VIP treatment," said the observer who saw the newlyweds moments after their landing. "[They] walked off the plane like regular tourists, waited in the immigration line and waited to get their bags from the baggage carousel." ||||| Reese Witherspoon: Pretty in Pink on Wedding Day

 Email This Reese Witherspoon's fairy tale

 The nuptials, which took place on March 26 at Libby Ranch, Witherspoon's Ojai, Calif., estate, were a

 "There was so much joy in the room and a lot of laughter. ... There was a real family feel," says a guest.

 Witherspoon was every bit the blushing bride in a rose-hued dress fit for a princess. The bride's Monique Lhuillier gown came featured a tulle skirt, Chantilly lace bodice and rows of silk flowers descending along a satin silk ribbon.

 "She took your breath away," a guest tells Reese Witherspoon's fairy tale wedding to agent Jim Toth was fit for Hollywood royalty, from the picturesque setting to the bride's dream dress.The nuptials, which took place on March 26 at Libby Ranch, Witherspoon's Ojai, Calif., estate, were a modest affair that included friends, family and Witherspoon's two children, Ava and Deacon, from her previous marriage to Ryan Phillippe "There was so much joy in the room and a lot of laughter. ... There was a real family feel," says a guest.Witherspoon was every bit the blushing bride in a rose-hued dress fit for a princess. The bride's Monique Lhuillier gown came featured a tulle skirt, Chantilly lace bodice and rows of silk flowers descending along a satin silk ribbon."She took your breath away," a guest tells PEOPLE

 Witherspoon's daughter, who also served as her maid of honor, wore a matching custom-designed Lhuiller dress.After the ceremony, Witherspoon traded in her gown for a white silk Lhuiller minidress, which she wore for the remainder of the evening.The actress's most recent nuptials were a far cry from her 1999 wedding to Phillippe. The couple married in 1999 at the Charleston, S.C., Old Wide Awake Plantation in a field of wildflowers. The bride, who was seven months pregnant with daughter Ava at the time, wore a dress designed by Judianna Makovsky , who created the retro looks for 1998's 'Pleasantville.' ||||| » SEE THE SLIDESHOW «

 On March 26, Reese Witherspoon was married to talent manager Jim Toth in a simple, elegant affair at her ranch in Ojai, California. Vogue’s Jonathan Van Meter spoke to the actress a few months before her wedding and discovered that, although the actress learned to ride an elephant for her role in the film, that’s nothing compared to balancing fame, love, and family.

 Here she comes, waving like Miss America but looking like a blonde Audrey Hepburn. She is dressed in all black—leggings, cardigan, Wayfarers, and a kitten heel. The wave is hilariously exuberant, and even from a block away, as she strides purposefully toward me, I can see that the smile is comic: forced and way too big. And with that one winning gesture—a perfectly timed little burst of goofball—Reese Witherspoon signals that she is not only painfully aware that the sidewalk has suddenly become a runway lined with paparazzi yelling her name on an otherwise quiet Thursday afternoon in Santa Monica, but also that she is OK with it. Look at my weird life! she shouts without saying a word.

 It’s a beautiful sunny day in early February, and we are meeting at the Blue Plate Oysterette, a hip little seafood joint not far from the Santa Monica Pier. Witherspoon, still at the curb, stares at the outside tables for a moment and then looks back at the photographers in the street still snapping away. She glances at the hostess, then at me, and finally says, with an ironic exclamation point, “How about inside!”

 See a slideshow of Reese Witherspoon throughout the years in Vogue.

 One of the things about being a polite Southern girl saddled with a cumbersome fame is that you are in constant negotiation with your surroundings. You know, more often than not, that your presence will tilt the delicate balance of the workaday world in your direction. And one thing that every good Southern girl knows is: Don’t make a scene. But that is exactly what happens everywhere Witherspoon goes. Indeed, just moments ago, people on this oceanside block were going about their noonday business: lunch, errands, sightseeing. And then—bam!—chaos.

 As we take our seats, she shakes her head in weary bemusement and says, “Every dog has her fleas.” (Witherspoon’s essential Southernness frequently comes through in her language.) She takes a deep breath. “I wasn’t planning on drinking,” she says, “but now I am.”

 Is that commotion an everyday occurrence? I ask.

 “Lately,” she says.

 All the wedding talk? (In case you haven’t heard, Witherspoon is engaged.)

 “Yeah,” she says. “It usually heats up during, like, pregnancies or babies or marriage. It’s the drama of real life. . . . It’s interesting to people. Readers want to know! I was talking to an actress the other day who is pregnant right now, and she was like, ‘What is it? What’s the deal?’ She said, ‘Oh, maybe once I have the baby no one will pay any attention,’ and I was like, ‘Bwah-ha-ha-ha!!!!’ ” She exaggeratedly tosses her head back. “ ‘Oh, yeah. They will leave you alone after you have the baby. Suuure. That’s exactly how it works.’ ”

 See a slideshow of brides who wore unconventional wedding dresses here.

 But then, perhaps not wanting to sound ungracious, she puts a different spin on it. “I get hugged a lot,” she says. “Which is fun. Mostly it’s all good, positive energy that comes to me. I like people. And at the end of the day, we’re all just people, you know? We’re all just going through it. Nobody’s life experience is all that much different than anyone else’s. We’ve all had our share of heartbreak. It’s the universal language of life.”

 I can’t help looking down at the four-carat rock sitting high on her hand, a ring proffered a few months earlier by the handsome 40-year-old CAA agent Jim Toth, whom she’s been dating for a little over a year. What’s he like? I ask. “He’s wonderful,” she says, beaming. “He’s just a really great guy, and I feel really lucky. It’s so cute: Over the holidays I was at a department store in L.A. with my friends, and these three women from Oklahoma came up to me, and they said”—she lays on a thick Southern drawl—“ ‘Reese. We are so happy for yeeew. We liiike this guy for yeeew.’ And I said, ‘You do?!’ ‘Yes, ma’am. We think he is a niiice man. We think he is going to treat you well and be good to yeeew.’ I was like, ‘Really?’ So sweet! And I told them my mother likes him very much, too.”

 I had been hearing from people who work with Witherspoon that she is in, as they say, “a good place.” When I mention these reports, she looks at me with one of those faces she is famous for, a look that telegraphs surprise tinged with irritation. “I mean . . . it sort of indicates that at other times I was not in a good place.” She laughs. “Which is true. I have had my share of heartbreak. But I think your friends really know when you are at your happiest. Even though I am nervous and excited and all those things people feel when they are about to get married, I think I am mostly very calm right now. Usually, I’m a little bit of a squirrel. I have a squirrelly energy.”

 Squirrelly?

 “Yeah,” she says. “Like, you don’t know where your next nut is gonna come from?” She stares at me with those unblinking blue eyes. “At the moment I am not buzzing around all squirrelly and nervous. I just feel really lucky to be with someone who cares so much and is so kind and loving. You know? It’s a really nice thing to finally have that.”

 Click here for a slideshow of Reese Witherspoon's best red carpet moments.

 Witherspoon may be settling down in her personal life, but she’s taking more risks than ever in the roles she chooses. Despite having recently said, “There’s not a part for a 34-year-old woman in a robot movie” (implying she would never want or be able to carry an action flick), she will later this year star in This Means War, one of those new era–Hollywood hybrids (action-adventure/romantic comedy, anyone?). The director, McG, describes it as both “my answer to Mr. & Mrs. Smith and Ocean’s Eleven” and “my ode to Billy Wilder.” Witherspoon plays a busy working girl who is unlucky in love but suddenly finds herself with a glamorous problem: Two spies—one American, one British (played by new era–Hollywood hotties Chris Pine and Tom Hardy)—start using every weapon in their arsenals to woo her.

 “It was new for her to be suspended in a rig hanging upside down in a Jeep from a building,” says McG. “But it’s just mind-scrambling to work with her in terms of her comedic timing, her sense of what matters, her inherent ability to be lit from within.” McG also hopes to show audiences a different side of her. “I think you are going to see a sexy Reese Witherspoon the likes of which you have never seen. That was a challenge that I set out for her at the beginning of the process. I said, ‘Men like you, but men don’t covet you the way that I think they can.’ ”

 It’s anybody’s guess whether this film will be watchable or whether Witherspoon will work in it or not. It wasn’t that long ago when it seemed Witherspoon could do no wrong. As the nineties came to an end, she began delivering in one smart comedy after another: Cruel Intentions, Election, and the two Legally Blonde films, the Elle Woods franchise that put her newly formed production company, Type A Films, on the map and also gave her some real power in Hollywood. By the time she won the Oscar for Best Actress in Walk the Line, in 2005, she had taken on an air of invincibility. Was there anything this girl couldn’t do? Turns out the answer is yes. She has lately been miscast a few times, most egregiously as a pro softball player past her prime in James L. Brooks’s How Do You Know. (As one big Hollywood producer said to me, “What woman identifies with a person who has no interest in falling in love? Who is that supposed to be?”)

 It’s far less of a stretch to imagine Witherspoon as the scrappy ingenue who will do whatever it takes to survive in the Depression-era circus world of her latest film, Water for Elephants, based on the best-selling novel and directed by Francis Lawrence. That role is the reason, a couple of days before our lunch, I find myself inside a giant circus tent pitched in a dusty lot near the train tracks in Riverside, California. Witherspoon appears in front of me and asks, “Wanna see something?” She leads me over to one of her costars, Tai, the 42-year-old elephant she spent six months with last summer, and coos, “Hiiii, laaaady,” and then runs a hand down her trunk. “I love that her trunk is both her nose and her hand,” says Witherspoon as the 9,000-pound creature begins sniffing around to see what sort of treat is in the offing. “She has this incredible dexterity; she can pick up a log, but she can also pick up something this tiny.” Witherspoon holds up one blue peanut M&M and then flattens out her palm, and Tai gently plucks it from her hand and puts it in her mouth.

 Set in the early thirties, the story follows a young Ivy League veterinary student played by Robert Pattinson, who, left with nothing after his parents die in a car accident, joins the circus, where he falls in love with Witherspoon’s character, Marlena. Marlena is not only the star of the circus, whose act with four horses and then an elephant is the show’s big attraction; she is also married to the charismatic, controlling ringmaster, played with sinister menace by Christoph Waltz.

 Witherspoon has made more than a few films where she has had to train for months to learn an entirely new skill set before a single frame was shot: most famously learning to sing like June Carter Cash in Walk the Line. Now the circus. “About three months before the movie started, I went to circus school,” she says, “doing trapeze and acrobatics with Cirque du Soleil performers. A lot of it is flexibility and learning to bend your body backward. I had been a gymnast when I was little, so getting that flexibility back was really fun.” Then she went to a ranch to train with Tai; she was slightly nervous the first day. “She could crush you with her jaw, but she knows the exact right amount of pressure with which to pick you up but not hurt you. It’s really incredible. I trust her more than any other animal I have ever been around.”

 Interestingly, the elephant in the room turned out to be the least of anyone’s troubles. (As Pattinson puts it, “She was the most consistently professional creature I have ever worked with.”) It was the horses—two white Andalusians and two black Friesians—that turned out to be high-strung and unpredictable. “Reese grew up around horses,” says Lawrence, “and she owns a couple that she rides now, and even she was scared of them.” Says Witherspoon: “I’ve always been a little bit of a tomboy that way, so I just always enjoy the thrill of doing something dangerous.”

 She got more than she wished for. Not only did she get thrown from a horse one day, Pattinson tells a story about shooting a scene in which one of the horses is lying down in a train car with Witherspoon curled up on the ground next to it when suddenly the horse jumped to its feet and stepped on her leg. “I could see in Reese’s face that it must have hurt more than anything, and she played it off like it was absolutely nothing,” says Pattinson. “And then the next day she had this enormous bruise. It could have quite easily broken her leg, but she didn’t mention it to anybody. She is just incredibly brave that way.”

 Witherspoon’s toughness was one of the main reasons Lawrence cast her in the film. “What I liked is that there’s that determination, but there’s also a sense of humor and a sense of vulnerability. It must come from her family and upbringing. You sort of feel like if she sets her mind to something, it’s going to happen—nothing is going to get in her way. And that’s part of what keeps her interesting—and oddly a little dangerous.”

 Pattinson, too, thinks there’s more to Witherspoon than meets the eye. “In terms of public perception, she’s thought of as America’s Sweetheart. And she kind of is in a lot of ways. But I think that she’s a lot bawdier than that, a lot more raucous. It did actually shock me to see that. She’s tough. You wouldn’t want to get into an argument with her at all.” He laughs.

 “You can always tell that she will be incredibly nice to anyone who’s not an idiot, but it’s always very clear that there’s a line you really shouldn’t cross.” (When I tell Witherspoon that Pattinson said this, her response is classic Reese: “Oh, yeah. I’m a little junkyard dog.”)

 If only she had brought some of that edgy danger to her performance. Although her scenes in the ring with the horses and the elephant are breathtaking, not least of all because you know that she is doing all of the stunts herself, and she looks fantastic in 1930s cut-on-the-bias evening gowns (and even committed to dyeing her hair platinum for the movie), it unfortunately feels like she’s holding back in some way. Perhaps it was hard to compete with the director’s overheated take on an already melodramatic story, in which terrible things happen to everyone, animals and humans alike. A feel-good movie this is not.

 But whatever the critical response will be, Witherspoon seems grateful for the experience: “I spent six months of my life last year with an elephant. Every day! Are you kidding me? And in leotards with sparkles all over them. I mean, come on! That’s like a little girl’s fantasy.”

 Two weeks after our lunch in Santa Monica, the day after the Oscars, Witherspoon calls me on the phone. She has just picked up her kids—Ava, eleven, and Deacon, seven—from some after-school activity, and she sounds a bit harried.

 “What is that?” she says to her dog, annoyed. “Don’t eat that.”

 Now that the Oscars are over, she has a couple months off—or “in town,” as she puts it. “You know, it can be a crazy life. Sometimes you feel like you are on a speeding train and you just don’t know where it’s going. You can start to lose your identity and what it is that you are really working for.” Like a lot of working women, she’s constantly looking for the right balance. “I don’t wake up to make movies. I wake up to have a wonderful family and to cultivate the best life for all of us, and it’s great to now have a partner in that. We have a lot of family meetings. ‘Mom’s going to be away and coming home on the weekends. How does everybody feel about that?’ It’s always military operations around here. Lots of different moving parts. I have my moments when I feel like I’m just going to collapse and I can’t do it anymore and I’m failing at everything. Like, you’re kind of good at a bunch of stuff but not really good at anything.”

 Witherspoon, who turned 35 in March, seems acutely aware that she is on the cusp of an entirely new stage in her life. “I am really going through that right now. I’ve had some really kind of sad moments lately. You don’t go backward! And I think 35 for a woman is a big thing. I remember when I was a little girl looking up at my mother at 35 doing her hair in the mirror, and I thought, my mother has never been more beautiful. She had years of wisdom you can’t erase. And now I feel the same way when I look in the mirror. You can’t pretend you are an ingenue. You can’t pretend you are wide-eyed and innocent. It’s on your face! It’s in your body. It’s in your voice. It’s in your reactions to things when people say, ‘I just did the most morally corrupt thing I’ve done in my life’ and you literally don’t blink.” She laughs. “You’ve either done it yourself or you know someone who has.”

 Having a preteen daughter has also made her see herself in a new light. “There’s a shift in your womanhood. That’s the little girl, and I am the woman. There’s a big difference. She’s on the precipice of having her love affairs and her life.”

 I ask her what Ava is like. “She is curious and artistic and very smart,” she says. “She really surprises me. I know it’s corny, but being a parent to me is such a great privilege; that I get to chaperone these beautiful little souls through life. They astound me with their knowledge and their humor. Parenthood is not at all what I expected it to be. I thought you make little people in your image. But they are just nothing like me or their father [her ex-husband, Ryan Phillippe]. They are their own individuals.”

 Because I first met Witherspoon eight years ago, when I interviewed her for this magazine, I ask her, What does 34 know that 26 didn’t? “I definitely know now that I know nothing,” she says. “When I was 26 I would have told you a lot of things that I thought I knew really, really well,” she says. “I was a little more shut down in my 20s. I was really scared of a lot of things and a lot of people. I have gone through so many changes since then. Obviously, being divorced and having a couple of relationships. I’m much more open than I was. I think with life experience you go: I have no idea what’s next. The unexpected doesn’t surprise me anymore. It really shocked me then.”

 Would you say you were blindsided by things?

 “Yeah,” she says. “Really blindsided. I was always shocked about finding out things or behavior or people’s attitudes toward things. You just realize that you don’t know anything about love or relationships.”

 It is different interviewing Witherspoon now. For one thing, we are comfortably hanging out for a couple of hours in a restaurant shooting the breeze and drinking wine; eight years ago we sat in facing chairs with a coffee table between us at her production-company office, and she was all business—I felt as if I were in a job interview. Today she is sweet, relaxed, and full of thoughtful questions; but she is also a very sharp and funny lunch companion, and some of her retorts have real teeth. For example, if you don’t talk as rat-a-tat fast as she does, she has a habit of finishing your sentences for you, but with her own particular take on things. At one point we were talking about fashion, and I said, “People who love fashion often . . .”

 “ . . . Lack perspective?” she said with a comically judgmental look on her face.

 But one thing that hasn’t changed is that she is as private as ever. Indeed, she seems almost constitutionally unsuited for the level of fame she has to live with. At one point, I ask her what is the worst thing about being Reese Witherspoon, and she pauses for a very long time. Finally she says, “I mean, I feel like an ingrate for even thinking anything isn’t good. I’m very, very, very lucky. But . . . umm . . . probably that I parted with my privacy a long time ago. We went different ways. And sometimes I mourn it. Sometimes I will sit in the car and cry. Because I can’t get out. That’s the only thing: I mourn the loss of my privacy.”

 More than most people in her position during this era of constant self-revelation, Witherspoon has nonetheless managed to maintain a modicum of privacy. “I have to say, I have been through a few life experiences that have just made me feel really good about my friends because the truth never came out about certain things. And that made me feel like I have confidantes in them. I mean, look: I don’t have that many friends. I have a few really amazing friends whom I consider family. But it means a lot to me that I have that, because so much of my life belongs to other people. Everyone always laughs about it and goes, ‘Boy, they got that wrong!’ It makes me feel like, Wow, maybe there’s something that’s still my own.”

 This is one of the strange conundrums of being Reese, the polite Southern girl with the cumbersome fame. She did not know she was parting with her privacy until the train had already left the station. “I just think you never think you are ever going to get to any level where it’s going to happen to you. I mean, that would be extreme hubris.”

 Do you ever regret becoming an actor?

 “Noooo!” she says, as if I had just asked her if she wishes she had married her high school sweetheart and stayed in Nashville. “With whatever I’ve lost, I’ve gained tenfold in life experience. I have an interesting life.”

 At our lunch a few weeks earlier, Witherspoon mentions that she and Nora Ephron are developing a film together about the singer Peggy Lee. (This explains why Witherspoon was humming standards under her breath to Tai at the photo shoot.) Lee, who grew up in North Dakota and who’s best known for her inimitable cover of the Little Willie John hit “Fever,” was one of the most influential jazz vocalists of all time, with a career that lasted six decades (she died in 2002). Ephron is writing and directing; Witherspoon will star. When I ask her how she feels about making another biopic about another American singer-songwriter from the heartland, she says, “When Nora and I began talking about Peggy Lee, it was really exciting because Nora has this unbridled enthusiasm for that era and that music. She knows every lyric to every song. So yeah, I am excited to revisit that.” Has she herself ever considered singing as a career? “I am not going to cut an album,” she says. “I’m not going to suddenly have a pop record on the charts.” She laughs. “But if I was going to do it, it would be country, because I like country music a lot.”

 I tell her that Ephron once sat me down when I was going through a difficult time and gave me some very frank advice that I have been following ever since. “I had a moment like that with Nora, too,” she says. “She really helped me through a hard time. It was like having the best girlfriend ever. She makes you laugh and she makes you think. I feel very lucky for her friendship.”

 When I call Ephron to talk about Witherspoon she says, “She’s a really smart, really charming, dear, dear person. Everyone loves her. And lovely on the set, and she basically kills herself. I mean, you know, she took softball lessons for a year!” She laughs. “And she went through that divorce in a kind of . . . you would call it a textbook way, if anyone had written a textbook about how to do it. I have never seen anybody handle a breakup as brilliantly as she did. She didn’t pretend to the people who knew her that it was anything but difficult and painful, but she was completely private. She made herself the winner of a situation that had been very difficult without suddenly appearing with a completely new look or dating someone wildly inappropriate in order to prove that she was fine. She lived her life in some dignified way, and it worked! I am just an enormous admirer of the way she handled that experience.”

 What made you think of her for Peggy Lee? “Just for fun, just to make myself feel really bad, I watched Walk the Line again, and it’s such an amazing movie. And she is so brilliant in it. She just disappeared inside that character without losing her Reese-iness, which we love. But she is June Carter Cash forevermore. It’s an astonishing performance. So that’s one of the things that I’m excited about; she is going to do the same thing with Peggy Lee. What I really believe about her is that her great gift is for character acting. She can really transform herself. That performance in Election is just spectacular.”

 Tracy Flick, the character from Election who will stop at nothing to win, is one of the great gifts of modern cinema. Indeed, it is now a noun, a type of person, like saying “She is an Eve Harrington.” When I ask Witherspoon about it, she says, “I think what’s flattering about it is that I created a character that never existed within the Zeitgeist before. She became a point of reference to people that seems very individual and very singular. It’s like one of those characters, like Chauncy Gardiner, whom you don’t know how to describe any other way. They are just very . . . Tracy Flick! I don’t think people think I am Tracy Flick. Not at all.”

 Hmm. Not so fast. Tracy Flick is nothing if not a determined little junkyard dog, a squirrelly Type A trying to figure out where her next nut is going to come from. As our phone call winds down, I ask Witherspoon about her own politics. “Well, I don’t really get into that stuff,” she says. “Everybody has their own choice, their political opinions. I don’t think it’s my place when talking to Vogue about movies that I’m making to use that opportunity to promote my political ideas. Not my cup of tea. It’s sort of private. I was raised Southern, you know? It wasn’t like you were told to talk about religion and politics at a dinner party. And don’t get me wrong: I definitely have a lot of opinions. I am not opinion-free. But there’s a time and a place for everything. But maybe I will change my mind! Look, if I wanted to run for office, I would. If I want to espouse my political opinions, I will run for office.” She laughs. “And that’s a possibility!” |||||

Write a summary.

– Reese Witherspoon never regrets becoming an actress, but she does miss one thing: her privacy. "I parted with my privacy a long time ago," she tells Vogue in a new profile. "We went different ways. And sometimes I mourn it. Sometimes I will sit in the car and cry. Because I can’t get out." More from the interview, given a few months before Witherspoon's March 26 wedding: On the increased amount of attention she's been getting from the paparazzi: "It usually heats up during, like, pregnancies or babies or marriage. It’s the drama of real life. ... Readers want to know!" One good thing about all the attention: "I get hugged a lot. Which is fun." On her then-fiance, CAA agent Jim Toth: "He’s wonderful. He’s just a really great guy ... I just feel really lucky to be with someone who cares so much and is so kind and loving. You know? It’s a really nice thing to finally have that." On her current emotional state: "Even though I am nervous and excited and all those things people feel when they are about to get married, I think I am mostly very calm right now. Usually, I’m a little bit of a squirrel. I have a squirrelly energy." On turning 35: "I’ve had some really kind of sad moments lately. You don’t go backward! And I think 35 for a woman is a big thing. ... You can’t pretend you are an ingenue. You can’t pretend you are wide-eyed and innocent. It’s on your face! It’s in your body. It’s in your voice." Click for the full piece, or check out a picture from Reese's wedding or gossip about her honeymoon.


U bum @ StephenCurry30 already said he ain't going! So therefore ain't no invite. Going to White House was a great honor until you showed up! ||||| Tweet with a location

 You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more ||||| Healthy democracies have ample room for politics but leave a larger space for civil society and culture that unites more than divides. With the politicization of the National Football League and the national anthem, the Divided States of America are exhibiting a very unhealthy level of polarization and mistrust.

 The progressive forces of identity politics started this poisoning of America’s favorite spectator sport last year by making a hero of Colin Kaepernick for refusing to stand for “The Star-Spangled Banner” before games.... ||||| IN 1943, with the nation mobilized for war against fascism, schoolchildren in West Virginia were required each morning to salute the American flag. The purpose, seemingly unexceptionable — and in fact not objected to by many — was "teaching, fostering and perpetuating the ideals, principles and spirit of Americanism."

 However, to Jehovah's Witnesses the flag was an "image," which, under their religious beliefs, their children were forbidden to salute. Students refused to do so and were expelled from school; parents were prosecuted; eventually, the case reached the Supreme Court.

 There, in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, Justice Robert Jackson wrote for a 6-to-3 majority that the state could not compel children to salute the flag. Reversing a court decision from just three years earlier, Jackson wrote, in the midst of war, what remains one of the enduring statements of confidence in what truly makes America great. "To believe that patriotism will not flourish if patriotic ceremonies are voluntary and spontaneous, instead of a compulsory routine," he wrote, "is to make an unflattering estimate of the appeal of our institutions to free minds."

 What brings this to mind, of course, is President Trump's latest bilious eruption. The first inclination, when he starts calling people "sons of b-----s" and waxing nostalgic for days when more concussions were inflicted for the entertainment of football fans, is to look away. It's embarrassing, after all, to have to explain to the children that we have a president who speaks so rudely. It's playing into the diversion he may seek when he finds himself flummoxed by Kim Jong Un or Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). And shouldn't we be worrying about more important things — health care, tax reform, the inundation of Puerto Rico, the dangers of nuclear war?

 But then, when Mr. Trump tweets that players should "stop disrespecting our Flag & Country," it becomes clear: In some ways, there is nothing more important than his misguided understanding of how to truly respect the flag. Some NFL players have been participating in a fraught, challenging debate about race, policing and criminal justice, and Mr. Trump is offended by this. His response: fire the players who don't share his views. Demand conformity and uniformity.

 He's not alone, of course. If he were, Colin Kaepernick would probably have a job by now. But the response to Mr. Trump's ugly tweets and threats, from players and team owners, reflects an encouraging consensus that the real way to respect the American flag is to respect the diversity of opinion it protects. As games began on Sunday, players, coaches and owners kneeled, linked arms and made statements in others ways. "Our players have exercised their rights as United States citizens in order to spark conversation and action to address social injustice," San Francisco 49ers owner Jed York said Saturday. "We will continue to support them in their peaceful pursuit of positive change in our country and around the world."

 What's offensive here is not what Mr. Trump thinks about Mr. Kaepernick. At this point, honestly, who cares? But when the president uses his bully pulpit to declare some speech legitimate and some beyond the pale; when his response to protest is to question patriotism rather than engage on the issue of unequal policing — then it is Mr. Trump who "disrespects our Flag & our Country."

 As Justice Jackson wrote three-quarters of a century ago, "If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein." ||||| The biggest message to come out of President Trump’s Friday rally in Alabama had nothing to do with its intended purpose of helping out Sen. Luther Strange.

 The president urging NFL owners to “get that son of a bitch off the field right now” if any of their players take a knee during the national anthem immediately inflamed one of the biggest battles in America’s culture war.

 Ever since then-San Francisco 49ers backup quarterback Colin Kaepernick started taking a knee when the anthem played last season, Americans have argued fiercely on the merits of this particular brand of protest.

 Conservatives have seen it as outrageous disrespect for the troops and the nation itself. Liberals and ESPN have portrayed it as a courageous act of defiance against racism and police brutality.

 The debate hasn’t gone away this season, with more players participating in the protest while Kaepernick remains unemployed.

 Trump has spent most of the weekend doubling down on his comments, as well as bringing the NBA into the matter, in the face of liberal outrage. The president’s opinion brought forth accusations that he was trying to take away the constitutional rights of Americans and that his sentiment was racist by nature.

 In response to the president attacks, dozens of NFL players publicly criticized the president and joined in the anthem protests on Sunday. As one example, multiple players from both the Baltimore Ravens and Jacksonville Jaguars took the knee while the anthem played during their game in London. Curiously, they all stood for “God Save the Queen.”

 Several commentators, primarily from the Left, saw more players joining the protest as a major defeat for the president, but they’re off the mark. Folks like New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait think that Trump has turned the kneel into a free speech issue, which is going to naturally earn the sympathy of average Americans.

 In reality, Trump has taken the side of the flag and provoked multi-millionaire athletes into opposing patriotism. When several players for the New England Patriots took a knee during the anthem on Sunday, their own fans booed them. So do fans of the Buffalo Bills and the Washington Redskins when members of those respective teams knelt. (RELATED: Football Fans Boo Players Protesting National Anthem)

 There are hardly two more liberal, anti-Trump areas in America than the Boston and D.C. metropolitan areas. Yet even football fans who live there can’t stand protests against the anthem.

 Rather than earning sympathy for free speech, more players joining in the protest is more likely to alienate NFL fans from the game. Polling last year showed that an overwhelming majority of Americans thought that politics should be kept off the field. The number one reason for declining NFL ratings was due to national anthem protests, according to ESPN, of all places.

 Hardcore Patriots fans booing their own team is not a good sign that the NFL is going to come out on top in its war with the president.

 Trump’s involvement in the debate over national anthem protests shows him once again stepping into his kind of cultural war. No longer tied to religious or moral concerns, Trump’s forays into the culture war typically revolve around questions of national identity and pit middle Americans against various elites.

 During his presidential campaign, Trump’s hardline views on immigration and the Muslim ban earned him unprecedented scorn from the media and political elites, but also support and votes from Republican voters. More recently, Trump faced a barrage of anger over his comments on the violence in Charlottesville, Va. where he blamed “both sides” and issued his support for Confederate statues. (RELATED: Trump’s Culture War)

 Those statements earned him extreme opprobrium from political leaders in both parties, nearly all of Hollywood and the establishment media. Yet, polling showed a majority of Americans agreed with his comments, especially in regards to the statues. (RELATED: Poll: Clear Majority Want To Keep Confederate Statues)

 In the fight over kneeling, Trump is facing off against out-of-touch athletes who appear to be opposing the flag and the troops. ESPN and most political pundits may think he is a dummy for engaging in this fight, but if NFL continues to lose fans over it, Trump will come out as the victor.

 There is the other issue of whether the President of the United States should even be involving himself in such a matter, regardless of whether it will be to his advantage or not. In years past, the answer would have been a “no” to the question of whether it was presidential behavior.

 But we increasingly expect our president to take sides in these cultural battles. Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama frequently weighed in on such topics as the name of the Redskins and Kaepernick taking a knee, albeit in a much more subdued manner.

 Trump is embracing his status as an Oval Office cultural warrior to a much greater degree than Obama, for some good reason. His legislative agenda is almost entirely stalled, and he has little to show in terms of accomplishments for his base. In fact, the only thing he might accomplish legislatively this year is giving millions of illegal aliens legal status in exchange for nothing.

 Fighting in the culture war on behalf of his base is the one area where Trump can do as he pleases. He doesn’t have to go through Congress to reduce the ratings of the NFL, he just needs a few tweets to do so.

 At the same time, the culture is getting weaponized at unimaginable level against the president and his supporters by elites. Every awards show now resembles a Resistance rally where each speaker makes sure to bash Trump and red state America. Late night talk shows act more as venting chambers for liberal resentment than light-hearted comedy. A large number of celebrities dedicate their social media accounts almost entirely to politics and hating on Trump.

 Last week saw a new height for our new, politicized culture. A bunch of Hollywood A-listers such as Morgan Freeman and Rob Reiner got together to promote an initiative to make the public believe Russia hacked the election and we’re at war with Vladimir Putin. (RELATED: Hollywood Liberals Team Up With Iraq War Hawks To ‘Protect Democracy’ Against Russia)

 The GOP’s latest attempt to repeal Obamacare found its greatest foe not among the Democrats, but with late night host Jimmy Kimmel. Kimmel spent most of his opening monologues this week attacking Republicans for their bill and regurgitating talking points given to him by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. (RELATED: Chuck Schumer Coached Jimmy Kimmel Behind The Scenes On How To Oppose Obamacare Repeal)

 The comic’s advocacy earned him plaudits from the media and he was able to get the message of the bill’s opponents out to the general public. It’s possible that the cultural elites’ intense rejection of the latest Obamacare repeal encouraged Arizona Sen. John McCain to say he would vote against it.

 With the cultural elite declaring total war on Trump and his agenda thwarted in part by their efforts, Trump may have no other choice than to spend his term fighting various battles of the culture war.

 His voters would probably prefer that option to a legislative agenda comprised entirely of amnesty for illegals and tax cuts for billionaires.

 WATCH THIS: MAJORITY OF STEELERS PLAYERS REMAIN IN LOCKER ROOM DURING NATIONAL ANTHEM

 WATCH DAILY CALLER BREAKDOWN THE NET-WORTH OF THE KNEELERS:

 Follow Scott on Twitter and buy his new book, “No Campus for White Men.” ||||| CLOSE After Donald Trump said NFL players should be fired for kneeling during the national anthem, NFL players, owners and coaches condemned Trump's comments. USA TODAY Sports

 Attacking #TakeTheKnee and First Amendment has nothing to do with patriotism or love of country: Our view

 The Cleveland Browns during the national anthem on Sept. 24, 2017, in Indianapolis. (Photo: Andy Lyons, Getty Images)

 The outpouring of defiance toward President Trump that spread across the National Football League on Sunday harkens to a single phrase directed at fear-mongering Sen. Joe McCarthy during a congressional hearing in 1954.

 "Have you no sense of decency, sir?" said an Army lawyer, crystallizing in a moment the politics of division behind McCarthyism and its persecution of innocents.

 Similarly, Trump's ad hominem attacks against "son of a bitch" players such as former San Francisco quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who sit or kneel during the national anthem to protest police brutality, had nothing to do with patriotism or love of country. When he demanded NFL owners fire protesting players, it was vintage Trump stoking flames of anger and resentment.

 OPPOSING VIEW: Good call, Mr. President

 Why did the president do it now, when the #TakeTheKnee movement seemed to be waning? Who knows? Maybe he was trying to whip up his core supporters. Or maybe it's his latest effort to employ a weapon of mass distraction. Why focus on a likely loss on Obamacare repeal, or a possible loss for your favored candidate in the Alabama Republican Senate runoff, when you can try to stir public resentment of a pampered athletic elite?

 The president, after all, has such a keen eye for ways to divide people, as he has demonstrated with the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., his dissing of undocumented immigrants, his travel ban focused on Muslim-majority nations, and his effort to excise transgender troops from the military.

 Plus, this NFL controversy would be delicious payback. Trump for decades tried to earn a seat at the NFL owners' table, but his bids for the New England Patriots in 1988 and the Buffalo Bills in 2014 fell short. The anthem protest issue was such a ripe wedge issue. Nearly three in four Americans said they thought it was unpatriotic last year, and the protests led reasons why some viewers have stopped watching NFL games.

 The only problem is that professional athletes and team owners alike recognized Trump's crude move for the ruse that it is: "With everything that's going on in our country, why are YOU focused on who's kneeling?" NBA star Chris Paul tweeted.

 CLOSE AP reporters counted more than 200 NFL players who did not stand during the national anthem before their games on Sunday. Six refused to stand the week before, mainly protesting police brutality. AP

 As of Sunday afternoon, players from more than a dozen football teams had chosen to stay seated, lock arms, or take a knee during the anthem. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell admonished Trump on Saturday for being divisive. Patriots owner Robert Kraft, a Trump friend and financial backer, said he was "deeply disappointed" by the president. Jaguars owner Shahid Khan joined his players and coaches in protest, as did the owners of the Miami Dolphins, Detroit Lions, New York Jets and Philadelphia Eagles. The Pittsburgh Steelers stayed off the field during the song.

 An epidemic of impertinence? Not at all. Rather, it was an audacious rejection of Trump's divisive ploy.

 Allowing someone the right to dissent peacefully is part of the nation's patriotic tradition. Using the bully pulpit of the presidency to rain aspersions down on someone who dares to do so is simply indecent.

 USA TODAY's editorial opinions are decided by its Editorial Board, separate from the news staff. Most editorials are coupled with an opposing view — a unique USA TODAY feature.

 To read more editorials, go to the Opinion front page or sign up for the daily Opinion email newsletter. To respond to this editorial, submit a comment to letters@usatoday.com.

 If you can't see this reader poll, please refresh your page.

 Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2xtuH78 |||||
What is a one-paragraph summary of the above article?

– NFL players' reaction to President Trump in regard to the national anthem was, not surprisingly, a big topic on Monday's op-ed pages. Here's a sampling: Wall Street Journal: The newspaper's editorial sounds fed up with everybody involved, blaming the left for initially exploiting the Colin Kaepernick situation, then Trump for exploiting the blowback. It adds that players who kneel shouldn't be surprised to hear boos, because "disrespecting the national anthem puts partisanship above a symbol of nationhood that thousands have died for." But ultimately, the real losers in all this "are the millions of Americans who would rather cheer for their teams on Sunday as a respite from work and the other divisions of American life." Daily Caller: In a column, Scott Greer writes that Trump seems to be relishing his role as an "Oval Office culture warrior," perhaps because his legislative agenda keeps hitting roadblocks. This fight may pay off: "In the fight over kneeling, Trump is facing off against out-of-touch athletes who appear to be opposing the flag and the troops. ESPN and most political pundits may think he is a dummy for engaging in this fight, but if [the] NFL continues to lose fans over it, Trump will come out as the victor." New York Times: Its editorial pits Trump as the villain here and Kaepernick as the hero of sorts. The QB still can't find a team, but the weekend protests "might well have been a huge victory for free speech and the cause of racial justice he has so bravely espoused." The editorial gives the last word to LeBron James, who tweeted of Trump that "going to White House was a great honor until you showed up!” Washington Post: The editors don't care what Trump thinks of Kaepernick. But "when his response to protest is to question patriotism rather than engage on the issue of unequal policing—then it is Mr. Trump who 'disrespects our Flag & our Country.'" USA Today: Its editorial faults Trump as "divider in chief" and says his use of the presidential bully pulpit to fault those exercising their right to dissent is "simply indecent." But an op-ed at the newspaper by former Nebraska Congressman Jon Christensen praises Trump's move. "When millionaire athletes refuse to honor America and pay homage to the men and women who died for our freedom, and instead, choose to use their field of occupation to make a statement, then I can choose to turn the channel." They do indeed deserve to be fired, he adds.


Write a summary based on this article:

Tweet with a location

 You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more ||||| Miami rapper Pitbull might soon be chilling out in Alaska.

 (Click Prev or Next to continue viewing images.)

 ADVERTISEMENT (Click Prev or Next to continue viewing images.)

 FILE - This April 26, 2012 file photo shows rapper Pitbull smiling after accepting the award for the Song of the Year by a male performer during the Latin Billboard Awards in Coral Gables, Fla. KMXT reports... (Associated Press)

 In a marketing deal, Walmart will send Pitbull, aka Armando Christian Perez, to the store that gets the most "likes" on its Facebook page.

 Right now, the leading candidate is Kodiak, Alaska. And there might be a reason.

 A writer for The Boston Phoenix newspaper thought it'd be funny to send Pitbull to the most remote Walmart possible, and is encouraging people to "like" the Walmart in Kodiak.

 It seems to be working.

 The Kodiak Walmart had more than 35,000 "likes" Monday, more than five times the town's population.

 Kodiak has a significant lead in the contest to land Pitbull, but actual numbers weren't immediately available, Walmart spokeswoman Sarah Spencer said.

 She says other Walmart shoppers have until July 16 to like their local stores and pull ahead of Kodiak.

 "I know Pitbull is hoping his Miami Walmart shoppers start liking their Facebook page," she said.

 That would require some heavy lifting, with one Miami location sitting tight with 45 "likes" Monday.

 "He's definitely coming to Kodiak if Kodiak wins," she said.

 It would be the rapper's first visit to Alaska.

 Pitbull, who is touring Europe, seems to be taking the contest in good nature. "Wherever the fans want to have a party, I will be there," he said in an emailed statement sent Monday from Austria.

 Kodiak Island is about 225 miles southwest of Anchorage. It's home to the nation's largest Coast Guard base, and the island is known for its Kodiak brown bear population.

 That fact wasn't lost on Pitbull, who tweeted Saturday: "I hear there's bear repellant at Kodiak, Alaska (at)walmartspecials." ||||| Pitbull may be headed to a Walmart on the secluded island of Kodiak, Alaska, reports the Associated Press.

 As part of a marketing deal, Walmart plans to send the reggaeton star to the store that lands the most "likes" on its Facebook page by July 16th. However, David Thorpe, a writer for the Boston Phoenix and the popular humor website SomethingAwful.com, found it entertaining to campaign to send Pitbull to the most isolated store possible by pushing the Kodiak location and rallying the Internet to swarm its Facebook page with "likes." As of today, it had surpassed 35,000 "likes" and spawned a rather successful Twitter campaign called #ExilePitbull.

 For his part, Pitbull remains a good sport, tweeting, "I hear there's bear repellant at Kodiak, Alaska" and adding the #ExilePitbull hashtag. "Wherever the fans want to have a party, I will be there," he added in an emailed statement. |||||

– Pitbull's marketing deal with Walmart may backfire on him: The Miami rapper is getting sent to whichever Walmart store gets the most "likes" on its Facebook page, and right now the store in the lead is in … Kodiak, Alaska, population just north of 6,000. That's because Boston Phoenix writer and SomethingAwful.com founder David Thorpe figured it would be hilarious to get people to purposely like the Kodiak store in order to exile Pitbull to the remote island location, Rolling Stone reports. The Kodiak Walmart had more than 35,000 likes yesterday, and even has its own Twitter campaign: #ExilePitbull. "I know Pitbull is hoping his Miami Walmart shoppers start liking their Facebook page," a rep for the company tells the AP, but they only have until July 16 to vote and it will be an uphill battle: One Miami location had just 45 likes yesterday. The rapper is taking it all in stride, tweeting, "I hear there's bear repellant at Kodiak, Alaska @walmartspecials @sheets #exilepitbull."


Write a summary based on this article:

Steve Jobs' resignation as Apple Inc.'s CEO might seem like a step out of the spotlight at the world's largest company. But it is possible that little may change with the executive shuffle at Apple.

 As CEO, Jobs' bosses -- who he had to answer to -- were technically Apple's board of directors and shareholders. Jobs was also a member of the Apple board, but recently Apple had not listed anyone as Apple's official chairman. Instead, Apple listed two co-lead directors of the board; Andrea Jung, chairwoman and CEO of Avon Products Inc., and Arthur D. Levinson, chairman and CEO of Genentech Inc. Now Jobs is the chairman of the board.

 Photos: Steve Jobs and Apple's influence

 Jobs hasn't been running Apple's day to day operations since January, when he handed over those responsibilities to Tim Cook, the company's former chief operating officer who has been voted in as CEO by Apple's board.

 Despite being on a leave of absence for medical reasons, the details of which have remained private, Jobs has remained involved in some of Apple's biggest decisions this year. For example, it was Jobs who unveiled the iPad 2 in March, not Cook.

 As for who will announce and show off the iPhone 5 or iPad 3, Cook or Jobs, that remains to be seen.

 In being promoted from COO to CEO, Tim Cook has also been given a seat on Apple's board, just as Jobs had.

 The addition of Tim Cook to the board ups the number of directors from seven to eight. All other directors remain.

 Besides Jung and Levinson, the other directors are William V. Campbell, chairman of Intuit Inc.; Millard S. Drexler, chairman and CEO of J. Crew; former Vice President Al Gore; and Ronald D. Sugar, former chairman and CEO or Northrop Grumman Corp.

 RELATED:

 Steve Jobs resigns as Apple's CEO

 Apple publishes Steve Jobs' resignation letter

 Tim Cook era begins as Steve Jobs resigns as Apple CEO

 -- Nathan Olivarez-Giles and Thomas Suh Lauder

 twitter.com/nateog

 Photo (top): Apple's then-CEO and current chairman, Steve Jobs, holds the iPhone 4 during the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference last year in San Francisco. Credit: Paul Sakuma/AP Photo

 Photo (bottom): Before and after screen shots of Apple's board of director listings. Credit: Apple Inc. ||||| The only thing surprising about Steve Jobs's resignation—which Apple had telegraphed several times already—was the timing. Why now? Because of health concerns, maybe. Or maybe because now, right now, is the perfect time for the company to transition.

 When I say now, I'm not talking about the dusky timing of the press release; the cardinal rule of bad news is that you bury it as late as you can. I mean now in the broader context of Apple's future. And if the company's going to not just survive but thrive without Jobs, he couldn't have left any sooner. And he definitely couldn't have waited.

 Apple has literally never been stronger. A month ago they reported record quarterly earnings in a period with no significant product releases, no back to school or holiday boost, all amid what turned out to be a grotesquely challenging three months for competitors like Dell and HP. They were, for a brief period, the most valuable company in the world. Incredible.

 And a month from now? They'll be releasing their next iPhone on America's three major carriers. And very possibly something altogether new: an affordable iPhone, a handset for the masses. If that device does emerge, Apple will have transitioned from yuppie luxury to unprecedented populist value.

 So that's where Apple sits now, cratered between two mountainous achievements. If they'd waited any longer, the iPhone 5 announcement would've been fully shrouded in memories of Jobs; with a month's distance, new CEO Tim Cook has a chance to stand on his own. He can bask in the reflected glory of the iPhone instead of languishing in Jobs's shadow. The company will feel like it's in good hands. Because it is.

 What's easy to forget is that companies have long, long product cycles. The iPhone 5's been done for months; ditto, likely, iPad 3. And iPhone 6 plans are well underway. They'll all have a touch of Jobs in them. Even products with a longer horizon, future generations of MacBooks with sick-skinny bodies and flash storage and no optical disc, AppleTVs teeming with apps, will have Jobs's imprimatur. Especially since, uh, guys? He's staying on as Chairman of the Board. He's involved.

 So yes, there is a chance that Steve Jobs is resigning now because his medical situation has become so severe that he has no other choice. But we certainly hope not. And sincerely don't think so. Because this feels calculated, in the best possible way, to happen at the best possible time. Now.

 You can keep up with Brian Barrett, the author of this post, on Twitter, Facebook, or Google+. ||||| ANALYSIS

 He may still be chairman of the board, but in the eyes of the world Steve Jobs has ceased to be the heart of Apple.

 The succession plan, one of the most closely guarded secrets this side of D-Day, is running. As it has been running for at least two years; the date of Jobs's departure may not have been known, but that it was approaching most certainly was.

 These past couple of years have been the strongest test yet of Jobs's famous reality distortion field, his ability to convince everyone he works with that what he says is either true or can — must — be made so. But some realities are not to be denied.

 Apple without Jobs is now one of them. Like any empire without its Caesar, what the next Apple will be, what it does and how it does it, depends on which of the factions within gains control.

 Many Apples

 For there are many Apples. One is that of new chief executive Tim Cook, who is as much responsible for Apple's success as Jobs was. He turned the business of actually making the goods into an imperial machine, controlling suppliers and manufacturers with unmatched ruthlessness. Making close to 100-percent margins on consumer electronics in an austere, hyper-competitive market is as miraculous as anything ever demonstrated in a keynote.

 Then there's the Apple normal people know and write about, a company capable of producing an endless stream of new products with pitch-perfect cadence. It is a marketing powerhouse — for how else do you account for Apple's coronation as king of all things technology, when all it makes is a mobile phone now on its fourth incarnation, a mutant mobile phone too big to put in a pocket, and a few laptops? Put that way — a valid analysis that seems heretical — Apple's success is even more miraculous, more reality defying, than if it had been more like Sony with its huge range of products.

 And there's the innovatory Apple, which lives well beneath the radar. With the exception of the ghostly presence of Jonathan Ive, this is an invisible and unknown force. The products and services appear, companies are swallowed up, and the star players leave. The big decisions are no longer what chip to use, what new hardware features are too cool not to have, but what deals can be done with media companies, what marketing advantage can be gained by rounding up which supplier.

 Success through control

 The signs are strong that Tim Cook's Viking armies will prevail, and without a struggle. It's where the money comes from, and where any attack is to be resisted by any means necessary. Apple of late has become self-righteously litigious, a terrible temptation for any company with fewer ideas and far more money than once it had, but nearly irresistible for one that's learned that success comes through control. If you can't out-think the competition, then it can be controlled through lawsuits — and if you lose a few, it doesn't matter. The damage has been done. And Apple of late has been run by Cook.

 Apple of late has become self-righteously litigious, a terrible temptation for any company with fewer ideas and far more money than once it had.

 Looking beyond the iPhone and the iPad, both of which can only be refreshed so far, there is only uncertainty. Apple in the cloud is Apple unproven. Apple as innovator without Jobs is Apple unknown. Apple in a market where everyone else can do what it does, but can do it cheaper, is unApple.

 Apple will play to what strengths it has, and that looks like a marketing-led, litigiously-active, cash-rich giant determined to protect what it has over building out what comes next.

 For with Jobs, there was always a 'next', even if we didn't know what it was going to be. As one part of the company's history was maturing, Steve Jobs would always be there on stage, unveiling just one more thing: the Mac, the iMac, the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad.

 That won't happen again. Apple's future depends on the new next, and the longer we have to wait to see what happens, the less likely it will happen at all. ||||| Starting in 1996, Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period. |||||

– Steve Jobs revolutionized Apple in his second go-round with the company, taking the stock from a split-adjusted $6.05 per share in 1996 to $376 today. But with Jobs resigning as CEO, everyone is wondering what the future holds for Apple. Some reactions: What will change? Not much, write Nathan Olivarez-Giles and Thomas Suh Lauder for the LA Times. In his role as CEO, Jobs had to answer to two groups: shareholders, and the board of directors. Now he's at the helm of that board. It was the perfect time to go, writes Brian Barrett for Gizmodo, noting that the coming release of the iPhone 5 and more affordable iPhone 4 should buoy the company and give CEO Tim Cook a chance to step into the spotlight. "If they'd waited any longer, the iPhone 5 announcement would've been fully shrouded in memories of Jobs. ... This feels calculated, in the best possible way, to happen at the best possible time. Now." Apple has lost its core, writes Rupert Goodwins for ZDNet, and only time will tell how this plays out. The iPhone and iPad can only be updated so many times, and with Jobs "there was always a 'next.'" But "Apple as innovator without Jobs is Apple unknown." Its future "depends on the new next, and the longer we have to wait to see what happens, the less likely it will happen at all."


Write an article based on this summary:

– Jeff Sessions may not be the only Cabinet member whose days are numbered. Multiple reports say Secretary of State Rex Tillerson isn't destined for a long tenure. The latest is Reuters, whose source says Tillerson was "very upset at not having autonomy, independence and control over his own department and the ability to do the job the way the job ... is traditionally done." It says Tillerson has told friends he likely won't last a full year, a sentiment echoed in an earlier CNN story. That one quotes two insiders who say a "Rexit" is possible before the end of the year, adding that Tillerson has been especially unhappy with President Trump's public criticism of attorney general Sessions. The story adds, however, that Tillerson might just have been "venting." Tillerson had previously signaled that he intended to see through a restructuring of the State Department through 2017, but that now seems to be in doubt, reports Newsweek. It runs through his past frictions with the White House, including not being consulted on major issues such as the travel ban. The speculation has been circulating for weeks now, notes US News & World Report, and it isn't helped by statements from Tillerson himself, who said in March that he "didn't want this job." It's reached the point where Tillerson's spokesman addressed the subject, though in the form of a denial that his boss is on the way out. Tillerson, he said, had "plenty of reasons to stay on the job, and all of them are important to America."

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson arrives at the Capitol to join Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis in briefing House members on the situation with ISIS on July 20, 2017. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

 Secretary of State Rex Tillerson may be considering resigning from his job as frustrations with the Trump administration may have him nearing the end of his rope.

 People "familiar with Tillerson conversations with friends outside Washington" told CNN the mood in Foggy Bottom's Mahogany Row has grown increasingly dark in recent days, particularly since President Donald Trump gave an interview to The New York Times in which he publicly rebuked Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Tillerson and others are said to also be troubled by the turmoil at the White House, resulting in last week's shake up of Trump's legal team, the hiring of new communications director Anthony Scaramucci and the resignation of press secretary Sean Spicer.

 Tillerson has been criticized for his absence on the world stage as the Trump administration has left allies concerned with the U.S.' commitment to its agreements and the president's continued warmth toward Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin.

 Tillerson's silence has at times been attributed to his disapproval of the president's actions and policies, and those of the people around him.

 Speculation that Tillerson may leave by the end of the year – after reorganizing the State Department – has been circulating for weeks. The former CEO of ExxonMobil has been open about his reluctance to work in government, saying in March that he "didn't want this job."

 Tillerson's frustrations with the White House increased in late June when he lashed out at Johnny DeStefano, the White House's personnel director, about the State Department's decimated ranks.

 According to CNN, two sources close to Tillerson said they sensed a change in recent days, predicting a "Rexit" sooner than originally rumored -- though the sources also acknowledged Tillerson may simply have been "venting after a tough week" and may not mean he's headed out the door immediately.

  ||||| Washington (CNN) Talk of a potential "Rexit" at Foggy Bottom, new tests for President Trump on immigration, tax reform and media relations and a big challenge for the nation's oldest civil rights organization -- it's all part of our Inside Politics Forecast.

 1) A chill across the executive branch -- and new rumblings from State Department

 There was a decided chill across the executive branch as last week came to a close after a tumultuous series of events that rattled worker bees and caught the attention of Cabinet secretaries.

 A large part of that dynamic was the result of the White House staff shakeup -- which saw President Trump overruling top advisers to hire Anthony Scaramucci as communications director, and the resignation of press secretary Sean Spicer.

 Bigger, though, were the continuing conversations about The New York Times interview in which Trump sharply criticized his attorney general and longtime supporter -- Jeff Sessions -- saying it was "unfair to the President" that Sessions recused himself from any decisions related to the Russia election meddling investigation.

 Among those who viewed the President's public rebuke of Sessions as unprofessional, according to several sources, is Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the former Exxon-Mobil CEO.

 Tillerson has a growing list of differences with the White House, including a new debate over Iran policy and personnel. His frustration is hardly a secret and it has spilled out publicly at times. But friends sense a change of late.

 For weeks, conversations with Tillerson friends outside of Washington have left the impression that he, despite his frustrations, was determined to stay on the job at least through the end of the year. That would allow time to continue efforts to reorganize the State Department and would mean he could claim to have put in a year as America's top diplomat.

 But two sources who spoke to CNN on condition of anonymity over the weekend said they would not be surprised if there was a "Rexit" from Foggy Bottom sooner that that.

 Both of these sources are familiar with Tillerson conversations with friends outside Washington. Both said there was a noticeable increase in the secretary's frustration and his doubts that the tug-of-war with the White House would subside anytime soon. They also acknowledged it could have been venting after a tough week, a suggestion several DC-based sources made when asked if they saw evidence Tillerson was looking for an exit strategy.

 2) Tax reform next? White House nervous as it eyes clock

 Trump pushed again Saturday for GOP senators to resolve their differences and settle on an Obamacare repeal and replace package. The White House wants a win, and worries failure will further damage the President's political standing.

 Some top Trump aides are worried about the calendar --- believing all this time spent on health care, without success, might have a domino effect on another top White House priority.

 Julie Hirshfeld Davis of The New York Times detailed the anxiety over finding a path toward tax reform.

 "What we're seeing, what we're hearing, from these meetings that have been going on behind the scenes with Steven Mnuchin, the treasury secretary, Gary Cohn, the National Economic Council director and the top congressional leaders on the Republican side is that they're sort of starting to think about potentially trimming their sales and not doing a big massive tax reform but instead a tax cut," Davis said. "There is a lot of uncertainty about whether they're even going to be able to get that this year."

 JUST WATCHED Why tax reform is so hard Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Why tax reform is so hard 02:05

 3) A reset -- with the media?

 New White House communications chief, Antony Scaramucci, is a feisty defender of President Trump

 But even as he echoes the President in tossing around the "Fake News" label, he also says he is looking to rebalance the White House relationship with traditional or mainstream media outlets.

 The timing, Michael Shear of The New York Times suggests, could at least present a genuine opportunity.

 "There could be an opportunity for a press reboot over some of the issues that the press corps has been arguing with the White House for: access to the President, press conferences, on-camera briefings," Shear said.

 "There is a new White House Correspondents' Association president who is coming in, as it happens, at exactly the same time that we have a new communications director and head of the communications shop."

 The moral of that story? It'll be a wait-and-see moment for White House reporters.

 JUST WATCHED Scaramucci: Trump unsure of Russia meddling Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Scaramucci: Trump unsure of Russia meddling 01:34

 4) DREAM Act push -- lost cause or a chance for clarity?

 Trump has sent mixed signals about policy toward so-called Dreamers -- undocumented workers who came to the United States illegally but at an age when they were too young to be responsible for that decision.

 During the campaign, he at times promised to reverse Obama administration protections extended to them. He has not done so as President, and he has on several occasions discussed how difficult it is for him to square his tougher views on immigration with understanding and compassion for a group that is otherwise law-abiding and did not make a decision to break the law.

 A new push in Congress could offer a chance to bring some clarity to the Dreamer question. The Atlantic's Molly Ball discussed the possibility of a revised version of the so-called DREAM Act, and its bipartisan sponsors: Democratic Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois and Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

 "It might seem like a strange time to be doing that. But this administration has sent very conflicting signals about DACA," Ball said.

 "There are some state attorneys general that have imposed a deadline on the administration to basically tell them whether this is going to go or stay. They have been issuing work permits. And so Lindsey Graham at the press conference introducing this said, you know, President Trump, you can really sort of act against type, you can solve this problem."

 5) NAACP meets this week -- no presidential visit -- but a Democratic parade

 The nation's oldest civil rights organization -- the NAACP -- holds its annual meeting this week amid a host of questions about how to navigate American politics and policy in the Trump years.

 Trump declined an invitation to attend Several Democrats thinking about the 2020 presidential campaign are scheduled to speak. CNN's Nia-Malika Henderson shared her reporting on how this legacy organization is trying to modernize its approach.

 "The question there, how does this very old, the oldest civil rights organization in the country, reboot and re-imagine themselves in the Trump era and the era of Black Lives Matter? And in the era of resistance? They invited Donald Trump. He said 'no,' he wasn't going to come," Henderson said.

 "Eric Holder will be there. He'll be talking about gerrymandering -- something that's very important to Democrats particularly. Also, it's being looked at as something of a 2020 cattle call. Also in attendance, Cory Booker, Kamala Harris and Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders, of course, struggled a bit with getting African-American support when he ran last go around. So we'll see what those folks have to offer." ||||| WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Frustration is mounting among leading foreign policy officials in President Donald Trump’s administration as they chafe at some policy and bureaucratic defeats and complain they lack independence to do their jobs, officials say.

 U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson attends a joint news conference with Qatar's foreign minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani in Doha, Qatar, July 11, 2017. REUTERS/Naseem Zeitoon

 The clash between internationalists urging the traditional U.S. leadership role in the world and advocates of an “America First” approach has worn down foreign policy and intelligence professionals inside the government, according to the officials.

 Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has told friends he will be lucky to last a year in his job, according to a friend, while two officials said national security adviser H.R. McMaster was frustrated by what he sees as disorganization and indiscipline on key policy issues inside the White House.

 A source familiar with the situation told Reuters that Tillerson was “very upset at not having autonomy, independence and control over his own department and the ability to do the job the way the job ... is traditionally done.”

 The source said he had heard nothing about any possible departure, but added: “The situation doesn’t seem to be getting any better, and in some respects appears to be getting worse.”

 R.C. Hammond, Tillerson’s spokesman, denied Tillerson was considering leaving or that his frustrations were boiling over, saying he had “plenty of reasons to stay on the job, and all of them are important to America.”

 “There’s a desperate need for American leadership in the world and that’s where the secretary’s focusing his attention,” he said.

 Tillerson scored a policy win last week when the administration certified, albeit reluctantly, that Iran was complying with the 2015 nuclear deal under which Tehran agreed to restrain its atomic program in exchange for sanctions relief.

 He was upset, however, by fierce internal criticism from Trump, as well as his chief strategist, Steve Bannon, and White House aide Sebastian Gorka, over the decision, said another U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

 “The secretary does not feel that White House staff members should be in a position to conduct hostile cross-(examinations) of Cabinet officials,” the official said.

 Hammond disputed the account of harsh discord between Trump and Tillerson regarding recertifying the Iran nuclear deal, saying: “I don’t buy this whole thing that there are tensions. Developing public policy is about vetting out ideas,” he said.

 Following last month’s move by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt to boycott Qatar, which they accuse of financing extremist groups and supporting terrorism, Tillerson publicly asked the nations to ease their blockade, and put the onus on both sides to end the crisis.

 Less than 90 minutes later, Trump accused Qatar of being a “high level” sponsor of terrorism and suggested he had helped plan the Qatar action with Arab leaders.

 “As a government we offered some confusing signals, but we’ve since been able to clear up and clarify that,” Hammond said.

 Politico reported last month that Tillerson was furious with Johnny DeStefano, the head of the presidential personnel office, for torpedoing proposed nominees to key State Department posts.

 ‘DISRUPTIVE FIGURE’

 Senior national security officials said McMaster was dismayed that his recommendations, backed by his senior director for Russia, Fiona Hill, about taking a tough stance with Russian President Vladimir Putin, had been ignored.

 Trump has questioned the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election to try to help him defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton.

 McMaster, a three-star Army general who once praised Trump as a “disruptive” figure, is also troubled by a protracted debate about sending more U.S. forces to help Afghanistan reverse gains by the Taliban, officials familiar with the matter told Reuters.

 Slideshow (2 Images)

 Asked to respond to the characterizations of the views of McMaster and other officials, a White House official said: “Assertions not of fact but of state of mind in internal thought have no place in a story like this.”

 While circumspect, Tillerson talked about the challenges of his new job earlier this month, telling reporters that it differed from his former role as chief executive of Exxon Mobil Corp, where “I was the ultimate decision-maker. That always makes life easier.”

 “I knew what to expect and we had very long-standing disciplined processes and decision-making,” he said. “Those are not the characteristics of the United States government.” ||||| Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is growing increasingly frustrated with the Trump administration and could quit before the year is through, according to reports.

 Two sources familiar with Tillerson’s conversations with friends told CNN over the weekend that he has grown so frustrated with President Donald Trump and his administration that there may soon be a “Rexit.”

 The change in Tillerson’s tone followed a stressful week for the secretary of state. He was found to have violated U.S. sanctions against Russia while working as CEO of Exxon Mobil. Also, Trump publicly assailed one of Tillerson’s fellow Cabinet members, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, saying he regretted hiring him.

 Joshua Roberts/Reuters

 Tillerson, the sources said, viewed Trump’s comments as unprofessional.

 Early Monday, Trump again attacked Sessions on Twitter, calling him “beleaguered” and wondering aloud why he wasn’t investigating Trump’s campaign rival Hillary Clinton.

 Before last week, Tillerson had strongly maintained he would see through his task of reorganizing the entire State Department after Trump’s March budget proposal laid out plans to cut $10 billion from its roughly $47 billion in funding. But that resolve seems to have dimmed.

 The sources acknowledged that Tillerson could have been venting after a tough week, but his frustration is just the latest in a long list of times he has butted heads with the president and his administration.

 Related: ‘Unprofessional’ Rex Tillerson gives meddling White House staffers an earful

 Last month, President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner was the one calling Tillerson “unprofessional.” The secretary of state reportedly blew up at top Trump administration staffers during a meeting in White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus’s office.

 Four people familiar with the details of the meeting described the heated exchange to Politico. During his tirade, Tillerson quarreled with the director of presidential personnel, Johnny DeStefano, and made clear he didn’t want the White House to “have any role in staffing.”

 Tillerson has been frustrated after Trump and the White House rejected a number of his hiring decisions. Early this year, Trump vetoed Tillerson’s plan to hire Elliott Abrams as his second in command because Abrams was critical of Trump and his policy positions during the 2016 campaign.

 Early this year, Tillerson was also left scrambling, along with other Cabinet members, in doing damage control after the administration implemented a ban on foreign travel to the U.S. from six Muslim-majority nations. The Cabinet was not consulted beforehand. The move gathered serious legal pushback and is headed to the U.S. Supreme Court this fall.

 In late June, the White House also failed to coordinate with the State Department when it issued a warning to the Syrian regime about using chemical weapons. Such warnings are usually issued through, or at least coordinated with, the State Department.

 Trump has also contradicted and overruled Tillerson's public statements about whether the U.S. should mediate in a dispute between Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

 Both sources said that Tillerson’s frustrations with these situations, and many other tug-of-wars between the White House and Cabinet members, are increasing noticeably and that he has come to realize things won’t change anytime soon. |||||


Tweet with a location

 You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more ||||| Focused crawls are collections of frequently-updated webcrawl data from narrow (as opposed to broad or wide) web crawls, often focused on a single domain or subdomain. ||||| Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.

 / Updated By Jessica Spitz

 Of the world’s 100 highest-paid athletes in 2018, not one was a woman.

 Forbes released its annual list of top paid athletes on Tuesday, highlighting the monster earnings of superstars across all sports, with boxer Floyd Mayweather topping the list at $275 million. NBA players make up a majority of the list, followed by football and baseball players.

 But 2018 was the first time in eight years that not a single woman has been included on the list — not even Serena Williams, one of the most accomplished and well-known athletes in history. She, along with fellow tennis players Maria Sharapova and Li Na, have made the list in recent years.

 According to Forbes, Williams most likely lost her spot on the list because she had a baby last year, and therefore was unable to earn as much prize money as she has in years past. She was the top-earning female athlete in 2018 at $18 million, but fell nearly $5 million short of the $22.9 million cutoff for the top 100.

 The pay gap in sports has been an especially pressing issue in recent years, as several women’s teams have initiated campaigns advocating for gender pay equity. The U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team has largely led the charge on this front, succeeding in securing a new collective bargaining agreement in 2017 after a year of arguing its case publicly.

 The women had argued that players for the men’s national team earned far more than they did despite comparable work.

 Around the same time, the U.S. Women’s National Hockey Team also reached an agreement with USA Hockey to end a wage dispute.

 But, seeing as no women were able to clear the bar to make the Forbes top 100 list this year, the problem is clearly nowhere near solved, female athletes said.

 Former soccer star Abby Wambach has devoted her retirement to advocating for equal pay in sports. In a recent speech at the Barnard College commencement, she noted that she and her male peers had “left it all on the field for decades with the same ferocity, talent and commitment."

 "But our retirements wouldn’t be the same at all," she said. Referring to basketball star Kobe Bryant and quarterback Peyton Manning, she noted, "Kobe and Peyton walked away from their careers with something I didn’t have: enormous bank accounts.”

 Several current and former athletes shared the lopsided statistics on social media. Tennis legend Billie Jean King, who broke barriers by pushing for equal prize money for women, said in a Twitter post: "Men, we need you to advocate as much for women as you do for other men. When more men in power become allies and care about gender equality, the power differential will shift."

 Sports are a microcosm of society. Men, we need you to advocate as much for women as you do for other men. When more men in power become allies and care about gender equality, the power differential will shift. #HeForShe #EqualityForAll https://t.co/uaLVqJUDKQ — Billie Jean King (@BillieJeanKing) June 6, 2018

 This is very sad.... and ppl say we are winning the war on equality, opportunity, and there is no such thing as a pay gap. https://t.co/BEdHUNqnTq — Kaillie Humphries (@BobsledKaillie) June 7, 2018

 Canadian bobsledder Kaillie Humphries, an Olympic champion in 2010 and 2014, told NBC News that the lack of women on the Forbes list was frustrating. “There’s plenty of strong, powerful females that exist within our society that are high performance and demand excellence for themselves and what they do,” she said.

 Humphries also said many of her male peers believe that the striking inequities in bobsleigh and other sports are acceptable, but that all athletes — not just female athletes — will need to recognize the pay gap as a problem going forward.

 “I think talking about it is the first step. I think we were able to get to this position because of the females before us. You look at Billie Jean King. We were able to ride that wave for so long, and now we’re kind of at a standstill, and the conversation has stopped,” she said. “Hopefully [gender inequity] can become a global conversation so we can hold people accountable, and we can create change.” |||||

Write a summary.

– Women in sports say Forbes' annual list of the world's highest-paid athletes is proof that the gender pay gap is real and pressing. That's because—for the first time in eight years—not a single woman made the cut. The highest-paid female athlete in 2017—the year she gave birth to a daughter—was Serena Williams. Her $18 million puts her roughly $5 million below the take of the man to hold the 100th spot, Nicolas Batum of the Charlotte Hornets, who made $22.9 million, reports NBC News. "When more men in power become allies and care about gender equality, the power differential will shift," former tennis champ Billie Jean King says in a tweet. They top-earners for 2017 are:


– An ex-money processing manager for Brink's Company in Alabama who had access to bags and bags of quarters swapped out coins for beads and made off with nearly $200,000 in 2014, per the FBI. Stephen Dennis, 49, has agreed to plead guilty and pay Brink's back for the money he's accused of stealing from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta while he was working in the armored transport service's Birmingham branch (Brink's has already paid the bank back), NBC News reports. Per a Justice Department press release, Dennis allegedly entered Brink's on a day he wasn't scheduled to work in February 2014, took four of the empty ballistic bags in which quarters are stored (each bag holds $50,000 in quarters), and filled them mostly with beads, as well as with just enough quarters so the coins could be seen in a see-through window on each bag. He's then said to have put the four bags in the coin room and, at some point, stolen 784,000 quarters—about 10,000 pounds' worth, or the weight of a large hippo, per AL.com—worth $196,000. An audit in April of that year found the bags only contained $1,000 each in real currency. "What Mr. Dennis may have thought was a nickel and dime theft was, in the end, the equivalent of a major bank heist," the FBI agent in charge of the case says in the release. "Now, he will be a convicted felon who must repay all the stolen money." The US attorney for the Northern District of Alabama piles it on with coined phrases, adding, "This defendant may have thought he had quite a haul … but now he carries a heavier load." That load would normally include the maximum penalty for bank theft, which is 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, though it's still unclear how Dennis' plea deal will affect his punishment. (A New York parking cop swiped $89,000 in coins from parking meters.)

Expand this summary.

A former security worker at Brink’s Company has been charged with stealing almost $200,000 worth of quarters, justice officials said Monday

 Stephen Dennis, 49, of Harpersville, Alabama, is accused of taking the coins while working as a money processing manager, the Department of Justice said in a news release.

 The 49-year-old has agreed to plead guilty to the charge and repay Brink’s, which has already reimbursed the coins’ owner, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, it said.

 “What Mr. Dennis may have thought was a nickel and dime theft was, in the end, the equivalent of a major bank heist,” FBI Special Agent Roger C. Stanton said in the release.

 An FBI investigation concluded that Dennis had replaced coins with beads in ballistic bags belonging to the Federal Reserve Coin Inventory.

 An April 2014 audit found four bags contained beads and only $1,000 in quarters. The quarters were placed so they would be visible through a plastic window in the neck of each bag.

 In total, Dennis swapped a total $196,000 worth of quarters for beads at the Brink’s facility in Birmingham, Alabama, investigators concluded — or 784,000 coins.

 “This defendant may have thought he had quite a haul but now he carries a heavier load," U.S. Attorney Joyce White Vance said in the news release. "He must repay the money and face a federal sentence.”

 The maximum penalty for bank theft is 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. |||||

 A Harpersville man was charged Monday with stealing nearly $200,000 – all in quarters - from Brink's Company, the armored transport service where he had worked, federal authorities announced.

 That's nearly 10,000 pounds of quarters – or about the weight of a hippo.

 Stephen Lancaster Dennis, 49, was charged with one count of bank theft for stealing $196,000 belonging to the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta while he worked as a money processing manager for Brink's at its Birmingham branch in early 2014, according to a joint statement from U.S. Attorney Joyce White Vance and FBI Special Agent in Charge Roger C. Stanton.

 Dennis also entered a plea agreement with the U.S. Attorney's Office to plead guilty to the charge and repay $196,000 to Brink's. The armored service already has reimbursed the Federal Reserve Bank for the loss.

 "This defendant may have thought he had quite a haul when he took nearly $200,000 in quarters from the Federal Reserve's coin storage at Brink's, but now he carries a heavier load. He must repay the money and face a federal sentence," Vance stated.

 Stanton also added his twenty five cents.

 "What Mr. Dennis may have thought was a nickel and dime theft was, in the end, the equivalent of a major bank heist." Stanton said. "Now, he will be a convicted felon who must repay all the stolen money."

 According to the charging document and Dennis' plea agreement, he carried out the theft as follows:

 Brink's stored U.S. currency and coin belonging to its customers, including the Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank, at Brink's facility in Birmingham. As a money processing manager at the facility, Dennis had access to the Federal Reserve Coin Inventory. As part of that inventory, quarters were stored in ballistic bags, each containing $50,000. The bags were stored on skids inside Brink's Coin Room.

 An April 2014 audit of the Federal Reserve Coin Inventory revealed that four of the ballistic bags contained beads and only $1,000 in quarters. The quarters were placed so they would be visible through a plastic window in the neck of each bag.

 An investigation revealed that on Sunday, Feb. 16, 2014, not a scheduled workday for Dennis, he entered Brink's and collected four empty skids and four empty ballistic bags, which he filled with beads. He then placed the skids and the bags inside the coin room. Between Jan. 1, 2014, and Feb. 20, 2014, his last day of employment at Brink's, Dennis stole the 784,000 quarters totaling $196,000.

 The FBI investigated the case and Assistant U.S. Attorney Henry Cornelius is prosecuting. |||||