In & Out*

Senator Craig has changed his stance and despite previous signals and gestures that he has given, has decided to stall his departure from the Senate.

Other Republicans have vowed not to take this sitting down.

*

Mmmmm bouncy

Greenpeace urges kangaroo consumption to fight global warming
Article from: Herald Sun
Karen Collier
October 10, 2007 02:35pm
MORE kangaroos should be slaughtered and eaten to help save the world from global warming, environmental activists say.
The controversial call to cut down on beef and serve more of the national symbol on our dinner plates follows a report on curbing greenhouse gas emissions damaging the planet.
Greenpeace energy campaigner Mark Wakeham urged Aussies to substitute some red meat for roo to help reduce land clearing and the release of methane gas.
More . . . .

Compatibility, only a week away...

Find out more here.

Neither man nor beast

Bill Saunders, FRC's Senior Fellow and Director, Center for Human Life and Bioethics, has penned an op-ed in today's Washington Times on the hairy issue of human-animal hybrids:

Well, hold onto your hats. It is about to happen. Not here (at least, not yet), but in England. On Sept. 5, a government agency (called the Human Fertilization and Embryology Agency or HFEA) decided to let scientists, mad or otherwise, create human/animal hybrids. Let me repeat: Science fiction will become science fact very soon; and man and beast will be combined into one.

Read it all.

Marital Quality Influences Job Satisfaction

Marital quality influences work satisfaction, according a 2003 study that analyzed over 1,000 married individuals surveyed four times between 1980 and 1992.

The study highlighted by the Heritage Foundation finds that respondents who experienced an increase in marital happiness and time spent in leisure and everyday activities with their spouses were more likely to report higher levels of job satisfaction at the later interview than individuals who did not experience an increase in marital satisfaction. Conversely, increases in marital discord between the interviews were linked to declines in job satisfaction.

Read more about this finding at familyfacts.org.

The billion-dollar "non-profit."

Charlotte Allen, writing in The Weekly Standard, on the empire that is Planned Parenthood:

Whether the federal government ought to be in the business of subsidizing birth control, which, except in cases of rape or abuse, is a matter of individual voluntary decisions about one's sex life and desire for children, is a good question. Whether people should have an automatic "right" to subsidized birth control under Medicaid, to be paid for indefinitely out of other people's federal taxes, is another good question. Those are matters for a long-term policy debate. The more pressing question is whether the federal government should continue to subsidize, to the tune of tens of millions of taxpayer dollars a year, an organization, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, that derives a heap of its revenues from abortions, has sustained a demonstrably poor record on reporting suspected sex crimes against underage teenagers--and has a mountain of cash to boot. What about the taxpayers' right to choose?

Read it all.

Drawing Straws

With the FRC Action Washington Briefing 2007 just about to get underway, now would be as good a time as any to vote in the Brieifing's Straw Poll. You can vote here in person if you've registered for the Briefing, or you can become a member of FRC Action and vote online.

Voting will end soon, so what are you waiting for? Go ahead and vote...

UPDATE: I've confirmed the time, and voting will be closed at 1:00p.m. EDT on Saturday.

The Washington Briefing is underway

I'm here in the ballroom of the Hilton Washington, as the Briefing began just over an hour ago. We've already heard from Sen. John McCain, Sen. Sam Brownback, and Rep. Tom Tancredo is speaking now.

If you want to watch the coverage online, you can view streaming content (both live and archived) at AFA.net, who is webcasting the event.

Also C-SPAN is here and is covering the event live today from 10 AM until 5:30 pm. They will pick up coverage again at 7:30 PM on C-SPAN 2.

Washington Briefing: Transcripts of Presidential Candidates

Transcripts of the speeches from each of the Presidential candidates available for download as a PDF:

• Sen. John McCain
• Sen. Sam Brownback
• Rep. Tom Tancredo
• Sen. Fred Thompson
• Rep. Duncan Hunter
• Rep. Ron Paul
• Gov. Mitt Romney
• Mayor Rudy Giuliani
• Gov. Mike Huckabee

Draw your straws before 1:00 PM EDT Today

**UPDATE: SAT. AFTERNOON** Voting is now closed, and results are being tallied. Stay tuned this afternoon for results.

It's Saturday morning here at the Washington Briefing, and before all the activities commence today, I wanted to remind everyone that there's still time to vote in the online version of the Values Voter Straw Poll.

Online voting will be cut off at 1:00pm EDT sharp, so make sure to give yourself plenty of time to get through the sign-up process and hit "submit" before the clock rolls over to 1:00pm EDT!

Briefing Coverage from the Washington Briefing's New Media Row

**UPDATED 10/22** We've got a full slate of bloggers here at New Media Row, which is sponsored by our friends at Americans United for Life

• PoliPundit.com
• Randy Thomas is posting at randythomas.org
• Erick Erickson of Redstate
• Ana Marie Cox from Time's Swampland Blog
• Jim Geraghty of NRO's Campaign Spot
• Anastasia Uglova and J.P. Freire from NBC Universal's Politalk Blog
• Matthew Anderson of Mere Orthodoxy
• Dan Nejfelt from Faith in Public Life
• Justin Hart of Race 4 2008 and mymanmitt.com
• Melinda Penner and Amy Hall from Stand To Reason
• Democratis
• Nathan Bradfield from Church and State Blog
• N.Z. Bear from The Truth Laid Bear
• Mark Ambinder of The Atlantic
• Byron York from NRO's The Corner
• Philip Klein of The American Spectator's AmSpecBlog
• Jill Stanek of JillStanek.com
• Sharon Soon from Conservatives With Attitude
• The gang from Townhall.com
• Soren Dayton from eyeon08.com
• The group from Evangelicals for Mitt
• Jon from Huckabee 08 - A Man of Hope
• David Weigel of Reason magazine's Hit and Run blog
• Jack Yoest from Management Training of DC
• Bob Ellis of Dakota Voice

There are many more, and I'll continue to add links as I get them, but this should get you started.

If you're here blogging and are not yet listed, please alert me in the comments and I'll add your link.

Washington Briefing Straw Poll Results

Which of the following candidates for President would you be most likely to vote for?

Total Straw Poll Results

Onsite Straw Poll Results

Straw Poll on the Issues

The FRC Action Values Voter Straw Poll has been making lots of news, but one of the poll questions that hasn't yet gained as much attention was question #3, which asked participants to rank the order of importance among a set of issues. Here are the results:

Here's the statistical breakdown:

Now that you've got the numbers, feel free to crunch away.

Southwick Confirmed!

After what seems like a battle without end, Judge Leslie Southwick has now been confirmed by the U.S. Senate to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in a 59-38 vote.

Here is FRC's press release on Judge Southwick's nomination:

FRC Praises Confirmation of Judge Southwick

October 24, 2007 - Wednesday

Washington, D.C. - Tony Perkins, President of Family Research Council, made the following comments following Senate confirmation of Judge Leslie Southwick to the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit:

"We are pleased that Judge Leslie Southwick, a veteran of the Iraq war with 11 years of judicial experience, can finally move forward after struggling for a simple up-or-down vote. However, the unconstitutional use of judicial filibusters continues as other well-qualified judicial nominees are vilified and blocked by Senate leadership and their liberal allies. I urge the Senate to end the backlog of judicial nominations and allow a fair up-or-down vote for each nominee.

"I thank President Bush and Senators Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Trent Lott (R-MS), Thad Cochran (R-MS), and Arlen Specter (R-PA) for their hard work to overcome stalling tactics and confirm this highly-qualified nominee to the bench."

Spinning Research 101

According to a recent report by ABC News, "One in 10 Men Has Multiple Sex Partners.":

At any given time, a significant percentage of men are engaging in multiple sexual partnerships with women -- a situation that may facilitate the spread of sexually transmitted infections, including HIV.

The headline is dramatic but buried in the details reported is that the actual percentage was 6.6 and they "adjusted" the numbers to come up with "as high as" 11. The article also makes a number of sweeping generalizations designed to convey the idea that this is an issue the public needs to be worried about.

But then, the truth, buried near the end, comes out:

Adimora agrees that other factors could be at play, as men who engaged in concurrent sexual relationships also seemed to have other behaviors in common.

"Men who did have concurrent relationships were more likely to be intoxicated on drugs and alcohol, to have relationships with women who had multiple partners, and to have had sexual relationships with men in the past," she said.

And then the clincher - the policy recommendations that go with all this:

"We need approaches that will remove health disparities caused by poverty, stigma and discrimination, poor access to health care and education," Coleman said. "We need to develop a sexual health approach to HIV infection which will provide sexuality education, access to sexual health care, all which is culturally sensitive and relevant."

In other words, this kind of aberrant, dangerous behavior is confined to easily identified subgroups of the population, but we are going to use it as a club to bring graphic sex ed straight to your kids.

What I want to know is why doesn't "cultural sensitivity" extend to our values?

Republican or Democrat, Maryland Governors Are Addicted to Gambling

Regardless of party, recent Maryland governors have one thing in common—an addiction to gambling as a source of new state revenue. Maryland’s new Democratic Governor Martin O’Malley has followed in the footsteps of the Republican he defeated last year, Robert Ehrlich, by calling for legalization of slot machine gambling in the state.

O’Malley has apparently broken a deadlock between the House and Senate leaders with his proposal to put the issue of slots on the ballot in November of 2008.

This is modestly good news, because such referenda have a poor record at the polls. But it would be better for the legislature to reject the slots proposal immediately. On this issue, conservatives who know that gambling destroys families are united with liberals who know that gambling preys on the poor. The revenue generated by gambling is far outweighed by the social costs it imposes (see The National Coalition Against Legalized Gambling).