The YFZ Ranch story, originally centered on child abuse, has reopened a Pandora’s box of confusion and misinformation about the legal and moral issues surrounding polygyny, polyandry and polygamy.

In the strict legal sense, polygamy is illegal in the United States. Yet enforcement has become touchy because of challenges based on Constitutional equal protection.

When the courts said it was alright for two consenting adults to live together (as if married) under a “contract” other than one of marriage, they opened the door, some argue, for a man and multiple women to also live together under a slightly different “contract”. And following that line of reasoning, a woman would likewise be able to take multiple “husbands” under a “contract”. The fine point in this argument is that, as long as the participants don’t call their arrangement “marriage” and don’t apply for a marriage license (or call themselves husband and wife), they shouldn’t be prosecuted for polygamy.

The YFG Ranch story has rekindled the debate. I doubt we’ll ever accept polygamy in the U.S. — it doesn’t fit well with our culture and history — but unless we take some legal position against “what” is being done and stop dancing around what it’s “called,” cults like this one will continue to spring up under the guises of religion and equal protection.

My brother, Ken, sent this oldie, but it’s definitely worth another turn, especially now…

John, the farmer, was in the fertilized egg business. He had several hundred young layers (hens), called “pullets”, and ten roosters whose job it was to fertilize the eggs.

The farmer kept meticulous records and any rooster that didn’t perform went into the soup pot and was replaced. That took an awful lot of his time, so he bought a set of tiny bells and attached them to his roosters. Each bell had a different tone so John could tell from a distance which roosters were working. He could sit on the porch and fill out efficiency reports simply by listening to the bells.

The farmer’s favorite rooster was old Butch and a very fine specimen he was, too. But on this particular morning, John noticed old Butch’s bell hadn’t rung at all! John went to investigate. The other roosters were chasing pullets, bells-a-ringing. The pullets, hearing the roosters coming, would run for cover.

But to Farmer John’s amazement, old Butch had his bell in his beak so it couldn’t ring! He’d sneak up on a pullet, do his job and walk on to the next one. John was so proud of old Butch, he entered him in the Renfrew County Fair where the old rooster became an overnight sensation among the judges. As a result, the judges not only awarded him the “No Bell Piece Prize” but the “Pulletsurprise” as well!

Clearly old Butch was a politician in the making. Who else but a politician could figure out how to win two of the most highly coveted awards on the planet by being the best at sneaking up on the populace and screwing them when they weren’t paying attention!

The story offers some valuable advise: Vote carefully this year. The bells are not always audible.

Today is Earth Day, the April 22nd one, not to be confused with the Equinox Earth Day in March or the Earth Hour, also in March, or any of the various World Days (World Day for Water, World Day for Cultural Diversity, World Jump Day, et al). Each year, the April 22 Earth Day marks the anniversary of the birth of the modern environmental movement in 1970.

Among other things, 1970 in the United States brought with it the Kent State shootings, the advent of fiber optics, “Bridge over Troubled Water,” Apollo 13, the Beatles’ last album, the death of Jimi Hendrix, and the meltdown of fuel rods in the Savannah River nuclear plant near Aiken, South Carolina — an incident not acknowledged for 18 years. At the time, Americans were slurping leaded gas through massive V8 sedans, industry belched out smoke and sludge with little fear of legal consequences or bad press, and air pollution was commonly accepted as the smell of prosperity. “Environment” was a word that appeared more often in spelling bees than on the evening news.

But Earth Day 1970 turned that all around, thrusting the environment onto the national agenda. On April 22, 20 million Americans took to the streets, parks, and auditoriums to demonstrate for a healthy, sustainable environment.

Earth Day 1990 mobilized 200 million people in 141 countries and lifted the status of environmental issues onto the world stage, giving a huge boost to recycling efforts worldwide and helping pave the way for the 1992 United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. Earth Day 2000 combined the big-picture feistiness of the first Earth Day with the international grassroots activism of Earth Day 1990. Using the Internet to help link 5,000 environmental groups in a record 184 countries, it sent the message loud and clear that citizens around the world wanted quick and decisive action on clean energy. And Earth Day 2007 was one of the largest Earth Days to date, with an estimated billion people participating in the activities world wide.

Today, Earth Day Network reaches over 17,000 organizations in 174 countries, while the domestic program engages 5,000 groups and over 25,000 educators coordinating millions of community development and environmental protection activities throughout the year. Notable is that Earth Day is the only event celebrated simultaneously around the globe by people of all backgrounds, faiths and nationalities with more than a half billion people participating in Earth Day Network campaigns every year.

Who cares? Well, we all should. We can argue whether the pendulum has swung too far or not yet far enough, but we all agree that environmental issues command an important place on the world agenda and that we all share responsibility for the proper care and feeding of Mother Earth.

By the way, what ever happened to Captain Planet and the Planeteers? Did environmental extremists (or Turner) render them irrelevant? Anyone?

Mike sent this. Somebody’s bound to be offended…

It’s interesting to note that the head-to-head polls (which, of course, we know are meaningless except to ignorant folks who want to be told how to vote) appear as uncertain of a national election winner as the rest of us. Except, that is, for CBS News/NY Times which is pushing either democrat (no surprise there) as a winner over McCain. Real Clear Politics has a chart and more information.

In his March 27 article for AP, Tom Raum notes that while there’s little enthusiasm for government bailouts in general, voters are increasingly demanding immediate government relief as the economy ebbs. And Democratic presidential candidates, quick to recognize potential votes, are fanning the flames with promises of government aid for homeowners facing foreclosure. Clinton wants a $30 billion fund to assist those at risk of foreclosure, while Obama’s “plan” includes $10 billion to help homeowners avoid foreclosure.

I’m afraid I have to agree with Senator McCain: “It’s not the duty of government to bail out and reward those who act irresponsibly, whether they are big banks or small borrowers.”

Sure, the Fed orchestrated a bailout, if that’s you want to call it, for Bear Stearns. It reasoned that allowing a major investment bank to fail could so adversely affect the nation’s economy that helping shore it up, even with some detrimental economic effects of its own, would be the lesser of two evils. But now homeowners facing foreclosure want a slice of bailout pie as well, and both Clinton and Obama want government (read “taxpayers”) to serve them one. But is that such a good idea?

Not as I see it. I’m a believer in the philosophy that if you make a mess, you’re responsible for cleaning it up. And in this case, we taxpayers didn’t make the mess. So who did?

Click to read more ...

Well, another successful Earth Hour. For those of you that participated, I’m sure the glow from knowing you did your part to save the planet lasted all weekend. Today, you’ll have to restart your computers, reset clocks and get back to your real life. I’ll bet you can hardly wait to do it again next year!

For those of you in the dark about why the lights went out for an hour on the Golden Gate Bridge and many buildings Saturday night, it was the second annual grand gesture to raise awareness of global warming climate change. Our office building was one of those that went dark for an hour to demonstrate support, and we turned off everything in our office except the AS/400 which I suspect would have burned more power to restart than letting it idle for the hour. I’m sure you saw it on the news and wished you’d participated. You’ll have to wait until next year to get that “green all over” feeling.

Or will you? What if you turn everything off for an hour tonight? Oh, you won’t get any recognition from your peers for “caring” but you’ll know, deep in your heart of hearts, that you, too, helped save the world from global warming climate change.

What’s that? It only counts if your fellow greenies know you were on the front lines? Oh, yeah. Well, next year, right? See ya’ there.

In the wake of the pop psychology gabfest spawned by the ever-evolving sex scandals of the New York governor’s office, and with every other conversation having something to do with hookers or managing to incorporate cheesy innuendo about “Client 9,” Los Angeles Times columnist Meghan Daum writes that she’s “still not entirely clear as to what we’re supposed to take away from this.” She concludes in her well written March 22 article, “No wonder we keep searching for meaning in a story whose real meaning is something we don’t exactly want to know.”

I disagree. I think we not only want to know, we want to clean up the mess and elect a better, more morally grounded class of officials. Trouble is, we feel helpless to stem the polluted tide of politicians from which we are allowed to choose. In our frustration, we sooth our disappointment with humor. We lick our wounds and try to laugh about the elephant in the room we feel powerless to get to leave.

James sent this political cartoon. I’m honestly not sure what it’s supposed to be saying, though. Is Davies suggesting that Bush had something (anything) to do with the Cuban embargo? As I recall, that was JFK and it hasn’t been repealed by any president since. Or is he implying that GW is too dimwitted to understand the headline?

In either case, I thought it was humorous enough (I love political cartoons!) to post.

Teddy and several others sent this in response to this post…

Sadly, there’s a lot of truth in this ‘toon. Many voters are choosing candidates this way, perhaps more than in any previous election, or are what’s become known as “single issue voters” — they vote for whomever is aligned with their pet issue. Iraq and, before that, abortion are good examples. C’mon, people, we’re better than that!

Michael forwarded this well written article by Gary Hubbell of the Aspen Times Weekly that describes, to a tee, a lot of folks I know. It’s definitely worth a read.

There is a great amount of interest in this year’s presidential elections, as everybody seems to recognize that our next president has to be a lot better than George Bush. The Democrats are riding high with two groundbreaking candidates — a woman and an African-American — while the conservative Republicans are in a quandary about their party’s nod to a quasi-liberal maverick, John McCain.

Each candidate is carefully pandering to a smorgasbord of special-interest groups, ranging from gay, lesbian and transgender people to children of illegal immigrants to working mothers to evangelical Christians.

There is one group no one has recognized, and it is the group that will decide the election: the Angry White Man. The Angry White Man comes from all economic backgrounds, from dirt-poor to filthy rich. He represents all geographic areas in America, from urban sophisticate to rural redneck, deep South to mountain West, left Coast to Eastern Seaboard.

Click to read more ...

Today is Presidents Day, at least in California. It falls, awkward and confusing, on the federal holiday designated by our federal government as Washington’s Birthday. And when I talk to friends and relatives around the country, I’m always reminded what a blurry and diminished holiday it has become. Here’s why.

Presidents Day (or Presidents’ Day), is a commonly used but erroneous name for the federal holiday officially designated as Washington’s Birthday. It is also the official name of a concurrent state holiday celebrated on the same day in a small number of states on the third Monday of February. To further muddy the water, some states call it “Washington’s and Lincoln’s Day” and other variations. Some spell it “Presidents” Day, some spell it “Presidents’” Day.

As the official title of the federal holiday, Washington’s Birthday was originally implemented by the federal government of the United States in 1880 in the District of Columbia and expanded in 1885 to include all federal offices. As the first federal holiday to honor an American citizen, the holiday was celebrated on Washington’s actual birthday, February 22. But on January 1, 1971 the federal holiday was shifted to the third Monday in February by the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, an ill conceived idea in my opinion that created long weekends but significantly diminished the meaning and significance of the affected holidays. Adding another layer of confusion, a draft of the Uniform Holidays Bill of 1968 would have renamed the holiday to Presidents’ Day to honor both Washington and Lincoln, but this proposal failed in committee and the bill, as voted on and signed into law on June 28, 1968, simply moved Washington’s Birthday.

In the late 1980s, with a push from advertisers, the term Presidents Day began its public appearance. The theme has expanded the focus of the holiday to honor another President born in February, Abraham Lincoln, and often other Presidents of the United States. Although Lincoln’s birthday, February 12, was never a federal holiday, approximately a dozen state governments have officially renamed their Washington’s Birthday observances as “Presidents Day”, “Washington and Lincoln Day”, or various similar designations.

But, at least from my perspective, today honors only George Washington. It is, and should continue to be, the day we honor the accomplishments of the man who has been referred to, for over two centuries, as “The Father of his Country”. Celebrated for his leadership in the founding of the nation, he was the Electoral College’s unanimous choice to become the first President. He was seen as a unifying force for the new republic and set an example for future holders of the office.

The federal holiday is also a tribute to the general who created the first military badge of merit for the common soldier. Revived on Washington’s 200th birthday in 1932, the Purple Heart recognizes injuries received in battle. In 2007, the country celebrated both Washington’s 275th birthday and the 75th anniversary of the rebirth of the Purple Heart medal.

Since 1862, there has been a tradition in the United States Senate that George Washington’s Farewell Address be read on his birthday. Citizens had asked that this be done in light of the approaching Civil War. The annual tradition continues with the reading of the address on or near Washington’s Birthday. For many, the revisiting of Washington’s Birthday is a strong reminder of the many contributions made by a great man to the early republic.

And so with that said, I’ll be taking the rest of the day off. Enjoy the holiday and we’ll see you tomorrow!

Thanks Mike!

Gawker video guru Richard Blakeley mashed-up two of the New York Times’ interactive newsmaps: one showing the deadly path of last Tuesday’s tornadoes, the other showing which Democratic candidates won which states on Super Tuesday.

The results: does God hate Hillary? (And note: Obama won Alabama, but Hillary won each county in that state with a recorded death from last Tuesday’s storms.) [NYT, NYT]

Got this from James…

This road sign in Newberry, South Carolina, points the way to nearby towns Clinton and Prosperity. I think there’s a message here, folks. For those of you who need a sign, this may be it.

I got this photo from James. It’s purportedly of poll worker Sabrina Castanon in Union City, N.J., where voting appears to be “self service”.