The Tuscaloosa News criticized Alabama’s congressional delegation for voting against a bill that would have made it illegal for an employer “to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise discriminate against any individual with respect to the compensation, terms, conditions or privileges of employment of the individual, because of such individual’s actual or perceived sexual orientation.”

The News specifically called out Alabama’s two Democrats, Artur Davis and Bud Cramer, while stating that it expected such votes from the Republicans.  They called it a “bow to bigotry.”

I have a different take.  We live in a free country.  That freedom includes the right to discriminate against others.  No one has a Constitutionally protected right to work a particular job and the federal government has no place telling private employers who they may or may not hire.  I don’t personally agree with such discrimination, but I’m confident that market forces will punish offenders over time without any government intervention.

A British woman tried twice to abort one of the twins she was carrying because doctors presumed it would die in the womb.  They were wrong.

When doctors found that Gabriel was weaker than his brother, with an enlarged heart,and believed he was going to die in the womb, his mother Rebecca Jones had to make a heartbreaking decision.

Doctors told her his death could cause his twin brother to die too before they were born, and that it would be better to end Gabriel’s suffering sooner rather than later.

Mrs Jones decided to let doctors operate to terminate Gabriel’s life.

Firstly they tried to sever his umbilical cord to cut off his blood supply, but the cord was too strong.

They then cut Mrs Jones’s placenta in half so that when Gabriel died, it would not affect his twin brother.

But after the operation which was meant to end his life, tiny Gabriel had other ideas.

Although he weighed less than a pound, he put up such a fight for survival that doctors called him Rocky.

Astonishingly, he managed to carry on living in his mother’s womb for another five weeks - until the babies were delivered by caesarean section.

Now he and Ieuan are back at home in Stoke - and are so close they are always holding each other’s hand.

“The baby might die so lets go ahead and kill it” argument really does ring hollow.  Life - in and out of the womb - is all about challenging and overcoming long odds, not yielding all hope of eventual success.

I wonder what kind of complex that kid is going to have when he learns that his mother did everything in her power to kill him before he was born.  The mother is clearly in denial over her decision based on her misleading characterization of the situation.  She said, “Doctors carried out an operation to let Gabriel die.”  No, what actually happened is that doctors, with her express consent, tried twice to carry out an operation to prevent Gabriel from living.  There is a big difference.

As if religious fanatics needed another reason to hate the Harry Potter books…

The head master of the little wizard school in the series is gay.

Harry Potter fans, the rumors are true: Albus Dumbledore, master wizard and Headmaster of Hogwarts, is gay. J.K. Rowling, author of the mega-selling fantasy series that ended last summer, outed the beloved character Friday night while appearing before a full house at Carnegie Hall.

After reading briefly from the final book, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” she took questions from audience members.

She was asked by one young fan whether Dumbledore finds “true love.”

“Dumbledore is gay,” the author responded to gasps and applause.

I don’t buy into the anti-Potter stuff just because I read my fair share of fantasy style books involving supernatural characters when I was a kid.  I consider myself a fairly well adjusted member of society - well, as well adjusted as an engineer can be.  It’s called fiction.  No big deal.

I’ve actually read one of the Potter books, the first one, as a deal I stuck with my wife to get her to read the FairTax book.  I can see why kids like it, but it didn’t do it for me.

The Decatur Daily has a great little bio on my state representative, Mike Ball.  I knew Ball spent time in foster homes as a child, but reading his life story is inspiring.  He went from being a “street urchin” to a Marine, law enforcement officer, and finally a state legislator, which really isn’t that far removed from being a street urchin now that I think about it :).

The impetus for the bio piece was his inclusion on an Alabama poverty task force.  I can’t think of a person with a better life experience to sit on such a commission.  It sure beats having a bunch of bleeding heart liberals who confuse helping people out of poverty with continuing dependency on government assistance.

Alabama senator Hank Erwin (R-Montevallo) recently proposed legislation that would force feuding spouses to wait one full year before a divorce can become final.  His intent is clear, although I believe his proposal would certainly contribute to prolonged spousal abuse.  Erwin believes the government should impose his pro marriage beliefs on the people of this state.  I disagree with using the weight of government to impose one’s beliefs, but I have an alternate proposal that I would propose if I were in the Alabama senate just to get under Erwin’s skin.

I would most certainly agree that a healthy marriage is a great thing.  In order to ensure that most marriages were healthy ones in the first place I would propose a one year waiting period on getting married.  When two young lovebirds come to the court house to apply for a marriage license the clock begins ticking.  One year later the couple can proceed with the official ceremony.  That waiting period would go a long way to prevent people from getting married due to a temporary lusty attraction rather than a true, eternal bond of love.  Of course this proposal would probably decrease the number of people getting married, although I would argue that a greater percentage of those marriages would be strong.  I bet the wedding industry would get behind the measure if they could get over the first year of no weddings (think how much money all those bridezillas could plan to spend in a one year engagement!).

From the NY Times:

Hinting that a remarkable turnaround in state policy was near, Gov. Charlie Crist said Monday that he hoped to persuade members of the Florida cabinet this week to end the practice of stripping convicted felons of their right to vote.

Florida is the most populous of three states whose constitutions require withdrawal of voting rights from all convicted felons, and it has the nation’s largest number of disenfranchised former offenders. The other two states are Kentucky and Virginia.

If you are subject to taxation then you should be allowed to vote for those who impose the taxes.  Period.

Drudge has a link to this story: Schoolgirls bullied into stripping online.  Makes me think I was born too early.  Just kidding.

While it is loathsome to pressure someone into doing that, teenage boy exerting enormous pressure on their girlfriends to do things that they might not otherwise do is nothing new.

John Stossel raises a good point about the widespread fear over child predators.  It’s basically a point I’ve tried to convey to my wife (to no avail) often.  People today think that child abductions and other harms are widespread and there is ample cause to be afraid and not trust anyone.  My gut feeling is that such stories are like news porn and are thus disproportionately reported because they get good ratings.  If some white kid gets abducted from a prosperous neighborhood you might as well turn the TV off for a few weeks if you’re interested in real news.

Further exacerbating this apparent increase in the number of crimes per child is the fact that children’s complaints about overly “friendly” strangers, friends, and relatives (the most common group, by the way) are treated much more seriously than in recent decades.  That encourages more kids to step forward and report abuse, but it does not necessarily mean that there are more abuses per child.

Stossel hits home the point about the relative scarcity of the most feared abductions:

The stereotypical kidnapping, where a child is abducted by a stranger and murdered, ransomed, or kept for a significant period of time, rarely happens. In fact, there are only 100 or so such cases every year.

Those abductions are tragic, but kids are more likely to be caught up in a tornado. Maybe we should have warnings about that, with lots of pictures to put everyone on edge.

He also points out that many, including the media and security companies, have a vested interest in making you think that your child’s well being is in grave danger.

The findings of a study by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development are sure to throw some fuel on the smoldering fire over day care versus family care.

A much-anticipated report from the largest and longest-running study of American child care has found that keeping a preschooler in a day care center for a year or more increased the likelihood that the child would become disruptive in class — and that the effect persisted through the sixth grade.

The effect was slight, and well within the normal range for healthy children, the researchers found. And as expected, parents’ guidance and their genes had by far the strongest influence on how children behaved.

But the finding held up regardless of the child’s sex or family income, and regardless of the quality of the day care center. With more than two million American preschoolers attending day care, the increased disruptiveness very likely contributes to the load on teachers who must manage large classrooms, the authors argue.

The findings were picked at by people on both sides of the ideological spectrum:

I have accused the study authors of doing everything they could to make this negative finding go away, but they couldn’t do it,” said Sharon Landesman Ramey, director of the Georgetown University Center on Health and Education. “They knew this would be disturbing news for parents, but at some point, if that’s what you’re finding, then you have to report it.”

…

Others experts were quick to question the results. The researchers could not randomly assign children to one kind of care or another; parents chose the kind of care that suited them. That meant there was no control group, so determining cause and effect was not possible. And some said that measures of day care quality left out important things.

The study did not take into account employee turnover, a reality in many day care centers that can have a negative effect on children, said Marci Young, deputy director of the Center for the Child Care Workforce, which represents day care workers. Most employees are “egregiously underpaid and have no benefits,” Ms. Young said, and when they leave for other work, “children experience this as a loss, and that does have an effect on them.”

I didn’t know there was a dramatic shortage of day care workers.  Surely if they are “egregiously underpaid” there must be no one willing to do the work.  Oh hold on, I forgot about basic economics for a second.

At the risk of stepping on toes (I’ve never been accused of avoiding controversy), I’ll wade into the debate.  My initial reaction is, “It took a $200 million study to find this out?”  I could have told them for far less.

My wife and I personally feel that it is in our children’s best interests to be taken care of at home during their early years.  Everyone doesn’t share this view, which is understandable.  I can attest that despite common stereotypes my wife works damn hard and it is a job I probably couldn’t handle.  I can see that it may not suit all people.

One of our big pet peeves is when we hear people tell us that they (both parents) “have to” work.  Look, nearly any family can get by on one income if you’re willing to make sacrifices.  We do it and we could find a way to do it if I made less.  But don’t say that you both “have to” work because you can’t afford for one of you to stay home.  Just be honest and say that you made the choice to work.  I feel that many people use the “have to” argument because it helps alleviate the guilt they feel as a result of their choice.  It can be hard to admit that it is more important to have the material things that you desire than it is to raise your own children.

I’ve also mused as to whether there are any psychological effects on the child.  Does your child subconsciously think, “mommy (or daddy) chose work over me.”

There are pros and cons to either option.  Daycare can be a breeding ground for sickness and the attention each child gets is less than he/she would receive at home.  But, kids at home may be less socialized and it is incumbent on the parent to assume a teaching role.  In the end the debate is something of a secondary one because the most important elements are loving, caring parents and a stable home life.

Controversial thought of the day:

One of the common arguments that pro choicers use is that a woman should be able to control her own body.  I wonder, though, how many of those people would take umbrage at the notion of allowing people to elect to sell off one of their kidneys?  It is their body after all.