Health officials support genital mutilation

National Institutes of Health officials say circumcision reduces the risk of HIV transmission.

You know what? Removing the penis entirely lowers the risk even more.

Circumcision is a radical prevention for a non-existent problem. When was the last time you heard of any male in America getting HIV through heterosexual sex? Sure, it could happen, but you could be struck by lightning while holding a winning lottery ticket, too.

Mmmmmm.... libertarians

The Republicans lost because they pissed off libertarians?

In the past, our research shows, most libertarians voted Republican—72 percent for George W. Bush in 2000, for instance, with only 20 percent for Al Gore, and 70 percent for Republican congressional candidates in 2002. But in 2004, presumably turned off by war, wiretapping, and welfare-state spending sprees, they shifted sharply toward the Democrats. John F. Kerry got 38 percent of the libertarian vote. That was a dramatic swing that Republican strategists should have noticed. But somehow the libertarian vote has remained hidden in plain sight.

This year we commissioned a nationwide post-election survey of 1013 voters from Zogby International. We again found that 15 percent of the voters held libertarian views. We also found a further swing of libertarians away from Republican candidates. In 2006, libertarians voted 59-36 for Republican congressional candidates—a 24-point swing from the 2002 mid-term election. To put this in perspective, front-page stories since the election have reported the dramatic 7-point shift of white conservative evangelicals away from the Republicans. The libertarian vote is about the same size as the religious right vote measured in exit polls, and it is subject to swings more than three times as large.

Sounds about right. I voted for the douche bag in '04 (though I regret it), and I'm glad the corrupt, big-government Republicans lost in '06.

Read the whole thing. If the Dems restrain their tax-and-spend instincts, they may claim the libertarian vote -- and a national majority -- for years.

Borat update

Borat 1, frat boys 0.

You signed the release, boys. Deal with it.

The difference

The difference between Bush and Clinton?

Bush eavesdrops on terrorists plotting mass murder. Clinton eavesdropped on Princess Di planning her dating schedule.

It's the meat, stupid.

You've heard it here before. You can't be a meat-eating environmentalist and Al Gore, meat-eating hypocrite.

Now the U.N. spends hundreds of thousands of dollars to discover what you already knew: meat is worse for the environment than cars or planes.

Meet the world's top destroyer of the environment. It is not the car, or the plane,or even George Bush: it is the cow.

A United Nations report has identified the world's rapidly growing herds of cattle as the greatest threat to the climate, forests and wildlife. And they are blamed for a host of other environmental crimes, from acid rain to the introduction of alien species, from producing deserts to creating dead zones in the oceans, from poisoning rivers and drinking water to destroying coral reefs.

The 400-page report by the Food and Agricultural Organisation, entitled Livestock's Long Shadow, also surveys the damage done by sheep, chickens, pigs and goats. But in almost every case, the world's 1.5 billion cattle are most to blame. Livestock are responsible for 18 per cent of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming, more than cars, planes and all other forms of transport put together.

Another steak, Al?

Kofi calls it like it is

Kofi Annan: "The U.N. is completely incompetent, impotent, and useless. Who the hell is in charge around here anyway?"

Tom Coburn for King

Historians say that some of George Washington's officers were so impressed with him that they proposed to make him king of the new United States of America. That's how I feel about Senator Tom Coburn right now. He is a solitary voice of integrity and fiscal discipline in a parliament of whores.

I've noted Coburn's stands against pork many times before. Today I noticed what Coburn has done with his Senate web site. He uses it to expose the U.N. wasting U.S. taxpayer dollars to promote itself and to give the Secretary General a $4.3 million apartment upgrade. And what's that on the right side of the page? A banner for Porkbusters, the "grassroots Internet movement whose members have banded together to demand an end to the Congressional spending circus in Washington." This is not business as usual in the clubby, collegial Senate.

If Ted Stevens were dead, he'd turn over in his grave.