An interesting thing that my brother noted the weekend before last. If we all vote the way that we think we will, all four members of my family will be voting for someone different. It's not every day you can say that. Particularly for a family that all voted the same way in 2000 and either voted the same way or split 3-1 in 2004.

For those wondering, the most likely recipient of my vote will be Carole Keeton Strayhorn. It is actually a close call between her and Bell. I have tried mightily, but I just can't take Friedman seriously. Even as seriously than I could take Jesse Ventura of Arnold Schwarzenegger, both of whom ran more serious campaigns.

Mike's post on KFC and transfats reminded me of a discussion over at Halfsigma involving a propose New York City law that would require restaurants to post nutritional content on their menus.

In short, I think it's a good idea. My chief complaint with the law is that it is not stringent enough.

I don't see why it would be a huge burden on restaurants and it's not aimed at regulating the food, but disclosing to the customer what is in it. It's amazing the differences that can exist on the same plates from one restaurant to the next.

Dominos complained that they have too many variations to keep track of. This may be true, to an extent, and the law should be somewhat flexible when it comes to extra ingredients. Subway right now puts the health content of some of their stuff on napkins. It doesn't include cheese or condiments, so those are listed separately. I don't see why there couldn't be a provision for Dominos to put a pizza topping chart on the back.

I am presently watching my fat and caloric intake very closely. Having actual numbers makes a big difference and I'm starting to lose weight. This may not last, but so far it has been at least very illuminating. It has me eating things I otherwise wouldn't consider and avoiding things I used to eat all the time. If this diet fails, it will not be because I am dissatisfied with what I am eating it will be because I am tried of keeping track and will drift towards the more convenient, less healthy foods. Right now the biggest barrier I have is trying to figure out the health content of restaurants that won't tell me.

This whole strategy would be nigh impossible if it wasn't for government regulation on supermarket items. Laws like these help people help themselves, which is a very good thing.

Reports come in today that KFC's eliminating trans fats from their recipes as fast as they can; chicken will be done soon, biscuits will be slightly longer as they figure out a replacement.

Ironically, the article gets it right on how they got there in the first place:

Ironically, many big fast food companies only became dependent on hydrogenated oil a decade and a half ago when they were pressured by health groups to do something about saturated fat.

McDonald's emptied its french fryers of beef tallow in 1990 and filled them with what was then thought to be "heart healthy" partially hydrogenated vegetable oil.

"They did so in all innocence, trying to do the right thing," said Michael Jacobson of the Center for Science in the Public Interest. "Everybody thought it was safe. We thought it was safe."

Some restaurants were still completing the changeover when the first major study appeared indicating that the hydrogenated oils were just as bad for you, if not worse.

So... in the course of trying to do the right thing (under public pressure), they wound up doing the wrong thing.

The same can be said for other chemicals. One of the big problems in modern American diets is an overabundance of sodium, because junk-science "studies" led some rather crazed types to rail against monosodium glutamate (also known as MSG). Truthfully, MSG's a wonderful thing (see IFIC's resource page on the additive). MSG has 13% sodium content (as opposed to table salt's 40%), and gives the same flavor-enhancing effect to foods with an application of much less MSG; their suggestions indicate that MSG can replace a good portion of the table salt in a given recipe for anywhere between 20% to 40% sodium reduction.

But instead, when I go to a restaurant, especially a chinese one, I see "no MSG added" on their foods. Then I ask to see the data sheets on how much salt it took to replace the MSG in the recipe. Scary thought.

I've more-or-less settled on what my November Novel is going to be. Here's the intro thingie:
Before the World Wide Web, people from across the country logged on to local computer Bulletin Board Systems. Computers and modems were far more expensive and less ubiquitous at the time and those who spent their time and social lives through a computer monitor and phone line were the smartest and strangest of people.

Casey Boone logged on to The Sanctum, a local BBS in Houston, and kicked his previously nascent social life in to high gear. In the ten years since, he's become a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and has watched what he once saw as a digital utopia commodified and dumbed down into something he barely could barely recognize. Through a chance encounter with a mysterious former BBS peer he is notified that Erin Henshaw, the benefactor to the BBS that redefined his life, was murdered.

The funeral evolves into a reunion of sorts for the Sanctum crowd. Neil Chambers, his former mentor, is days away from being elected to congress on a platform that is anathema to the Neil that he once knew. His old flame Shannon McBride, once the belle of the Sanctum ball, is living a lonely life in the suburbs. Many of the best and brightest people that he knew slipped into mediocrity or worse. Underneath his happy memories of a tightly knit community was something dark that some were unable to escape. Something that may have gotten Erin Henshaw killed.

In the comment section of PubliusTX, I get in a brief back and forth with A Precinct Chair about what Democratic gubernatorial nominee Chris Bell should do to overcome the Republican tilt of the state. APC says that emulating a Republican won't work and I reply that being a Democrat through won't, either. I don't think either of us are wrong.

So was it always a hopeless battle? Maybe, but not necessarily. While mulling it over, I came up with I think a salespitch that might have worked if Bell had made the point early and often. Here's the pitch I would make:

Every statewide office, both houses of the legislature, and the court system in the state of Texas is lead by Republican Party. Yet with all of this power, they have squandered it on partisan initiatives, a school finance plan that nobody likes, and a legislature that has been called back to special session after special session to fail to resolve these issues to your satisfaction. Texas is a Republican state and, however much Democrats may wish it weren't so, is likely to remain that way in the future. But with one vote, you add a balance to all the power they hold. Chris Bell will work with the Republicans when they're right, but he is the candidate that will fight them vigorously when they're wrong. Texas Republican leadership has made the mistake of believing what's best for them is automatically what's best for Texas. Send Chris Bell to Austin to represent the rest of you.

I don't know, I think this avoids the major pitfalls of trying to be a Republican-lite while not trying to coast in on the sails of the minority party. Right now he's almost acting as an emissary of the Texas Democrats. The whole "Mainstream Mandate" or whateveryoucallit doesn't give anyone an idea of what he would really do or what kind of governor he would be. It may helpfully obscure his liberalish preferences from a conservative state, but without a strong impression people will assume that he is a standard Democrat, which won't work no matter how worthless the Republican is. This strikes me as one of those cases where saying that he will "fight the power" would actually be quite productive... but only after assuring Texans that he couldn't change Texas into California even if he wanted to.

Though I'm leaning in the direction of a particular candidate - or at least I think I am - I don't know who I'm going to vote for next month.

Rick Perry (R)
Pro: He's stood pretty firm as an anti-gambling governor. From what I understand he got there somewhat opportunistically, but there is little sign that he will budge on this issue of considerable importance. His first two years had two major accomplishments: he didn't buckle and raise taxes as did Republican governors from across the country (I didn't expect that kind of spine from him!) and he helped get Houston speed limits back above 55mph when our own mayor was treating the federal requirement as though it had come down from the Almighty Himself. And, on the whole, issue-for-issue I probably agree with him more than I agree with any of his rivals.
Con: Since his 2002 election, he's been a pretty lousy governor. He's had six years with Republicans controlling everything and everything is in greater chaos than it was when Bush had to work with the Democrats to get things done. Then, when faced with his greatest opportunity to revamp school finance, he did it in a way that pleased nobody and to which the upside is already being negated. And he missed a prime opporunity to implement appraisal caps.

Chris Bell (D)
Pro: Bell was a very solid Houston City Councilman. I wish he were serving out his third and final term as the mayor of Houston. He was a Democrat, but one more focused on solutions rather than partisan ideas.
Con: Something in Bell changed when he lost his mayoral bid. Somewhat bitter that Republicans lined up around the unimpressive Orlando Sanchez solely due to his partisan affiliation, he got the idea that Republican voters were out of his reach and stopped doing anything - except maybe support for Israel - that would lead us to support him again.

Carole Keeton McClellan/Rylander/Strayhorn (D/R/I)
Pro: She is by far the least offensive person in this race. She's alienated or been alienated by both parties, so she would govern as an independent in a way that the state would probably benefit from.
Con: She'll likely be a Republican or Democrat before her term. Her constantly shifting political stances would probably have her shifting into the mainstream thinking of whichever party she does re-join. It's disconcerting to vote for someone that could, by the end of her term, be a standard-issue Republican or a standard-issue Democrat.

Kinky Friedman (I)
Pro: He's interesting. He seems rather straightforward in his views to the point of offending some. He will take some positions that none of the others would dare. He is unambitious politically and I believe he honestly wants to do what is best for Texas, not his party or his political career.
Con: I don't know what positions, really. As with Strayhorn, I don't have a solid idea of what kind of governor he would be. Unlike with Strayhorn, neither party would be vying for his loyalties because both parties would likely realize that it would be more headache than it is worth even for the governorship. Ultimately, while I believe he wants the best for Texas, I don't believe he has the slightest clue what that might be.

Most of it, for me, comes down to whether how much I do not want Rick Perry to be Texas's longest-serving governor. If I determine that his defeat is paramount, I will vote for the most promising competitor, which at this point would probably be Chris Bell, who is least ideologically acceptable to me at this time. If I take a more nuanced view and accept that there are worse things that Governor Perry 3.0 or if the polls demonstrate conclusively that he will win (which is harder to do in a race like this than a standard two-person race), then I've got to decide which of his opponents I would find most preferable and "vote my conscience."

I really, really wish John Cornyn or John Sharp were in this race. Heck, at this point I would take Tony Sanchez.

Newsweek has this ominous title:
Medicine's Racial Gap - Two new studies find that, when it comes to health care, minorities just don't fare as well as whites

Then you get to the guts of it:

But why should that be, if the overall quality of medical care is improving, as shown in the earlier study? There are many possible reasons. More often than whites, African-Americans find they cannot afford expensive medications, such as cholesterol-lowering statins. Their communities tend to have more limited options for exercising and eating right. Those problems don’t lend themselves to quick fixes. [...]

The findings apparently weren’t due to explicit racism. Everyone in the minority-dominated neighborhoods—white, black, Hispanic and Asian—tended to give their health lower marks. “It relates to the poverty level, the quality of food, the quality of life, the quality of health care,” says Borrell. “In poorer areas, there are fewer green spaces to play in, fewer shops selling fresh fruits and vegetables, more cigarette ads. We’re not blaming the victim. We’re blaming the social structure.”

So... minorities... no wait... people in minority neighborhoods are getting substandard health care... no wait... they're getting the same health care (that was one of the controls of the study).

The issue here is not only not really about minorities, it's not even about health care as we understand it -- it's about self-care. The issue is how capable they are of taking care of themselves and whether society should give them more health care than their wealthier counterparts to compensate for other structural limitations.

But I guess that's not as juice as suggesting that they're getting less.

Mickey Kaus at Slate magazine has an interesting take on the most recent gay-marriage flap in New Jersey, which they appropriately title "Dems Dodge Big Gay Bullet."

Now, for the purposes of this post, I'm setting all the morality-politics stuff aside. Don't want to discuss whether gay marriage is wrong, homosexuality, yadda yadda.

What I do find remarkable is that once again, the courts seem to be setting up a worst-case scenario that plays to certain very conservative bases very well. And Kaus notices this as well. His main take seems to be that since the court gave the state legislature 180 days to enact either gay marriage or civil unions (their choice):

"In other words, had the New Jersey Court gone all the way and required gay marriage, the next two weeks might have been filled with stories of happy gay couples from across the nation buying plane tickets to Atlantic City for their expected weddings. Only a Liberal Media Conspiracy of unprecedented self-repressive power could have kept the hype from driving cultural conservatives to the polls."

The kicker for this? Unlike Massachusetts (the previous "only state" for gay marriage) and the two states who enacted Civil Unions (Vermont, Connecticut), New Jersey lacks a previous-residency clause preventing people from zipping into the state, getting married, and zipping out. That makes New Jersey "open season" when and if their version passes and becomes law.

Kaus also points out how absurd Andrew Sullivan's take is when Sullivan claims the New Jersey Supremes were "not being activist":

a) The creation of a new protected class is pretty close to the paradigm of judicial activism; b) The final step taken by the New Jersey court may have seemed the "only logical option" only because of all the earlier activist steps the N.J. courts had taken to help bring the law to the point of giving some-but-not-full marriage rights to gays; c) As Amy Sullivan might argue, the breathtaking speed with which this sort of radical cultural change has gone from being unmentioned to being a litmus test for all rational people is one of the things that worries ordinary voters and turns them into cultural conservatives even though, were activists like Sullivan a little less self-righteous and condescending ("no logical option") these voters might be persuaded to try worthy experiments like gay unions and gay marriage.

So, the stage is set. Unfortunately for the Dems, I don't think Kaus is right, and I don't think the Dems can claim to have "dodged a bullet" here. Why?

First of all, while there is no massive movement of gays traveling to NJ to get married this moment, I'm sure that this news doesn't play well for Democrats in less-liberal states.

Second of all, while this may not have immediate effect in this election, what it effectively does is put gay marriage back into play across the nation for 2007 and 2008. How so?

- In Massachusetts, this might provoke another push for re-amending their constitution.
- In Vermont and Connecticut? Likely nothing (these two states have Civil Unions already, and I'm sure their legislature will just pass a "New Jersey Marriage = Our Civil Union" recognition clause to clarify).
- In New Jersey, the fight will be dirty, and loud, and quite possibly the legislature will be deadlocked. It's hard to predict. But you can rest assured that by 2008, New Jersey will have a constitutional amendment before its population.

Across the rest of the nation?
- 20 states currently have constitutional amendments barring same-sex marriage. In these states, unless a federal challenge (based on the full faith and credit clause) is filed with language indicating that the US Supreme Court is asked to invalidate such clauses even in state constitutions, the status quo is upheld. However, these states will be the easiest to rile up and fundraise from to fight the battle in other states.

- Another 8 states are currently debating such amendments. Expect fighting to get fiercer as the proponents of the argument are buttressed by the fact that now not just one, but two, state Supreme Courts have done this, and the argument "we need an amendment because a law will just be overturned" gets stronger.

- 40 states in total (including the 20 with constitutional amendments and 7 of the 8 mentioned earlier, Wisconsin being the lone exception) already have "Defense of Marriage" laws, which take advantage of the Federal law (which takes advantage of the clause in the Full Faith & Credit clause indicating that Congress defines the manner in which Full Faith & Credit may be given to offer states the option to not recognize same-sex marriages from other states), but without a constitutional amendment, the NJ decision again makes that a battleground. Several of these states, last time, passed the laws and voted down amendments because, as argument went, the law was sufficient. The more Supreme Courts use constitutional claims to overturn laws, however, the more pre-emptive amendments will pass.

Ultimately, too, while the New Jersey decision put off the big "gay couples are flying to NJ in record numbers to get hitched" news story, what it left in its place is something that ought to be scary for Democrats:

- Somewhere before 180 days, word that the New Jersey legislature is starting work on the legislation will make news.
- Somewhere before 180 days, the governor's signage (or lack thereof) of the bill will make news.
- If the bill somehow doesn't pass, expect that to make news. If so, expect the court's decision to make news too.
- 180 days from now, one way or another, expect that dratted news story to pop up.
- And expect lots of coverage of this come election time.

Ultimately, I think this hurts Democrats. It might not hurt them right this instance (which, I'm sure, has something to do with Kaus's sigh of relief since the decision passed right before an election that Democrats are desperately counting on) but what does it do in the long run?

(A) it gives activists from the other side a hot-button to push for funding. Expect lots of money to flow into those coffers. The money from Massachusetts had been trickling down as more and more states became content in their anti-gay-marriage amendments and laws, but now, those aren't a safe bet.

(b) it makes sure that this is a hot issue in 2008, when the House is up for grabs, and when the Presidency is once again on the line. And let's face it, the Democrats don't need to be facing the same issue that some have argued made the difference for George Bush driving highly conservative voters to the polls yet again.

1. UTEP travels extremely well. We were pretty amazed at how much orange was in the crowd. I would say that they made up 30-40% of the crowd. I recall this being one of the reasons that they were given the Conference USA invite over Louisiana Tech and North Texas. It seemed unlikely considering that El Paso is closer to San Diego than Houston, but there you go. I assume that many were already in the Houston area as I cannot imagine that many making the 700+ mile trip.

2. I almost felt bad for the passionate UTEP fans when the tide turned in UH's direction. At least for the ones that did make the trip from El Paso.

3. The Cougar secondary is just dreadful. It seemed like there was always at least one UTEP reciever wide open.

4. It's been said before, but it's worth saying again. Kevin Kolb is a really impressive athlete. He's not a Heisman QB, but he may well be a pro QB someday. At the least, I would imagine his versitility would make him a real asset in the Arena League.

5. It's funny. I rarely remember yelling that loud at football games, but my voicebox always hurts the next day.

6. The Cougars ended both their 3-game losing streak and UTEP's 3-game winning streak.

7. Though I wish that UH games were televised, when you're there it's much more fun to watch an untelevised game. It's not nearly as broken up without the TV timeouts. I noticed the same during the last quarter of the Texas-Iowa State game, which wasn't televised due to a 1-hour rain delay and Texas's insurmountable lead.

8. I really enjoy games at Robertson Stadium, though I wish that UH could mend fences with Texas by agreeing to play in Reliant as Rice does.

9. It was multi-cultural day or somesuch. They had ten different people say something in ten different languages before saying "Go Coogs!" Subtitles on the video monitor would have been helpful, but probably hard to pull off.

10. I'm definitely glad I went to this game instead of the Louisiana-Lafayette one. It's more fun when your team wins and very not-fun to watch a team slowly give the game away in the last quarter.

I have decided that I will try my hand at National Novel Writing Month again. Four years ago I wrote Something So Perfect, which landed me in the top 10 most prolific writers of the event. What this means is that the blog will be shut down for the month of November as I unplug myself from the rest of the world (election day excepted, of course).

To be honest, I'm not sure in what will happen after that. I may start blogging again at full speed, but I haven't been blogging at full speed in months. I may extend the hiatus indefinitely. I may shut down the blog and delete its contents. I'm also going to keep an eye out for existing group blogs that might be interested in retaining my (scaled-back) services or I may try to start up another group blog (though that's unlikely). Those of you that have been reading me for a while know that I have shut down at least a couple blogs in my career and I always return in some capacity. It's not unreasonable to believe that will happen here.

Anyway, I have a week or so until that happens. I don't have any firm plans on what to post about, so I will give y'all the opportunity. If there's any issue or topic, be it political, social, or something else, that you are interested in my thoughts on, now's a good time to ask. If I get any such inquiries, I will try hard to get a post written up in time.

Woohoo!

I got my voter registration card today.

Now I can vote in December's November's elections.

Now I just gotta figure out who to vote for.

The Minnesota airport is having a problem with Somali Muslim immigrant cab drivers refusing fares that have alcohol in their possesion due to a religious ban on transporting alcohol.

Hogan said the first refusals to carry alcohol began 10 years ago, but came from just a handful of drivers. Now, though, he estimates that three-quarters of the 900 airport cabdrivers are Somali, most of them Muslim. Hogan said drunken passengers haven't had trouble getting a cab, just the ones who let on that they're carrying a bottle.

Cabbies don't like being put in the position of turning away fares, and passengers don't like being left standing at the taxi stand, waiting for the next taxi.

"It's slowly grown over the years to the point that it's become a significant customer service issue for us," he said.

The story is a couple months old and I heard a snipit about it at the time, but this is the first article I've read on it.

Much in the same way that I don't believe the state ought to force pharmacists to sell birth control pills, cabbies should not be required to take on customers that they have a religious issue with -- provided that ethnic-bias is not a factor.

The only hang-up here is whether or not there are a limited number of cabbies given access to the airport. as some at RedState.org suggest*. If that's the case, then whether or not the cabbie allows alcohol on board should be a factor in whether or not their access is renewed or given to someone with no such moral dilemma the same way that a pharmacy should be able to fire a pharmacist that won't do his or her job at the pharmacy sees it.

Really, though, that's probably not a good idea. Putting aside for the moment that an overwhelming majority of the cabbies are Muslim and that it could cause a strike, most of the time it wouldn't be an issue. Since most people coming out of an airport don't have alcohol, allowing certain cabbies to pass up those passengers that do strikes me as a reasonable acommodation.

One possible solution here would be to alot 40% of the licenses to cabbies that are willing to carry alcohol. That would apply some pressure to get cabbies to reconsider their stance (because it would make getting the license easier) while not prohibiting cabbies from following their consciences.

Ultimately, I don't think that taxi transportation with alcohol is more of a right than is the ability to follow through with ones religious convictions.

The cabbies and the airport did reach a compromise:

Now, the airport and cab drivers have worked out a proposal that calls for cabdrivers who won't carry alcohol to have a cab light that's a different color. That way, the airport workers who hook up travelers with taxis can steer alcohol-carrying fares to cabs that will take them. Airport officials hope to have the new lights ready by the end of the year.

Cabdrivers who want the lights will have to pay for them, though airport spokesman Pat Hogan said the cost will be minimal. Cabbies without the light who refuse fares will be sent to the back of line - often a three-hour wait until it's their turn again for a fare.

The only concern I have about this deal is that it may be putting an undo burden on the airport, depending on how much extra "steering" would be required. I don't have enough information on that. Chances are it's not significant, though an alternative (that's a bit too late to implement now) would have been to add a relatively light fee for the special lights to compensate for whatever costs are generated for the required steering.

* - The people at RedState are trying to draw a distinction between the birth control pills and Muslim cabbies because the latter has to get privileges while the former just needs a license. I think that's a bit of a stretch, though if the airport itself were making that argument I would give it more weight. I think what it ultimately comes down to is the belief of some that immigrants ought to be held to a higher standard than native born Americans when it comes to conformity. This is not a wholly irrational idea as the site of an American burning an American flag, for instance, and an immigrant from a hostile nation envoke two very different images. However, I think that by taking this stance they are ultimately weakening the pharmacist's ability to refuse prescriptions that they have a moral issue with, be it birth control pills today or abortion or suicide pills tomorrow.

"The Republican Party of 2006 is a tired, cranky shell of the aggressive, reformist movement that was swept into office in 1994 on a wave of positive change. I worked for them. They were friends of mine. These Republicans are not those Republicans." -Frank Luntz

Back in 2000, RAW and I took a course in political science together. It was something of an odd course; one offered at UH only once every four years, focusing on an event that not-so-coincidentally only happens every four years. The name of the course was American Presidential Elections.

Of course, that was the year 2000, and so everyone had to write their final essays for the course not knowing who had won the election.

One of the more interesting items that came up in the course, however, was the phenomenon of the "October Surprise." Basically, it's a tactic of mudslinging campaigning; you hold on to some bit of juicy dirt on your opponent as long as possible before releasing it into the wild, hoping that you can use it to hurt your opponent without their having time to come up with a decent response.

So far, I count at least three "October Surprises" this election cycle, on the national scale.

First up: The leak of a "classified" document - the "National Intelligence Estimate" - on the status of the war in Iraq. Interestingly enough, when information "leaks" like this hurt Democrats, they want an inquisition, and when they help? Oh, what "brave souls" are doing the leaking. The same I'm sure is the case for Republicans, or any other political entity, but it's always funny to behold; the people who were screaming about getting someone for "leaking classified information" one day are lauding the leak of classified information the next.

Second up: The unveiling of the "Mark Foley Scandal."

Now, the Foley scandal has all sorts of juicy tidbits. Part of the problem is that Foley was an "in the closet" gay Republican, and as such pretty much immune to any repercussions as long as it was the Republicans who'd have to do the ousting; after all, there's nothing that the supposed "party of diversity", the Democrats, would like than to go on the talk shows and hammer the Republicans for firing a gay man for being gay.

The second problem? Every page involved in the "scandal" was either an adult, or so close to being 18 that it's hard to draw the line. The third problem? This isn't happening in a vacuum. The discussions in all of the IM logs that I've seen appear to be mutual, which means he's - gasp - a gay man doing naughty things with another gay man. If he weren't also a Republican, I have no trust that the Democrats would have been doing anything other than their best to bury this and protect Mark Foley.

The last problem? Yeah, the timing. This could have been brought up months ago, but the release was timed to coincide with the election too well. As Elim Garak stated on DS9: "I believe in coincidences. Coincidences happen every day. But I don't trust coincidences."

This is one of those coincidences that can't be trusted.

The latest "October Surprise" is a release by the British magazine "The Lancet" of highly inflated casualty counts in Iraq.

The problem with this? Not only is their study methodology discredited, they tried the same stunt in 2004, releasing a study with highly inflated counts just in time to try to influence the 2004 US presidential election.

And un-shockingly, the major newsmedia, in quoting the Lancet's report, are failing to report on this.

Coming back from the other side, we have Harry Reid in trouble for some illicit land dealings that look quite suspicious. Again, the timing of the release is also suspicious, and could easily be Republican "October Surprise" that they've been holding on to as well.

Which leads only to the question - what will next week's "October Surprise" be?

David Hill's makes a good point:

So why do “perverted” politicians keep on running when their lies are almost always eventually exposed? Do they enjoy living on the edge until their outing? Many obviously think that what they do after hours is their own private business. Well, here is some news. It’s not private business, especially if you are running with the imprimatur of the Republican nomination. And if you are living a lie, you are killing your party. Look at what’s happened in Florida. Republicans are forced to throw hapless Joe Negron into the fray as a last minute replacement for Foley. With only a month left, what’s the poor guy to do?

As mentioned, I don't believe that Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert ought to be tossed from leadership. The original emails were considerably tamer than what has come out since. Foley could plausibly claim that he didn't mean to be too forward and lied and claimed that there wasn't much else out there that would hurt him. Hastert understandably wanted to believe Foley and there were things seemingly of more immediate importance. In retrospect it wasn't the right call to make, and maybe it should have been apparent at the time, but hindsight is 20/20.

The biggest failure here is a lack of information. Had Hastert known what has since been revealed, obviously he would have done more. The problem, which the Hill column deals with, is that candidates and officeholders are seemingly expected to police themselves. That's the problem.

The solution, it seems to me, is that each party ought to have a group of investigators whose only job it is to follow up on these things. That way, when the suspicions were aired, they would have had a place to go and be investigated without an official complaint being lodged. From what I understand at least some candidates have people investigating the employer to find out what can be found out, but it would be much better if done on the party level. Senator Smith may be willing to take a risk that someone won't be discovered when he runs for president, but that doesn't mean that the party should be willing to take that risk, too.

In the movie Half-Baked, Dave Chapelle's character goes to a drug rehab meeting and is booed off the stage when it is discovered that his only addiction is to marijuana. He had been incovenienced by the drugs, but others there had their lives ruined by much more addictive stuff.

I came a tentative conclusion that is bound to be unpopular as I haven't yet heard anyone reputable state it aloud.

Like most political nerds (and some with actual lives) I was paying really close attention to the whole Mark Foley mess. For those of you that are unaware, Foley is a conservative Republican congressman that apparently gets his jollies by flirting with 16 year old male congressional pages.

It seemed like a pretty cut-and-dry case. Foley was caught red-handed, didn't deny having done it, quit congress, confessed to having been sexually abused earlier in his life, admitted that he is gay, and has checked himself in to rehab. All within a couple of days!

Some, however, didn't want to stop there. Democrats wanted to use this pan to fry bigger fish and went after Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert and others that are accused of having known about it. Many Republicans agree. At the moment, it appears that the Republican leadership heard mutterings about Foley's peculiarities and were aware of some of the earlier, less weird, correspondences between Foley and young pages. Hastert and Majority Leader Boehner were not helped by the inconsistency of their statements.

Here's the realization I came to today:all of the hysterics surrounding the entire issue are built upon the premise that a 16 year old kid, protected by a computer monitor, is utterly helpless in the face of power.

Note the language being used. A word that I am seeing brandied about is "predator." A predator is an animal that eats its prey. Or it's a person that plunders, pillages, or obliterates. Whatever a predator is done with will never be the same again. Mark Foley would be a predator if he physically raped or psychologically tormented the young men, but not simply because he grossed them out.

And then there's the word "pedophile," which carried a certain weight to it. A pedophile is one that "loves children". Children. To date, the youngest victim is 16. That's not an adult, but it's not a child, either. We do society a great disservice to futher infantize young adults. The longer we treat young people like children the longer they will act like children. Adolescence already spans into the mid-twenties for a lot of people. They need to be expected to take control of the situations they find themselves in to a much greater degree than we expect them to now.

And lastly, just about everything I've heard that he's done has been behind the safety of a computer monitor and involved kids that were quite a distance away. If all he's done is produceable in IMs and emails, then he really hasn't done that much. Whatever meetings he might have arranged were quite consensual. That's not to say that it's all okay, but to attach the same level of condemnation to this that one would attach to a serial rapist or child molester does a disservice to the genuinely raped and molested.

I should state that it's possible that we are (or at least I am) fully unaware of the worst of Foley's transgressions. If he's guilty of something more then my argument is undercut. But most of what I've heard thus far involves being a crappy congressman and a sick man, but not a predatory monster.