"Liberal Media" Strikes Again

Next time somebody starts whining to you about the "liberal media," point them to the Manchester, New Hampshire, Union Leader. Turns out that the newspaper has decided not to publish wedding notices for gay weddings, even though gay marriage is legal in New Hampshire. In other words, owners of the newspaper don't like the law, so they're going to pretend that it doesn't exist. The Union Leader clearly wants to make the news, rather than report it. Or maybe, they're going to report the news the way they think it should be, rather than the way it is. In other words, the Manchester Union Leader is just like every other "mainstream" media outlet operating in this country.

You Need to Shut Up About the Damn Mosque

The United States of America is not a place. It’s not a flag. It’s an idea. The idea was set forth in the Constitution. If you bother to read the Constitution, what you find out is that it’s mostly just nuts-and-bolts instructions about how to run a government. Yeah, there are some good ideas there, but really, it’s about as exciting and revolutionary as the instructions for assembling a cheap Wal-Mart bookshelf. The part that is groundbreaking, and breathtaking, is the bit tacked on at the end—the Bill of Rights.

And the one that comes first is the most important. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” Now, I know that some of y’all really love that Second Amendment. And the Fifth, and Ninth, and Tenth are pretty awesome, too. And even the Third is underrated—who among us wants a bunch of soldiers hanging out in the rec room, drinking up the beer and scratching up the pool table? But the Founding Fathers—and y’all keep telling me how important their intentions are, all the time—put the First Amendment first. That should tell you how important they thought it was.

And it’s what makes this country America. Up to that time, pretty much every country in the world reserved the right to make you worship the way they wanted you to worship, and they could throw you right in prison for saying the wrong thing, or writing the wrong thing, and if you decided to have yourself a Million-Man March, or a Vietnam War Protest, or God-help-you, a Tea Party Rally, they could beat you with nightsticks, or squirt you with fire hoses, or do whatever they did to people who mouthed off in the 1700s. But the First Amendment changed all that. It protected your right to say whatever stupid-ass thing you wanted to say, or to worship Baal if that was your predilection. If you didn’t like what the government was doing, the First Amendment gave you the right to bitch about it. In other words, the First Amendment says that you are a human being, and you have the right to think whatever you want to think.

Now, I know some of you don’t like Islam, and that’s your right (your First Amendment right!). I know I don’t like it, what with the beating women down, and the blowing shit up, and the America-hating and whatnot. But guess what—I don’t like your fucked-up religion, either, whatever it is. I don’t like that you think that your god should have some say into whether I can buy a beer on Sunday, or that you think that somehow posting the Ten Commandments up in the courthouse makes sense, or that I shouldn’t be able to marry a dude if I get hit by lightning and burn out the heterosexuality circuits in my brain. I don’t like that you think that your god should have some input into my biology classes. But I’ll tell you this—I would fight to the death to defend your right to believe whatever crazy-ass thing you want, and there’s not many things in this world that I think are worth dying over. The First Amendment is the United States of America. It’s why your grandfather died on Omaha Beach, and why your uncle came back from Vietnam as your crazy uncle. The First Amendment is the “free” in “The Land of the Free.”

I never liked George W. Bush (how’s that for an understatement?) but he said something once that was pretty insightful (especially for him). Somebody asked him why the Muslim extremists didn’t like us, and he replied something along the lines of “They hate us for our freedom.” And he was right. They don’t hate us for our freedom to choose from eight flavors of Mountain Dew, or our freedom to help select the next American Idol. They hate us because we don’t have to worship their god if we think their god is silly. If the people who died on 9-11 are heroes, here is why—they died because of the First Amendment.

We should be reveling in the fact that people can build goofy religious buildings wherever they like. We’re the United Fucking States of America, and we’re not afraid of your religion. If you like, you can ignore what the First Amendment means, but if you do, you’re no American. Yeah, a mosque down by the big hole in the ground might hurt some people’s feelings, but if you want to suspend the First Amendment for that, you’re no better than somebody who thinks it’s okay to kill people because they dared to make a cartoon of Mohammed (remember how we made fun of those people?). And if you’re a person that would demagogue this—somebody who would undermine the First Amendment to score political points, or to attack the President because you don’t like him—I’m talking about Sarah Palin, and Newt Gingrich, and I’m talking about you—than you’re no patriot. You’re a treasonous rat bastard who isn’t worth the spilled blood of the American soldiers and the other martyrs of our freedoms.

The Genius Speaks

Time for Tony to Shut.  The.  Fuck.  Up.

On The Beach

The last night of the trip, we spent a couple of hours on the beach at Pensacola. The beachfront was decimated in 2007 by Hurricane Ivan, and almost every human-built structure was completely destroyed. NOAA records indicate that the storm surge was 12.5 feet on Pensacola Beach, but the locals claim that it was much higher at times. However, the entire beach area has been completely rebuilt, and there are restaurants, stores, a pavilion for special events, and plenty of tourist attractions. This was the fourth trip I’ve made to the beach, and the third since the hurricane, and the progress of reconstruction has been exciting.

We arrived on the beach near sunset, expecting to find the regular raucous crowd of tourists and kids, but found it as empty as the year after Ivan. A sign in front of a condo rental agency explained, “There is no oil on our beaches except Coppertone.” Pensacola is in the crosshairs of the BP oil spill, and even though there is no oil on the beach yet, hundreds of vacationers have cancelled their trips. Radio stations throughout the Gulf Coast exhort their listeners to spread the word that the beaches are still clean and beautiful, but apparently to little effect. The cheap hotels (the type frequented by college students on field trips) are full around Mobile and Pensacola, but not with the usual contingent of families and college kids. Instead, there are people funneling in to deal with the oil.

I walked out onto the fishing pier with a couple of students to watch the Least Terns hunting in the shallow waters there. The birds are tiny compared to other terns and gulls. They sail over the waves, using their excellent vision to find little fishes near the surface, then fold their wings and dive into the water, much like a pelican. They crash-land into the sea and emerge about one time in ten with a silver prize. The successful terns take off for the shore with their fish, cackling a victory cry past the morsel in their bill, while those who haven’t been as lucky immediately bounce twenty or thirty feet into the air to try again. The crashing and bouncing happen quickly and make the terns appear mounted on strings. The number of Least Terns at Pensacola was the greatest I’ve seen there, but the birds are one of the success stories of the Endangered Species Act, and the populations are starting to flourish all along the Gulf. Wildlife managers identified important nesting areas for the birds—almost always on pristine stretches of beach—and posted fences and signs warning beach users to stay clear. Amazingly, this worked. People in the Gulf care about wildlife, or at least about the tourist dollars that the wildlife brings in, and do what they need to do to protect it.

The next morning in the hotel room, I watched an interview on one of the morning news shows. The subject of the interview was a fishing charter captain who was also the father of two other fishing boat captains. He choked back tears as he described his conversations with his sons—what would they do for customers this year? What would they do for a living? The waitress at the fish house the night before had chuckled nervously when she told one of the students that the dressing on his salad would be made of the “good kind of oil.” We noticed several times this graffito: “FUBP.” Sometimes it wasn’t written on a BP store or billboard. For the most part, though, the people in Pensacola were like those we had encountered throughout Florida—cheerful and positive, and very, very nervous.

Many years ago, I read the Nevil Shute novel On the Beach. The plot was that a nuclear war had destroyed all life in the Northern Hemisphere, and that weather currents were slowly moving the fallout south to Australia. The people in Australia were waiting for the end with a fantastic feeling of foreboding and resignation—knowing that the end was coming and that there was nothing to be done about it.

That’s what it feels like in Pensacola.

I Have Always Loved Arkansas

But in the last few days, it has gotten better and better. Now if we could just get rid of some of our embarrassing congressmen and senators. One (or two) things at a time, I guess.

Cops Can Do Whatever They Want!

Thank God, the courts have decided that it's okay to use excessive force against pregnant women who may be exceeding the speed limit. I'm sure that tasering pregnant women won't be hazardous to the fetus, and it'll keep those poor widdle coppers from being overwhelmed by those big, mean pregos!
(h/t Pharyngula.)

A Little White-nosed Lie

Leslie Newell Peacock of the Arkansas Times does a nice job here explaining the decision of federal and state agencies to close caves under their jurisdiction. The caves contain bats that may be susceptible to white-nose syndrome, a fungus that kills bats. The fungus is thought to have been introduced from Europe or Africa by human visitors. Note at the end of the article a quote from the owner of a commercial tourist cave who is "skeptical" that the fungus is killing bats. Does that sound familiar? If you don't like the science, just declare yourself a skeptic! White-nose syndrome, anthropogenic global warming, evolution--all junk science, invented by those pesky scientists to make life difficult!