Saturday January 13, 2007

Men and women can be equal without being treated identically. That point apparently eludes those in power and has resulted in a moronic policy. From the NY Times:

WHITNEY POINT, N.Y. — Thirty girls signed up for the cheerleading squad this winter at Whitney Point High School in upstate New York. But upon learning they would be waving their pompoms for the girls’ basketball team as well as the boys’, more than half of the aspiring cheerleaders dropped out.

The eight remaining cheerleaders now awkwardly adjust their routines for whichever team is playing here on the home court — “Hands Up You Guys” becomes “Hands Up You Girls” — to comply with a new ruling from federal education officials interpreting Title IX, the law intended to guarantee gender equality in student sports.

“It feels funny when we do it,” said Amanda Cummings, 15, the cheerleading co-captain, who forgot the name of a female basketball player mid-cheer last month.

Whitney Point is one of 14 high schools in the Binghamton area that began sending cheerleaders to girls’ games in late November, after the mother of a female basketball player in Johnson City, N.Y., filed a discrimination complaint with the United States Department of Education. She said the lack of official sideline support made the girls seem like second-string, and violated Title IX’s promise of equal playing fields for both sexes.

But the ruling has left many people here and across the New York region booing, as dozens of schools have chosen to stop sending cheerleaders to away games, as part of an effort to squeeze all the home girls’ games into the cheerleading schedule.

Boys’ basketball boosters say something is missing in the stands at away games, cheerleaders resent not being able to meet their rivals on the road, and even female basketball players being hurrahed are unhappy.

In Johnson City, students and parents say they have accepted the change even as they question the need for it. Several cheerleaders there recalled a game two years ago, long before the complaint, when the squad decided at the last minute to cheer for the girls’ team because a boys’ game was canceled. The cheers drowned out directions from the girls’ coach, frustrated the players, and created so much tension that the cheerleaders left before halftime.

“They asked, ‘Why are you here?’” recalled Joquina Spence, 18, a senior cheerleader. “We told them, ‘We’re here to support you,’ and it was a problem because they kept yelling at us.”

But, as the New York State Public High School Athletic Association warned in a letter to its 768 members in November, the education department determined that cheerleaders should be provided “regardless of whether the girls’ basketball teams wanted and/or asked for” them.

The ruling followed a similar one in September in the Philadelphia suburbs, and comes as high schools nationwide are redefining the role of cheerleaders in response to parental and legal pressures as well as growing sensitivity to sexism among athletic directors, especially as more women step into those roles.

Saturday January 13, 2007

From today’s Washington Post:

President Bush fought back at lawmakers opposing his new plan for Iraq today, charging that simply being against the strategy without suggesting alternatives was “irresponsible.” He challenged them to come up with a better plan.

Bush made his comments in his weekly radio address two days after top officials of his administration received a roasting on Capitol Hill about the plan, which calls for 21,500 additional soldiers and Marines to be sent to Iraq in an attempt to quell the increasing sectarian violence there between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, particularly in Baghdad.

Bush unveiled the plan in a prime-time television speech on Wednesday night and it has been drawing criticism from Democrats — and some Republicans — ever since. Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel (Nebraska), a Vietnam War veteran, described it as “the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam.” Bush hosted an informal and primarily social gathering of Republican lawmakers at his Camp David retreat on Friday night and Saturday.

Democratic senator Joseph Biden (Delaware), new chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called the administration’s plan a “tragic mistake” and says it shows the president is ignoring the will of the American public, who gave Democrats control of the Congress in the country’s midterm elections in November largely because of displeasure over the course of the war in Iraq. More than 3,000 U.S. troops have died in the conflict since it began in March 2003 and public support for the war has been steadily waning as the violence shows no sign of abating.

“To oppose everything while proposing nothing is irresponsible,” Bush said in the radio address. “Members of Congress have a right to express their views, and express them forcefully,” he said, but added: “Those who refuse to give this plan a chance to work have an obligation to offer an alternative that has a better chance for success.”

Bush also lashed back at critics who have called the plan a repackaging of the same strategy, which the president and military officials have all said has failed to put an end to the violence there. Sen. Carl L. Levin (D-Mich), the new chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said yesterday on the Hill that the plan only reinforces a “flawed strategy.”

“We have a new strategy with a new mission: Helping secure the population, especially in Baghdad,” Bush said. “Our plan puts Iraqis in the lead.”

You can call it whatever you want, Mr. President, but this is an escalation. You’re putting more troops on the ground to accomplish very familiar and nebulous goals. It constitutes putting our soldiers in the middle of a foreign country’s civil war to stand there and be shot at. There is no military objective that can be accomplished with this so-called “surge”. I’m now convinced that you are doing this largely because you don’t want to be the president that “lost Iraq.”

You want a plan, Bush? Here’s a plan. It’s called GET THE FUCK OUT OF THERE. You let the various ethnic groups fight it out. Yeah, it might pull in surrounding countries. So what? At least our people won’t be getting killed. There’s gonna be a huge Middle East war at some point … it’s pretty damn inevitable, based on nothing more than ancient ethno-religious feuds and the boundaries drawn up at the Treaty of Versailles. There’s so many conflicts boiling just under the surface all over that region. Would you rather have the war before or after Iran has nukes? Before or after the other countries over there feel the need to stock up on WMDs themselves? Before or after some country’s government is overthrown by Islamic radicals (Lebanon, Egypt, and Pakistan seem like good candidates)?

Terrorists who actually want to attack the American mainland can be dealt with through air strikes, special ops missions, and similar mechanisms. You don’t need to occupy the entire country of Iraq to do that. Everyone else … let them kill each other. They all seem pretty intent on it. We messed this up really bad, but refusing to admit the mistake — or thinking that staying there indefinitely will correct it — is insane. There will be carnage, but it would be far less than if a regional war played out ten or twenty years down the road.

Saturday January 13, 2007

From Reason‘s blog:

A few months ago, Delaware state Rep. John C. Atkins was pulled over in Ocean City Maryland under suspicion of drunken driving. Immediately after getting pulled over, he flahsed his Delaware Legislature ID, after which the officer assured him that he wouldn’t be arrested. Problem is, Atkins took a roadside breath test which came back at .14, well over the legal limit.

Atkins wasn’t arrested. His car wasn’t impounded. He wasn’t even fined. Instead, he was allowed to call a friend, who came to pick him up and take him home. Atkins was arrested hours later after a domestic dispute with his wife. He pled guilty to one count of “offensive touching.”

All of that is bad enough. Stranger still is the fact that, months later, Mothers Against Drunk Driving has put out a press release expressing their full support for the Ocean City Police Department in declining to arrest Rep. Atkins. MADD says it entered the debate to express its full support for the arresting officer, who apparently has pleased the group by making hundreds of drunk driving arrests over the years (no word on how many of them were politicians).

Even worse, it appears that details of Atkins’ traffic stop were kept secret until after last November’s election. This article, dated October 29th, explains how Atkins went on a local radio talk show to explain the 911 call and arrest for the domestic dispute. Atkins apparently assured the listeners that “no alcohol” was invovled in the altercation with his wife.

I wonder how many other people who blow .14 in a roadside breath test, go home and “offensively touch” their wives, then publicly lie about it get such staunch public support from MADD?

I also wonder if it has anything to do with Atkins’ seat on the Delaware legislature’s public safety committee, or his past votes on MADD-favored DWI issues.

As for Atkins, after public pressure, he has finally asked the legislature’s ethics committee to look into his actions on the night of the 29th.