So I’m not posting the post, because it’s too stupid for me to replicate.

♦The Article: From CNN.com

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/law/08/27/michael.vick/index.html

♦The Arguement

What.

I know that we as Americans have some sort of internal breeding to be trained to wag our tails at the stimulus of celebrity, but is this even news?  I mean, yes, everyone knew that this ass-bastard was fighting pit bulls when the story first aired.  I mean, his ‘co-conspirators’ (as this is apparently a federal dogfighting conspiracy charge, good game CNN) already folded under the pressure.  How could all these people be conducting dogfights out of Vick’s home and Vick not know/be innocent of it?

 Whatever.

I think what gets me the most about this entire story isn’t the charging of a guilty man for crimes he committed once he finally admitted his guilt.  This story, like the Anna-Nicole circus, is an affront to the justice system, a scar on the face of our national media, and quite possibly, a cause for a number of people like myself to give themselves concussions from banging their heads against a wall.

 ”What I did was very immature so that means I need to grow up,” he said.

I get the ball, I throw the ball!  A sentence of 12 to 18 months, are you serious?  That’s just insane!  I mean hell, Nicole Richie was only in jail for 98 minutes, and we’re gonna send a superstar like Michael Vick to prison for TWELVE TO EIGHTEEN MONTHS?

Someone sent me an email that said my first article/arguement was very well poised and well written, and that since then, the nature of my writings in general have started to go downhill.  I want you to browse the places I get my news from, the things that might have relevance to my topic audience, and I want you to try and understand.

This isn’t watergate class stuff I’m dealing with here.  I can’t make a sculpture out of shit.

But hey, if I could, maybe I could run in 2012.  Or become a NFL star Quarterback.

Why the government can tell you what to do: Part 1

♦The Article: Taken from www.baxterbulletin.com

LITTLE ROCK (AP) — States and cities around the nation are following Arkansas’ lead in protecting young children from close encounters with secondhand smoke while traveling on public streets and highways.

The Arkansas Legislature banned smoking in cars with young children quickly and quietly last year. Since the Arkansas law went into effect in July 2006, similar bans have been approved in Louisiana; Bangor, Maine; Rockland County, N.Y.; Puerto Rico and the Australian state of South Australia.

The bill, which bans smoking in passenger vehicles where a child younger than 6 is riding in a car seat, was backed by then state-Rep. Bob Mathis, D-Hot Springs.

“I’m very pleased about the snowball effect,” Mathis said. “It has brought an awareness to smoking around children, whether it’s in a car, at home, or anywhere else for that matter.”

The measure passed in an April 2006 special session that was primarily devoted to education funding, though the Legislature also passed an indoor workplace smoking ban.

“I am not on an anti-smoking crusade. In fact, I’m probably alive today because I quit,” said Mathis, who quit smoking more than two years ago. “I’m very proud of what has happened.”

Arkansas’ law is punishable by a $25 fine.

Dr. Carolyn Dresler, chief of the state Department of Health’s Tobacco Prevention and Cessation Program, said other laws that have followed are tougher.

“Arkansas set the bar low and others are looking to make it stricter,” Dresler said, noting that in Bangor smoking is illegal in vehicles with passengers younger than 18.

Mathis said some of his colleagues didn’t take him seriously – especially because he voted against the workplace smoking ban.

“I felt that people that own a business or restaurant should still be able to decide how they want their business to be run,” he said. “If people knew beforehand a restaurant was a smoke-free place they could choose not to go there.”

But the House and Senate eventually passed the ban on smoking in cars, thanks to help from fellow lawmakers who stood up for the measure.

“No one really gave me a chance,” Mathis said. “I felt like it was a very legitimate piece of legislation and I’m proud of what happened.”

 

♦The Arguement

Okay.  So, I’m torn on this legislature, and I’m more than a little pissed off about it.  I’m a smoker, for who knows how many years now, and I take offense to this kind of stuff because it directly affects me.

Sure, banning smoking in public places to protect the public health, whatever.  But why is that law specific to the age of twenty one?  Why can I buy cigarettes at eighteen, smoke cigarettes most anywhere at eighteen, but I can’t go into a smoking restaurant until I’m twenty one?  Doesn’t make any sense to me, but hey, neither do bluebirds or politicians.

So now, after sneaking that one past us, raising up some taxes, they pull this number.  You’re not allowed to smoke inside a vehicle with a child younger than the age of six in the car with you.  Who the hell comes up with this stuff?  Did they pull six years old out of the air at random?  At seven, are your lungs more immune to second hand smoke?  While yes, a parent introducing their child to second hand smoke might be in the wrong, it isn’t, and it’s not supposed to be, the government’s right to decide that.

 And that’s just what they’re doing.

All the while, stroking their egos.

Group seeks to ban unmarried from adopting, foster parenting

♦ THE ARTICLE  – From the Baxter Bulletin

LITTLE ROCK (AP) — A conservative group hopes a ballot item that would ban unmarried couples from adopting or foster parenting children will effectively reinstate a ban on gay foster parents overturned by the state’s highest court. The head of the Arkansas Family Council said Thursday that the broader ban would withstand court challenges better than a measure focusing only on gays and lesbians.

 “We looked at what was likely to be pretty bulletproof when it came to constitutional challenges,” said Jerry Cox, the council’s executive director and president.

The council hopes to place the proposed act on the November 2008 ballot. It has submitted the proposal to Attorney General Dustin McDaniel, who is reviewing the measure. The council this year pushed unsuccessfully for legislation that would have banned gay people from fostering or adopting children.

Cox said the ban did not specifically target homosexuals partly because the group believed cohabiting heterosexuals are not safe for children, either. If approved by voters, the ban would take effect Jan. 1, 2009.

Cox’s group has been pushing for a ban on gay parents to be reinstated after it was overturned by the state Supreme Court last year.

Legislation barring any unmarried couple from fostering or adopting children passed the state Senate but failed before the House Judiciary Committee during this year’s session. Gov. Mike Beebe said earlier this year the measure — which was written by the council — had constitutional problems and did not offer equal protection to all people.

Beebe spokesman Matt DeCample would not comment on the proposal.

Rita Sklar, the state director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said broadening the ban beyond just gay couples doesn’t make it any less vulnerable to a constitutional challenge.

“It doesn’t make it better,” Sklar said Thursday. “There’s nothing better about including a lot more families who are going to have private decisions made for them by the government.”

Cox said the group provided the written proposal to the attorney general’s office on Tuesday. If McDaniel’s office approves the wording of the popular name and ballot title of the proposal, the Family Council would need 61,947 signatures of registered voters to place the issue on the ballot. That number represents 8 percent of the votes cast for governor in the 2006 election.

It would have until July to submit the signatures to the secretary of state’s office.

Cox said the group is drafting a guide to adopting and fostering children that it plans to distribute along with petitions if McDaniel approves the ballot title.

“That will enable the people to say on the one hand we’re circulating those petitions to prevent children going to home that aren’t safe, but also that there’s a need for good foster homes in the state. There’s a need for children to be adopted,” Cox said.

In 2004, Cox’s group backed a constitutional amendment overwhelmingly approved by voters that defined marriage as between a man and a woman.

♦THE ARGUEMENT 

So cutting past the obvious laughable parts of this issue.  This group, I think it’s the ‘Arkansas Family Council’, has decided that unwed couples aren’t fit for adoption or foster parenting situations.  It’s putting the thing to petition, and hoping that it comes up in the November 2008 ballot.

 What, exactly, does all this mean?

It means that in this apparent attempt to further limit the rights of same-sex couples looking to take care of children, this group will push to bar those singular individuals who seek either adopted children, or foster children, from doing so.  I only say ‘apparent attempt to further limit the rights of same-sex couples’ because the article states: The council this year pushed unsuccessfully for legislation that would have banned gay people from fostering or adopting children.

Who is this random group of individuals, caught up in their own agenda, to say that single parents can’t raise kids they didn’t produce?  I personally grew up in a single parent home, and while I wasn’t adopted or the product of the foster parent system, I don’t imagine these kids (on the whole, mind you) would recieve any less love and attention from their newly acquired parents, be they a single person, a married couple, or a ‘cohabitating heterosexuals’.  I would wager, that in some cases, these kids might be better off, due to the screening processes (however lax) required for adoption or placement as a ‘foster home’.

The issue here isn’t the covert attack on gay rights, no matter how they spin it.  What these individuals are doing in their ignorance, is putting children out of a potentially good home.