Nothing seems to be inspiring me to write much this evening, so I’m just going to post a few links that I found interesting.

I’m generally an Anti-Federalist; I’d much rather we have strong state governments than a strong central, Federal government. Dafydd ab Hugh wrote about an assault on federalism (in the sense that the Federal government was taking over, which would make it the only government) a week or so ago. Megan McArdle touched on the same topic when she was writing about The Moral Hazard of a State Bailout. Both posts are worth reading.

The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education revealed that 73% of would-be teachers failed the mathematics portion of their licensing exam. This wasn’t college level math here — it was elementary level:

The teacher’s licensing exam tested potential teachers on their knowledge of elementary school mathematics. This included geometry, statistics, and probability.

Why would anyone not want the government to run healthcare? They’ve done so well with education. Give it a few years, and government healthcare will involve massively underpaid doctors with a two-to-one (or higher) ratio of (equally over-paid) administrators to doctors. That’s a surefire model for success, as we see here.

I’m pretty up-front about the fact that I used to do an absolutely horrible job with money. I didn’t need a “budget”, I knew, because I was pretty smart and would be able to manage without one. I consistently had overdrafts, I’d put off bills because I couldn’t cover them… My financial life was, in short, an utter ruin. I’m doing much better now, but only because I started formally planning and tracking my spending.

So, it filled me with a great deal of dread when I realized that the Obama budget was created just by spending what they felt like spending, not by implementing any sort of budgeting process.

Yep, this new administration fills me with confidence…

Anyone who’s interested in buying me a gift, say, for my birthday or for Christmas or something, please see here.

Also, I know this is a short post, but there are pictures on the link, and pictures are, as we all know, worth a thousand words.

With Firefly and Chuck under his belt (not to mention a stint on Angel in the last season), Adam Baldwin has to be near the top of most modern geeks’ favorite actors list. This just earns him bonus points:

That beautiful moment was but one of countless expressions of dignity and courage that I witnessed during my participation in this year’s Ride 2 Recovery “Don’t Mess With Texas Challenge” – a 350 mile bicycle ride from Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas to Arlington’s Texas Ranger’s Ballpark, Mar. 30 – Apr. 4, 2009.

Ride 2 Recovery is produced by the Fitness Challenge Foundation, in partnership with the Military and the VA Volunteer Service Office, to benefit Mental and Physical Rehabilitation Programs that feature cycling as the core activity.

When Former Marine John Wordin, R2R’s founder and a world-class cyclist, extended me an invitation I jumped at the opportunity to make a journey with some of America’s heroic Wounded Warriors.

My favorite line in the piece is this, but the whole thing’s worth a read:

As I pulled alongside he barked, “Hey ‘Animal Mother’,” a character I once portrayed, “thanks for coming… I don’t think too many of those guys in Hollywood would do this. But that’s okay,” he sang out, “don’t apologize for them. They’re the ones missing out!”

The “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, put in place during Bill Clinton’s Presidency, never made a lot of sense to me. Why does a person’s sexuality matter when it comes to putting his (or her) life on the line to defend this country?

These are the sort of issues that highlight the fact that I’m a right-leaning libertarian, not a “conservative”. I’m kind of on the outside on the gay marriage debate^[a], and I absolutely believe that anyone who wishes to serve this country should be allowed to do so — and they should be allowed to be open about their sexual preferences while doing so.

We already have codes of conduct for individuals in the military. As long as a military man (or woman) abides by those codes in public, I really couldn’t care less which gender they prefer to have sex with. Heck, if it comes right down to it, if all the participants are consenting adults, I don’t really care what combination of genders they want to have sex with. They’re serving (and protecting) our country, and, for that, they have my thanks, my respect, and my support.

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Gay Patriot has more on this topic (and he’s better at expressing his thoughts than I am, besides):

I’ve always supported a strong military, opposing restrictions, generally coming from well-meaning liberals, which decrease its effectiveness. And that’s how I see the ban on gays serving openly. It serves no purpose, save to placate those holding on to long discredited prejudices against gay people. And it deprives the military of qualified personnel.

Perhaps I’m more sympathetic to Lt. Choi’s outspokenness on this issue because, as a gay conservative, I see the benefits in being open about one’s sexuality. Coming out in right-of-center confabs has allowed me to see how my conservative confrères react to a gay man in their midst and to show that not all gay people subscribe to the politically correct orthodoxy of the far left.

1. Short version: Honestly, I’d rather we do away with heterosexual marriages and just force everyone into the “civil union” group as far as the law goes, but I could take it or leave it either way. I worry that legalizing gay marriages would open the door for lawsuits against clergymen who refused to perform the ceremonies, but, other than that, I have no problem with the idea of gay marriages being recognized by the government. I draw a very strict line between a legal marriage and a “religious” one. The former has no significance to me at all (if my wife hadn’t insisted that we be legally married, I would’ve been perfectly content just to have a purely religious ceremony), except for the legal benefits that it represents: easy method of defining next of kin, “family” for purposes of hospital visitations, etc.). Why would we want to deny anyone those things?

   Besides, what if two straight men are living together and just happen to be best friends (think Felix and Oscar), and their actual blood families are all gone (or simply estranged)? Why shouldn’t they be allowed to define themselves as family? Maybe this is just the influence that Joss Whedon has had on me over the years — his shows always seem to highlight the idea of building a family that isn’t actually “related” (the Scoobies, or the Serenity crew, for example), after all.

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The trip to Shepherdstown was a little more draining than I’d expected (in part because our arrival home was delayed significantly by a pretty serious downpour), so I didn’t get any posts written for the weekend. I expect to pick up the post-a-day schedule again starting tomorrow.