07 Aug 2006
Why Harold Ford Has a Shot

You know why he has a shot?

The Congressman who is running to replace retiring Bill Frist as Senator from Tennessee has voted to outlaw gay marriage and to repeal the estate tax, and wants to amend the Constitution to ban flag burning. He supports getting rid of the handgun ban in the nation's capital and says the Ten Commandments should be posted in courtrooms around his state. He favors school prayer, argues that more troops should have been sent to Iraq and wants to seal the border with Mexico.

Because he's a Republican, in everything but name!

The G.O.P.'s weakness creates a chance in the Tennessee senate race for a certain kind of Democrat.

(link) [Time]

17:25 /Politics | 1 comment | permanent link

Study finds safety intervention increases use of child safety restraints in shopping carts

Seat belts for kids in shopping carts ...[sigh] ... I'm not so sure we're a nation of wimps as much as we are a land of idiots. A few brain cells in the parents head would prevent more injuries than all the seat belts and airbags they could fit in one of the damned things. But that'd be asking too much, I suppose. I mean, who wants to actually think about safety? That's somebody else's job, right?

A study published in the August issue of Pediatrics reports more than 20,000 children were treated in United States hospital emergency departments in 2005 for shopping cart-related injuries. The study conducted by the Columbus Children's Research Institute at Columbus Children's Hospital found that an in-store safety intervention successfully increased the use of child safety restraints in shopping carts. Researchers suggest redesigning shopping carts to prevent falls and tipovers.

(link) [EurekAlert!]

08:45 /Home | 1 comment | permanent link

15 States Expand Right to Shoot in Self-Defense

This is reported as though it were a Bad Thing™. To me, on the other hand, it's one of the few things government at any level has done right in the past few years.

Of course, the paper breaks out some rather extreme anecdotes - the one with the taxi driver is particularly lurid.

But if somebody breaks into my house at 3am, I'm not going to make a reasonable effort to ascertain if they're armed or not, or if they're threatening my family, or "merely" my property. We might be nice and give them a warning shot before going into combat mode, but if I were a burglar I wouldn't count on it.

New laws allow crime victims to use deadly force in situations that might formerly have subjected them to murder charges.

(link) [New York Times]

08:39 /Politics | 3 comments | permanent link

Alaska pipeline closed

Well, ain't this peachy! We'll have European prices at the pump before too long, now, and an economy that'll head for the tank right before winter. I wonder what heating oil/gas prices will do this year?

And I wonder if I've been stupid - the co-op offered "locked in" pricing on LP gas this year, but you had to go on the budget plan to get it. We didn't because, well, cash flow is such that it'd be problematic around here. We figured it'd be better to buy in bulk net 30 when we need it. It's worked out for us in the past.

But now, who knows? And what about the co-op (and the other businesses that essentially offered the same deal? If they're paying $3 a gallon and selling that same gallon on contract for $2, how long can they stay in business?

All this reminds me of that ancient Chinese curse: May you live in interesting times.

In a blow to drivers already struggling with high gas prices, BP shut down the biggest oilfield in the United States, cutting off about 8 percent of the nation's oil supply. BP said it had found "unexpectedly severe corrosion" in the pipeline in Alaska's Prudhoe Bay. The U.S. Energy Department will consider loaning emergency supplies to refiners caught short of supply, a spokesman said today.

(link) [CNN.com]

08:31 /Politics | 1 comment | permanent link