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The pilots on last week's wayward Northwest Airlines flight have given their official story: They were looking at laptop computers and discussing their employer's work-schedule system.

Case closed?

Hardly. Not when Flight 188 flew past its Minneapolis destination by 150 miles. Not when traffic controllers had tried numerous times to reach the pearl jewelry pilots, in vain.

But at least the flight crew's explanation, reported by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Monday, provides a scrap of information on a mystery that has baffled the public and aviation experts since the incident occurred last Wednesday night.

The flight's captain, Timothy Cheney, and first officer, Richard Cole, told investigators that they both had their laptops out while the first officer, who had more experience with scheduling, instructed the captain on monthly flight-crew scheduling – something that has been evolving due to a recent merger of Northwest with Delta. The pilots did not realize their mistake until contacted by a flight attendant, the NTSB said. The board's investigation is continuing.

It's possible that this incident will amplify calls for commercial airline flights to have cockpit voice recorders that capture at least two hours of audio – so more independent information is available on what happens in such incidents. Many flights already do that, but the Airbus A-320 plane on last week's Minneapolis flight had an older voice recorder that leaves investigators with only a 30-minute tape. Flight 188 overshot by so much that the final 30 minutes of the flight includes dialogue taped after the flight crew was correcting course.

"We need to move to the modern standard of having two hours" of flight time recorded, says David Stempler, president of the Air Travelers Association, which represents airline passengers on issues of safety and service.

His organization and others focused on air safety also support the use of video cameras to capture cockpit activities during flights. Pilots unions, however, have traditionally resisted moves that open their workplace to greater scrutiny.

Will the Minneapolis overshoot, which ended safely for the biwa pearl 144 passengers on board, bring tighter oversight of flight crews? While it's too soon to know, the incident has garnered national attention.

One of the pilots, Mr. Cole, told reporters over the weekend that the flight crew's actions were "innocuous" and didn't threaten passenger safety.

On one level, that may be true. The pilots, who had earlier said they were arguing over airline policy, told investigators they were not asleep, fatigued, or arguing.

But commercial pilots, with the safety of many people in their hands, aren't supposed to lose contact with traffic controllers for an extended period of time, as this crew did for more than an hour. And Northwest has a policy against using laptops in the cockpit.

"It strains credulity that they were so busy on their laptops and talking that they didn't pay attention to their primary duties," Mr. Stempler says.

"It's inexcusable," former NTSB Chairman Jim Hall told AP. "I feel sorry for the individuals involved, but this was certainly not an innocuous event. This was a akoya pearl significant breach of aviation safety and aviation security."

In addition to radio attempts by air traffic controllers, other pilots in the vicinity tried reaching the plane, and Northwest tried contacting them using a radio text message that chimes. Fighter jets were readied for takeoff to intercept the plane, but did not take off as the crew reestablished radio contact.

So, by now you know that President Obama golfed with a [GASP!] woman yesterday. We told you about it here.

But why would a golf game with Melody Barnes – his chief domestic policy advisor – be newsworthy? Was it because right before she faced a critical putt, he yelled out “Noonan!”

Although that would be a great news story – no.

No girls allowed

It was news because – for those of you keeping score – up until yesterday, all of his golf partners have been men. And this past week, there was also criticism that Obama only plays basketball with male counterparts. We told you about that here.

Even last March, Obama was criticized for pearl jewelry not being an equal opportunity NCAA basketball bracket filler-outer.

Who cares? Many of you said that. One visitor yesterday commented: “How about reporting news, not things nobody cares about? Who gives a damn about who golfs with who?”

Networking

Others, however, say that it’s important for the president to be more inclusive. And the sporting events represent a chance to network with the biwa pearl president. Therefore, they say, it’s only fair that the president expand his chromosomal outreach.

So, at 1pm yesterday, Obama and Barnes (with two other guys filling out their foursome) played 18 holes at the Fort Belvoir golf course just outside of Washington, DC.

Coincidental that Barnes played yesterday? Or an attempt to get the media off of the topic? After all, it was the weekend after an NBC reporter put the president on the spot about his male-only basketball games and the New York Times ran an article on the same topic yesterday.

It was just a game

It crossed the mind of one reporter this afternoon during the akoya pearl press briefing on Air Force One. And, as you would expect, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs dismissed the thought of it being anything except a golf game. Ever. Period.

Here’s the exchange:

    Q Robert, what was behind the decision to have Melody Barnes play golf with the President yesterday? Was it in any way related to the –

Yet it appears there is more than just the ordinary partisan frustration at work. Since August, the Obama administration has undertaken a clear strategy of seeking to discredit and marginalize some of the most influential conservative voices in Washington, according to pearl jewelry a report in Politico.

The result is a Washington turned even more antagonistic. It took President Bush – the self-styled compassionate conservative – hardly more than a year to lose that moniker, and President Obama – elected as a great uniter – is now reportedly embarking on a biwa pearl strategy to emasculate the political right.

But that’s how the city works, says political scientist Sidney Milkis. “Partisanship is at least part of the solution to the political challenges he and the country face,” he said at a recent roundtable about partisanship at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va.

His argument is that the current partisanship is akoya pearl neither unprecedented nor unusual but rather “unvarnished,” and that all the most consequential presidents in history were also “extraordinary party leaders.”

Fox News – whose war with the Obama administration has been very open – is only the most obvious target. As the White House has been casting aspersions on Fox News, it has also been meeting directly with executives at some of America’s most powerful firms.

To the Chamber of Commerce, the effort amounts to pearl jewelry an end run – bypassing one of Washington’s most powerful lobbying groups in an attempt to undermine its authority.

The White House feels this is necessary because of the Chamber of Commerce’s opposition to some of Obama’s flagship reforms, most importantly cap-and-trade and financial regulation.

Evidence suggests that the White House can have some success in peeling away certain businesses from the Chamber of Commerce. Nike and Apple quit, for example, in protest over the organization’s opposition to energy reform.

But this campaign has come at the expense of cordial relations between the White House and the Chamber.

At the beginning of Obama’s term, the Chamber of Commerce backed the president on the stimulus and the bank bailouts. Now, speaking of the apparent war the White House has started, Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue said: “Tell ’em to put their damn helmets on.”

AHIP check

The same situation applies to biwa pearl AHIP. In May, administration officials were praising AHIP and other insurers for wanting “to be a part of the solution” after they agreed to voluntary cost-cutting reforms that would result in $2 billion in savings over 10 years.

Earlier this month, however, AHIP released a report that angered the White House and many Democrats. It suggested that healthcare costs for a typical American family would go up – by $20,700 between 2010 and 2019 – if the Senate Finance Committee’s version of healthcare reform passed.

The president responded in his weekly radio address, saying insurers were “ breaking out their massive war chest … for one last fight to save the status quo. They’re … funding studies designed to mislead the American people.”

Professor Milkis suggested that Obama has used the presidential bully pulpit to its fullest extent, trying to maximize the influence of the presidency, which he akoya pearl argued is more powerful than at any point since Richard Nixon.

Others have drawn different comparisons with Nixon, saying Obama has an “enemies list,” as Nixon did.

It appears, however, that the White House has not yet completely cast off its “enemies.” Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel will speak to the Chamber of Commerce on Nov. 4.

"That was our hope — that we would create something for history," said filmmaker Alicia Sams, who made the documentary with colleague Amy Rice and a key assist from actor Edward Norton.

Rice was inspired by Obama's speech to the Democratic National Convention in 2004 and wanted to do a film about him as an up-and-coming political leader. Her friend Sams signed on, but they couldn't get their phone calls to Obama's office returned until Norton called on their  cultured pearl jewelrybehalf. He's still involved as a producer.

They got lucky. They wound up with a far more important story than they had dreamed about.

Even though they began filming nearly freshwater pearl jewelry a year before Obama announced his candidacy in February 2007, being on the ground early didn't guarantee them anything. They were nearly shut down when the campaign began.

Obama aides like David Axelrod didn't want Rice and Sams around. He worried about leaks and whether the presence of cameras would cause people to act like they were in a reality show — concerns that proved amusing in retrospect. Access was a constant concern.

Iowa became their centerpiece. They stuck game machines close to Obama through his early campaigning there, catching moments like a 9-year-old boy making phone calls to drum up support. After three hours of shaking hands, a weary Obama says, "It's like I've been through a wrestling match."