Category: Issues of the Day

A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolved, and the people recovering their true sight, restoring their government to its true principles. It is true that, in the meantime, we are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the horrors of a war, and long oppressions of enormous public debt. … If the game runs sometimes against us at home, we must have patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning back the principles we have lost. For this is a game where principles are the stake.

Thomas Jefferson, 1798

Pat Oliphant

In light of the Congress’s action in the Schiavo case, how long do you think individual state laws permitting abortions will last once the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade?

“Young Americans believe it’s more likely to see a UFO than receive a Social Security check.”

President Bush today, thinking he was in Roswell rather than Albuquerque.

A church has withdrawn its support for a food pantry serving the needy because the pantry works with Roman Catholics.

Central Church of God explained its decision in a letter March 1 from minister of evangelism Shannon Burton to Loaves & Fishes in Charlotte.

“As a Christian church, we feel it is our responsibility to follow closely the (principles) and commands of Scripture,” the letter said.

“To do this best, we feel we should abstain from any ministry that partners with or promotes Catholicism, or for that matter, any other denomination promoting a works-based salvation.”

The [Durham] Herald-Sun

Link via No More Mister Nice Blog via The American Street.

From SignOnSanDiego.com:

The head of the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego apologized Monday to the family of gay nightclub owner John McCusker, less than a week after decreeing that McCusker couldn’t have a Catholic burial because of his “business activities,” according to a statement released by McCusker’s family.

In a stunning twist to a controversy that has created an uproar in the San Diego gay and Catholic communities, Bishop Robert Brom also promised to preside at a mass in memory of McCusker at The Immaculata Catholic church on the campus of the University of San Diego.

Keith Olbermann takes a look at the email his Sponge Bob defense generated, including this one:

— With similar obliviousness, Frank from Albuquerque, New Mexico, has been good enough to reproach my “inappropriate toleration of pro-gay groups” by quoting one of America’s great writers:

“The genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges, or churches, or parlors, nor even in its newspapers (media) or inventors, but always most in the common people. Walt Whitman 1819-1892, American Poet.”

Um, Frank – I have a historical tidbit about Walt Whitman’s dating habits I think might interest you.

The Roman Catholic bishop of San Diego has denied funeral rites to a man who owned a bar and a dance club popular with gays, saying his business activities clashed with church teaching. The owner, John McCusker, who was 31 and gay, died of congestive heart failure on Sunday, his family said. Arrangements had been made for services at his alma mater, the University of San Diego, until Bishop Robert H. Brom intervened. “The bishop concluded that to avoid public scandal Mr. McCusker cannot be granted a funeral in a Catholic church or chapel,” the diocese said. A church official said the decision was not related to Mr. McCusker’s sexual orientation.

AP via The New York Times

The revised Catechism:
Who made us? God made us.
Why did God make us? God made us to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world and the next … unless you run a gay bar.

Let’s subpoena a woman who’s been in a coma for 15 years. That would be a good one. That would show we are serious people.

From the report in The Washington Post:

Doctors removed the feeding tube of America’s most famous brain-damaged patient after a Florida judge rejected efforts by Republican leaders in Congress to stall the end of her feeding. Unless congressional Republicans can get the tube restored, medical experts said, Schiavo will die within two weeks.

The removal came after a dramatic sequence of legal feints that began Friday morning when the House Government Reform Committee issued subpoenas to Schiavo, a woman who has been unable to speak for 15 years; her husband, Michael Schiavo; and several doctors and employees of her hospice, ordering them to appear at a congressional hearing March 25. Then, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee formally invited Michael and Terri Schiavo to testify on Monday. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist’s statement pointedly noted that it is a federal crime for anyone to interfere with a person’s testimony before Congress.

The maneuvering set off a power struggle pitting Congress’s top leaders against Pinellas County Circuit Judge George W. Greer, who ruled against them.

NewMexiKen keeps wondering why — in an increasingly inter-related world with its global economy — legislators aren’t smart enough to be proposing legislation to mandate bi-lingualism — rather than their myopic English-first-English-only nonsense.

From an editorial in The New York Times:

We certainly look forward to Mr. Bolton’s confirmation hearings, and, after that, his performance at the United Nations, where he will undoubtedly do a fine job continuing the Bush administration’s charm offensive with the rest of the world.

Which leaves us wondering what Mr. Bush’s next nomination will be. Donald Rumsfeld to negotiate a new set of Geneva Conventions? Martha Stewart to run the Securities and Exchange Commission? Kenneth Lay for energy secretary?

From Paul Krugman in The New York Times:

Warren Buffett recently made headlines by saying America is more likely to turn into a “sharecroppers’ society” than an “ownership society.” But I think the right term is a “debt peonage” society – after the system, prevalent in the post-Civil War South, in which debtors were forced to work for their creditors.

If you live in the Bay Area, look out for the Freeway Blogger.

There’s this:

Undocumented immigrants would be eligible to qualify for the lottery scholarship and all other state grant and financial aid programs for education, under a bill passed Tuesday in the Senate.
Sen. Cynthia Nava, D-Las Cruces, said removing the current prohibitions against undocumented immigrants is simply a matter of fairness.

“Young people affected by this bill did not have a say in their decision to come to New Mexico, and this gives them the same opportunity as their classmates,” she said.

To qualify, a student must have graduated from a New Mexico high school or received their GED in the state.

Farmington Daily Times

And then there’s this:

Max says, if it becomes law, he will trade in his Utah driver license for a state-issued “driving privilege card” because he wants to follow the rules here – a place his family calls home.

Max, an illegal immigrant, is one of tens of thousands who will be stripped of their driver licenses and issued a different-looking card starting July 1, if Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. signs Senate Bill 227, which passed the Legislature on Tuesday. The driving card, which will be issued to people who do not have a Social Security number, will read: “For driving privileges only – not for identification.”

Salt Lake Tribune

Bill Gates in the Los Angeles Times on “What’s Wrong With American High Schools” —

Our high schools are obsolete.

By obsolete, I don’t just mean that they are broken, flawed and underfunded — although I can’t argue with any of those descriptions.

What I mean is that they were designed 50 years ago to meet the needs of another age. Today, even when they work exactly as designed, our high schools cannot teach our kids what they need to know.

Until we design high schools to meet the needs of the 21st century, we will keep limiting — even ruining — the lives of millions of Americans every year. Frankly, I am terrified for our workforce of tomorrow.

Key point: “We need a new design that realizes that all students can do rigorous work.”

The whole essay is worth your time.

From The New York Times:

Ten of the 32 government drug advisers who last week endorsed continued marketing of the huge-selling pain pills Celebrex, Bextra and Vioxx have consulted in recent years for the drugs’ makers, according to disclosures in medical journals and other public records.

If the 10 advisers had not cast their votes, the committee would have voted 12 to 8 that Bextra should be withdrawn and 14 to 8 that Vioxx should not return to the market. The 10 advisers with company ties voted 9 to 1 to keep Bextra on the market and 9 to 1 for Vioxx’s return.

The votes of the 10 did not substantially influence the committee’s decision on Celebrex because only one committee member voted that Celebrex should be withdrawn.

Paul Krugman has an informative and important article in The New York Review of Books concerning Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the aging population and fiscal responsibility. NewMexiKen recommends you find time to read the entire article, but here are some notable points:

[A]nd many economists now think that the original optimism was right after all: if the economy grows as fast over the next fifty years as it did over the past fifty years, Social Security will be sound for the foreseeable future. And if the economy doesn’t grow that fast, by the way, the high rate of return on stocks needed to make privatization work can’t possibly materialize, either.

*****

In that sense, the trust fund is as real an obligation of the US government as bonds held by Japanese pension funds. The other way would be if the United States found itself in a general fiscal crisis, unable to honor any of its debt. Given the size of the current deficit and the prospect that the deficit will get much bigger over time, that could happen. But it won’t happen because of Social Security, which is a much smaller factor in projected deficits than either tax cuts or rising Medicare spending.

*****

As you may have noticed, right now everyone is talking about Social Security, and nobody is talking about the stunning shift from budget surplus to budget deficit since Bush took office.

Lawsuits against doctors are just one of several factors that have driven up the cost of malpractice insurance, specialists say. Lately, the more important factors appear to be the declining investment earnings of insurance companies and the changing nature of competition in the industry.

The recent spike in premiums – which is now showing signs of steadying – says more about the insurance business than it does about the judicial system.

The New York Times

“The [Honduran] abuses, however, were widely chronicled in local papers. That means he [John Negroponte] either willfully ignored the mass murders and torturing of citizens or he was so out of touch that he didn’t see the atrocities going on beneath his very nose. Neither of these scenarios is what the United States needs in a National Director of Intelligence.”

From the web site Think Progress, commenting on the nomination of Ambassador John Negroponte as National Director of Intelligence.

Link via Altercation.

This story from CBS News about states mulling over taxing us by the mile.

College student Jayson Just commutes an odometer-spinning 2,000 miles a month. As CBS News Correspondent Sandra Hughes reports, his monthly gas bill once topped his car payment.

“I was paying about $500 a month,” says Just.

So Just bought a fuel efficient hybrid and said goodbye to his gas-guzzling BMW.

And what kind of mileage does he get?

“The EPA estimate is 60 in the city, 51 on the highway,” says Just.

And that saves him almost $300 a month in gas. It’s great for Just but bad for the roads he’s driving on, because he also pays a lot less in gasoline taxes which fund highway projects and road repairs. As more and more hybrids hit the road, cash-strapped states are warning of rough roads ahead.

Officials in car-clogged California are so worried they may be considering a replacement for the gas tax altogether, replacing it with something called “tax by the mile.”

Seeing tax dollars dwindling, neighboring Oregon has already started road testing the idea.

“Drivers will get charged for how many miles they use the roads, and it’s as simple as that,” says engineer David Kim.

Kim and his team at Oregon State University equipped a test car with a global positioning device to keep track of its mileage. Eventually, every car would need one.

“Administration officials said declassifying the report had been slowed by the fact that the commission no longer existed and that it was unclear who was authorized to work on the declassification.”

Critics Want Full Report of 9/11 Panel in The New York Times

From The Albuquerque Tribune —

New Mexico driver’s licenses would no longer be recognized as proof of identity by federal officials – like the guards who screen passengers before they board airplanes – under legislation headed for House approval today.

New Mexico is one of 10 states whose residents would have to carry some other proof of identity to board airplanes or enter a federal courthouse because the state issues driver’s licenses without requiring proof of U.S. citizenship.

New Mexico would have to change its law and deny such licenses if its other licenses are to be recognized as valid identification by the feds.