There wasn't a booth review of the Warner fumble. What happened was this: the people upstairs, whose job it is to decide whether or not a review is needed, decided that a review was not needed. They did so in less than 10 seconds. Such a process does not qualify as a "review".

An actual review would have entailed stopping the clock and an announcement by the ref that a review was underway. That did not happen.

The replay officials should be ashamed of themselves for not reviewing this play. It was far too important to let go the way they did.

As for Warner, his HoF case would be a bit stronger had he not thrown a record-breaking TD pass to James Harrison. That was a terrible decision, and could we please stop crediting Dick LeBeau for what was essentially a mental error on Warner's part? He forget to keep an eye on the NFL's Defensive Player of the Year.

There was a penalty after the play on the Steelers for celebrating, and of course the change of possession, both of which stopped the clock for about 2 minutes, and gave the replay assistant time to watch the replay, discuss the call with the league office, and allow the play to stand as called on the field. Besides which, he got the call right, so what worry about how they could have taken longer to come to the same conclusion?

There's a lot of fiction here.

For starters, you don't seem to be disputing my contention that there was no review.

When there's a booth review, the referee stops the play and the booth looks at the replay from several different angles for a few times. That's not what happened here. For a review to happen, the replay official has to challenge the call on the field. He didn't do so.

All Al Michaels did was confirm that the replay official knew that he could have challenged the call, but had decided not to. That is not the same thing as formally reviewing the play.

And no, I don't think the refs got the right call. But whether the refs on the field got the call right is immaterial as to whether the replay official got right the decision as to make a review. His criterion is not to make a wild-assed guess as to whether the refs on the field made the correct choice. Whether the original refs "made the correct decision" is not the measure of whether he did his job correctly. He doesn't get off simply because you think the original call was correct.

You understand that an accountant whose job it is to audit books has not done his job correctly if he just walks in, waves his hands and says "I don't see anything wrong" and walks out without looking at the books correctly, right? Even if the books are in order, the auditor has failed to do his job correctly. In this case, the call was hardly so clear that the replay official should have simply gone by the original call without a second look.

Indeed, he did the correct thing at the end of the first half, when it was unclear at first whether Harrison had scored a TD.

And there was no "two minutes" between the turnover and the Steelers' snap on offense. Not to mention the story about "calling the league office" is hilarious. Just who is manning the league office during the Super Bowl? That job must suck!

I just watched a video on You Tube of the aftermath of the play. It was literally 15 seconds between the fumble recovery and the time that the ref came out and announced that the play had been ruled as a fumble. Where did this "2 minutes" come from?

About 65 seconds after the fumble recovery the Steelers snapped the ball and the game was over. There was 45 seconds between the refs announcement of his ruling on the play and the end of the game. That's not enough time for a booth review. But, of course, no booth review happened.

I mean, really! You're telling bold-faced lies about the timing here!

When I look at the replays, I see Warner's arm going forward before he's hit. The refs blew it, and the replay official blew it worse. Warner should have had one last chance at a Hail Mary.

"Rotten" is more appropriate.

When did our national parliament become a "make everybody happy" society?

It is not important to make Republicans happy, except to the extent that they will threaten to take their ball and go home.

Environmental science is not something that is going to negotiate with the GOP and their ignorant caucus and electorate.

and Obama is already "identical to Bush"!

Geez.

Although I have sympathy to anti-Wall Street and anti-defense spending agendas, it's worth noting that Obama never embraced that kind of thinking in his campaign. Anybody who voted for him expecting a radical change in this fundamental way of doing business was just kidding himself.

Yes, these things need to be done, but to get them done we need to get the American public behind the ideas first. Politicians are just place-holders for the dominant lines of thought in the public. The public is not demanding a decrease in defense spending (even though it would be in their interests.) It's kind of nutty to expect the politicians to take the lead on this issue.

As for Wall Street - those people are very unpopular right now. It should be possible to get action on Capitol Hill along those lines.

Flying along blissfully in a fact-free world.

Mr "rockybalboa", if you have some facts about somebody who is actually in Obama's cabinent who is a criminal, please share. Otherwise, we're just going to think you're a nutjob.

And no, Daschle doesn't count.

to accuse others of whatever chicanery they get up to. Their followers are too stupid to bother to understand the difference between supported allegations and unsupported allegations.

It's old hat.