Make every member of Congress speak frankly about birth control

When I see articles like this one at Huffpo, I am reminded that there are members of Congress who would like to keep women and men from deciding whether and when they will have babies. This impulse is often the result of a religious belief that it is their duty to discourage people from having sex unless they are trying to have babies. And sometimes, as indicated in the Huffpo article, it's motivated by a belief that other people should be compelled to have babies they would rather not have. Maybe my memory is foggy, but I don't remember this power of Congress being spelled out in the Commerce Clause or in any of the enumerated powers. I realize that the Huffpo article concerns health insurance coverage, but reading it reminded me of my recurring suspicion that many members of Congress are incurably meddlesome when it comes to other people's sexuality. [caption id="attachment_18928" align="alignright" width="180" caption="Image - Creative Commons"][/caption] It is my belief that people who feel these compulsions are engaging in warped sexual fantasies of their own. They are getting off on keeping others from getting off. I suspect that there are many of these pleasure police and it's time to OUT them. Let's force them to make their repressive sexual agendas explicit. Here's how I would do it, if I had my way: Make every member of Congress stand up at a podium, one by one, and answer a single simple question, but first they would be read the following explanatory prelude:

"The following question concerns only those pills and devices that are used prior to or during sex to prevent pregnancy. This question does not concern abortion."

Now, here's the question:

Every American adult should be entirely free to purchase any

currently available pill or product to prevent pregnancy.

Yes or No?

This imaginary spectacle would allow Americans see who is for personal liberty and who is for meddling. Let's make it all public. Let's allow The People to see who "represents" them:
An estimated 98 percent of sexually active women in America have used some form of birth control at some point in their lives. According to a recent Thomson Reuters/NPR poll, 77 percent of American voters believe that insurers should cover the cost of birth control with no co-pays.
Alas, my proposed thought experiment will never occur. For the foreseeable future, the meddlesome members of Congress will continue to express their aversions to other people's sexual pleasure only indirectly, for instance, by voting in wacky ways on insurance issues. I wonder whether Rep Steve King is against requiring people who have health insurance pay medical premiums that cover appendectomies because there are many people who won't need to have appendectomies. He's a real piece of work. At least he's already stepped up and declared his position: I like to meddle with other people's lives.

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No surprise that the bloated military budget was spared.

Tom Englehart discusses the military's profligate use of $400/gallon (and even $800/gallon) gasoline in the Middle East. It's a symptom of a much bigger problem:

So here’s a question at a moment when financial mania has Washington by the throat: How would you define the state of mind of our war-makers, who are carrying on as if trillion-dollar wars were an American birthright, as if the only sensible role for the United States was to eternally police the planet, and as if garrisoning U.S. troops, corporate mercenaries, and special operations forces in scores and scores of countries was the essence of life as it should be lived on this planet?
How many military bases does the United States have, by the way? Gloria Shur Bilchik of Occasional Planet does her best to provide an answer to this straight-forward question:
You can’t get a consistent answer from news stories, that’s for sure. Recent articles, media reports and op-eds peg the number variously at 460, 507, 560, 662 and more than 1,000 . . . According to the Department of Defense’s 2010 Base Structure Report, as of 2009, the US military maintained 662 foreign sites in 38 countries around the world. . . . the official US military tally underreports our presence by nearly 500 bases.
Why not cut the military budget at this time of purported austerity? It's about what you'd expect from a bunch of psychopathic leaders, people not like you and me, people who cease serving as representatives of the People soon after hitting Washington D.C. and getting high on a non-ending hit of campaign cash.

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The birth of Earth

Ever wonder how it must have looked as clouds of space dust combined to form the Earth. National Geographic offers this awesome animation: Also from National Geographic, here's a theory of how some species of animals, but not large dinosaurs, survived the the aftermath of an enormous asteroid crashing into Earth. And here is a theory regarding the formation of the moon.

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Exploring the Canon S95 camera

About a month ago, I purchased a Canon S95 camera for about $400. I sought it out because I wanted the ability to capture non-blurred photos in low light. It has lived up to its reputation as a good low-light pocket camera. After I purchased the camera I traveled to Europe and then to Chicago. I've been exploring a few of the special settings of the camera and decided to share a few of the photos here at DI. One of the settings allows you to take "miniature" looking objects, such as this Norwegian town along a fiord (click the image for a larger image). The S95 also has a wider angle lens then most other pocket cameras, allowing you to take in larger scenes. I really appreciated this in the Berlin monument regarding War and Tyranny--the beautiful space completely fit into the camera. I was also able to fit large scenes like the Eiffel Tour (I patiently waited for the even clouds to ripen before capturing this image). Of special interest to me is the "high dynamic range" setting, allowing you to take three photos with one click on of the shutter button. Then the camera itself processes all three photos into a single HDR photo. It's important to completely stabilize the camera, or else the images will not coincide. I haven't used a tripod yet, but I have used walls and fences--anything that might work to allow me to keep the camera steady. The following photo of Napoleon's tomb is an HDR photo. This photo of the main hall of the Field Museum in Chicago is another HDR photo. Notice the ghostly people walking around. This is a multiple exposure technique, and these ghosts are an artifact whenever you've got movement during the 3 seconds during which the camera is taking the 3 images. I rather like the ghost people--it shows movement within the finished still. There will obviously be times when I don't want ghosts in my photos, however. One other trick I'll mention is the ability to take "stitch photos," which combines several photos into a single panorama. The scene below, taken of the city of London from the top of St. Paul's Cathedral, consists of four separate shots. The camera offers a slick way to take the shots, and you then stitch them together, using special software provided with the purchase of the camera. I'll end this post with a gallery of other photos I took recently with the S95. Most of these are HDR photos. If you don't see the gallery, click on the title to this post, which will take you to the permalink version, where you will see the gallery.

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How much spying is going on?

Consider this description of the N.S.A., from Jane Meyer's New Yorker article called "The Secret Sharer," regarding Thomas Drake (since publication, Drake has resolved his case and is not headed for prison). The N.S.A. is

an agency that James Bamford, the author of “The Shadow Factory” (2008), calls “the largest, most costly, and most technologically sophisticated spy organization the world has ever known.” . . . Even in an age in which computerized feats are commonplace, the N.S.A.’s capabilities are breathtaking. The agency reportedly has the capacity to intercept and download, every six hours, electronic communications equivalent to the contents of the Library of Congress. Three times the size of the C.I.A., and with a third of the U.S.’s entire intelligence budget, the N.S.A. has a five-thousand-acre campus at Fort Meade protected by iris scanners and facial-recognition devices. The electric bill there is said to surpass seventy million dollars a year.

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