Today I ran into a fellow lawyer from the area. One of his ongoing humanitarian efforts is in conjunction with the St. Mary Haiti Ministry. St. Mary’s in Lafayette was “twinned” with Pendus, an area in the mountains of Haiti about 120 miles from Port-au-Prince. Turns out, the project has a website, so I thought I would give it a mention. One of the things that struck me was how much good they are able to do for not that much money. So, if you are interested in such things, click through and see what they are doing.

Nate Silver at fivethirtyeight.com has an interesting post about political identity and the President in office when a person turns 18. There appears to be a reasonably significant correlation between a person’s political affiliation and the President in office when the person turned 18.

A good President in office tends to correlate with a person’s identification with that President’s political party, apparently for a lifetime. And a bad President tends to correlate with identification with the opposite political party. Correlation doesn’t equal causation and all of that, but Nate Silver’s hypothesis is that Bush’s exceptional badness might haunt the Republicans for generations to come (much as they have had ongoing benefits, generally, from Reagan’s tenure.)

The Journal & Courier ran a very bare bones story about the ongoing Congressional health care debates, saying there are three basic proposals:

One would look like Medicare. Another would be based on Medicare, but administered by an outside party. The third would leave it up to the states to set up a public insurance plan for residents.

Insurers say a public plan would put them out of business and Republicans say it would be a dealbreaker in reforming health care.

A couple of observations – putting the health insurance industry out of business may be a feature as opposed to a bug. The industry doesn’t appear to be serving us very well but instead seems to be a giant leach, leading to a situation where, by and large and with some exceptions, we pay more for health care but get less than in other countries. As a tool for managing risk, controlling costs, and efficiently distributing a scarce resource, the insurance industry has not been notably successful.

As for Republican opposition, it bears mentioning that many Republicans couldn’t even bring themselves to support SCHIP, a not very controversial measure. I don’t see them playing along with any significant health care measure.

Maybe he’ll come up with something good, but I don’t think the state budget and funding the Indianapolis Capital Improvement Board will be two great tastes that taste great together. But, apparently Gov. Daniels is going to take a stab at the CIB.

Legislators should probably just focus on the state budget in the special session. Full stop.

I think I’m going full-on Godwin with this one, but these things happen.

First they came for the latte drinkers; I remained silent. I’m a coffee drinker.

Then they came for those who eat swiss cheese on their cheese steaks; I remained silent. I don’t like cheese steaks.

Then they came for the arugula eaters. I did not speak out. I didn’t know what arugula was.

Now they are coming for the spicy mustard enthusiasts. And all I can say is, “are you guys complete morons?”

(H/t Oliver Willis) Mike Pence went on Hardball and had a hard time saying whether he believed in evolution. I know some readers here take a nuanced view on the issue — the Bible is metaphor, maybe God worked through evolutionary processes, etc. But that’s not the problem Pence is having here.

He has to deal with people in his party who believe that God put Adam & Eve on earth directly with no evolution from non-homo sapiens. He has to deal with people in his party who think fossils were put in the earth by the Devil to test the faithful. Unless and until Republican leaders are willing to just come out and say that, while their followers are free to believe and worship as they wish, the Republican leaders personally trust in the scientific method and believe that the available evidence suggests that the world was not created in a literal seven days and that humans evolved into humans over long periods of time (whether through a divinely guided plan or not), and that where rigorously conducted scientific study contradicts religious dogma, the appropriate thing is to govern based on the science rather than the religion. Unless and until the Republicans are willing to make these small steps, they are not going to be able to shake the reputation of being anti-science.

House Speaker Bauer tagged Gov. Daniels as the “Nowhere Man,” with respect to his less than clear leadership on the budget. He was vague, uninvolved until late in the game, and moved the goal posts.

Bauer is predictably hyperbolic about Daniels, but even Senators Long and Kenley were mildly critical of Daniels’ leadership on the budget. Senator Kenley said he was getting mixed messages from the Daniels’ administration on what was acceptable. Senator Long would only go so far as to say that “it was open to interpretation” about how clear people were. Only Rep. Bosma, who is all about the political game and very rarely about actual governance, seems to be claiming that Gov. Daniels set clear parameters.

Now, Gov. Daniels has moved the goal posts again, demanding that the legislature cut $1 billion from the budget proposal, based on a recent economic report. He is apparently projecting the numbers from April tax collections through 24 months. Senator Long, Senator Kenley and Rep. Bauer have challenged the Governor to outline a budget that he could approve. Gov. Daniels seems to be demurring, finding that his job is to “lay out the boundaries.”

So, now Gov. Daniels seems to be casting himself as a “big picture” guy. I’ve always sneered at “big picture” types. The devil is always in the details. That’s where the real work gets done, and the big picture means nothing without implementation. Often a “big picture” can’t be implemented, but that’s not entirely clear until you work on the details. I say this as a guy who would love to simply be an idea man. But, in myself, I recognize this as work-avoiding laziness. Most times, when I take care of the details, the big picture takes care of itself. The reverse is not true.

So, I’ll leave you with a quote from the often overlooked Henry Winkler/Michael Keaton film from 1982, “Night Shift:”

Wanna know why I carry this tape recorder? To tape things. See, I’m an idea man, Chuck. I got ideas coming at me all day… I couldn’t even fight ’em off if I wanted. Wait a second… hold the phone! Hold the phone! [speaking into tape recorder] Idea to eliminate garbage. Edible paper. You eat it, it’s gone! You eat it, it’s outta there! No more garbage! . . . . What if you mix the mayonnaise in the can, WITH the tunafish? Or… hold it! Chuck! I got it! Take LIVE tuna fish, and FEED ’em mayonnaise! Oh this is great. [speaks into tape recorder] Call Starkist!

Here is an interesting one. The Associated Press has an article out of California wherein a federal judge has held that a teacher violated the First Amendment Rights of a student by referring to Creationism as “superstitious nonsense.”

U.S. District Judge James Selna issued the ruling Friday after a 16-month legal battle between student Chad Farnan and his former teacher, James Corbett.

Farnan’s lawsuit alleged that Corbett made more than 20 statements that were disparaging to Christians and their beliefs.

The judge found that Corbett’s reference to creationism as “religious, superstitious nonsense” violated the First Amendment’s establishment clause. Courts have interpreted the clause as prohibiting government employees from displaying religious hostility.

I wonder where the line is — whether mainstream religions have special protections. Would Heaven’s Gate cultist be protected from having their religions beliefs disparaged?

The opinion is here (pdf) . Ed Brayton and his commenters have a pretty good discussion of the ruling here.

The crux of the matter is that religion gets special protection not given to other sorts of ideas by the U.S. Constitution. Parents are, to one degree or another, compelled to put their kids in public schools and/or support the public schools with their tax collars. Consequently, the courts have found that teachers, as government employees, are not permitted to be openly hostile to religion absent some legitimate government purpose. If the challenged action of the teacher serves some legitimate purpose, the challenged action furthermore cannot have the principal or primary effect of promoting or inhibiting religion. Lastly, the challenged action cannot foster an excessive entanglement with religion.

Ultimately, the court sided with the school and teacher on a large number of challenged statements and with the student on the one statement where the teacher referred to creationism as superstitious nonsense. Truth, in this context, is apparently not an absolute defense.

This AP story on the matter describes the confirmation process for Supreme Court Justices and mentions that it takes 60 votes to prevent a filibuster in the Senate. It neglects to mention, however, that many Senate Republicans are on record as to their deeply held conviction that the President (regardless of political party, one can safely assume) is entitled to an up-or-down vote on his judicial nominees.