Paul Mero posted on Utah Amicus about a gaggle of high school girls (all under 16) in the depressed Massachusetts town of Gloucester who decided it would be cool if they all got pregnant at roughly the same time.
My favorite take on the whole issue comes from Rachel Lucas. If you can handle moderate profanity give it a read. She may be overreacting in her call for mandatory sterilization of all teenagers but after reading the above story it is hard to argue that she isn’t on to something.
Scott Adams on our current batch of presidential candidates:
According to Time, ethanol is very bad economics and disastrous for the environment.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1725975,00.html?
The major candidates for President of the United States all support ethanol. If Time has correctly reported the consensus of expert opinions on ethanol, it seems to me that any candidate who supports it would be proved incompetent for leadership.
Is Time’s cover story wrong, or will the next leader of the United States be certifiably incompetent on day one, no matter what time the phone rings?
Any presidential candidate who claims they know right now how to solve America’s energy and environmental woes is likely to screw things up even more and isn’t worthy of our vote. Daniel has a great post about how policy makers should proceed sensibly when it comes to making energy policy.
Because there apparently aren’t enough real criminals to pursue in Utah, Attorney General Shurtleff wants everyone to remember that he’s looking to fine people who bet on March Madness brackets this year.
Utah: The state where it will always be illegal to be an adult.
UPDATE 03/11/2008 11:07: I like VOU’s proposed solution to the silliness that is Utah’s extreme gambling prohibition.
Yeah…I’ve got it and its nasty. I haven’t been around everyone’s favorite militant progressive at all lately but his symptoms sound like what I’ve got. It stinks.
Since I’m tired and miserable I’m only going to link to other people today and call that fulfilling my blogging responsibilities:
Bob Rules. Sign the petition.
Paramaphil thinks Sen. Margaret Dayton is worse than Buttars when it comes to stupid racist statements. He makes a great argument. Who would have thought someone would say something even more stupid than the “black baby” comment.
For The People catches Sen. Buttars in a lie.
David at Pursuit of Liberty links to an excellent description of why the free traders are right and Lou Dobbs is an idiot.
Frank Staheli thinks American militarism is expanding in a very real and scary way. As usual he’s right.
RudiZink points out that the legislature is owned lock stock and barrel by real estate developers who would sell their own mothers for a little more easy month. We should spend a little less time focusing on fools like Sen. Buttars and more focusing on the blatant corruption on display daily from the legislature. Thank you WCF.
Utah may have its problems…but our local blogosphere rocks.
The NAACP and others who are opposed to Sen. Buttars agenda have so focused on trying to take advantage of the Senator’s stupid comments that they’ve turned him into a hero for Utahns who are sick of having to worry all the time about political correctness and multi-cultural hyper-sensitivity.
If Sen. Buttars were really a malignant racist don’t you think he’d be the one proclaiming real racism from the rooftops like he does his bigotry against homosexuals? He’s never shown himself to be shy about sharing his real thoughts on any topic.
Now the left has turned him into a hero for those in Utah (and there are a lot of them) who think society already focuses too much on political correctness. I predict that Buttars will become a hero not just to the looneys at Eagle Forum but to most active Utah Republicans because of the persecution he’s receiving over some obviously dumb and insensitive but generally harmless slips of the tongue.
Think I’m wrong? Spend an hour or so looking at the comment thread (300+ comments) on this KSL story about the NAACP being offended at Sen. Buttars. If the NAACP wanted to make itself even more irrelevant in our state their overplaying of the political hand they’ve been dealt in this case is the perfect way to do it.
I just started reading the comments on this KSL story about the House voting down driving privilege cards for illegal immigrants. I was a little shocked at how many people think taking these permits away is a good idea.
None of the first dozen or so comments that I’ve read so far mentioned the rationale Donnelson claimed motivated him to draft his bill:
Rep. Glenn Donnelson, R-North Ogden, said the cards are a threat to national security and encourage illegal immigrants to settle in Utah.
“With the driver privilege card, we do not know who they are,” Donnelson said. “Are they terrorists? Are they just people who want to come here to work? We don’t know.”
Who does Donnelson think he’s kidding? “Are they terrorists?” What? Has there been a rash of car bombings in North Ogden I haven’t heard about? Of course they aren’t terrorists. All I can take from his statement is that Rep. Donnelson thinks we are all either stupid enough to think there really is a national security concern or that we are just racist enough that we won’t call him on his idiotic assertion.
I’d like to hear a good argument for why penalizing these people is worth increasing our auto insurance premiums and making our roads less safe. I don’t think there is one.
UPDATE 02/12/2008 10:09 PM: Sen. Buttars, you’re not helping.
Why would Sen. Buttars propose a bill that would make police officer misconduct confidential? I’d love to give the guy the benefit of the doubt every once in a while but when he pulls moves as obviously stupid and bad for Utah as this…its hard.
Here is the text of SB260
Our police are given a near monopoly on the use of force in our society. Their use of that monopoly keeps us safe and it is a great arrangement. That doesn’t mean that we don’t need safeguards in place to protect the people from misuse of police power. This misuse happens all over our country on a regular basis. We don’t need to make it easier to hide. Its all pretty simple really. Anyone who would want to make police misconduct easy to hide is either very confused or working some agenda. Either way Utahns will suffer if Sen. Buttars has his way.
I’d recommend that Sen. Buttars and everyone else read The Agitator on a regular basis. Radley Balko has done a great job cataloguing police misconduct across the country. It happens all the time and Americans are more powerless than ever in fighting it. We don’t need people making things even worse in our state.
UPDATE 2/11/08 10:53: I just saw that Ethan is already covering Sen. Buttars poor legislating this session. Props.
A Mississippi legislator proposed a message bill he knew would fail in an effort to “shed a little light on the number one problem in Mississippi.” His bill would require that restaurants turn away the obese rather than serve them.
Right now bills like this are just used to raise awareness. When taxpayers become responsible for paying each others medical bills under the socialized healthcare plans proposed by some politicians ideas like this will be taken more seriously as efforts to save taxpayer money.
H/T Boing Boing
Utah law currently allows illegal immigrants to drive legally if they obtain a special driving permit. The permit is not allowed to be used as ID it is just a measure meant to ensure that the population most likely to drive without insurance in our state has incentives to get insured and drive safely and legally.
Republicans on the House Law Enforcement Committee, in blatant disregard for public safety on our highways, approved HB239, a bill that would revoke driving permits for illegal immigrants. They claim that they fear that the permits will be used as ID (which would be against the law and also very unlikely since each permit has a bold announcement stamped across the front of it stating that it can’t be used as ID).
Good policy creates incentives for those being regulated to behave in a way that benefits society. How does HB239 benefit society? Sure it punishes illegal immigrants who are breaking the law by being here (what a stupid law by the way) but it makes drivers in our state less safe and will inevitably result in an increase in auto insurance premiums.
Should Utahns really be so afraid of illegal immigrants that we’re willing to be less safe and less wealthy? Why?
Pete Ashdown and XMission will be forced to shut down the free wi-fi system XMission has basically donated to downtown SLC if Rep Daw’s HB139 is passed. HB139 introduces civil penalties if a minor is able to access any pronogrphy over public wireless internet.
We need fewer efforts on the part of legislators like Rep. Daw to protect us from pornography and more action aimed at making sure families have the tools to ensure their families can safely use the internet. XMission has done an awesome job at this. Check out Pete Ashdown’s statement in response to Rep. Daw’s lack of foresight.
Do Lobbyists control the Democrats in Utah too? Unfortunately it looks that way.
H/T KNVU’s For The People
I think tax cuts are great. I nearly always support them.
I don’t support tax cuts when they are implemented at the expense of the most needy in our society. The legislature needs to fix this.
Against Utah Vouchers seems to have some pretty good evidence that Parents for Choice in Education paid a notorious Utah political spammer to spam for them. Just when you thought they couldn’t sink any lower…
Hat Tip: The World According To Me
UPDATE 10/07/2007: Jesse did a great job summing up this story here. Really excellent research and blogging.
Read this article. Why do Utahns keep putting clowns like Rep. Clark in office?
Hat Tip: The Third Avenue
