some disjointed observations

1. It's been a while since I was in law school, but from what I remember from my first year torts class, there's a name that lawyers have for this type of thing: false imprisonment.

2. Though I find Judd Apatow movies generally amusing, I'm not a huge fan and am on the verge of being an anti-fan simply because the guy gets so much hype nowadays. But aside from that, I guess I never realized that his movies had this element of "conservative family values", a fact which, I suppose, means that the message was clever and effective. In any event, Matt Yglesias makes a really insightful point in discussing the linked article. Namely, the tendency of a high percentage of the folks most loudly espousing these ideals to place a highly disproportionate amount of importance on those parts of "Christian family values morality" that are the easiest for them personally to adhere to. For example, most people are not gay. For those people, refraining from having sex with persons of the same sex is easy -- they have no desire to do so. On the other hand: being charitable, turning the other cheek, loving your enemies, keeping lust out of your heart, being faithful to your spouse, subordinating your materialistic desires in favor of your love of Christ and your fellow man, or -- to take the teachings of Christ literally -- to give away all of your material possessions and lead a simply, godly life in service of the Lord: these things, to a greater or lesser degree, are all very difficult. But hating fags: simple!

3. This story comes from one of my old stomping grounds -- a place where Christian charity abounds. Apparently County Judge Tom Head thought it would be a good idea to paper the courthouse cork board with a racist wingnut email he printed out. When caught, rather than admitting error and apologizing, he chose to defend the message, deny any racism, and state that he was attempting to "try and get people talking to one another". Because, ya know, in Lubbock County, Texas, the best way to promote a civil, productive conversation about racial issues is to use the county courthouse as a forum to champion the idea that blacks are all a bunch of crack-smoking, wife-beating felons. I predict this guy will be re-elected in a giant landslide.

4. Apropos of the post below, Sarah Palin recently broke her post-employment silence to assert that Obama's health care reform plan is evil because it will establish "Death Panels" (no doubt populated by gay muslim terrorists) for the purpose of euthanize her grandmother and her Trig-baby. (the same Trig-baby, by the way, that is OFF LIMITS! to all political speech -- just FYI, dontcha know.) Prominent conservatives then lined up to support this ludicrous conspiracy theory. This is really reaching some kind of limit, isn't it?

5. Or maybe not. Here's another brain-dead ideologue's valuable contribution to the national conversation on health care, in which we are told that under the UK's state-run health care system, brilliantly intelligent special needs persons such as prominent physicist Stephen Hawking "wouldn't have a chance" -- would, in other words, presumably be put of of their misery, just like little Trig -- never mind that Stephen Hawking, of course, is British and has lived in the UK his whole life. No word on how he's managed to evade the NHS death squads for the last 67 years. (link is to secondary source, as the original has -- after being righteously (and hilariously) pilloried far and wide -- been scrubbed.)