So, I haven't written anything in a long time. And this is why:

Tonight, I skipped the last half of an overly theoretical design class to watch a screening of the vice presidential debate dog and pony show.

Why did I bother?

After the first question of the debate, the moderator said something to the affect of:
"Thank you, Senator Biden, Governor Palin, but neither of you actually talked about what you would do as Vice President."


And they all fell down.

The Hand That Feeds

There has been a lot of talk recently about punishing Florida and Michigan for primary-election-time-placement and a lot of people are getting up in arms, claiming that it's a violation of our constitutional right to vote. As a Florida resident, I'm a bit peeved at the situation, but the wrong case is being made. It isn't a violation of our rights for any party to not count Primary votes. Political parties are independent organizations; the constitution did not call for Parties and we shouldn't pretend that it does.
Here are a few interesting (and some not so interesting) takes on Florida/Michigan and the Primary Votes:
#1
He sounds vaguely Cro-Magnon. Notice the excessive exclamation points (Why is he screaming? Or is that grunting....)
#2
This is a CNN article that is interesting because it talks about some logistics.
#3
This is a group that is pushing a petition that, they hope, will bring their strife to the attention of the Democratic Party.

The bottom line is that it could be in the best interest of any party to count all the votes cast during primary elections, but we're positioning it wrong. One of the most powerful things you have as a citizen in the US is your right to vote, but you also have the right not to vote. Not counting these votes isn't wrong because of the Constitution, or because of the feelings of anybody; it's wrong because the Parties are biting the hand that feeds them. How do you show that? You don't whine, because they don't care about your whining. You refuse to vote in November. Show some weight! Refuse to vote and they'll count the votes you already cast.

Sticking a Foot in Your Mouth

"'My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I don't understand it,' she said, dismissing calls to drop out." (via NYPost, complete article here).

Are we grasping for straws, or what? Creepy? A bit. Scary? Maybe.

Bob Chapman?

While scrolling through my Google-Reader today, I came across this little nugget of a headline:
"THE NEARLY UNFATHOMABLE DEPTHS OF PENTAGON CORRUPTION" by Bob Chapman
I laughed out loud. Bob, have you been living under a rock?

Reducing Foreign Oil Dependence

From Cleantechnica on Obama's Plan to Reduce Foreign Oil Dependence:

"Doubling fuel economy standards within the next 18 years is a priority to Obama. Research in engines and advanced lightweight materials will help meet this goal. He also wants to assist auto makers in increasing fuel economy standards through loan guarantees and tax credits for domestic auto manufacturers."

That's cool. But my father and I drive a Volkswagen. What is this? The Soviet Union? Cutting out foreign car manufacturers isn't the answer. Making American Car companies into monopolies isn't the answer. There is a reason that I don't drive an American car: our Volkswagen is much nicer and much more dependable than my mother's Jeep.

This isn't about decreasing foreign dependence. Obama's plan is a plan for foreign alienation. There's a difference.

"Obama’s goal is to have two billion gallons of cellulosic ethanol in use by 2013. He plans to use tax incentives, government contracts and cash prizes to help this industry mature and specifically wants to encourage farmer-owned refineries. He would like renewable fuel standards to increase, such that 60 billion gallons of advanced biofuels are in the fuel supply by 2030."

If only ethanol worked. Ethanol does burn cleaner, but it also holds less chemical energy for the same volume. Ethanol also burns faster and costs more. My local gas stations are selling 10% ethanol blends at higher prices. Since the ethanol supply is subsidized, that means more frequent and profitable repeat business for energy suppliers and corn growing-conglomerates like ADM.
Faster burning, more expensive fuel means more frequent trips to the gas station which in turn means increased emissions, which adds to the problem that Ethanol was meant to solve. Ethanol corrosion of engine parts also means more dollars spent on parts replacement, new cars and labor in the automobile industries, which also has negative impact on the environment (more stuff put into landfills at a faster rate and more carbon emitted making new cars and parts). So is ethanol about the environment or is this about profit for energy, agribusiness and automobile corporations? Who are the biggest donors to Obama's campaign?

"By 2025, Obama would like 25% of U.S. electricity to be generated from clean, renewable sources including wind, solar and geothermal with a Renewable Portfolio Standard. Obama calls for $150 billion to be invested over 10 years in clean energy and infrastructure to support it. Investment in a national digital electric grid would allow greater amounts of renewable energy to be utilized and make plug-in hybrids more environmentally sound.

“For the sake of our security, our economy, our jobs and our planet, the age of oil must end in our time,” said Obama."

Where is that $150 billion going to come from? Has he forgotten that we're in debt to our eyeballs? Roll out the taxes. Who are you? Prince John? I'll be your Robin Hood.

But more importantly, for the sake of our security we need to make peace with people by making agreements not pushing them out of the sandbox. For our economy we do need to lower prices but we need to do that by opening up trade, not shutting it off. For our jobs we need to push education. For our planet we need to reduce the number of SUVs on the road, we need to cut down our Eliot-Spitzer-style consumption and be more weary of greenwashed politicians and products.

Disappointment

The Libertarian Party held their convention over this Memorial Day weekend. After six rounds of voting they nominated a candidate for President. It's too bad they didn't nominate a Libertarian.

Bob Barr: A Life Of Accomplishments
1. While in Congress, he was a member of the Speaker's Task Force for a Drug-Free America.This task force was established in 1998 by then-Speaker Newt Gingrich to "design a World War II-style victory plan to save America's children from illegal drugs."
2. Barr advocated complete federal prohibition of medical marijuana. In 1998, he successfully blocked implementation of Initiative 59 -- the "Legalization of Marijuana for Medical Treatment Initiative of 1998" -- which would have legalized medical marijuana in the District of Columbia.
3. He authored and sponsored the Defense of Marriage Act, a law enacted in 1996 which states that only marriages that are between a man and a woman can be federally recognized, and individual states may choose not to recognize a same-sex marriage performed in another state.
4. In Congress, he controversially proposed that the Pentagon ban the practice of Wicca in the military.
5. In 2002 he voted for the Iraq War Resolution.
6. He voted for the Patriot Act.

To his credit:
Since he left Congress in 2003 he's spoken against the Bush administration, and has stated that he regrets voting for the Patriot Act. He's spoken in favor of removing troops from Iraq. He is a supporter of the Fair Tax and repealing the 16th Amendment which gives the U.S. Congress the power to levy an income tax without apportionment. And he joined the Libertarian Party in 2006.

But does that make him a Libertarian? No. It makes him a disillusioned Republican, angered by the way the federal government ballooned under the Bush Administration. Disillusioned Republicans and Libertarians are like apples and oranges. A few years of speaking out against all his previous positions does not absolve him of all his political "sins," nor does it make him a Libertarian.

His criticism of Bush earned Barr labels such as maverick, Jekyll-and-Hyde and libertarian. I've got a label for you: BS.

Go Home, Bob Barr.

Mrs. Sue OPEC

If you did a Google search for "sue OPEC" right this moment, you would get countless matches concerning the NOPEC bill that was recently passed in the House (Is Sue a female suicide bomber? credit for that joke goes to Joe Calhoun). The bill changes the Sherman Anti-Trust Act to allow for Congress to sue OPEC. If you read the bill, you realize that Congress would be suing OPEC for things that Congress does itself. In short, this is pretty arrogant, moderately hypocritical, and mostly stupid. In his blog, my father (click the above "Joe Calhoun" link) suggested some appropriate rewriting of the bill. He is far nicer than I am, and I offer this piece of editing:

"`(a) In General- It shall be illegal and a violation of this Act for any foreign state, or any instrumentality or agent of any foreign state, to act collectively or in combination with any other foreign state, any instrumentality or agent of any other foreign state, or any other person, whether by cartel or any other association or form of cooperation or joint action--

`(1) to limit the production or distribution of oil, natural gas, or any other petroleum product;

`(2) to set or maintain the price of oil, natural gas, or any petroleum product; or

`(3) to otherwise take any action in restraint of trade for oil, natural gas, or any petroleum product;

when such action, combination, or collective action has a direct, substantial, and reasonably foreseeable effect on the market, supply, price, or distribution of oil, natural gas, or other petroleum product in the United States.

`(b) Sovereign Immunity- A foreign state engaged in conduct in violation of subsection (a) shall not be immune under the doctrine of sovereign immunity from the jurisdiction or judgments of the courts of the United States in any action brought to enforce this section.

`(c) Inapplicability of Act of State Doctrine- No court of the United States shall decline, based on the act of state doctrine, to make a determination on the merits in an action brought under this section.

`(d) Enforcement- The Attorney General of the United States may bring an action to enforce this section in any district court of the United States as provided under the antitrust laws.' We of Congress would like to take this moment to confirm to the people that we govern that we are in fact arrogant, corrupt, useless morons. Thank you, come again."

Seeing the Whole Iceberg

David Wessel and Bob Davis wrote an article in March for the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) that ran in a similar form in the Educational version of the publication last September (the education version can be found here; it's slightly different but has the same message). Both versions of the article, called "A Very Big Iceberg," focus on Alan Blinder, economics professor at Princeton. Mr.Blinder, an MIT grad, has been with Princeton since the 70s and claimed in 2001, "Like 99% of economists since the days of Adam Smith, I am a free trader down to my toes..." Having helped to "sell" NAFTA along side Bill Clinton, it appears to me (when this article and that fact are taken into consideration) that Mr.Blinder is not so much pro-trade as he is pro-bureaucracy. This makes me wonder where on his body his toes are located.

"Mr. Blinder began to talk about this in public. At a foreign-affairs forum in January 2005 he called "offshoring," or the exporting of U.S. jobs, "the big issue for the next generation of Americans." Eight months later on Capitol Hill, he warned that "tens of millions of additional American workers will start to experience an element of job insecurity that has heretofore been reserved for manufacturing workers."

Last year, Mr. Blinder wrote an essay, "Offshoring: The Next Industrial Revolution?" that was published in the journal Foreign Policy. "The old assumption that if you cannot put it in a box, you cannot trade it is hopelessly obsolete," he wrote. "The cheap and easy flow of information around the globe...will require vast and unsettling adjustments in the way Americans and residents of other developed countries work, live and educate their children."

In that paper, he made a "guesstimate" that between 42 million and 56 million jobs were "potentially offshorable." Since then he has been refining those estimates, by painstakingly ranking 817 occupations, as described by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, to identify how likely each is to go overseas. From that, he derives his latest estimate that between 30 million and 40 million jobs are vulnerable.

He says the most important divide is not, as commonly argued, between jobs that require a lot of education and those that don't. It's not simply that skilled jobs stay in the U.S. and lesser-skilled jobs go to India or China. The important distinction is between services that must be done in the U.S. and those that can-or will someday-be delivered electronically with little loss of quality. The more personal work of divorce lawyers isn't likely to go overseas, for instance, while some of the work of tax lawyers could be. Civil engineers, who have to be on site, could be in great demand in the U.S.; computer engineers might not be."

A. "Guesstimate" is an invented word, I believe the one they might be looking for is "estimate" which you can in fact find in the dictionary (definition of estimate here and you might notice that if you search for "guesstimate" on Google you get a link to an Urban Dictionary page, among other things).
B. How is "potentially offshorable" defined? (for the record, "offshorable" is not a word either) When considering "offshorability" you can't just say that something is offshorable because it's possible that it could be done overseas. There are lots of jobs that people in the United States would want done by someone else in the United States. For example, if you're getting a divorce, you're going to want your divorce lawyer to live in your city, not in New Delhi. The very basic bottom line is that there will always be consumers who want face time (without plane travel involved) and so we'll never get to a point where everything can be done overseas as such alarmist articles as this imply.
C. Now for the mushy: Why do our computer engineers deserve those jobs more than computer engineers overseas? Idealistically, with dreamy eyes, Americans want everyone to get along. We claim that everyone is "created equal" but then turn around to complain when some of our jobs go overseas. Is everyone created equal? Or are all Americans equal? I'm pretty sure the phrase says "everyone."
D. The industrial Revolution was a pretty good thing; without it computer engineers wouldn't exist because we never would have come this far. Complaints about offshoring look backwards, shouldn't we look forward?

"Diana Farrell, head of the McKinsey Global Institute, a pro-globalization research group that has done its own analysis of vulnerable jobs, calls Mr. Blinder "an alarmist" and worries about the impact he is having on politicians, particularly the Democrats who see resistance to free trade as a political winner. She insists that many jobs that could go overseas won't actually go. Ms. Farrell says Mr. Blinder's work doesn't take into account the realities of business, which make exporting of some jobs impractical or which create offsetting gains elsewhere in the U.S. economy.
Mr. Blinder counters that he is looking even further into the future than McKinsey-10 or 20 years instead of five-and expects more technological change than the consultants do.
Mr. Blinder says there's an urgent need to retool America's education system so it trains young people for jobs likely to stay in the U.S. Just telling them to go to college to compete in the global economy is insufficient. A college diploma, he warns, "may lose its exalted 'silver bullet' status." It isn't how many years one spends in school that will matter, he says; it's choosing to learn the skills for jobs that cannot easily be delivered electronically from afar."

My first instinct is to say "if you can't stand the heat, don't be a chef, get out of the kitchen, and give someone else a shot," but something else about this disturbs me more:
While I do think Mr.Blinder is an alarmist, more importantly, I think the writers of this article are alarmists. Everything I've quoted above was from the educational version of the WSJ, and while I wish it weren't true, students are easily alarmed and directly mentioning education in this article was a mistake. Most students who read this article aren't doing independent research and making up their own minds; they read this article because a teacher told them to, the teacher advocated what was being said out of enthusiasm for their subject, and the students internalized it, end of story. Those students leave that classroom in fear that they won't be able to get a job when the time comes. They panic, quietly and privately, but they panic and it's on their mind for a while. Maybe it just distracts them a little bit, or maybe it really deeply affects them and they decide not to go to college because they think it won't matter. Sure, that's an extreme case, but adolescence is a time for extremes. What hurts the American job market? Subpar workers. What creates subpar workers? Few educational opportunities (or few people taking advantage of the chances they have), lack of motivation and fear of a lack of compensation. What creates those things? Popular sentiment, just like anything else. Perception is reality and if we think that all our jobs are offshorable, eventually they all will be. It isn't free trade that damages the American job market, it's a bad perception of free trade.

The Red Button

. . .And Other Shit Slinging From Both Sides:


From huffingtonpost.com:
"While the putatively "liberal" media hyperventilate about a few words Barack Obama uttered in San Francisco last Sunday, lost in the din were the remarks at a fundraising dinner for Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and his compatriot Representative Geoff Davis who represents the good people of Northern Kentucky. Senator McConnell called Obama "incredibly naive" and Representative Davis called him a "snake oil salesman." But the truly offensive and, yes, "elitist," statement came from Davis when he said: "I'm going to tell you something. That boy's finger does not need to be on the button."

I have two things to say about this:

First,
Mr.Davis, your foot doesn't need to be in your ass. (And neither does Obama's need to be in his, but that's old news, so I won't address it)

and, more importantly, second:
Where IS this magical red button? What exactly does it do? And how many layers of bureaucracy do you have to wade through before you can push it? Or is it like a fire alarm? Lot's of loud noise and punishment (or not) later? Do you get called to the principal's office?


Interesting facts about Mr.Davis:
He's only three years older than Barack Obama.
He was born in Montreal (awfully American, eh?).

Endorsement '08

From brucespringsteen.net :
"Dear Friends and Fans:

LIke most of you, I've been following the campaign and I have now seen and heard enough to know where I stand. Senator Obama, in my view, is head and shoulders above the rest.

He has the depth, the reflectiveness, and the resilience to be our next President. He speaks to the America I've envisioned in my music for the past 35 years, a generous nation with a citizenry willing to tackle nuanced and complex problems, a country that's interested in its collective destiny and in the potential of its gathered spirit. A place where "...nobody crowds you, and nobody goes it alone."

At the moment, critics have tried to diminish Senator Obama through the exaggeration of certain of his comments and relationships. While these matters are worthy of some discussion, they have been ripped out of the context and fabric of the man's life and vision, so well described in his excellent book, Dreams From My Father, often in order to distract us from discussing the real issues: war and peace, the fight for economic and racial justice, reaffirming our Constitution, and the protection and enhancement of our environment.

After the terrible damage done over the past eight years, a great American reclamation project needs to be undertaken. I believe that Senator Obama is the best candidate to lead that project and to lead us into the 21st Century with a renewed sense of moral purpose and of ourselves as Americans.

Over here on E Street, we're proud to support Obama for President.

Bruce Springsteen"



Is he a superdelegate?

Stealing Money From The Public, one Internet Purchase at a Time

The beautiful days of sales-tax-free internet shopping maybe numbered (as told by an article from news.com)
The full article is here, but the general idea is simple: politicians want more money.

"For years, politicians in state legislatures and the U.S. Congress have been arguing that the rise of e-commerce is causing them to miss out on potentially millions of taxpayer dollars. But now, with a Democratic Congress and a potentially Democratic administration next year, the arguments may gain more political traction.

Technically, of course, Americans in states with sales taxes are supposed to keep track of out-of-state purchases and cough up the necessary sales tax on April 15--the concept is known as a "use tax". But state tax collectors have long complained that in practice, that just doesn't happen, and that money has been unfairly left in taxpayers' pocketbooks.

Verenda Smith, government affairs associate for the Federation of Tax Administrators, framed the decision as a moral one of sorts: "Do you want to be a good American, or do you want to be an American who wants to cheat your government deliberately? It's a harsh way to look at it, but it's true."

Unfair? Unfair? I feel like I need to repeat it again: UNFAIR? Do I want to be a good American? Sure. Do I like paying sales tax? About as much as I like sticking nails through my toes. Do I want to cheat the government? Only if they cheat me.

Lot's of people agree that government spending is outlandish. (Do they make $17 dollar Army hammers out of gold? Where can I get some? They'd make a killing as bling on the black market.) People spend money more efficiently when they have less.We call if budgeting. Why should we increase the "budget" of an institution that spends money like a five year old? (that is unwisely and recklessly). I'm sorry, Congress, until you can figure out how to properly spend the money you have, I don't think you need any more.

Being a Libertarian

"In their cover story for Politics, Matt Welch and Nick Gillespie assuage nervous libertarian voters by promising them that a more glorious future awaits us all, regardless of who takes control of the White House, the Congress or even the Supreme Court this fall. Cultural libertarianism, after all, is a growing force in America."
The full article can be downloaded as a pdf here.

Essentially, the article claims that the American people (specifically the younger generation) are moving toward a more Libertarian outlook on social issues and culture. As Welch and Gillespie point out in their article, we are becoming more and more accustomed to individualized service and choice in our social and economic lives. We're a very "have it your way-would you like your decaf frappuccino made with soy?" type of society. Netflix. iPod. Internet shopping. Blogger, and it doesn't stop there. The power of choice is an undeniable force in contemporary American society. The "next generation" prides itself on being a cohort of free minds.
To the Libertarian minority, this sounds wonderful, but it also begs the question: Why don't more people get it? Why are we backing candidates that are, at the root of everything, trying to limit our freedom and rights with ideas that are older and more tired than John McCain himself? McCain spews ideas reminiscent of ". . .Teddy Roosevelt’s century-old ideas about national, and international, greatness. . . " and the campaign finance legislation bearing his name is a "spectacular affront to the first amendment's guarantee of free political speech." Hillary Clinton's platform seems strangely Great Society. Mike Huckabee wanted to create public weight loss regimens and argued against the teaching of evolution in schools! And he actually won primaries! And as good looking and charismatic as he may be, Gillespie and Welch point out that it seems Barack Obama's true calling is repackaging JFK speeches from the 60s.
Why are these our choices for President? Because people are afraid to step outside the box. We've made "Liberal" and "Conservative" into four letter words for each opposing side and people are afraid to stand in the middle. Libertarians are categorized as " extreme conservative" which is a phrase that makes anyone under 25 shake in their boots. In actuality Libertarians stand for a lot of very "liberal" ideas: open immigration, civil liberties, women's rights, gay marriage and non-interventionist foreign policy. On the flip side, just as no "Liberal" wants to side with anything tied to the word "conservative," you'd be hard pressed to find any self proclaimed "conservative" standing near anything vaguely Blue. In reality, Libertarians are pro-gun rights, free trade and limited government. Isn't there something here for everybody? In a country founded on compromise, I find it strange that our population is so unwilling to do so.
Why don't more people understand that limiting the rights and choices of other people comes back to haunt you? I don't know. Why anyone would be so consumed with taking something away from a peer is beyond me. Does it really matter if gays get married? Does it affect "straight" people? No. If we have free trade with friendly countries and allow our own companies to do business globally, will the world fall apart? No. But if the "right" manages to do away with the gay marriage issue for good, someone will retaliate. If the "left" disbands trade agreements, someone will retaliate. Does is seem obvious that we'd all be better off if the government stayed out of our metaphoric hair? I think so. Why don't more people my age agree with me? Sheep!

Staying Focused on What's Important in Life

via The Miami Herald

BEIJING -- Among all the protests, pollution concerns and talk of boycotts surrounding the Beijing Olympics, a more basic problem has arisen for organizers: the toilets.
At the more than 30 test events held by organizers, the presence of squat toilets at many of the new and renovated venues has drawn frequent complaints.

"We have asked the venues to improve on this, to increase the number to sit-down toilets," Yao Hui, deputy director of venue management for the Beijing organizers, said Wednesday. "Many people have raised the question of toilets."

Am I sensing a theme here? That's right, us Floridians are concerned about our asses (and the asses of those who may visit our state or go with us to China).

Floridians: looking out for asses everywhere.

Blogging

So I learned yesterday that, apparently, there is blogging etiquette. Here I was assuming that bloggers just blog (strange verb, isn't it?) all willy-nilly, silly me. I will never use "willy-nilly" and "silly" in the same sentence again. Ever. I promise.
But I digress,
There are countless writings (mostly on BLOGS, go figure) about blog etiquette. (HT: the ward-o-matic) So I think I've learned a thing or two. I learned about Tipping One's Metaphorical Blog-Hat. I learned about linking to the main page of quoted publications. I learned that it's bad juju to mindlessly beg for people to link to you. I learned that it's worse juju to steal bandwidth from other sites. I learned that "People like links about monkeys, robots, sexual perversion, and any combination thereof. " (HT: Ten Tips For A Firmer, Slimmer, Sexier Weblog). I learned about the spirit of blogging. I learned that to contribute to the collective community of the Blogosphere, one should have a blogroll (via wikipedia.org "Blogosphere is a collective term encompassing all blogs and their interconnections. It is the perception that blogs exist together as a connected community (or as a collection of connected communities) or as a social network.") And from these tidbits I felt compelled to, first laugh at the amazing complexity of things that we as humans invent to keep ourselves busy, and second, that blog etiquette exists for a reason. So I guess I can be more blog-polite.

And for your viewing pleasure:

Hi Monkey!
Your Friendly Neighborhood Robot Store

Being Popular

http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2008/03/the_world_according_to_obama.asp

"The World According to Obama

It’s interesting how Democrats harp on foreign policy explanations for anti-Americanism while disregarding the role domestic policy plays. In the world according to Obama, America is hated because we’re in Iraq:

"The fact that the continuation of a presence in Iraq as Sen. McCain has suggested is exactly what, I think, will fan the flames of anti-American sentiment and make it more difficult for us to create a long-term and sustainable peace in the world," Obama said today at a campaign stop at The Little Dooey, a barbeque restaurant in Columbus, Miss.

Never mind that farm subsidies--as in the policy Obama defended vociferously while pandering to Iowans a few months back--leave the poorest people in the world starving and without jobs."

There has pretty much been "anti-American sentiment" since before the United States existed, and still people think we're going to eliminate that? Maybe I'm a skeptic (actually, I know I'm a skeptic) but for some reason I don't see anyone liking us anymore if we leave Iraq or stay there for "another hundred years" (a phrase popularized by criticism of John McCain). History shows that we're just not very popular on the playground.
Additionally, is it only me that thinks the leap from farm subsidies to "the poorest people in the world starving and without jobs" is a little large? I think I need a pole to make it across that gap (though I am pretty short and don't run very fast). Perhaps our lack of popularity on the global playground has more to do with the fact that we think we should be very popular, important and necessary and less to do with individual actions. Maybe "America" just has a bad attitude.

Protecting Our Asses

"A proposed law currently making its way through the Florida legislature might help you with what can be an embarrassing problem. Here’s the bottom line, the bill would be a mandate that all eating establishment must have enough toilet paper when you go into the restroom. The only problem is the bill doesn’t dictate how much toilet paper is “enough.” State Senator Victor Crist, a Republican from Tampa, felt the problem was so important, a law must be passed to protect the backsides of anyone in Florida. The measure will also try to regulate the cleanliness of restrooms in eating establishments."

I'm not quite sure what to say here. I'm not sure if the bigger problem is that the Florida State Legislature has nothing BETTER to do than this or that there is apparently a shortage (or poor distribution/organization of) toilet paper in the state of Florida. Who knew? Is this problem unique to Floridians? Do we use so much more toilet paper per capita that "eating establishments" actually RUN OUT without knowing? Where does the toilet paper go? Is the average Floridian ass larger than, say, the average Connecticut ass? What about Boston asses?These are all fine questions for the Legislature to answer though I wish they would answer them on their own time, perhaps with some field research.

Trans Fat

http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2008/03/boston_health_r.html?p1=Well_MostPop_Emailed7


In 1920 they banned alcohol (and invented stock-car racing).
In 2008 they banned trans fat (and invented underground oil-running).
In 2012 they banned tap water (and started a revolution).

What if the people of Boston like their french fries fatty? But of course we must protect people from themselves! The city of Boston does know, better than you, what's good for you.

Defending Our Civil Liberties

Over two hundred years after ratification, people have still qualms with the Bill of Rights. We cling to those amendments and rights that we feel apply to our sensibilities and us and reject and criticize those that do not. We pick and chose which parts we can use to back up our own arguments and our opposition does the same. Those who advocate the integration of religion into the classroom say it is a matter of free speech while those who fight to keep God out of our classrooms say it infringes upon the freedom of religion (or the implied freedom to not be religious). Citizens who own guns claim it is their constitutional right to do so, while people who advocate stronger gun control laws claim that the Second Amendment has no modern application as we no longer maintain a “well regulated Militia” that is “necessary to the security of a free State.” The ultimate irony here is that without a Bill of Rights we’d have no guaranteed right to debate our guaranteed rights.

James Madison felt that the safeguard of individual liberty must lie with the people. He wrote, on the security of liberty, “ . . . whatever fine declarations may be inserted in any constitution, respecting it must altogether depend on public opinion, and on the general spirit of the people and of the government.” He and others saw the Bill of Rights as a tool that could promote understanding and awareness of the rights of citizens and thus enable them to protect those liberties. The Bill of Rights gives us endless justification through different interpretations (and the implied right the interpret) to feel and think the way that we want to, to judge for ourselves what our rights should be and for every citizen to advocate change as they see fit.

Many groups of people have embarked, as of late, on crusades to limit the rights of fellow citizens (pro-life/anti-abortion groups and those against gay marriage, for example) because they do not agree with decisions that may be made my others. To get caught up with change that limits the rights of others though would be a mistake. Movements to further amend the Constitution in ways that may negate previous amendments or are written to take away rights (even those not explicitly granted anywhere) are dangerous to the overall integrity of the amendment process and thus to all the rights that are already secured. With the increasing size of our government, we should stand together and our attention should move to preserving the Bill of Rights to protect and expand our civil liberties. The loss of any amendment, despite any personal feelings about it, could lead to the loss of another. Getting rid of an amendment that you don’t agree with or pushing for an amendment that limits someone else may lead to that someone else doing the same in return.

Focus for any change should be in the affirmative, not the negative. We should be trying to expand our personal liberties not hinder the rights of others. We should be asking: "what can I get?" not "what can I take away?" The ultimate question about the Bill of Rights is this: Though it is your right to disagree, speak freely, petition or assemble and therefore make motions for change, which is more important: all the rights that you are entitled to or restricting the rights of others who may, in turn, retaliate?