Beccawers Land

What, did you expect anything different?

Tom Brady, who almost certainly should have been watching his New England Patriots open their season on a massive television somewhere in Back Bay, made the most of the NFL’s Deflategate incompetence and his resulting gift from the American judicial system, and had one of the most dominant, accurate season openers of his illustrious career, moving the Pats offense with ease and leading New England to such an easy win that the back-to-back chatter had practically begun by the time the third quarter ended.

There were always two ways Thursday night was going to go. Either Brady was going to be rusty from the craziness of the past four months (and giving up those first-team reps to Jimmy Garoppolo) or he was going to come out with the biggest chip on his shoulder since Week 5 of last season when people dared have the audacity to question whether Tom Terrific was on a career downswing. He answered the question that week and did it again Thursday. It was a refreshing performance, one that should end the chatter about Deflategate (Bob Costas is right; stop the appeal, Roger Goodell) and gleefully start a new season of football that will hopefully be devoid of crime and controversy

This year, Roger Goodell was a no-show at the NFL season opener he usually frequents, saying he wanted the attention to be on football at Gillette Stadium when the New England Patriots and Pittsburgh Steelers took the field. (When asked why the attention wouldn’t be on football if he had been there, Goodell demurred like the politician he is.) The Deflategate-hunter also used the excuse that he’ll be in Chicago for the Packers-Bears game on Sunday, as if car, plane, train and balloon travel had yet to be invented and there was no way he could get from Boston to Chicago in 60 hours.

Anyway, while New England’s least favorite man was theoretically at home watching the quarterback he tried to suspend pick apart the Pittsburgh Steelers, he wasn’t forgotten among the fans in Foxborough, who started a hilarious “where is Roger?” chant midway through the fourth quarter.

During the first quarter of the New England-Pittsburgh NFL season opener, NBC’s Al Michaels reported that Steelers coaches were having trouble with their headsets and were evidently hearing the Pats’ radio broadcast instead of each other. “Hmmmmmm,” thought all of America with a raised eyebrow.

After going back to the story following the initial reports, Michaels impishly asked Cris Collinsworth, “You don’t think, do you?” Collinsworth replied:

Michele Tafoya later reported that the radio call was bleeding into Pittsburgh’s coach-to-coach headsets and once that happened, the Patriots were forced to turn off their headsets because of NFL rules. By the time the first quarter ended, the incident was resolved, according to the NFL. After the game though, Mike Tomlin said the problems persisted for “the majority of the first half.”

“It’s been an ongoing saga in New England,” Michaels said with a sigh. 

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. – The New England Patriotsmade the most of their opportunity Thursday night to remind the nation they’re the NFL’s most successful franchise of the past 15 years. They weren’t bad once the game began either.

One banner was unfurled on the field for each of the club’s four titles, owner Robert Kraft showed off the latest Lombardi Trophy and Tom Brady emerged from Deflategate with four touchdown passes in the Patriots’ 28-21 win over the Pittsburgh Steelers in the season opener.

The Steelers cut the deficit in half with an 11-yard touchdown pass from Ben Roethlisberger to Antonio Brown with 2 seconds to go. But time ran out on the ensuing onside kick.

Chants of “BRA-DY! BRA-DY!” erupted multiple times for the Patriots’ star quarterback, who at one point completed a franchise-record 19 consecutive passes and finished 25-of-32 for 288 yards, a week after a federal judge vacated his four-game suspension.

A chant of “WHERE IS ROGER?” also broke out as the Patriots put away the game in the fourth quarter – a mocking tribute to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, who declined to attend the game, saying he’d be at Sunday’s Green Bay Packers-Chicago Bears game instead.

Among those who did attend: NFL Players Association director DeMaurice Smith and Brady’s lead attorney, Jeffrey Kessler, who took a sort of victory lap around the field before the game.

It was a triumphant night in stark contrast to the controversy that has circled the Patriots – who also were fined $1 million and docked two draft picks by the NFL for an alleged scheme to deflate footballs – since their triumph over the Seattle Seahawks inSuper Bowl XLIX.

Massachusetts band Dropkick Murphys performed and fireworks left a haze of smoke over the field before Kraft emerged from a tunnel and joined former Patriots Willie McGinest, Ty Law and Troy Brown, who held the other Lombardis on a small stage as the crowd roared.

Many fans wore ponchos to combat a downpour that hit Thursday afternoon and continued as Brady took the field for warm-ups, pumping his fist and playing to the crowd. But Mother Nature wasn’t putting a damper on this party, and it didn’t slow the Patriots offense much either.

Three of Brady’s touchdown passes went to all-pro tight end Rob Gronkowski, the last a 1-yard score with 9:20 to go set up by a 52-yard completion to Gronkowski after the Steelers had trimmed New England’s 18-point lead to seven.

The Steelers offense moved the football well despite the absence of suspended running back Le’Veon Bell and center Maurkice Pouncey. But newly acquired kickerJosh Scobee missed two field goals, Darrius Heyward-Bey botched a sure touchdown by stepping out of bounds and a Pittsburgh defense debuting under new coordinator Keith Butler seemed lost at times.

Patriots safety Duron Harmon’s interception on a deep ball Roethlisberger intended for Heyward-Bey spoiled the Steelers’ last best chance with 7 minutes to go. One small step towards the Patriots’ fifth title and another party this time next year complete.​

LANSING, Mich. — A dramatic day of expulsion hearings, passionate debate, and claims of deals reneged appeared to be on the way to an anti-climatic end late Thursday night as Republicansweren't able to muster the two-thirds House majority vote needed to expel state Reps. Todd Courser and Cindy Gamrat.

Courser and Gamrat, two tea party Republicans caught up in a sex and cover-up scandal, have Democrats to thank for saving their jobs — at least for the moment. Twenty-six Democrats refused to vote on a resolution to expel Courser, leaving the expulsion vote six votes shy of the 73 votes needed to remove the lawmaker from office. They hadn't taken up the resolution to expel Courser as of 9 p.m. ET.

After a 67-14 vote, with 26 Democrats refusing to vote and two Democrats absent, Republicans called for a reconsideration of the vote and the board was still open as of 9 p.m.

"It's sort of Shakespearian, if you look at it: My fate rests in the hands of the Democrats," Courser said late Thursday.

Many Democrats said, while they found the actions of Courser and Gamrat "disgusting and despicable," they wouldn't vote on the measure because of the process that was used to get to an expulsion. They wanted more information on what Speaker of the House Kevin Cotter, R-Mount Pleasant knew and when he found out about the affair and bizarre cover-up engineered by Courser and Gamrat. They wanted to hear from two staffers — Ben Graham and Keith Allard — about the process they went through to reveal the cover-up to Republican leadership.

"The issue is much larger than the very narrow scope given to the committee. I really want to know when the staff went to leadership, what they said and when they said it," said state Rep. Sarah Roberts, D-St. Clair Shores. "The gravity of this issue truly deserves to be looked at in a much broader scope and in brighter light. People deserve that due diligence before we make this decision."

But Republicans said the 833-page report and testimony from both Courser and Gamrat, who both admitted misconduct in office and misuse of taxpayer resources but asked for censure rather than expulsion, clearly laid out plenty of reason to expel the two members.

"The oath that we all take is the sole protection against an unjust expulsion," said state Rep. Ed McBroom, R-Vulcan, chairman of the special committee that voted 4-0 earlier Thursday to expel both members. "They have both admitted their guilt. They both agreed to the damage they've done. And neither can offer a reasonable argument that they're being honest now, or the disdain they have shown to this body and its members is the outlier and not the norm."

A California-based Marine was killed and 18 others injured Thursday afternoon in a vehicle rollover accident at Camp Pendleton, according to the Marine Corps.

The Marine killed in the accident was assigned to 1st Marine Division, based out of Pendleton in Southern California. The Marine's identity is behind held for 24 hours after next of kin have been notified.

It's not immediately clear whether the 18 injured in the mishap belong to the same unit or what the Marines were doing at the time. Marine officials declined to provide any additional details on the accident, including the type of vehicle that was involved.

“The command’s priorities are to take care of the Marines, sailors and families of the unit,” 1st Lt. Colleen McFadden, public affairs officer with 1st Marine Division, said in a release. “We want to ensure the Marines and their family members are being provided for during this difficult time.”

(NEWSER) – Alzheimer's isn't exactly contagious, but a protein that goes on to form the disease was perhaps passed to patients during surgery, meaning there could be an acquired form of the disease, a new study finds. UK researchers, who describe their finding in Nature, studied the brains of eight people 36 to 51 who died of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, caused by proteins known as prions, or "proteinaceous infectious particles," per Popular Science. They found all had contracted the disease via accidental exposure to prions when they were given a contaminated growth hormone to treat growth problems, reports Reuters. But researchers also discovered something else: "What we found, very much to our surprise, was that of the eight patients, four had quite significant, some severe, deposition of amyloid protein, the Alzheimer's protein," neurologist John Collinge says, per Time. Only one patient showed no sign of the protein.

That doesn't mean Alzheimer's can be passed through normal contact. Instead, it shows that Alzheimer's may, like CJD, be caused by exposure to a protein—in this case, amyloid—that could potentially be passed via surgery. Some researchers argue the amyloid protein's precursor, a-beta amyloid, does "stick avidly to metal surfaces." The human growth hormone given to patients, "in addition to being contaminated with CJD, probably also was contaminated with a-beta seeds," Collinge says; it had been donated by elderly patients after their deaths. Since 1985, human hormone injections have been replaced with synthetic ones due to the risk of contamination. Collinge says research will be needed to ensure other procedures, like blood transfusions, don't raise a person's chance of developing Alzheimer's, but, as another researcher says, "I don't think we need to worry excessively."

This article originally appeared on Newser: