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ership, those were all qualities we were looking for when we talked with Greg."
• Jennings dined with Frazier, Spielman, offensive coordinator Bill Musgrave and defensive end Jared Allen at a downtown steakhouse on Thursday night before the two sides got down to business on Friday.
• Jennings said he and his wife quickly felt as if they were part of a family. The Vikings were the only team he visited, and he said he had an inkling on his way to Minnesota that this would be where he ended up.
• "I definitely wanted to know that they wanted me," he said. "I wanted to feel that they wanted me to be a part of what they were doing and a part of the future. And I got that feeling early and I got that feeling quite often."
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Whiteclay alcohol sales dropped again in 2012
GRANT SCHULTE,Associated Press
• LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) -- A tiny Nebraska town that sells millions of cans of beer on the border of South Dakota's Pine Ridge Indian Reservation saw its alcohol sales drop for the second year in a row in 2012, according to a report by Nebraska's liquor control commission that American Indian advocates said was encouraging.
• Four beer stores in Whiteclay, which has roughly a dozen residents, sold what amounts to nearly 3.9 million, 12-ounce cans of beer last year. That's a 10 percent drop from 2011, when the stores collectively sold the equivalent of nearly 4.3 million cans of beer, according to the commission's year-end report.
• Alcohol sales had previously been climbing in Whiteclay, which American Indian advocates and others blame for alcoholism and other social problems plaguing the heavily impoverished reservation, where alcohol is banned. In 2010, sales had climbed to 4.9 million cans of beer compared to 4.3 million cans in 2007.
• It's unclear why sales have dropped. Business owners in Whiteclay have pointed to financial struggles of the tribal government, which supplies many of the reservation's jobs. But activists who want to shutter Whiteclay scoff at that claim, saying the reservation has been impoverished for generations, and attribute the decline to increased awareness of the town and the work of Pine Ridge residents to discourage drinking.
• The Sheridan County Sheriff's office also installed a security camera in Whiteclay, which allows deputies to keep watch on the town from their home base in Rushville, about 20 miles away.
• Nebraska lawmakers have tried for years to address the problem with little success. On Friday, a legislative committee killed a bill that would have increased the state's beer excise tax by 5 cents per gallon. The plan would have generated about (Continued on page 33)
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