Contrary to some who have said that a pharmacist couldn’t or wouldn’t refuse to fill birth control prescriptions on religious grounds, apparently it can and does happen. In Washington State, a pharmacist was sanctioned in just such a case.

According to court records, Noesen was working as a substitute pharmacist at a Menomonie Kmart in 2002 when a University of Wisconsin-Stout student sought to refill her birth control prescription.

Noesen testified he advised the woman of his objection to the use of contraception and refused to fill the prescription or tell her how or where she could get it refilled.

The woman was able to get the prescription filled two days later but missed the first dose of the medication, court records said. She filed a complaint with the state Department of Regulation and Licensing.

Noesen, 34, of St. Paul, Minn., told regulators that he is a devout Roman Catholic and refused to refill the prescription or release it to another pharmacy because he didn’t want to commit a sin by “impairing the fertility of a human being.”

. . .

The Pharmacy Examining Board ruled in 2005 that Noesen failed to carry out his professional responsibility to get the woman’s prescription to someone else if he wouldn’t fill it himself.

The board reprimanded Noesen and ordered him to attend ethics classes. He was allowed to keep his license as long as he informs all future employers in writing that he won’t dispense birth control pills and outlines steps he will take to make sure a patient has access to medication.

. . .

A pharmacy should accommodate its pharmacists’ religious beliefs but it can’t leave “a patient high and dry,” Dupuis said.

Noesen said the discipline “critically devastated” his business as a traveling pharmacist because some pharmacies refused to hire him and he lost his liability insurance, court records said.

Seems about right. Disclose the information up front and let the invisible hand of the market determine the value for a pharmacist who will not fill prescriptions for birth control. I might go a bit further and require the pharmacy to put up a sign disclosing the hours during which it will not have a pharmacist on duty who will fill birth control prescriptions. Earlier this year, Senator Drozda proposed legislation that would have protected pharmacists like Noesen from adverse consequences for refusing to fill such a prescription.

In a sign that global warming is increasing, Connecticut has been used as the metric for describing the size of an ice shelf collapse in Antarctica. (h/t Oliver Willis)

Some 220 square miles of ice has collapsed in Antarctica and an ice shelf about the size of Connecticut is “hanging by a thread,” the British Antarctic Survey said Tuesday, blaming global warming.

“We are in for a lot more events like this,” said professor Ted Scambos, a glaciologist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Scambos alerted the British Antarctic Survey after he noticed part of the Wilkins ice shelf disintegrating on February 28, when he was looking at NASA satellite images.

In my experience, Rhode Island has traditionally been the global warming ice shelf metric.

Just to be clear, I’m not trying to make light of global warming. It’s a huge issue about which the U.S., by and large, has its collective head stuck in the sand. Just noting the tendency of journalists to use small New England states in these stories.

I was amused by this editorial from the Evansville Courier Press that ran a few days ago. They took a courageous stance against Osama bin Laden, showing a devil-may-care attitude toward the powerful pro-bin Laden segment of their readership. They taunt him for being attention starved and offer him some advice: “Come down out of the mountains and show yourself. We can guarantee you the kind of reception you deserve.”

Tough guys. I’m all for killing bin Laden, given the chance, but this editorial is vaguely ridiculous. I can just imagine bin Laden, in his cave, getting his copy of the Evansville paper. “Oh, my; they are challenging my manhood. I will show them my toughness by doing exactly as they say.” Bin Laden will then be captured, and we’ll have the scribes of southwestern Indiana to thank.

Jim Shella posts “Questions for a Monday.” He has questions, I have answers:

Why is John McGoff attacking Dan Burton in his first ads? Shouldn’t he establish what he stands for first? Or, does he just stand for Anyone but Dan?

Because Dan’s negatives are so negative that even the most positive positives can’t compete. Lead with your strongest argument. With a primary challenge to a long time incumbent, I think you’re stuck with the fact that the race is going to be a referendum on the incumbent. If Dan’s adequate, voters are going to keep him, regardless of the qualities of the other guy. But, he’s not, so maybe they won’t.

Where’s Barack Obama?
St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands.

-Will Sean Astin do a better job selling Hillary Clinton to Indiana voters than he did in a failed attempt at selling tax credits for filmmakers to the General Assembly?
No. But, I love Samwise anyway.

Remember when gubernatorial candidates were the biggest thing at Dyngus Day?
This and all questions/reports about Dyngus Day are just an excuse to have fun saying “Dyngus Day.”

Not too long ago, I had a friend, a long-time Christian, express some bewilderment about what bunnies and eggs had to do with Easter. My understanding is that it had to do with how Christianity came up through the ranks from a fringe, primarily Jewish, sect to one of the world’s major religions. By arranging major religious festivals in a way that was similar to those of other religions, it made attracting converts easier. Two of the most significant pagan times of the year are the winter solstice — the shortest day of the year, after which the days begin to get longer — and the vernal equinox — when spring begins and life begins to return after winter. Christmas and Easter line up roughly with these events.

Rabbits and eggs are fertility symbols; symbols of spring and the return of life. Here is a nice summary of some of the pagan roots of Easter. According to that site, the rites connected with the death and resurrection of the gods Tammuz, Osiris, and Adonis are the forerunners of the “Christian” Easter.

Spread the good news.

See, I’d be more inclined to give past policymakers who got Iraq so wrong more of a chance if they would be as forthright as John Cole, a guy who supported the War back in the day, but apparently has a nasty habit of reconsidering his positions as facts become available. Certainly it’s not “resolute,” that most treasured of virtues, but it’s still admirable. In what way does he now believe he was wrong?

I was wrong about the Doctrine of Pre-emptive warfare.
I was wrong about Iraq possessing WMD.
I was wrong about Scott Ritter and the inspections.
I was wrong about the UN involvement in weapons inspections.
I was wrong about the containment sanctions.
I was wrong about the broader impact of the war on the Middle East.
I was wrong about this making us more safe.
I was wrong about the number of troops needed to stabilize Iraq.
I was wrong when I stated this administration had a clear plan for the aftermath.
I was wrong about securing the ammunition dumps.
I was wrong about the ease of bringing democracy to the Middle East.
I was wrong about dissolving the Iraqi army.
I was wrong about the looting being unimportant.
I was wrong that Bush/Cheney were competent.
I was wrong that we would be greeted as liberators.
I was wrong to make fun of the anti-war protestors.
I was wrong not to trust the dirty smelly hippies.

I mean, I could go down the list and continue on, but you get the point. I was wrong about EVERY. GOD. DAMNED. THING. It is amazing I could tie my shoes in 2001-2004. If you took all the wrongness I generated, put it together and compacted it and processed it, there would be enough concentrated stupid to fuel three hundred years of Weekly Standard journals. I am not sure how I snapped out of it, but I think Abu Ghraib and the negative impact of the insurgency did sober me up a bit.

Indiana schools are 2-0 after the first day of the tournament. Purdue beat Baylor 90 – 79 and Notre Dame beat George Mason 68 – 50. On the down side, Duke narrowly avoided a defeat by Belmont, eking out a 1 point win. Such a humiliating defeat for the Blue Devils would have had me smiling for a week — (I’m still bitter about their referee-assisted win in 1992 over the Hoosiers.)

The Lafayette Journal & Courier has an interesting article discussing growth in the region, or lack thereof. Since 2000, Tippecanoe County has had the 6th fastest growth rate in the state, growing almost 10% between 2000 – 2007. Meanwhile, the surrounding, primarily rural, counties of Benton, White, Newton, and Fountain were in the top 12 population losers in the state.

Population follows jobs. Lafayette’s south side has been growing at a pretty good clip. Meanwhile, the recession of the late 90s, early 00s, resulted in the loss of manufacturers in the rural counties that never came back.

Companies are now focusing new development on urban areas that have access to better transportation and amenities, McNamara said.

“The challenge for rural communities in the future will be to provide more jobs,” McNamara said.

Just spit-balling here, but I wonder if the new controls on local government spending will hamstring the ability of rural counties to make their areas attractive to potential employers.

The Muncie Star Press published readers’ thoughts on Iraq. This one explains a lot:

I don’t agree with them coming over here and killing our people like 9/11. But I don’t agree with us going over there for so long and nothing changing. It’s time to bring the troops home.

That people still think Iraq had anything to do with 9/11 is mind boggling. They were Saudis and Egyptians by descent. They attacked us as part of an extremist Sunni terrorist group. Until we got there, Iraq was a dominated by a dictator with nothing but secular concerns — who didn’t have time for a bunch of religious extremists because they threatened the one thing he cared about: his own power.

Arthur C. Clarke died at the age of 90. Fittingly, he died on March 19, 2008 — and I am writing this on March 18, 2008. (He lived a few time zones in the future).

Clarke was regarded as a technological seer as well as a science-fiction writer, and was known as “the godfather of the telecommunications satellite.”

Besides that, he seemed like a genuinely decent human being; which, at the end of the day, is probably the best epitaph to which any of us can aspire.

During World War II, the Royal Air Force put him in charge of a new radar blind-landing system. Then, after the war, he proposed the idea of using geostationary satellites as relays for wireless communication. It took decades for the idea to bear fruit, but it eventually earned him a claim to fame almost as great as his science-fiction stories. Geosynchronous orbits, which keep satellites in a fixed position relative to the ground, are today called Clarke orbits.

Also during the 1940s, Clarke predicted that man would reach the moon by the year 2000 — an idea that some experts dismissed as nonsense. In the late 1960s, Clarke served as a commentator along with CBS broadcaster Walter Cronkite for the Apollo missions that turned his prediction into reality. Later, NASA Administrator Tom Paine wrote in an inscription to Clarke that the science-fiction author “provided the essential intellectual drive that led us to the moon.”

Rest in peace, sir.