"Wisconsin v. Yoder, a 1972 Supreme Court case dealing with an Amish family who wanted to withdraw their children from public school after the eighth grade. [Citation] from the majority opinion written by Chief Justice Warren E. Burger:

This one tasted better in the store than at home. Not a bad wine by any stretch of the imagination, just not what I remembered tasting in the store. Did I somehow get the wrong bottle?

Spitzer should be indicted and prosecuted. He should not be allowed to dodge the full consequences of his misdeeds. Prostitution should not be a crime. However, being involved in some way with prostitutes makes one liable to extortion and blackmail. A man on the way to running for President in a few years would be vulnerable. He would fear revelation of dark deeds of even a non-criminal sort to his family, to his enemies, and others. He could then be “forced” to use his high office's power to end government action against someone or to generate large favors to someone

I oppose HR 5512 because it is unconstitutional to delegate the determination of the metal content of our coinage to the Secretary of the Treasury. Under Article I Section 8 of the Constitution, the Congress is given the power to coin money and regulate the value thereof. It is a shame that Congress has already unconstitutionally delegated its coinage authority to the Treasury Department, but that is no reason to further delegate our power and essentially abdicate Congressional oversight as the passing of HR 5512 would do.

Oversight by members of Congress, who have an incentive to listen to their constituents, ensures openness and transparency. This bill would eliminate that process and delegate it to unelected bureaucrats. The Secretary of the Treasury would be given sole discretion to alter the metal content of coins, or even to create non-metal coins. Given the history of Congressional delegation and subsequent lax oversight on issues as important as the conflict in Iraq, it would be naïve to believe that Congress would exercise any more oversight over an issue as unimportant to most members as the composition of coins.

Congress is poised to pass the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) authorizing up to $50 million in unconstitutional foreign aid. The bill passed out of the Foreign Affairs Committee with a bipartisan agreement to nearly double the President's requested amount. It is always distressing to see officials in our government reach across the aisle to disregard Constitutional limitations.

Much of this aid will run through government-to-government channels and will be vulnerable to corruption. Some of the aid will be sent to faith-based organizations who, along with accepting government largess, will now be subject to governmental controls and will soon become more dependent on taxpayer funding than private funds. If they accept the aid, they must be careful of the vague language regarding what types of programs they can run. For example, the requirement that 33% of any funding received must go toward abstinence-only programs has been dropped and replaced with a 50% requirement toward behavior change. Many humanitarian organizations are incensed by the politicized requirements placed on their work, and feel they are being forced to continue failed programs at the expense of more effective ones.

'In a recent class at Abraham Clark High School in Roselle, N.J., business teacher Barbara Govahn distributed glossy classroom materials that invited students to think about what they want to be when they grow up. Eighteen career paths were profiled, including a writer, a magician, a town mayor -- and five employees from accounting giant Deloitte LLP.

'"Consider a career you may never have imagined," the book suggests. "Working as a professional auditor."

Overall it’s a pleasant sipping wine and ok with a lighter dinner. I’m partial to lighter reds, and this one fits the bill!

The Ron Paul Revolution is the acorn that will become the means by which the people will govern themselves. It is a good thing.

It’s a passable white wine for most occasions. Sipable, if the 2nd bottle you open for the evening. It would be ok for dinner too, but don’t tax it too much.

The U.S. has major problems, and many of them trace down to the application of the Constitution. The chances that the United States of America can establish again a limited government, in the spirit of the framers of the Constitution, are slim. Ben Franklin said, when asked what the Constitutional convention had come up with, “A Republic, if you can keep it.” We did not keep it.

"High on Mount Sinai, Moses was on psychedelic drugs when he heard God
deliver the Ten Commandments, an Israeli researcher claimed in a study
published this week. Such mind-altering substances formed an integral
part of the religious rites of Israelites in biblical times, Benny
Shanon, a professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University
of Jerusalem wrote in the Time and Mind journal of philosophy. 'As far
Moses on Mount Sinai is concerned, it was either a supernatural cosmic
event, which I don't believe, or a legend, which I don't believe

Hillary Clinton’s chances of becoming the next President of the United States shrank to little or non, as of March 5, 2008. Obama won in several states that she had called her own. By continuing her campaign she is counting on the super-delegates. This could be disasterous.

It’s a pleasant wine, if not a particularly inspiring one. Good with dinner and in a pinch, sipping on its own if needed.

Now for the Nervous News at Nine. A bomb scare in Piddlyboro, Vermont. Police, sheriff's department, state troopers, SWAT teams, bomb squads, FBI, BATFE, Homeland Security, National Guard units and the town dogcatcher converged on a "suspicious brown paper bag" left unattended in front of Mother McRaggedy's Second Hand Store on Main Street. Following a six-hour standoff, a $190,000 remote-controlled ordinance-disposal robot was sent in. The bag contained an empty Mad Dog 20/20 wine bottle, left there the night before by Elmer Swilling, the town wino and dogcatcher. Grumbly Freehold, the county's only self-professed libertarian, later questioned why a Middle Eastern terrorist would want to blow up Mother McRaggedy's Second Hand Store in the first place. Or how they ever would have heard of Piddlyboro. Or Vermont.

The folks at the US Citizenship and Immigration Services have devised a new citizenship test for those few illegal immigrants who, for some unknown reason, are actually trying to become lawful citizens. The new questions, the USCIS claims, are calculated to better measure how well newbies understand what it means to be an American rather than how well they can memorize answers. Of course, most libertarians are convinced that most natural born citizens don't know what it really means to be an American either.