It’s not a fun disease to have. In my case, I’ve had to have two surgeries which removed upwards of two feet of small intestine.

With Crohn’s disease, when you have to go, YOU HAVE TO GO. You don’t get much time to figure out where the nearest restroom is.

I think I have some “authority” to say what I’m going to say here.

There’s a new law in Illinois called “Ally’s Law.” It came about because Ally Bain was in an Old Navy store with her mom when she had to go. The management of the store refused to let her use the employee restroom. The resulting law forces businesses with employee only restrooms to allow customers to use the restroom if certain conditions are met.

The part of me that suffers from Crohn’s disease says “yeah, about time”. The part of me that believes in freedom says “bad law.”

I think the freedom loving part of me wins in this situation. Here’s why: the management of that Old Navy store made a bad decision; there’s no doubt about that. They could easily have allowed Ally, who was obviously in distress, the use of the restroom. Instead, they didn’t, and now we have another law that tries to force common sense onto businesses.

Yeah, I feel for the girl in this situation; I’ve been there (I had to stop at a stranger’s house one time to use the bathroom). What they should have done was let Old Navy know how bad this decision was, not try to get a law passed to fix it. A publicity campaign would have been better than getting another law passed. Imagine how embarrassed the manager of that Old Navy would have been if his name had been in a news story that related the situation.

What needs to happen is that the public needs to be made more aware of this disease. The last thing we need is to go running to the government for a fix. I find it ironic that in the video on the page I linked to above the mother says that her daughter will overcome the disease no matter where she goes. No, now whenever her daughter feels like she’s owed something because she has this awful disease, her daughter will use government as a first resort.

I’m sorry, but part of having Crohn’s disease is having “restroom awareness”. Her mother failed her when she didn’t know where the nearest public restroom was. Sure, Old Navy could have stepped up and helped, but they weren’t obligated to (at that time).

Now a version of that law is making its way across other states, mine included. Despite the fact that it could possibly help me a some point in the future, I’m against it. Government shouldn’t be used this way.

Click here to view the embedded video.

It’s amazing that someone so young is able to put into words that a lot of us think about.

H/T: Stand to Reason via Caffeinated Thoughts via Wizbang

Click here to view the embedded video.

H/T: Bear Creek Ledger

How do I know this? Well, my mayor, Karl Dean, has as much told me this. “This is a tremendous opportunity for the city of Nashville to  demonstrate its commitment to the environment on a global scale,” he says.

Seems that Nashville is one of a few cities world wide to be invited to take part the World Wildlife Fund’s Earth Hour. The deal is that at 8:30 pm on the 28th, you turn your lights off for an hour. This supposedly saves a bunch of electricity blah blah blah.

I think last year, around 40,000,000 people supposedly did this, and a whole bunch of carbon was not released into the atmosphere.

I have an idea: if you believe that you’re causing “climate change”, then by all means participate in Earth Hour. But instead of turning off a few lights, you can do something that’s even more immediate to reduce your carbon output: hold your breath. Yes, that’s right. I suggest you hold your breath for an hour so that the carbon dioxide you exhale won’t go into the atmosphere. If you can’t hold your breath for that long, then take a big garbage bag and put it over your head to capture the nasty carbon you exhale.

If 40,000,000 people do that, it will definitely reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the air.

Jack Roush, part owner of several NASCAR teams, has announced that he’s going green! Roush Fenway Racing has “announce[d] their pledge to sustainability and environmental protection”.

I’m so relieved. I thought for sure that global warming climate change was going to destroy the earth, but Roush and his organization have saved the day.

I’m sorry, but if you’re concerned about saving the planet, operating auto racing teams is the last thing you need to be doing.

Two of Roush Fenway’s drivers, Carl Edwards and Greg Biffle, were suckered into are buying “renewable energy credits”. I also am selling renewable energy credits. Send me your money and I’ll go buy a little windmill or maybe some solar cells. Geesh.

Now you may read this and think that I don’t really care about the environment, and you’d be absolutely wrong. But I draw the line at these scams that sell “carbon credits” or whatever so that people can buy them and feel good about themselves.

If you want to invest in renewable energy, then invest in it. Buy stock in a small company that can use the money to figure out how we can be more energy independent. You don’t need a third party to pat you on the back and say “Nice job, you saved the planet (while making me rich off this green scheme)”.

I don’t have a problem with going green per se. But do it for real reasons, not the made up global warming fairy tale. If you want to build a building that takes less energy to heat and cool, great. That’s a perfectly valid reason.

I wonder if there’s any government oversight on these companies that sell “earth shares” or “carbon credits” or “renewable energy credits”? If not, there should be. After all, someone needs to protect idiots from themselves.

Yeah, I know. This all sounds absurd. How can you be harassing someone just by reading? But it happened. It took intervention by F.I.R.E. (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) to get the judgment removed from Keith John Sampson’s record.

F.I.R.E. has released a short documentary about the situation. I highly recommend you take a look at it.

Any government that attempts to guarantee healthcare must also control its costs. The inevitable next step will be to seek to control citizens’ health and their behavior.

If the US government gets its hands on our health care system (more than it does now anyway), it’ll only be a matter of time before they start dictating what you and I can eat and what physical activities we can (or have to) do.

I wonder what those AIDS activists will say when the government starts telling them that the behavior that causes AIDS has to be stopped?

I think I have a corollary to that: Give a man enough fish, and you make him dependant on you for fish.

John Stossel did a segment on 20/20 (not sure when) titled “Freeloaders”. The gist of it is that we’re keeping a segment of society from taking responsibility for themselves by continuing to make it easy for them to avoid that responsibility. How? Homeless shelters and church groups who just give handouts without requiring anything in return, like work, are a couple of examples. Motorists giving money to those folks on the street with “will work for food” signs is another.

I’m as compassionate as the next person. I’m also an easy mark. It’s hard to look someone in the eye who’s out on the street, obviously homeless and hungry, and not give them a buck or two. I’ve done it more times than I can know, all the while knowing in the back of my mind that they’d probably use the money for booze.

The point is, there needs to be a way for truly needy people to get the help they need. But they also need to be made to take responsibility for their situation.

Here’s Stossell’s report.

Using what’s obviously a Lennon impersonator for the voice, and some video tricks that aren’t even as good as 1989’s “collaboration video” between Hank Williams, Sr. and Hank Williams, Jr., they’ve produced the following video:

While the goal of giving one laptop per child may be a credible one, I’d rather have seen Yoko Ono do the spot rather than continue to sully her husband’s image. I’m sure there’s no commercial gain for the Lennon estate involved, but the quality of this commercial diminishes Lennon’s image.

Here’s what’s on the ballot:

A new section numbered 1.08 will be added to Article 1 of the Metropolitan Charter.

The new section shall state the following:

“English is the official language of the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County, Tennessee. Official actions which bind or commit the government shall be taken only in the English language, and all official government communications and publications shall be in English. No person shall have a right to government services in any other language. All meetings of the Metro Council, Boards, and Commissions of the Metropolitan Government shall be conducted in English. The Metro Council may make specific exceptions to protect public health and safety. Nothing in this measure shall be interpreted to conflict with federal or state law.”

They present three reasons to vote against the amendment:

1. It’s needless, because English is already our official language.
2. It will hurt our economy by driving away new jobs and tourism.
3. It will damage our reputation as a friendly city that people want to visit.

All three of these objections to the amendment can be overcome with a little common sense.

1. Yes, Metro council enacted a resolution in January of 2007 making English the official language. But there’s nothing to stop the current council from rescinding that whenever they want. If it’s in the charter, then it’s harder for council to ignore it.
2. The anti-Amendment 1 folks’ web site says that this amendment would make it illegal to speak Japanese to Japanese companies who are considering coming to Nashville. Anyone who’s read the language of the amendment can see that this simply isn’t the case. The contract would certainly have to be in English (surely they don’t expect us to sign a contract in Japanese). They also say this sends a negative and inaccurate message to the world about Nashville. I’d like to see them go to France and expect to see official French government business to be conducted in English.
3. They just say it’ll be bad for tourism and will alienate folks who’ll want to take their money elsewhere. They don’t really give any logical reasoning behind this assumption (and that’s all it is, an assumption). They don’t provide any proof that having Metro Council meetings in English will turn away visitors.

In a nutshell, this anti-English group doesn’t have a logical leg to stand on.

There’s also a second charter amendment up for vote on January 22. Interestingly enough, this same group is against it as well. Upon finding out that little fact, I had to do some more digging. As it turns out, this second charter amendment gives the citizens greater opportunity to propose amendments. So, they’re also against the Nashville citizens having a greater voice in Nashville politics. How Democratic.

I still find it amazing that the United States is seemingly the only country in the world where we’re expected to speak the language of international visitors and emigrants. Whatever happened to “When in Rome…”?