The absence of new content here for the past few days has not been the result of any tragedy or work implosion. I have been thinking seriously about multiple commitments and where in my life I can make the most difference. Two years ago I started this blog on something of a lark, primarily to see what would happen, and to inject some of my own ideas into that whirlwind we all call the blogosphere. Several thousand posts later, I came to the realization that ... I'm done. Not that it hasn't been fun, intellectually challenging, or even may have changed the minds of a few people on a few select issues... it has. But as a whole, I've recently discovered, it's a never-ending personal commitment to an enterprise that neither pays the bills nor makes a significant enough change [as compared to other venues in which I work] to be worth continuing. I only have a certain amount of time and energy available, and here's where it will be going in the near future: 1. To my fa...

One of the hallmarks of the current American political discourse is ossification: you can no longer seriously grapple with issues, because to be seen even considering a possible change in thinking is a sign of weakness and betrayal. The initial responses to my last post on the radicalization of American politics in response to the Fort Hood massacre is a case in point: an anti-abortion proponent jumped right in to essentially disavow the existentance of radicalized anti-abortion groups, implying that I had said there were only radicalized anti-abortion groups. The comment cites the case of Abby Johnson as a non-violent anti-abortion activist who is being harassed by a Planned Parenthood gag order , leaving out two salient facts made clear with the link provided in the comment : (1) Johnson is not prohibited from protesting, just talking about confidential medical and staff information; and (2) it would be illegal for her to share confidential patient health information in the fir...

... because some of our commenters have the strange idea that belonging to any organization whatever makes you responsible for any sins ever committed by that organization or removes all credibility from your views. They also seem to believe that belonging to any organization represents a blanket public statement that you endorse every single idea ever put forth by that organization. So I thought it would be important to list for my readers those organizations with which I have been involved that engage in genocide, oppression, homophobia, or discrimination, so that everyone can understand why my views on virtually any subject are completely worthless. 1) I spent twenty-one years of my adult life as a member of an organization that engaged in relentless genocidal wars across the North American continent, has on many occasions bombarded innocent civilians, has used nuclear weapons against undefended cities, and which has engaged in personnel management policies which have (or, in severa...

The current status and legal position of the Diocese of Wilmington, at least in my mind, is ... conflicted. For those reading outside Delaware, the Diocese sought Chapter 11 protection this week from the 142 child molestation victims in 131 lawsuits, who stand to be conceivably awarded up to $500 million in total damages from a Diocese that has assets of only about $50-100 million. Of course, the laity might be forgiven (so to speak) for failing to understand that Diocese is a distinct corporate entity from all of its parishes and schools, none of which are parties to these suits. Yet in the strange world of interlocking relationships, the churches and the Diocese split collections, the Diocese provides additional funding to the schools, and--naturally--the Diocese approves and moves around all the priests and other religious folk assigned to each of these completely financially independent organizations. It's kind of like the case where your doctor also maintains a lab in his bu...

... and 1,000,000 other Americans like him who suffer from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Researchers may have identified the virus associated with CFS, if it isn't the cause.

Regular readers know that I generally post something--usually several somethings--here every day. For the past few days, however, the output has been off. Partly [Hube taught me this a couple weeks ago] I have not been pushing it because I have not felt particularly ... inspired. I'm tired of writing about health insurance reform, or the US misadventures in Afghanistan, or even Delaware politics, because there is actually very little chance that I will say something original enough here to actually ... matter. So I am lightly blogging for a few days--maybe a week--while I do a little necessary rethinking of the whole process. I have been at this for nearly two years and nearly 3,000 posts, and while I've met a lot of interesting people and exchanged some neat ideas (and insults) I do spend time wondering if this is all anything more than mental masturbation. I think it needs to be more than that, and I think it needs to be more original than it has recently become. Just lettin...

I learned yesterday at Mass and today in the WNJ that Bishop Saltarelli is in hospice care, which presumably means that cancer or whatever else ails him has taken its toll. On many issues I did not agree with my bishop, but I have repeatedly found him in interactions to be a warm, caring, and humorous man, whose love for his parishoners exceeded any intellectual devotion to a particular interpretation of Christianity. My son Michael first met him at age six, when the Bishop was visiting Resurrection Parish to conduct Mass. We were in the church library, and one of the Bishop's hangers-on was preparing to uncase and screw together his staff for the service. My own Michael, fascinated with this entire operation, asked if he could do it. The young and oh-too-serious Monsignor was recoiling in horror (I suppose it was his primary job in life), but Bishop Saltarelli laughed and said, "I think another Michael will take quite enough care with the stick. Let the boy have it."...

Solitary blogging leaves one vulnerable to lapses in inspiration, getting caught in ruts, and unconsciously bringing here the frame of mind you get into when things aren't going all that well in the rest of your life. I've taken a look back over the past few weeks and you've got a point. Working on it. [This will only make sense to anybody else if you are a truly devoted follower and read every single comment.]

Offensive is when you turn the issue of military suicides into a diatribe to be used in the health care debate, as Homegrown Boy does today at Resolute Determination : That’s right we have failed. The New York Times – see for all of you liberals who swear I’m a troglodyte, I am literate and do on ocassion read more then the comics – reports today that one transportation unit in Iraq has had two suicides among them since returning to America. Since returning to America. Yet there is a push in the socialist health bill to give free health care – that means you and I pay for it – to illegal aliens; yet we have two Americans dead because they couldn’t get enough help? To reinerate, these two men fought to keep us free so we can scream inanities on blogs and host shows on channel 28 and bleat incessantly about our beliefs yet …….. not enough help was there for them. Illegals will get surgery if the bill passes. Yet our soliders commit suicide in the country they fought to protect. Be you pr...

This issue puts me on the opposite side of the fence from Hube and Coyote , neither of whom see it as legitimate or desirable. Let's start with some fact-checking here, as Coyote seems to think that this will end up as something else he has to subsidize as a taxpayer. As the NYT reports, this is an endowed, visiting chair . Chair in this sense is an individual professor's appointment, not chair of a department. Endowed means that some individual or group--in this case the Harvard Gay and Lesbian Caucus --has made a sufficient donation to underwrite the position in perpetuity. It has been paid for; you don't need to subsidize it. Now for the larger question about the legitimacy of LGBT Studies. Two issues here, and one piece of potential conflict of interest to reveal. That one first: one year ago I taught the first-ever Seminar in American History in Gay and Lesbian History at Delaware State University. Seminar in American History is one of those course titles whe...

Time to try to explain something personal. The Fringe has a very unsavory connotation today; it's a term used to marginalize and demonize--mostly out of fear rather than vindictiveness, but that doesn't change the effects of the process. People worry about fringe elements infiltrating rightwing political groups; just the mention of the word brings out the calls for government surveillance, extra care, politically correct denunciation. It has become impossible in these days of 24/7 MSM rectal examinations, YouTube, and blogs for many of us to see those with social and political views way off the beaten paths as ... well ... people. Here's the thing: I've grown up with, lived with, worked with, joked with, even deployed to foreign countries with so many people that were so fringe in so many different ways that it is often the supposed mainstream that worries me more. How do you explain this to folks who have led carefully sanitized lives, where the fringe population is...

UPDATED: stupid me, forgot the location: Limestone Hills off Route Seven north behind Goldy Beacom College in Delaware. OK so maybe this isn't the lost and found, but a wonderful young dog, barely more than a puppy, deposited herself on our doorstep yesterday. She's an immaculately groomed shepard-Dobermann mix, brown and black with different colored eyes. She's maybe a year old, and exceptionally well-trained (responds to "speak," "sit," "heel," etc.) Our kids have put out signs around the neighborhood and we've notified the vets, SPCA, Humane Society... For a variety of reasons, we can't keep this amazing animal for more than a few days. If anybody who reads this happens to know anybody who has lost this dog, please, please send them here. Back to incessant political posturing now.

... or it will be if that damn Tyler Nixon doesn't post something while I'm finishing it. Delaware Libertarian has now been around since November 2007, and when I started this blog not only did I not have any idea how to embed html links, I had no idea if anybody would ever read it. (There are a few people who persistently remind me that they see no good reason to read it now.) But thanks to the first and second Brian, to Tyler, and (occasionally) to mat marshall, we've hung in there and done our part to generate debate in the blogosphere. For anniverary's sake, here's the first post (in late November 2007) that I felt really proud of: Eating an Atheist Turkey . It is, ironically, still relevant eighteen months later, as proponents of SB 27 keep trying to outlaw both gay marriage and civil unions, while the Prop 8 mess in California shows the continuing ignorant strength of certain types of religion in public life. Besides: I doubt mat has ever read this one, and...

... already wants a do-over on the year 2009. And at least one of the reasons should make you sit up and take notice if you have a child below the age of six. On January 4, he and my son were horsing around (reading wrestling, struggling, fighting, shooting at each other, whatever) in the basement area of the house set aside for childhood mayhem. Shane jumped from a couch cushion eighteen inches high onto a heavily carpeted floor ... and broke his leg. Six weeks in a full leg cast. The day he got the cast off, we also scheduled him for a routine visit to the eye doctor. One reason: why not bunch as many appointments on the same day as possible. Second reason: his mom had only recently gotten a full-time job with healthcare benefits. Third reason: we'd recently gotten one of those routine notes from the school nurse that his vision check suggested he might need a follow-up. If you have kids in school you get those notes on a fairly regular basis. So he's got the cast off f...

Brian Shields started the ball rolling in the Delaware blogosphere, with his call for a return to community. Then, earlier today, Shirley put up a post on The Forgotten Ones , which was in part intended to draw attention to those whom the government bail-outs will not help, and who are struggling to make it themselves.... Read the post : Sandy, Sam, and Jeff are good people you should get to know, at least vicariously. For Sandy, I can't do much more than observe that with a husband like she's got and a friend like Shirley, I think she'll make it. As far as Sam goes, Shirley points out that she's trying to start her own consulting business: Nomad EMC Consulting : Nomad EMC Consulting is an independent consulting firm that primarily investigates electromagnetic interference, in any environment. However, we specialize in healthcare environments; hospitals, clinics, etc. RF interference is the same phenomena regardless of where it occurs. If you've got an interferen...

The reason why real civility matters, and not the fake carping about profanity or bad taste, is that the absence of civility eventually acts like a corrosive toward our ability to feel empathy for each other. People are more than words scrawling across the screen. Rsmitty . Brian Shields . Shirley . Dominique . Donviti . Dana Garrett . Me .

I'm doing this part before Marvel because, quite frankly, if I didn't a lot of people might never take a look at it. Charlton Comics was the poor relation of the Marvel-DC war (sort of the DuMont network of comix). They did a lot of the standard late-1950s stuff like monster stories, watered-down EC-type stories, hot rods, cowboys, and romance, but they also had some really interesting SF and superhero books, as well as some significant talent. Dick Giordano, who later came over to DC and paired with Neal Adams on a lot of classic Batman stories, as well as with Dick Dillin on Justice League, was first at Charlton. Jim Aparo, who took over the pencils on Brave & Bold from Adams, as well as doing Phantom Stranger, got his start at Charlton as well. Giordano edited, Steve Skeates wrote, and Aparo illustrated one of the better back-of-the-book series, Thane of Bagarth, which ran second fiddle to Sam Glanzman's rather crude Hercules. Aparo never got a cover for Thane ...

Dana Garrett has a post up suggesting that Delaware Attorney General and son of VP elect Joe Biden should not be deployed to Iraq with his National Guard unit. Here's the key paragraph: With his father's election to the Vice Presidency of the United States, Beau would constitute a security risk in Iraq. He could easily become a target for attack or kidnapping. That not only places him at higher level of risk than the usual soldier deployed to Iraq, but it also places those soldiers working with him at a higher level of risk. Besides, if (heaven forbid) anything should happen to Beau Biden, the effect that it could have on the judgment of the Obama presidency respecting Iraq could be significant. Why create an unnecessary problem? Let's take those issues separately: 1) Beau would constitute a security risk in Iraq, for himself and those soldiers working with/around him. Stipulated, but not relevant. Here's why: (a) ask the soldiers themselves who will serve with/aroun...

Waldo is my friend. He has been my friend for thirty years--since long before I knew he was gay. Friendship is a tricky, sometimes inexplicable thing. A lot of my friends either wouldn't or don't like each other, and while that's sometimes uncomfortable, it's just the way it is. What do you do when the authority figures in your life--let's say, your church--asks you to shit on your friends? Not this : The El Coyote restaurant used to be popular especially with many people in the gay community. But when it was revealed that manager, and niece of the owner, Marjorie Chrisoffersen had contributed to the Yes on 8 campaign to strip gay couple of marriage rights business dropped off. Marjorie told the public that she has “been sick at heart” that people are offended by her actions and said she has “family, friends, employees from the gay community who are treasured people in my life.” So then, why exactly did she help fund a campaign to strip those “treasured people” ...

... which is because--aside from fervently praying for the success of some Libertarian candidates in state and local races, as well as the failure of Prop 8 in California-- I have reached the saturation point . It happened this weekend at my daughter's soccer tournament (where anybody with a pistol seems to have had a concealed carry permit). Moments after I watched her execute to leap of her twelve-year-old life to stop a rocket at the crossbar of the goal, I realized, This is what is important to me. . About two devout Statists (yes, f**king Uber- Statists, jason), contending for the Presidency, I simply no longer give a shit . I'm done. I'll deal with policy and politics as it comes, but you know what? I'm still a free American citizen regardless of what twit is in the White House. I'll cling to my goddamn guns and my goddamn Bible for security, and I'll hang out with former goddamn terrorists if I jolly well feel like it. My wife and I will teach our chil...