Unlike in warmer climes or times home isn’t just a place to keep your stuff and rest your head, it’s a precious island of life and warmth in a sea of cold uncaring death.

This strikes me as significant. Radical change in consciousness is now inevitable. If AOL News can do it, anybody can.

http://news.aol.com/health/article/some-say-aids-crisis-is-overblown/263374

Also:

http://www.scienceguardian.com/blog/critics-of-hiv-paradigm-broadcast.htm

“An Oklahoma teenager is swept up in laws aimed at protecting kids from child predators. He must register as a sex offender for life, as the worst level offender, after having a sex with his girlfriend, who said she was his age, 16…

“[T]he district attorney charged Ricky as an adult for two counts of felony sex abuse of a child. He was facing 25 years in prison…”

More anti-male sex hysteria. From Teen Feels Snared In Sex Offender Law (www.newson6.com, 11/7/08):

TULSA, OK — An Oklahoma teenager is swept up in laws aimed at protecting kids from child predators. He must register as a sex offender for life, as the worst level offender, after having a sex with his girlfriend, who said she was his age, 16. Sex between teenagers is no longer just a moral issue, it’s a legal one.

Ricky (pictured) grew up dreaming of joining the Navy and becoming a police officer. He was 16 and living in Iowa when he met a girl at a club for kids 16 to 20 years old. He says she told him she was nearly 16. They began dating and had sex. Soon after, police questioned him.

“The cop asked me, did you have sex with her? And, I said twice. He said sign this statement and I signed it. Soon as I got done signing it, he said, sorry to let you know, she’s only 13,” said Ricky.

Ricky’s mother, who has recently gone blind, met with the girl’s parents.

“They said, look, we know she lied, we don’t want to press charges, we just want Ricky to say away from her and I said okay,” said Ricky’s mom, Mary.

But, the district attorney charged Ricky as an adult for two counts of felony sex abuse of a child. He was facing 25 years in prison, so he pleaded guilty and got a deferred sentence, which means it would expunged off his record.

Ricky and his mother moved back to Oklahoma and learned he must register as a sex offender for life in Oklahoma as an aggravated offender, the highest level.

That means he’ll have to forget his dreams or even getting a job.

“I read one application that said if you answer yes to sex offender, this does not make us not hire you, but, it does. If you say you’re a sex offender, automatically, you’re not getting a job,” said Ricky.

Ricky’s record was expunged last month, but Oklahoma won’t take him off the registry.

“With the expungement, there is no plea now. It’s gone, no record anymore, so no plea, why is he on this registry?” said Ricky’s mother, Mary.

Ricky now educates teenagers as his mother works to get the law reformed.

Police officers told The News On 6 the law started good, but as it’s been added to, it’s become a “screwed up mess.”

They also believe the laws must be reformed to protect children from dangerous sex offenders and also, teenagers like Ricky.

The accompanying video can be found here.

For more details about this injustice and to fill out a petition, see the website http://www.rickyslife.com

Mary, Ricky’s mom, can be reached at rickyslife@windstream.net.

The mortgage interest deduction is supposed to subsidize home ownership, but instead it subsidizes very nearly the opposite of home ownership. What the mortgage interest deduction subsidizes is carrying large amounts of home mortgage debt, meaning that the bank owns far more of your home than you do. This does make it easier to buy a house, but once you’ve bought it, it gives you a strong incentive to avoid accumulating equity in your home. Cash-out refinancing is subsidized by the mortgage interest deduction every bit as much as home purchases are. The mortgage interest deduction gives people every incentive to live up to their necks in debt.

If we really wanted to subsizide home ownership, mortgage principle (including downpayments) would be deductable, not mortgage interest, and cash-out refinancing would be taxable income. Basically, equity in a primary residence would be treated like a 401(k) without the 10% early withdrawl penalty.

At current interest rates, the total subsidy of a mortgage principle deduction over the lifetime of a traditional 30-year fixed mortgage with a 20% downpayment would be about the same as the total subsidy on the same mortage of the current mortgage interest deduction, so this is revenue-neutral and subsidy-neutral if we phase it in carefully (say, grandfather existing mortgages and allow homebuyers over the next year or two to choose between the old system and the new).

For some reason, I just can’t stop giggling. I wonder why?

Here’s a story you don’t see very often. Iraq’s highest court told the Iraqi Parliament last Monday that it had no right to strip one of its members of immunity so he could be prosecuted for an alleged crime: visiting Israel for a seminar on counterterrorism. The Iraqi justices said the Sunni lawmaker, Mithal al-Alusi, had committed no crime and told the Parliament to back off.

That’s not all. The Iraqi newspaper Al-Umma al-Iraqiyya carried an open letter signed by 400 Iraqi intellectuals, both Kurdish and Arab, defending Alusi. That takes a lot of courage and a lot of press freedom. I can’t imagine any other Arab country today where independent judges would tell the government it could not prosecute a parliamentarian for visiting Israel — and intellectuals would openly defend him in the press.

The only other Mideast country where one would expect dissent to be tolerated that way is… Israel.

In the case of Iraq, though, the federal high court, in a unanimous decision, vacated the Parliament’s rescinding of Alusi’s immunity, with the decision delivered personally by Chief Justice Medhat al-Mahmoud. The decision explained that although a 1950s-era law made traveling to Israel a crime punishable by death, Iraq’s new Constitution establishes freedom to travel. Therefore the Parliament’s move was “illegal and unconstitutional because the current Constitution does not prevent citizens from traveling to any country in the world,” Abdul-Sattar Bayrkdar, spokesman for the court, told The Associated Press. The judgment even made the Parliament speaker responsible for the expenses of the court and the defense counsel!

(Via Ace)

I especially need a Visorganizer!

Hat tip: Zenpundit

It’s all these women’s husband’s fault. Right?

Honestly, the more time goes on the more convinced I am that there’s simply no point in mentioning things like this, as people’s viewpoints on this are probably genetically encoded or something; holding women responsible for their actions as fully functioning adults like men is just something we don’t like to do as a species. It’s the only explanation I can think of anymore.

Sober, yes. Depressed, very.

How about you?

*Update*: Bumped for Saturday! Cooking stew for Mom and the Elder Prince tonight.

*Update2*: Arnold Harris for Cross Plains Town Supervisor! (PDF)