Rick Santorum

(Warning: This entry talks about some pretty gross stuff.  If you don’t want to be exposed to it, you may be better off just skipping this whole entry.)

A number of people are currently running to be the Republican nominee for president in 2012.  One of them is former senator Rick Santorum.

Santorum is a fiscal conservative and a foreign-policy conservative, but what’s really “politically incorrect” nowadays is that he’s also a social conservative.  He is strongly against homosexuality, for example. 

Just Another Example of Casual Liberal Hatred

We’ve talked plenty before about incivility from liberals (who, ironically, often seem to think that conservatives have the monopoly on incivility), but I thought I’d pass on this example anyway.

I was glancing over a few of today’s featured blog entries on the Wordpress main page, and ran into this: in a conversational blog about the blogger’s life, an offhand reference to the fun and satisfaction of “smacking the stupid out of Sarah Palin”. 

Loser-pays Can Win in America?

Today I read that under Governor Rick Perry, Texas has adopted a loser-pays system!

In America, if someone sues you, you pay for a lawyer.  Even if you ultimately win the lawsuit and aren’t held liable for any damages at all, you’ve still lost thousands of dollars in attorneys’ fees (not to mention the time taken out of your life, which you can never get back).  A lot of the theory behind tort law revolves around making people “whole” for the wrongs they’ve suffered.  Who will make you whole? 

Internet Anonymity

Does Internet anonymity bring out our dark side?

On the radio this morning I heard Lisa Hendey talk about participating in Internet discussions, such as in the comments section on blogs.

She suggested that people seem to feel more free to be a jerk when they know (or think) they have the cover of Internet anonymity. 

“Obama ‘Not Our Boyfriend Anymore'”

As Dave Barry would say, I Am Not Making This Up:  The NPR headline is “Liberal Bloggers: Obama ‘Not Our Boyfriend Anymore'”.

Separation of School and State

During my last semester of law school, we read an interesting case for Corporations class, A. P. Smith Mfg. Co. vs. Barlow, 13 N.J. 145, 98 A.2d 581.  In this 1953 decision by the New Jersey supreme court, the question (basically) was whether the corporation was allowed to donate money to charity, or whether donating would be an illegal waste of the shareholders’ money.  I won’t bore you with the legal details (the court found that the corporation was allowed to make such donations), but listen to some of the testimony in the case: 

“I HAVE NO WILL OF MY OWN… MY OWN… MY OWN… MY OWN…”

Among the testimonials in a direct-mail advertisement which, presumably, was intended to make me more inclined to read The Economist:

“‘I used to think.  Now, I just read The Economist.’”

(emphasis in original)

Contraceptives

Apparently the Pill makes men and women like each other less.  Also, apparently, condoms make women more depressed.

Sometimes I wonder whether the Catholic Church hasn’t been right about contraceptives all along.

Incidentally, political correctness makes it difficult even to talk about such questions.  The Wall Street Journal writer, at that first link, feels compelled to assure readers,