First Libya, Now the Norks

Will George Bush get any credit from his domestic adversaries for this astonishing development?

GENEVA (AP) - North Korea agreed Sunday to account for and disable its atomic programs by the end of the year, offering its first timeline for a process long sought by nuclear negotiators, the chief U.S. envoy said.

Look for this story to sink with scarcely a trace into the abyssal deeps of political journalism. The media line is that Bush is the worst president in history, and anything which runs counter to that line is merely an anomaly to be ignored.

This worst president in history, however, has liberated more people from oppression and done more to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons to terrorist states than has any other president we've ever had.

You would think that with his spending and his position on illegal immigration, such a man would be a hero to the left. So why isn't he?

Here are the main reasons: He opposes abortion on demand and government funding of stem cell research. He has instituted tax cuts which allow the rich to keep more of their money and which have caused the economy to thrive, and he believes that America should occasionally be willing to use force as a last resort to free people from tyranny. Plus he's a devout Christian and a Republican. Therefore the left despises him. Their hatred would be comical if it weren't so sad.

RLC

Katrina's Cost

Having recently marked the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina some in the media have been pointing to the mess that still remains and even blaming the Bush administration for not doing more to get people back into their homes in places like New Orleans.

Rep. Tom Tancredo (Colo.) has a different view. He recently noted that it's "time the taxpayer gravy train left the New Orleans station" and urged an end to the federal aid to the region. "The amount of money that has been wasted on these so-called 'recovery' efforts has been mind-boggling," said Tancredo, "Enough is enough."

There's more:

Citing administration figures, the lawmaker said that $114 billion has been spent on the effort to rebuild a large stretch of the Gulf Coast after the storm hit New Orleans in August 2005 and claimed more than 1,600 lives.

"At some point, state and local officials and individuals have got to step up to the plate and take some initiative," said Tancredo. "The mentality that people can wait around indefinitely for the federal taxpayer to solve all their worldly problems has got to come to an end."

The lawmaker criticized in particular the amount that has been wasted through fraud and abuse, estimated at $1 billion.

"This whole fiasco has been a perfect storm of corruption and incompetence at all levels," he added.

It's worth noting that Mississippi, which was just as hard hit as Louisianna, seems not to be nearly as far behind the recovery curve as is its neighbor. I wonder how much that has to do with the political leadership in the respective states and the level of corruption in Louisianna.

Larry Kudlow adds to the picture:

Here's a pop quiz: How much money has Uncle Sam spent on New Orleans and the Gulf region since Hurricane Katrina ripped the place apart? I'll give you the answer because you'll never guess it. The grand total is $127 billion (including tax relief, which Tancredo's numbers apparently omitted).

That's right: a monstrous $127 billion. Of course, not a single media story has highlighted this gargantuan government-spending figure. But that number came straight from the White House in a fact sheet subtitled, "The Federal Government Is Fulfilling Its Commitment to Help the People of the Gulf Coast Rebuild."

This is an outrage. The entire GDP of the state of Louisiana is only $141 billion, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. So the cash spent there nearly matches the entire state gross GDP. That's simply unbelievable. And to make matters worse, by all accounts New Orleans ain't even fixed!

You might be asking, Where did all this money go? Well, the White House fact sheet says $24 billion has been used to build houses and schools, repair damaged infrastructure, and provide victims with a place to live. But isn't everyone complaining about the lack of housing?

Perhaps all this money should've been directly deposited in the bank accounts of the 300,000 people living in New Orleans. All divvied up, that $127 billion would come to $425,000 per person! After thanking Uncle Sam for their sudden windfall, residents could head to Southern California and buy homes that are now on sale thanks to the sub-prime mortgage crisis and bid up the sagging house prices in the state.

The fact sheet goes on to say that $7.1 billion went to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to rebuild the levees; that the U.S. Department of Education spent $2 billion on local schools; and that the Laura Bush Foundation for America's Libraries has awarded more than $2.5 million (the pikers). The administration also provided $16.7 billion as part of the largest housing-recovery program in U.S. history.

So the billion-dollar question becomes: Where did the rest of that money go?

Meanwhile, ... New Orleans has earned the distinct honor of becoming the murder capital of the world. The murder rate is 40 percent higher than before Katrina, and twice as high as other dangerous cities like Detroit, Newark, and Washington, D.C.

Think of this: The idea of using federal money to rebuild cities is the quintessential liberal vision. And given the dreadful results in New Orleans, we can say that the government's $127 billion check represents the quintessential failure of that liberal vision. Hillary Clinton calls this sort of reckless spending "government investment." And that's just what's in store for America if she wins the White House next year.

Right from the start, New Orleans should have been turned into a tax-free enterprise zone. No income taxes, no corporate taxes, no capital-gains taxes. The only tax would have been a sales tax paid on direct transactions. A tax-free New Orleans would have attracted tens of billions of dollars in business and real-estate investment. This in turn would have helped rebuild the cities, schools, and hospitals. Private-sector entrepreneurs would have succeeded where big-government bureaucrats and regulators have so abysmally failed.

For our part we're wondering why we're rebuilding New Orleans at all. If global warming projections are correct sea levels will continue to rise over the next hundred years and New Orleans will be harder to protect against flooding than ever before. How many times will that city be rebuilt before we decide to concede southern Louisianna to Mother Nature and stop throwing money at it.

RLC

Essay Contest

Any students out there interested in competing in an essay contest on Allan Bloom's Closing of the American Mind can find details here.

RLC

The Next AG

Rumors have it that the next Attorney General nominee will be Ted Olsen, former Solicitor General and former husband of writer Barbara Olsen who was on the plane that crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11.

Mr. Olsen was instrumental in the legal battle over the 2000 Florida presidential election mess and has been on the short list of possible nominees to fill the last two Supreme Court vacancies.

RLC

So You Like Your Cell-Phone

As if we didn't have enough to worry about word now comes that researchers have shown that cell-phones really do mess with your brain:

Mobile phones can take as little as ten minutes to trigger changes in the brain associated with cancer, scientists claimed yesterday.

They found even low levels of radiation from handsets interfere with the way brain cells divide. Cell division encourages the growth of tumours.

Israeli scientists exposed human and rat cells in a laboratory to low-level radiation at 875 megahertz - a similar frequency to the one used in many mobile phones.

Although the radiation was far weaker than emissions from a typical handset, it began to switch on a chemical signal inside the cells within ten minutes, the researchers report in the Biochemical Journal.

Next thing they'll be telling us that sitting in front of a television screen for more than ten minutes lowers one's IQ by 20 points. Hmmm.

RLC

Got Milk?

If you like creative commercials and don't mind if it actually has nothing to do with the product being advertised try this one.

HT: Hot Air

RLC

Re: Very Odd

One of our posts, Very Odd, was discussed at Telic Thoughts and their post on it turned out to be the third most visited post on their site for the month of August. Their top ten are listed here and their post is titled If ID Is Not Science...

The thought occurred to me that it was probably read more there than it was here.

RLC

The Lessons of History

Peter Wehner provides historical perspective for those despairing over our involvement in Iraq. It's an excellent essay and I highly recommend reading the whole thing. Here's the history lesson:

In the words of the Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Herbert Donald:

"Many Northerners were euphoric at the outbreak of war, confident that the Union with its vast natural resources, its enormous superiority in manufactures, its 300 percent advantage in railroad mileage was bound to prevail. Surely its 20,000,000 inhabitants could easily defeat the 5,000,000 in the Confederacy. Seward thought the war would be over in ninety days. The Chicago Tribune anticipated success 'within two or three months at the furthest,' because 'Illinois can whip the South by herself.' The New York Times predicted victory in thirty days, and the New York Tribune assured its readers 'that Jeff. Davis & Co. will be swinging from the battlements at Washington... by the 4th of July [1861].'"

Then came the First Battle of Bull Run, which shook the confidence of both Lincoln and the Union; and the Second Battle of Bull Run, which threw Lincoln and the Union into a state of near despair. "Alone in his office," the Lincoln biographer Stephen Oates has written, "Lincoln mulled over his oceans of trouble, mulled over the vast uncertainties of this war, and confessed that events had spun out of his control."

"The people are impatient," Lincoln wrote. "[Secretary of the Treasury Salmon] Chase has no money and he tells me he can raise no more; the General of the Army has typhoid fever. The bottom is out of the tub. What shall I do?" Lincoln asked in 1862.

After that came the carnage of Antietam; setbacks in the 1862 midterm elections; and the loss at Fredericksburg. "Disgust with the present government is certainly universal," one man observed. "Even Lincoln himself has gone down at last. Nobody believes in him anymore."

"We are now on the brink of destruction," Lincoln himself said. "It appears to me the Almighty is against us, and I can hardly see a ray of hope."

By early July 1864, Professor Donald writes, "a visitor found Lincoln deeply depressed. War weariness was spreading, and demands for negotiations to end the killing were becoming strident." Calls for General Grant's resignation (McClellan had long since been replaced) were common - and so were discussions of replacing Lincoln on the Republican presidential ticket. "From all corners of the Union came waves of indignation against Lincoln," according to Oates, "that he could sanction such senseless carnage, that he could put a butcher like Grant in command."

High casualties among Union soldiers, Grant's impasse at Petersburg, and weakening resolve in the North led Lincoln to issue a blind memorandum to his Cabinet members on August 23, 1864, saying that "it seems exceedingly probable that this administration will not be reelected." If that had happened, Lincoln would today rank among our least successful presidents.

But then General Sherman gave President Lincoln all that he needed. "Atlanta is ours, and fairly won," Sherman wired Lincoln in the aftermath of Sherman's occupation of Atlanta. Lincoln went on to win re-election on November 8, and a week later General Sherman began his march to the sea. After that came the capture of Petersburg and the occupation of Richmond. General Lee finally surrendered at Appomattox Courthouse on April 9, 1865. The Civil War was over, the slaves were freed, the union was preserved - and more than 620,000 lives had been lost in a nation of 31 million. A war of equal magnitude today would kill roughly six million Americans.

Was the Civil War worth the effort, worth the cost, worth the carnage? For most people today, the question is essentially rhetorical; after all, the president whose tenure was consumed by the war has his face chiseled in granite on Mt. Rushmore. But if you had asked Americans in the North (let alone in the South) the same question in 1862, or 1863, or 1864 - or even asked them that question in the aftermath of the surrender of the Confederacy, when reconstruction was going poorly and the wounds of the Civil War were still deep and fresh - many people would have said the war was senseless, the slaughter unbearable, and the conflict should be stopped, come what may.

Yet Lincoln, who made significant errors in the war, always understood the stakes of the struggle. He made adjustments along the way even as he refused to bend on the moral meaning of the Declaration and the need to preserve the Union. Eventually the war was redeemed and America was made whole.

"Here was the greatest and most moving chapter in American history," according to the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Bruce Catton, "a blending of meanness and greatness, an ending and a beginning. It came out of what men were, but it did not go as men had planned."

We do well to keep this history in mind and to meditate upon its lessons.

RLC

Should He Have Been Suspended?

Jason sent along this story, which touches a pet peeve of mine. Let's read the story first:

A high school student who tricked football fans from a crosstown rival into holding up signs that together spelled out, "We Suck," was suspended for the prank, students said.

Kyle Garchar, a senior at Hilliard Davidson High School in suburban Columbus, said he spent about 20 hours over three days plotting the trick, which was captured on video and posted on the video-sharing Web site YouTube. He said he was inspired by a similar prank pulled by Yale students in 2004, when Harvard fans were duped into holding up cards with the same message.

At the end of the video, Garchar wryly thanks the 800 Hilliard Darby High School supporters who raised the cards at the start of the third quarter during last Friday's football game. "It couldn't have been done without you," reads the closing frame of the video.

Garchar, 17, created a grid to plan how the message would be spelled out once fans in three sections held up either a black or white piece of construction paper. Directions left on stadium seats instructed fans to check that the number listed on their papers matched their seat numbers. Darby supporters were told the message would read "Go Darby."

"It was tedious," Garchar said. "I didn't really think it was going to work."

But it did, and everyone at Davidson has been talking it ever since, said Jordan Moore, a junior. "That was the ultimate in-your-face," he said. "I think it was ingenious."

Davidson Principal John Bandow had told students that he expected them to show sportsmanship at the game, which Darby won 21-10.

Bandow gave Garchar three days of in-school suspension and banned him from extracurricular activities for a semester, the students said. Two Darby students who helped Garchar received the same punishment after the principals from both schools spoke by phone.

What, if anything, did this kid do wrong that he got suspended? Suppose the sign had read "Darby Stinks" or "Go Davidson" would that have earned him a suspension? It shouldn't have, but nevertheless, I agree with his principal that the message Garcher chose to use crossed the line of propriety.

Despite the fact that the word "suck" has gained wide currency in our degraded and depauperate culture, and despite the fact that most people who use it are oblivious to its meaning, it really is a vulgarism etymologically derived from references to fellatio. As such it's as sleazy as the word with which it rhymes and should have no place in public discourse. Davidson's principal was right to send the message that that kind of language won't be tolerated under the auspices of his school.

Too few of our adminstrators are willing to fight against the debasement of society by our popular entertainment culture, and it's refreshing to find one that is.

Now, I wonder if Davidson's principal is doing anything about the growing eroticization of cheerleading at high school football games.

I know. I have to lighten up.

UPDATE: You can see video here.

RLC

Good Question

Granville Sewall poses a simple yet telling question to Darwinists:

In any debate on Intelligent Design, there is a question I have long wished to see posed to ID opponents: "If we DID discover some biological feature that was irreducibly complex, to your satisfication and to the satisfaction of all reasonable observers, would that justify the design inference?" (Of course, I believe we have found thousands of such features, but never mind that.)

If the answer is yes, we just haven't found any such thing yet, then all the constantly-repeated philosophical arguments that "ID is not science" immediately fall. If the answer is no, then at least the lay observer will be able to understand what is going on here, that Darwinism is not grounded on empirical evidence but a philosophy.

The "ID is not science" arguments would fall because if the answer is yes then there is a test to which ID can be put and have the theory confirmed. At the same time such a find would falsify the Darwinian view that only physical processes are at work in producing biological structures.

If the Darwinist answers no then he is acknowledging that no amount of evidence would ever count against his theory. If that's the case then the theory is simply not subject to being falsified and is a metaphysical, rather than a scientific, hypothesis.

I'm sure that were this question posed to the critics of ID they'd try to duck it somehow rather than answer it forthrightly. They'd pretty much have to.

RLC

Hypocrisy and Senator Craig

Like you, probably, I've heard a number of people criticize Sen. Larry Craig for his homosexual advances in an airport restroom, not on the basis of their homosexual nature or of the sleaziness of soliciting anonymous sex in a public restroom but because, they allege, Craig is a "hypocrite."

The charge of hypocrisy is levelled on the grounds that Craig, though presumably gay or bisexual, is politically opposed to both gay marriage and gays serving in the military.

I guess what I'm having trouble with is figuring out why his opposition to these policies is hypocritical just because he himself is gay. Lots of women oppose having women serve in the military. Does that make them hypocritical? Lots of blacks oppose affirmative action for blacks. Are they hypocrites? Indeed, there are open gays who oppose gay marriage, and no one calls them hypocrites.

Just because someone is gay how does it follow that he's being inconsistent if he opposes a policy that purportedly benefits gays? Lots of people who smoke or drink tell their children it's wrong to do it, and we say that it's good that they try to persuade their children not to follow their example.

Having said this I do think that Craig may qualify as a hypocrite but not for his opposition to either gay marriage or gay soldiers.

A hypocrite is someone who condemns or criticizes others for doing what he himself does. Craig took some public shots at President Clinton back in the 90's for his illicit dalliance with Monica Lewinsky while the Senator was allegedly unfaithful to his own wife with other men. If so, that's hypocritical, but let's have no more of this talk that just because someone is gay they must as a matter of logical necessity favor whatever rights other gays demand.

RLC

Of Pit Bulls and Gamecocks

A student of mine raises an interesting question. Is there a significant moral difference between dog-fighting, such as Michael Vick was involved in, and cockfighting which is still legal in some American states? I know dogs are mammals and gamecocks are birds, but is that a significant difference?

Would there have been the same outrage expressed over the Vick episode had he been fighting roosters instead of dogs?

And if cockfighting is just as reprehensible as dog-fighting doesn't it seem at least a little odd that Michael Vick will pay for the rest of his life for dog-fighting while the University of South Carolina glorifies cockfighting by adopting the gamecock as its mascot?

I'm not sure I know the answers to these questions. I'm just asking them.

RLC

Battle for the Belts

Bill Roggio provides a helpful update for us on the fighting in the belts around Baghdad in Iraq.

RLC

God's Warriors and Pink Elephants

Nathaniel Peters at First Things comments on CNN's recent three part series titled God's Warriors hosted by Christiane Amanpour. The hype for the series suggested that the three monotheistic religions, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity shared a common desire to impose a theocracy by whatever means necessary, but if that was their intent the producers must have been at a loss as to what to do with footage like this described by Peters:

Toward the end of the final segment of God's Warriors, Christiane Amanpour speaks to Mindy Peterson, a teenage organizer for Teen Mania, the evangelical organization that hosted the BattleCry rally against which the San Francisco protestors railed [see the opening paragraph of Peter's essay]. Peterson is, she says, the product of an affair between her mother and an abortionist who wanted to have her aborted. Arguments over abortion, therefore, are more than political theory for Mindy Peterson.

After the San Francisco protest, Peterson told Amanpour, "These people think that our war is against other people. They think that our war is against man. And our war isn't. Our war's against . . . the pain in teenagers' hearts, like depression, alcoholism. Those things that-that are, like, tearing our teenagers apart."

Mindy Peterson's words suggest that it means something very different to be God's warrior for Christians in the United States. In the Middle East, the war is against flesh and blood; in America, the war is against principalities and powers.

Indeed. Despite the stereotype promoted by the left of militant, violent Christians it's amazingly hard to actually find a specimen of one. Most Christians believe that the best way to change society is through changing people's hearts, not by lopping off their heads.

Someday, perhaps, the secular media will realize that they have been duped by their own propaganda and that the ubiquitous theocratic Christian boogeymen of their imaginations are in fact about as common as pink elephants.

RLC

Scandalous Deviancy

The New York Times is calling Republican Senator Larry Craig's foot-tapping and hand waving solicitations in an airport rest room a sex "scandal," and liberal talk host Chris Matthews, perhaps inadvertently letting his true feelings rise to the fore, labeled the Senator a "sexual deviant."

Now I agree with both of these assessments, Craig's behavior is both scandalous and deviant. What I can't figure out, though, is why liberal papers like the Times and liberal commentators like Matthews would use such descriptors. According to the liberal catechism the only sexual acts that are out of bounds or scandalous are those which are nonconsensual and Craig's clearly didn't meet that criterion.

Moreover, liberals like Matthews aren't supposed to be so narrow-minded, intolerant and judgmental as to think that gay sexual behavior is deviant. It's enough to make one think that perhaps the attitudes of at least some liberals concerning homosexual beahvior are really just a hypocritical pose.

Of course, Craig is a Republican so perhaps that makes his behavior "deviant" even though it wouldn't be deviant if it were engaged in by someone like, say, Massachusetts Democrat Barney Frank. One has to keep in mind that much depends upon whether there is an R or a D after a politician's name in deciding these matters.

At any rate, I wonder if Matthews will stand by his assessment that common homosexual practice is deviant after he gets the memo instructing him to reread the catechism and to recant his heresy.

RLC

Atheism's Top Five

John Wilson at Christianity Today offers up his top five books on atheism. Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, and the rest aren't on it.

RLC

No-Risk Borrowing

A lot of Americans live in modest homes because that's all they can afford. They've chosen to live within their means and to be financially responsible, but a lot of other Americans have chosen instead to go into serious debt to buy homes they couldn't really afford. They signed on to variable rate mortgages, knowing full well that the rates they were paying were going to go up. As the New York Times put it:

Banks and mortgage lending companies developed an array of subprime mortgages for people with poor credit and exotic loans that allowed people to borrow without putting any money down, or to qualify for mortgages without documenting their incomes.

When the inevitable happened and the rates were raised the borrowers found themselves unable to meet their payments and the lending institutions that made the risky loans have been forced to foreclose and are take the houses.

Now Congressional Democrats and others are demanding that taxpayers bail these people out. Those who chose to live within their means all their lives are being told that they should essentially pay for the houses of those who live above their means, many of whom should never have been permitted to buy a house, or at least not one as expensive as they did buy, in the first place.

This may be the sort of thing Democrats do, but it's hard to see the justice in it. It's as if your neighbor overextended himself on his credit card and is now going house to house demanding that everyone else pay off his debt.

Michelle Malkin has details here.

RLC

Plan of Attack

A pair of Brits have written the most extensive analysis of American preparations for a war against Iran that I have seen. Here are some of the chief points:

Any attack is likely to be on a massive multi-front scale but avoiding a ground invasion. Attacks focused on WMD facilities would leave Iran too many retaliatory options, leave President Bush open to the charge of using too little force and leave the regime intact.

US bombers and long range missiles are ready today to destroy 10,000 targets in Iran in a few hours.

US ground, air and marine forces already in the Gulf, Iraq, and Afghanistan can devastate Iranian forces, the regime and the state at short notice.

Some form of low level US and possibly UK military action as well as armed popular resistance appear underway inside the Iranian provinces or ethnic areas of the Azeri, Balujistan, Kurdistan and Khuzestan. Iran was unable to prevent sabotage of its offshore-to-shore crude oil pipelines in 2005.

Nuclear weapons are ready, but most unlikely, to be used by the US, the UK and Israel. The human, political and environmental effects would be devastating, while their military value is limited.

Israel is determined to prevent Iran acquiring nuclear weapons yet has the conventional military capability only to wound Iran's WMD programmes.

The attitude of the UK is uncertain, with the Brown government and public opinion opposed psychologically to more war, yet, were Brown to support an attack he would probably carry a vote in Parliament. The UK is adamant that Iran must not acquire the bomb.

The US is not publicising the scale of these preparations to deter Iran, tending to make confrontation more likely. The US retains the option of avoiding war, but using its forces as part of an overall strategy of shaping Iran's actions.

There's much more to the article than this and those interested in our relations with Iran should read the whole thing.

Other sources have added another layer of intigue to the above scenario by suggesting that an American attack against Iran may be coupled with an Israeli attack against Syria.

There's an enormous risk of catastrophe in such plans. Yet the risk of allowing Iran to develop nuclear weapons is even worse. Yet, the world sits by refusing to do anything much to punish Iran for its nuclear weapons program. If diplomacy fails and Iran doesn't stand down, as Libya and perhaps North Korea have done, if the only alternative to allowing Iran to have nuclear weapons is to take out their weapons facilities along with their military and their government, the U.S. will surely be seen as the bad guy for doing attempting it. Even so, the fault will lie not with us but with the Iranians, and the Russians, Chinese, and Europeans who tried to profit from the Iranian quest for military power. These nations all put financial gain above doing what was necessary for stability and peace and they will have deserved the opprobrium of all civilized people.

RLC

Alberto Gonzalez

Paul Mirgenhoff at Power Line articulates my thoughts on the resignation of Alberto Gonzales:

I've never been a fan of Gonzales, but I can't help feeling sorry for him. The "scandal" that led to his demise -- the firing of the U.S. attorneys -- appears to involve no wrongdoing on his part. Moreover, the underlying decisions and process appear to have been the product of the White House, not Gonzales. His defense of the decisions was hardly stellar, but if I'm correct, he was handicapped by the fact that they were not really his decisions.

Gonzales's only real offense seems to have been mediocrity. But mediocrity in an Attorney General is nothing new (think Janet Reno), and any blame for this occurrence properly attaches to the White House.

Often the biggest favor a president can do for a friend is to not appoint him or her to very high office.

I didn't care for Gonzales because he really didn't seem enthusiastic about controlling our borders. His justice department was tougher on border patrol officers than it was on illegal aliens. Even so, the firing of the District Attorneys, the offense for which he was hounded by Democrats, struck us as a tempest in a teapot given that Pres. Clinton fired ninety three DAs and no one made much fuss. Clinton's Attorney General, Janet Reno, gave the go-ahead to assault the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas resulting in the immolation of dozens of women and children, and even then Democrats were relatively mute. She then ordered the seizure and deportation to Cuba of Elian Gonzalez a child immigrant who should have been allowed to stay in this country if anyone should, and again the Democrats were silent.

It took the firing of nine District Attorneys by a Republican AG to rouse their outrage.

Gonzales, a former real-estate attorney, never should have been appointed to the office he held, but the Democratic obsession with tarnishing the careers and reputations of everyone they can in the Bush administration really does make them look small.

RLC

Gender-Neutral Loos

Jason sends us word that the University of Vermont is providing gender neutral bathrooms for its students and staff:

[These are designed] to accommodate transgendered people, as well as those with some disabilities. The four single bathrooms in the new Dudley H. Davis Center - each with a toilet, sink, shower and lockable door - cost about $2,500 a piece to build. Their wall signs identify each as "gender neutral restroom."

"It's about inclusivity and accessibility and the importance of meeting all people's needs, not just a few," said Annie Stevens, assistant vice president for student and campus life.

"Not just a few"? I would think that 98% of the students on campus would be adequately accommodated by traditional rest rooms.

What's next, we wonder. Perhaps separate bathrooms for the obese who find the usual facilities a bit too confining would be a good idea, and maybe, if it's about "inclusivity," the University might also consider luxury accommodations for those who are accustomed to them and standard facilities for those who are not.

It's easy to poke fun at the things the politically correct deem important, but seriously - does the University really suppose that gay and lesbian students who are not "out" will want to be seen using the new facilities? If they're reluctant to use them, and they doubtless would be if they're keeping their orientation secret, how many transgendered students on Vermont's campus will ultimately benefit from these $2500 rest rooms?

RLC