PATRICK BLOG NEWS

he first time I meet Bruce Springsteen is backstage at the Walter Kerr Theatre in New York, where he is in the homestretch of performing his one-man show,  Springsteen on Broadway.  It is a few weeks before I am supposed to sit with him for an interview, but his publicist has asked me to come by before this performance so he can, I deduce, check me out. I arrive at 7:00 and am directed to a small couch near the backstage bathroom. Finally, five minutes before curtain, I see, coming down the stairs that lead to his dressing room, a pair of black work boots and black-legged jeans. Springsteen ducks his head beneath a low arch and walks toward me, extending his hand and saying, “I’m Bruce.” We shake hands, and then there is silence. He looks at me and I look at him, not sure what to say. At five-foot-ten, he’s taller than you think he’ll be; somehow, he remains the runty-scrawny kid in the leather jacket, possibly dwarfed in our minds due to the years he spent leaning against C...

F or Tyson Timbs, the idea that his legal dispute with the state of Indiana could reach the U.S. Supreme Court began in jest. “I joked about it in the beginning, saying, ‘Hey, maybe I can change the law or maybe this will go all the way to the Supreme Court,’” Timbs told the  Washington Examiner . “It was just a joke.” But on Wednesday, what was a distant possibility will become a reality for Timbs, 37, when the Supreme Court hears oral argument in a case that began after the state of Indiana seized his 2012 Land Rover LR2, which he had used to transport heroin en route to drug deals with undercover police. Timbs’ case has brought together a diverse coalition of very odd bedfellows to support him, with groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and the Southern Poverty Law Center allied with the conservative Americans for Prosperity and U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The court will be tasked then with deciding whether the Eighth Amendment’s Excessive Fines Clause appl...

HPE is uniting information and operational technology in edge-network hardware and software systems. HPE is offering new Edgeline Converged Edge System hardware and software designed to let enterprises not only control machines in their facilities, but also manage and analyze the sea of data generated by devices and sensors at the edge network. The new software lets enterprise network managers and data-center administrators merge data from a variety of third-party applications and remotely manage as many as thousands of Edgeline hardware systems, which are  capable of running unmodified enterprise applications , HPE said at its Discover Conference in Madrid Tuesday. [ Read:  Who's developing quantum computers  ] Citing  data from Gartner,  HPE noted that within the next four years, 75 percent of enterprise data will be created and processed outside the traditional, centralized data center or cloud, up from less than about 10 percent now. "The big p...

Obama slams Trump legal troubles amid Manafort revelations ... Oshawa devastated by plans to close GM car plant ... Trump officials accused of using wildfires to weaken regulations Top story: Hyde-Smith victorious despite stirring of racial tensions The Republican US senator Cindy Hyde-Smith has  won her race for re-election in Mississippi , after a tense runoff during which she attracted national attention for a series of racially loaded remarks in a state with a notoriously complex racial history. In her victory speech on Tuesday, Hyde-Smith pledged to “always represent every Mississippian”, after defeating her Democrat challenger, Mike Espy, by a closer than expected 55% to 45%. GOP majority.  The final Senate result of the midterms, Hyde-Smith’s victory gives Republicans a 53-47 majority in the US Senate, a gain of two seats. Democrat TJ Cox has taken the lead in the last outstanding midterm House race, for California’s 21st district, where a win would mean a 40-s...