Monthly Archives: October 2008

The more things change…

Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin was interviewed on radio station WMAL-AM in Washington this morning. Among other things, she stated

“If [the media] convince enough voters that that is negative campaigning, for me to call Barack Obama out on his associations, then I don’t know what the future of our country would be in terms of First Amendment rights and our ability to ask questions without fear of attacks by the mainstream media.”

Exactly backward, Ms. Palin. The Constitution’s first amendment explicitly guarantees a right to a free press; the amendment says zilch about the rights of campaigning public figures. If you start censoring what a television reporter or newspaper editor can and cannot say about a open, freely-run election campaign, you might get…

…why…

The Alien and Seditions Acts, passed by President John Adams in 1798. The acts (four separate bills) were designed to still what was considered “undue and harsh criticism” of Adams’ administration. Twenty-five people, primarily prominent newspaper editors such as Benjamin Franklin’s grandson Benjamin Franklin Bache, were arrested.

…or you might get…


the suspension of habeus corpus by the Lincoln administration. This was done presumably to stifle efforts to force Maryland to secede from the United States (leaving Washington DC solidly within the territory ofthe Confederate States of America). However, the most urgent reason to invoke the suspension was to stifle criticism of the War Between the States coming from “Copperheads”, or Union dissenters who were protesting the war. Most “Copperheads” were newspaper editors and pamphleteers.

…or you might get…

The Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918, both passed the Wilson Administration, to austensibly prevent fifth columnists from sabotaging the war effort. Virtually all of the Americans prosecuted and convicted were newspaper editors and pamphlet writers. Some sentences exceeded 10 years.

…or you might get…


The Patriot Act, passed by President George W. Bush in 2001. (Do you really need to see his face again?) This law has been used, along with the current suspension of habeas corpus, to imprison people without access to counsel and without declaration of formal charges. Many newspaper editors now fear that undue criticism of the current administration will bring down the power of this Act upon them.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Now we have a candidate who, if elected, is one heart attack or cancer relapse away from the Presidency, and who is now invoking First Amendment privileges against any sort of media protest against her candidacy.

*sigh*

See an earlier post on my thoughts on that subject.

Criminal neglect, beer-wise

If you wish there to be justice in the world, demand that Leinenkugel bring back Big Eddy’s Russian Imperial Stout.

(I usually only write about beers and such that are made in true microbreweries. However, this beer is so good, and so very much deserves it, that I have made an exception to the rule.)

This is a VERY full-bodied stout, rich with chocolate and coffee overtones, thick (though even thicker would be better!), and layered with an exquisitely explosive orchestra of flavors and noses, including caramel, honey, orange, cinnamon, ginger, and other warm spices.

I categorically declare that I have not had a finer stout in my life. You can literally smell it when the glass is set before you. Never before have my taste buds been assaulted so pleasantly.

(The sad news is that the brewery did not realize what they had made. Sources tell me that Leinie was literally dumping kegs of it into the sewers.)

I tried this at The Happy Gnome, one of the finest purveyors of beer in the Twin Cities area. They were lucky enough to know what they had stumbled across, and have it on tap when they can find it.

You should find it if you can, and discover this unacknowledged, brilliant star in the Firmament of Brewing. Let Leinenkugel know (repeatedly) that they need to make it again.

Teen-age abstinence, religious or not

There is an interesting article by Margaret Talbot in this week’s online New Yorker entitled “Red Sex, Blue Sex”, and subtitled “Why do so many evangelical teen-agers become pregnant?”

There are several interesting bullet points here that bear mention:

  • 74% of white evangelical teen-agers say that they believe in abstaining from sex before marriage. (Only half of mainline Protestants, and a quarter of Jews, say that they believe in abstinence.)

  • Evangelical virgins are the least likely to anticipate that sex will be pleasurable, and fear that having sex will cause their partners to lose respect for them.
  • Evangelical Protestant teen-agers are significantly less likely to use contraception.

  • According to sociologists Peter Bearman, of Columbia University, and Hannah Brückner, of Yale, communities with high rates of [teenage abstinence] pledging also have high rates of S.T.D.s.

  • If too many teens in a given area pledge abstinence, the effort basically collapses. Pledgers like to think that they are an embattled minority; once their numbers exceed 30%, that special identity is lost.
  • Abstinence is more likely to be maintained when a teenager has access to a close-knit community of friends and family to reinfoce the goal of abstinence. A religion-based institute is only one such choice.

  • The age at marriage may be the pivotal difference between red and blue families. The five states with the lowest median age at marriage are all red states, while those with the highest are all blue. The red-state model puts couples at greater risk for divorce. Also, young couples are more likely to contend with the biggest stressors on a marriage: financial struggles and the birth of a baby.

  • A new “abstinence-plus” curriculum, now growing in popularity, urges abstinence while providing accurate information about contraception and reproduction.

    (…and what’s a rant without a little levity?)

Responsible school parenting

1. What are the names of your child’s best friends at school? Have you met their parents?

2. What is the name of your child’s teacher, the teacher’s office phone number, and the teacher’s qualifications to teach?

3. What are the qualifications of the school principal?

4. Have you read your child’s textbooks? checked them for factual content?

5. Do you have regular meetings/chats/email with your child’s teacher?

6. Do you speak up at school board meetings?

7. Do you regularly discuss and participate in your child’s homework?

8. Do you study proposals to modify school funding in your area, and vote accordingly?

If so, excellent!

If not, why the hell not? Don’t you care about the quality of education your child is receiving?

You don’t like the quality of your child’s education? Fine. Look into private schools, or homeschooling, or at least get more involved in what you do have.

Some thoughts on the political scene

Some thoughts about our current political system, from V for Vendetta:


“It’s no good blaming the drop in work standards upon bad management, either, though to be sure, the management is very bad. In fact, let us not mince words. The management is terrible.

“We’ve had a string of embezzlers, frauds, liars, and lunatics making a string of catastrophic decisions. This is plain fact.

“But who elected them? It was you! You who appointed these people! You who gave them the power to make your decisions for you!

“While I admit that anyone can make a mistake once, to go on making the same lethal errors century after century seems to me nothing short of deliberate.

“You have encouraged these malicious incompetents, who have made your working life a shambles. You have accepted without question their senseless orders. You have allowed them to fill your workspace with dangerous and unproven machines.

“You could have stopped them. All you had to do is say ‘No!’ You have no spine. You have no pride.”

Rules of the (relationship) road

You can’t create a healthy relationship by starting out with a laundry list of “musts”.

Judge the individual, not the group.

If you’re unhappy with your romantic life, reexamine your assumptions about it. You will inevitably find that one or more of them is wrong.

Always be careful what you wish for. You might get it.

Cheap terrycloth makes terrible lube.

You’re not interviewing for a job, so don’t treat your dating profile like a resume.

Broken hearts mend.

Never explain. Your friends do not need it, and your enemies will not believe you anyway.

As a rule, men are size queens, and women are not.

What you take out of a morally neutral situation is almost always what you brought into it. (Sex is morally neutral.)

Never go spelunking while wearing a lace thong.

Moving in together, or starting a baby, with someone you have not known a *long* time can be asking for trouble.

If size doesn’t matter, why are there no 3″ dildoes?

The person matters.; the genitals don’t. The home-cooked meals don’t really matter, and the sex doesn’t really matter. It’s the connection that counts.

Once a woman has forgiven a man, she must not reheat his sins for breakfast. (Thanks to Marlene Dietrich, and the same must be said for men.)

If you’re not content and happy with your life before you start a relationship, you won’t be content and happy after you start one.

Intelligence is sexy.

A successful relationship contains an endless cycle of wrongs committed, apologies offered, and forgiveness granted, all leavened by laughter, fun, and the occasional orgasm. (This last was borrowed from Dan Savage but modified to make a more accurate–IMO–statement.)