When Rush Limbaugh apologized to Sandra Fluke after calling her a ‘slut’ for daring to argue that the government should force health insurance plans to include medicinally beneficial birth control pills in their plans, I thought this was a good thing.  If there’s one thing I’m much in favor of, it’s civility in the political discourse. Rush was uncivil in his comments, period. And unlike what some of my conservative friends believe, I don’t think apologizing for a mistake like that makes you weak. I actually think it shows that Rush isn’t a coward; instead, he mans up to his mistake. This is how things are handled in the real world. You make a mistake, you apologize for it, and that’s the end of it.

Well, that should have been the end of it. Instead, Ms. Fluke rejected the apology, saying it only came after advertisers started pulling support. Fine, that’s her prerogative.| MORE ›

It’s a fairly common saying, at least in the Western world, that when you try to prohibit an activity on moral grounds ,the people will find a way to do it, anyway. This is usually made in reference to our current legal prohibitions on drinking for young people ages 18 to 21 and our legal (for pre-18s) and social (for 18 and above) prohibitions on casual sex. They don’t work.| MORE ›

Michael Bloomberg thinks he knows best. Today New York City became the latest city to enact a ban on smoking in all parks, beaches, and Times Square.

As an asthmatic, this is something of a muted celebration. The asthmatic part of me is happy my next trip to Times Square will be with slightly cleaner air. The Crohn’s patient part of me is also happy that a irritant of my condition is now banned from Times Square.| MORE ›

Via Hot Air, the sorta-crazy Florida pastor Terry Jones, who is best known for his burning of a Koran just weeks ago, was convicted of breach of peace by a Detroit court earlier this week. The jury found that Jones was likely to incite violence by way of his protesting:

At the start of Friday’s trial, prosecutors presented their arguments before the jury.| MORE ›

In my last post, I shared a video by a young man named Zach Wals, who explained why he thought treating gay couples differently than straight couples was discrimination. He used his own experience as the child of a gay couple to highlight that he was not so different than other people.| MORE ›

Let me first put it out there that, unlike some of my fellow conservatives/libertarians, I don’t believe unions are inherently bad, or at least the larger labor movement isn’t. In the past, it was a force for good, producing some much needed reforms at a time when some companies were beyond corrupt.| MORE ›

You know, supporting an anti-circumcision bill is one thing. We can debate this all day and week (though the bill’s supporters don’t seem to get the concept of intent when comparing it to female genital mutilation). That’s fine. But when one of the major’s bill’s supporters creates a comic heavily featuring Jews as barbaric cirumcisers, you have to wonder about their intentions.| MORE ›

Sometimes, it’s nice to be proven wrong, if only in part. Last week, I spent a lot of time writing about the TSA and other organizations like Homeland Security. I argued that we are seeing more and more security-state policies everyday, and that we risk slipping from security-state to police-state.| MORE ›

My friend John Hawkins believes that it’s nothing short of a miracle that people still get married these days.

John explains that our ancestors got married because:

Men were the breadwinners and women really didn’t have a lot of career options. Yet, they both had a strong incentive to get together; You needed children to take care of you of when you got old. It was practically a necessity.| MORE ›

All of us armchair pundits can sit here and say what we like. Then someone like Zach Wals stands up and tells us how it really is.

This was originally going to be a longer post, but I need to collect my thoughts. So stay tuned for more later.

I’m geeking out over both the message AND the great video production (’cause it’s what I do in real life). It’s a short but powerful message:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqWd46O64zU[/youtube]