“Special Protection or Special Consideration? ”

Written by Lucy, a contributing author

Recently I learned that the so-called “hate crimes” bill, HR 1913 will be brought to the Senate for a vote before the Memorial Day break.  This bill passed the House without amendments that would remove pedophilia from the exception protection offered to a special class of citizens created under “sexual orientation”.  Incredibly the American Psychiatric Association lists over 30 “sexual paraphilias” in their definition of “sexual orientation” in the DSM-IV, yet the U.S. House of Representatives left the vague definition in the bill, even after many representatives pointed out the overbroad language.

Government’s first and foremost responsibility is to protect its most innocent and helpless; yet apparently the U.S. House of Representatives did not think that is their most urgent responsibility; they chose instead to give special protection based on behavior and inclination rather than protect our children.  In addition, they left the door wide open for religious discrimination…for those who don’t think it could happen that pastors are arrested for quoting the Bible regarding homosexuality, check out Sweden and Canada’s record.  They have hate crimes statutes.

Those who espouse a Biblical view of homosexuality might be construed as having an “animus” against homosexuals and receive stronger punishments for the same crimes.  In addition this legislation violates the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution which affords EQUAL PROTECTION to all citizens regardless of their sexual choices.  Let’s see…wouldn’t it make more sense to insist the the laws be enforced equally for all people; that a crime committed against a grandma would be equal to a crime committed against a cross-dresser?  Then the government wouldn’t have to read our minds to see if there were any “hateful” thoughts.  People need to wake up and realize that “special rights” given to special classes of people mean you lose your rights.

Ben Cunningham:

Link
The ante went up Thursday in a battle over chicken-naming rights on city streets.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals sent a letter Thursday morning to Mayor Ron Littlefield, saying the group would double the amount of a donation the city received from KFC Corp. to fix potholes on city streets.

KFC gave $3,000, and PETA is offering $6,000.

The catch would be that they want to put an evil depiction of KFC founder Col. Harlan Sanders on the road with the tagline, “KFC Tortures Animals,” the group said Thursday.

National Center for Policy Analysis:

Spending on Medicare and Social Security is expected to grow considerably in coming years, commanding an increasing share of the nation’s output. This study begins by comparing the long-run forecasts for Medicare and Social Security made by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the forecasts presented in the respective trustees’ reports.

Washington Legal Foundation:

As the nation and world move deeper into an information economy, the government continues to test the bounds of permissible regulation. A very prominent case raising these issues may now be headed to the U.S. Supreme Court. In IMS Health, Inc. v. Ayotte, 550 F.3d 42 (1st Cir. 2008), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit upheld New Hampshire’s Prescription Information Law (PIL). That statute criminalizes the transfer of information about medical prescriptions for the purpose of increasing drug sales. It targets so-called “detailing”, where pharmaceutical companies use a doctor’s previous prescription history to engage in targeted one-on-one marketing about their products. The New Hampshire legislature tried to obstruct detailing because it believes the process drives up the costs of health care by encouraging patent-protected drug sales. Lawmakers in New Hampshire knew they couldn’t directly regulate detailers’ marketing presentations without raising First Amendment concerns. So instead, they attempted to achieve the same result indirectly by making it a crime for pharmaceutical companies to acquire information about doctors’ prescription histories, knowing that prescription information helps the detailing process.

Ctr for College Affordability:

Many professors and administrators alike wistfully dream of returning to the “golden days” before college rankings allegedly ruined higher education. Such pre-ranking days, however, are now a century past. The continued development of new domestic and international ranking systems makes the chance of their demise more and more remote. The call for the abolition of ranking is not only futile, given the course of their history; it is also illegitimate in light of academic quality rankings’ important contributions. Regardless of their flaws-and they have many-college rankings satisfy an immense demand for information from students, parents, and the general public about institutions that traditionally lack transparency about their internal workings and quality of product. A call for the abolition of college rankings represents a disregard for accountability that should be strongly rejected in light of the large investments that consumers and the public make in higher education.

City Journal:

Unsatisfied with the stranglehold they have on the nation’s regular public schools, teachers’ unions have long sought to gain access to charter schools, most of which operate free of the workplace restrictions (and job protections) that the unions have won for their members. Now a battle is underway in New York City, where a national symbol of the charter school movement is struggling to keep unionization at bay.

Among today’s most important education reforms-President Obama recently made them a centerpiece of his education agenda-charter schools currently enroll more than 1.3 million students nationwide. About 4,600 charter schools operate in 40 states and the District of Columbia. Students attend these schools by choice, not assignment, and the schools come in many forms. Some are small operations run by local community members, while others are part of larger networks, with common philosophies and practices. One such national network, the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP), is viewed by many as the charter movement’s gold standard.

Texas Public Policy Foundation:

Tuition prices are increasing due to high university operating costs, not a lack of state funding. There must be measures in place that provide incentives for universities to keep these costs as low as possible. The only way to achieve this is to infuse free-market principles into a higher education system that severely lacks fiscal discipline.

Heritage:

President Obama favors an expansion of government health insurance programs as a key component of his health care reform agenda. Because of the “crowd out” of private insurance that routinely follows such expansion, millions of Americans, regardless of their personal preferences, will find themselves in these programs-willingly or unwillingly. Serious health care reform should include efforts to move individuals out of, not into, Medicaid.

Heritage:

Most Americans value their current private health insurance, desire choices in health coverage, and are wary of government plans. Key supporters of a new government plan do not intend to compete with the private sector on a level playing field, but to overwhelm it through a series of benefit designs, mandates, and special federal subsidies provided by higher taxes.

AEI:

The argument that the developed world should be the first to cut emissions is not only illogical when viewing climate change as the long-term challenge it is purported to be, but it is also a dangerous smokescreen hiding the reality that developing countries will cause vastly more environmental degradation than the developed world has or will. Indeed, what logic there is suggests that the most dramatic actions should start first in the developing world, as, in the fullness of time, that is from where the majority of the damage will come.

Texas Public Policy Foundation:

After a favorable vote from the Senate on Tuesday, local option transportation tax legislation is moving to the House for the next round of vigorous debate. The legislation, which proposes to give local communities the ability to call elections to seek billions in new transportation taxes and fees, has many concerned that now is not the time for such a bill-particularly since the specter of a national recession has yet to pass. Nevertheless, state and local officials have vigorously pushed this legislation through the process under the banner of a perceived transportation funding “crisis.” Local governments, as they argue, need more transportation tools. However, the point these officials have overlooked is that communities already have transportation tools available to them.

Ecampusnews.com:

Students with disabilities often wait weeks or months for their textbooks to be specially formatted, but now a new higher-education partnership could make these books more widely available to students by scanning books and expanding an online library.

Nonprofit company Bookshare announced April 29 at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., that 11 colleges and universities would contribute thousands of books to students and reduce the duplication and proofreading costs of campuses that must make reading material available to students who are blind, have low vision, or are unable to turn pages.

HT Ben Cunningham.  Library of Congress:

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RCP: Tim Geithner “grades” the banks that underwent “stress tests.”

Watch CBS Videos Online

Politico:

Former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-Mass.) criticized President Barack Obama on Monday for looking “weak” over his administration’s handling of Iran and North Korea.

“Recently, Iranian President [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad announced that his nation has successfully mastered every step necessary to enrich uranium, violating the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty it has signed,” Romney wrote in an e-mail to supporters. “And North Korea’s Kim Jong Il launched a long-range missile on the very day President Obama addressed the world about the peril of nuclear proliferation.”

AFP:

“No regrets. I think it was absolutely the right thing to do,” he said on CBS television, adamant that techniques decried by critics as torture were essential to break the resistance of captured extremists.

“I’m convinced, absolutely convinced, that we saved thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of lives,” Cheney said, arguing again that Al-Qaeda was bent on attacking a US city with a nuclear device.

Reuters:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Staying inside to avoid the flu? Or perhaps you are not convinced yet that a pandemic would be scary. Either way, the U.S. National Archives has a solution.

It has posted an online exhibit about the 1918 pandemic of influenza, the “Spanish flu” that took the lives of anywhere between 40 million and 100 million people, depending on the estimate.

“In this room were all stages of Indians lying dead or dying or advancing well to the conditions which followed the Flu,” Dr. D.A. Richardson writes in one letter to the Bureau of Indian Affairs describing the conditions at a reservation in New Mexico in October 1918.

A nurse from Kansas, “As many as 90 people die here every day with the ‘Flu’.”

Reuters:

“It is clear that this field has not advanced (enough) … when left exclusively to the private sector so there is a public role,” said Dr. David Blumenthal, head of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology.

Backers of electronic records say they can protect patients by preventing medical errors and save money by avoiding duplicated tests and better managing chronic conditions that can be costly to treat.

The government did not want to regulate too much or be too intrusive but it did need to take steps to improve the public good, Blumenthal told an event hosted by the Markle Foundation, a nonprofit technology group.

A former professor at Harvard Medical School, Blumenthal took charge of the health IT office last week and must now help direct roughly $19 billion in federal funds aimed at encouraging doctors and hospitals to convert mounds of paper medical records into digital records.

Commmonwealth Foundation:

Pennsylvania maintains over 3,000 public pension plans at the state, city and municipal levels, the most of any state and approximately 25% of all such plans in America. Over 2,200 of these plans are of the often financially and politically problematic “defined-benefit” genre. According to the Pennsylvania Public Employee Retirement Commission (PERC), over 67 percent of these plans have fewer than 10 members. Needless to say, there is vast opportunity for pension reform.

HT Club for Growth: “The Economist has the scoop.”

NRO:

Celebrating Kemp   [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

National Cathedral was packed for his funeral this afternoon, every GOP luminary from Frank Carlucci and Al Haig and Michael Steele  to Joe Lieberman and Sam Donaldson.

Chuck Colson eulogized his friend and said that in all his years in Washington he can’t remember anyone who left public office 22 years before getting such an elaborate send-off.

The funeral was properly focused on faith and family (and his son Jeff, who sounds so much like his raspy father and can command an audience’s attention just as well as the late Kemp, too). But there was a memorable line that didn’t come from the Bible and won’t make the news coverage. Again, from Colson: While Jack was playing football, he was reading Hayek.

Politico:

Rep. Dave Reichert (R-Wash.) can be forgiven if he’s feeling a case of déjà vu.

For the third consecutive election cycle, Reichert could face a well-funded, former Microsoft employee in his Seattle-area district.

Democrat Suzan DelBene, a former corporate vice president for mobile communications, has been raising money at a fast clip, hiring experienced campaign staff and traveling throughout the suburban district since February.

DelBene cuts a slightly different profile than Darcy Burner, a darling of the online liberal community who unsuccessfully challenged Reichert in 2006 and 2008 - for one thing, DelBene promotes her business background and moderate stands.

From KSU:

IT’S A DOG’S LIFE: K-STATE VETERINARIAN SAYS QUIRKY BEHAVIORS BY CANINES CAN BE JUST FOR FUN, INNATE OR MAY REQUIRE TREATMENT

MANHATTAN — It’s just another day in the life of a dog — chasing its tail, licking its owner’s face and turning around a few times before taking a nap.

Dr. Susan Nelson, veterinarian at Kansas State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine, said there are varied reasons for a dog’s quirky behavior.

“Everyone has a pet who will sometimes exhibit an odd behavior,” Nelson said. “But before you attribute it as just a silly behavior, there might be medical reasons why your pet is acting in a certain way.”

Many dogs love to lick, especially people, and it starts as a puppy. Puppies lick their mother’s face to get them to regurgitate food, and mother dogs lick their puppies to stimulate breathing and bowel movements, Nelson said.

Licking also is a sign of submission, according to Nelson. Dogs are pack animals, so they will lick the mouths of the more dominant dogs in the pack to show respect. People are considered a member of the pack, often the alpha dog, so when a dog licks a person, they are acknowledging that the person is the boss.

Nelson said dogs also seem to like the salty taste of the human face, not to mention the assortment of food left on children’s faces after they eat.

Owners can attempt to extinguish licking by ignoring it, or saying, “no lick,” Nelson said, and gently pushing the dog away or turning their back on the dog. Owners also can reinforce licking behavior by showing they enjoy the dog’s licks by petting or talking to them in a happy tone as the dog licks them, Nelson said. This encourages the behavior because the dog is getting positive attention from its owner.

Another common behavior noticed in dogs is how they may circle a few times before deciding to lie down. Nelson said this is simply an innate behavior. “In the wild, dogs would rest in grass, so stomping down on the grass several times before lying down made a nice bed for themselves,” Nelson said. “This habit has just carried on through time.”

Another quirky behavior dogs exhibit is scooting their bottoms on the floor when they walk. Nelson said the main reason why dogs do this is because they are trying to relieve a painful anal sac.

Dogs have glands back by the anal area, and normally when they have a bowel movement, the sacs empty. Sometimes the sacs can get backed up, so dogs scoot along the floor to relieve the pressure, Nelson said. Often times a veterinary visit is needed to fully take care of the problem because anal sacs can rupture or abscess.

The scooting behavior also can be because of tapeworms or other intestinal parasites that can cause some itchiness near the anal area, Nelson said. Dogs with short, corkscrew tails can get skin-fold infections, which also can be very itchy. Female dogs may scoot because the skin fold of their vulva is infected. Lastly, there can be feces stuck to the hair around the anus, which can cause some irritation and/or infection to the surrounding skin. This is more common in longhaired dogs, especially when having soft or loose stool. Nelson suggests a veterinary visit for any scooting behavior that is continually exhibited.

Almost everyone has seen a dog chase its own tail, but what makes this activity so popular? Well, some dogs actually think it is fun — especially if they are bored, Nelson said. “If owners laugh or give the dog attention when it chases its tail, the behavior can be reinforced and the dog will keep doing it,” she said. “Dogs are kind of like children in that respect. The more attention they are given for doing a certain activity, the more they will do it.”

Other times a medical condition can cause this behavior, Nelson said. Many dogs have a mental condition known as obsessive compulsive disorder and may need to go on medication to control it. Other dogs may be trying to lick or bite their tails because of a flea infestation or other irritation, she said.

Their own tails are not the only thing dogs may chase — cars are another popular yet dangerous option. “It’s an innate behavior,” Nelson said. “Dogs are predatory animals. It’s instinctive for them to chase moving things. Sometimes it is reinforced because when they chase the car and the car drives away, the dog feels like they did their job.”

A thunderstorm is another event that is likely to cause some strange behavior from some dogs. Dogs often hide, bark and become extremely nervous during a thunderstorm, Nelson said. “When a storm hits, dogs can feel the barometric changes,” she said. “They are in tune with the weather better than humans. Dogs may also react to their owner’s nervousness about storms, which in turn perpetuates the dog’s insecurities.”

Behavioral modifications and medications are available for severe cases of thunderstorm phobia. Owners also can try changes to the environment, such as completely closing blinds and curtains to block out lightning and turning the volume up on the television or radio to hide the sound of thunder.

Everyone knows that dogs are not discriminatory when it comes to food — they will eat just about anything, even garbage or cat feces. Nelson said when dogs get bored they often go scavenging for food. Also, if a dog has separation anxiety, they may destroy everything they can find, including the garbage. It is an outlet for their nervousness, she said.

Nelson said that if your dog suddenly starts digging through the garbage and has not exhibited that behavior before, the dog could have a disease that gives them an increased appetite. Eating feces also can be medically related. Dogs might not be digesting their food well or their diet could be deficient in certain nutrients, so they consume feces in an attempt to correct those deficiencies.

Dogs often are attracted to cat feces because cat food typically has more fat in it, so cat droppings taste good to dogs. Dogs who are kenneled for long periods of time might eat their own fecal matter as a way of cleaning their cage, Nelson said.

“Eating fecal matter is not a good idea because of the risk of intestinal parasites and other diseases that are transmitted through them,” she said. “To help curb this behavior, owners can add some products to the dog’s food that makes their stool taste bad to them. Also, keep the cat’s litter box out of a dog’s reach.”