Snow Day!:
I'm almost pleased that my holiday travel plans were interrupted because of the "significant winter weather event" currently bathing Vermont, God's Country, in a sea of snow and death ice. Staying home with nothing pressing to accomplish certainly frees up time to read and catch up on world news, and I was most certainly rewarded: Cynthia Tucker, the editor of the Atlanta Journal-Consitution op/ed pages, included some great columns. It was so refreshing to think about current issues instead of the relation between internal angles and side length in hyperbolic equilateral triangles!
**A bit of background: the Georgia legislature is in the process of approving a new way to configure child support amounts, which has ignited much talk about the rights of custodial parents, the needs of the children, and general divorce topics.
Chief Justice Leah Sears entered the media dialogue with this piece on the "devaluation of marriage" and the impact on the court systems. (registration may be required, but it's free).
I also found this column interesting in light of our recent discusions on the death penalty. A man discusses his experiences as his wife was dying of cancer and compares it to euthanasia in pets and the lethal injection for criminals facing the death penalty.
"We have mercy on pets and those who cruelly murder. But not for the Nancys."
A thought-provoking comparison, to say the least.
I'm almost pleased that my holiday travel plans were interrupted because of the "significant winter weather event" currently bathing Vermont, God's Country, in a sea of snow and death ice. Staying home with nothing pressing to accomplish certainly frees up time to read and catch up on world news, and I was most certainly rewarded: Cynthia Tucker, the editor of the Atlanta Journal-Consitution op/ed pages, included some great columns. It was so refreshing to think about current issues instead of the relation between internal angles and side length in hyperbolic equilateral triangles!
**A bit of background: the Georgia legislature is in the process of approving a new way to configure child support amounts, which has ignited much talk about the rights of custodial parents, the needs of the children, and general divorce topics.
Chief Justice Leah Sears entered the media dialogue with this piece on the "devaluation of marriage" and the impact on the court systems. (registration may be required, but it's free).
I also found this column interesting in light of our recent discusions on the death penalty. A man discusses his experiences as his wife was dying of cancer and compares it to euthanasia in pets and the lethal injection for criminals facing the death penalty.
"We have mercy on pets and those who cruelly murder. But not for the Nancys."
A thought-provoking comparison, to say the least.
posted by Melanie @ 2:25 PM
1 Comments:
Two comments:
1) Louie the Cowman clearly dominates. Moo, I say, Moo!
2) Hear, hear to Chief Justice Sears (rhyme not intentional)! A few months back I was talking to a social services worker who confirmed what Sears is saying here: children of parents in a 'nonbinding' relationship get the worst of it when the relationship breaks up and there's no legal remedy.
There's also the overall problem of increasing illegitimacy, which is simply awful for society in the long run. At the risk of losing even more libertarian credibility, let me simply say this: society is not composed of individuals, it is composed of the relationships between and among individuals. We cannot merely put 300 million people in a room (as it were), call it a 'society,' and expect it to work.
In this sense, African-American urban poverty and white rural poverty stem from the same source: isolation from society's relationships. During the Jim Crow era, blacks - out of dire necessity - had to form an alternate society. As enfranchisement and civil rights came, many of the best and brightest sought integration into 'mainstream' (please pardon the term) society. This seems to have had the unfortunate effect of leaving behind the rest of the old African-American society to the benefit of a few. In the case of white, rural poverty, you can say that many of these people have never had the connection with the larger society either.
I'm glad Boudicca brought this to our attention, and will definitely keep my eye on Georgia's Legislature.
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