One Utah

In her usual trenchant way, Elizabeth Wood summarizes the problem with discussion of sexuality in our society:
I keep thinking about this discussion we’ve been having about “protecting” people from sex, or sexually explicit material. The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that quite often our efforts at protection do more harm [...]

Sometimes you can’t really tell if it is satire or seriousness.
Take today’s Tribune letters to the editor, headlined: Remove abortion stain.
The right to choose was made when a pregnancy resulted . . .
Unless, maybe, you were using contraception and it failed. Or you had abstinence only and never learned how to use contraception. [...]

You know the message is getting out when the largest power user on the planet, the United States Department of Defense, takes steps to cut its energy consumption for whatever reason.
But let’s review: The Department of Energy is ordered by Congress to install solar power for the first time in history while the DOE wastes [...]

A video about things on the ground in Iraq!
This is going around the Internet pretty fast. “I think everyone, no matter where you sit on the political fence… should watch this…”

I went to an Energy Film Festival today sponsored by our local Sierra Club chapter. One film, The Power of Community — How Cuba Survived Peak Oil documented what Cuba had to do when the oil supply from the Soviet Union stopped in the 90s. It was really inspiring to see what solutions they [...]

Political Solutions for the problems of the Middle East What can we learn from History?
When I read recently that the European Union and Turkey had made little headway in resolving a stalemate over Turkey’s refusal to open its ports to Cypriot ships —a decision that might stop Turkey’s membership application to the European Union [...]

The gospel music group the Winans, from my one-time hometown of Detroit, performed one of my favorite inspirational songs: “Ain’t No Need to Worry”, recognized by the chorus “It’ll be all over in the morning.” I met them in 1996 (after the Oklahoma City bombing and before the Atlanta Olympic bombing) and gushed like a [...]

The following originally appeared on Simple Utah Mormon Politics.
Some pretty high-profile individuals can say some pretty uneducated and insensitive things about other people. But when it happens, it’s not a time to effectively ban such speech. Rather, it’s time to talk about what misconceptions would cause that sort of speech to occur. [...]

The brouhaha about the Edwards’ bloggers has me thinking - Did Amanda in fact say anything that was anti-Catholic?
Amanda criticized the Catholic church’s stance on women’s issues, glbt issues, contraception and abortion, but is that the same thing as in fact being anti-Catholic?  To the best of my knowledge, and I’ve been reading pandagon for [...]

Like many Americans, I have sat back to watch for a hero to arise, someone who can make sense of what has been going on for the past four unbelievable years of war and horror. But what I have seen instead since September 11, 2001, are Americans under attack from the very people they thought [...]

Some people only know President Abraham Lincoln from the Rozerem commercials. Here’s Rep. Don Young (R-AK), citing what he thought were Lincoln’s words during yesterday’s debate on the Iraq War Resolution:
“Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs, and should be arrested, exiled or hanged.”

I thought [...]

Frank Stahali wrote this in response to a comment on “Supporting the Troops” several posts down.
It gave me a new clarity I needed.
I repost his entire comment here without his permission and in the hope that our friends and their friends will also read it.
Let me take a stab at the ASP mentality. Because [...]