† Living In These Mad, Mad, Madoff Times: KOVR-TV (Channel 13, Sacramento) reports that 82 percent of Californians recycle – the highest rate in the nation – but it’s not necessarily because they care about the environment: 

 

According to Cal Recycle, a record number of people are saying, “we’ve already bought the soda, so instead of just throwing it away, why not recycle it and make $2 a pound?”

 

From laid-off professionals to college students, a record number of Californians are cashing in on recycled cans and bottles, and they couldn’t have picked a better time.  Sites like recycling industries are paying more for aluminum than they ever have before.

 

KOVR interviews one laid off network hardware engineer who haul in $40 a week by recycling trash – not all of it generated by his own family. “Digging through garbage cans isn’t fun bit you do what you gotta do,” he says.

 

† Raising Cain in SC: Here's what former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) meant at last week's debate in SC when he said "Anybody who would suggest we call a truce on moral issues doesn’t understand what America’s all about”: The Wall Street Journal law blog reports that the CO House killed two state Senate bills that would have repealed laws forbidding adultery and “promoting sexual immorality” by renting a room to unmarried people who have sex. Half the states in the U.S. have criminal adultery or immorality provisions on their books, which does not bode well for Newt Gingrich’s candidacy as he and his wife had “a nontraditional start” to their relationship.

 

Meanwhile, Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson explains to Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) and his libertarian acolytes why being a junkie shouldn’t be a First Amendment right along with the freedom to pray that you and no one in your family ever becomes a junkie (anyone with a lick of common sense can just skip over this and go straight to the next item):

 

This argument is strangely framed: If you tolerate Zoroastrianism, you must be able to buy heroin at the quickie mart. But it is an authentic application of libertarianism, which reduces the whole of political philosophy to a single slogan: Do what you will - pray or inject or turn a trick - as long as no one else gets hurt.

 

Even by this permissive standard, drug legalization fails. The de facto decriminalization of drugs in some neighborhoods - say, in Washington, D.C. - has encouraged widespread addiction. Children, freed from the care of their addicted parents, have the liberty to play in parks decorated by used needles. Addicts are liberated into lives of prostitution and homelessness. Welcome to Paulsville, where people are free to take soul-destroying substances and debase their bodies to support their “personal habits.”

 

But Paul had an answer to this criticism. “How many people here would use heroin if it were legal? I bet nobody would,” he said to applause and laughter. Paul was claiming that good people - people like the Republicans in the room - would not abuse their freedom, unlike those others who don’t deserve our sympathy.

 

The problem, of course, is that even people in the room may have sons or daughters who have struggled with addiction. Or maybe even have personal experience with the freedom that comes from alcohol and drug abuse. One imagines they did not laugh or cheer. …

 

In determining who is a “major” candidate for president, let’s begin here. Those who support the legalization of heroin while mocking addicts are marginal. It is difficult to be a first-tier candidate while holding second-rate values.

 

† The Pubic Library: The New York Public Library’s new pro-porn policy makes it easy for kids to access smut “by simply claiming to be of age on the software and clicking off the filters that block XXX-rated content,” The New York Post reports:

 

[L]ibrary patrons say it happens all the time.

 

"You'll see three or four kids, 13 or 14 years old, and they're all gathered around a computer giggling," said a regular at Brooklyn's central library at Grand Army Plaza.

 

Even kids who don't want to surf for smut can be exposed to it because they can wind up sitting next to porn gazers.

 

"A lot of the times, I see people watching pornography and stuff like that. The man right next to me today was watching naked women," Julio Sosa, 14, told The Post at the Jerome Branch in The Bronx. …

 

Julio, who likes to play video games on the computers, says porn watchers should be booted.

 

"They shouldn't be allowed to watch it," he said. "You don't know if a minor like myself could be walking by."

 

NYPL spokeswoman Angela Montefinise tells the paper that “It is long-standing library policy - here and across the nation - to abide by the First Amendment." The NYPL and the American Library Association pick their free speech battles very idiosyncratically. 

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (third item, Romney: The Sequel): Though former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA) came in second to John McCain in the NH primary in 2008, “many grass-roots voters say they still have doubts” about him, The Washington Times reports:

 

Granite State Republicans have lingering concerns about the Massachusetts health care legislation Mr. Romney signed and doubts about his commitment to pro-life and gun ownership issues. Some even question the depth of his appreciation for the legacy of Ronald Reagan.

 

Gary Brown, a 56-year-old businessman, said he likes Mr. Romney's business experience but gives him the dreaded tag of RINO," or "Republican in name only."

 

John Moscillo, a 39-year-old real estate agent, said Mr. Romney reminds him of a "used-car salesman" and "will tell you what you want to hear."

 

State Rep. Laurie P. Pettengill, a 2008 Romney volunteer who rode the tea party wave into the New Hampshire Statehouse last year, said the former Massachusetts governor "doesn't resonate."

 

"I love the guy, but I just think that the average American doesn't connect with him," Ms. Pettengill said. "I think to a lot of people he says what they want to hear, and it doesn't come from his heart." …

 

Hurting Mr. Romney the most are the lingering concerns from 2008, when he spent much of his time explaining the record he amassed in Massachusetts, one of the most liberal states in the country. …

 

History suggests that Mr. Romney has reasons to be concerned. In mid-May 2007, he topped the Republican primary field in New Hampshire, according to the RealClearPolitics.com average of polls. He held that lead for more than seven months until a week before Republicans went to the polls and delivered a 6-percentage-point victory to Mr. McCain, an Arizonan.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (last item, The Keystone Kops Are Enforcing U.S. Immigration Laws): In the shadow of a ginormous 164-by-94 feet Mexican flag flying from a 300-foot pole at Chamizal National Memorial Park in Juarez - just across the U.S.-Mexico border from El Paso - President Barack Hussein Obama delivered a in which he ridiculed the pleas for border security of U.S. citizens whose lives are blighted – and sometimes cut short - by cross-border drug violence:

 

“The Border Patrol has 20,000 agents, more than twice as many as there were in 2004. … They wanted a fence. Well, the fence is now basically complete.”

 

“Maybe they’ll need a moat. Maybe they want alligators in the moat.”

 

In contrast, when then-Mexican president dedicated the 164-by-94 feet "banderas monumentales" at Chamizal National Memorial Park in 1997, he said:

 

This flag will remind everyone across the border that we are a sovereign nation. It is also a reminder that we are an independent nation ready to defend its people wherever they may be.

 

Too bad we don’t have a president who wants to remind everyone across the border that we are a sovereign nation and that we are ready to defend our people when their people aren’t where they’re supposed to be.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (seventh item, A To Z Approach On Illegal Immigration In AZ): Yet another article about a "blended family" - that is, with members who are illegal aliens and members who are citizens by birth - that presents the consequences of series of choices people knowingly made as a polemic favoring family reunification - on the U.S. side of the border, natch:

 

When Princess Martinez saw her husband for the first time after he was deported, two thoughts crossed her mind: that she loved this man, and that she might have to leave him.

 

The only other option appeared to be moving with their six daughters - who, like Martinez, are all U.S. citizens - across the border to her husband’s new home in Mexico, with its mounting violence and troubled schools.

 

There are more mixed-status families living in the United States than ever before - non-citizens and citizens under the same roof. …

 

Parents are left to choose between dividing the family between two countries, to keep children who are U.S. citizens in U.S. schools, or moving together to Mexico or Central America, where the education is inferior and the language is often foreign to U.S.-born children.

 

But in the border region, there’s a third option, little known elsewhere, and now facing mounting opposition: living in Mexico but crossing the border each day for American schooling.

 

As the immigration debate has intensified and school budgets have tightened, some districts have sent photographers to the border to identify students crossing from Mexico. In Arizona, officials last year sued a district for not adequately vetting the residency of students. …

 

Martinez finally decided to move the family to Matamoros in early 2010 and make the daily journey across the Rio Grande with her daughters so that they could remain in the sleepy Texas school district of Port Isabel, where Martinez worked as a cashier at a grocery store. To evade residency requirements, Martinez registered her daughters for school using a relative’s address. …

 

The routine lasted for about a year. Then, in February, the superintendent called Martinez into her office. The district had learned of her daily cross-border journey. …

 

Martinez decided … to stay in Mexico with her husband. Their daughters would move to Texas with an aunt and grandmother, returning only on weekends.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (eighth item, There’s Many A Slip ‘Twixt The Cup And Lip): A three-judge panel of the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is presiding over two cases seeking to strike down ObamaCare. It doesn’t bode well that two of the judges were appointed by President Barack Hussein Obama (Judges Andre M. Davis and James A. Wynn Jr.) and the third by President Bill Clinton (Judge Diana Gribbon Motz). The Washington Times reports:

 

The judges drilled attorneys for both sides, but seemed skeptical during the two-hour hearing of arguments to invalidate the law made by Liberty University and the state of Virginia. …

 

The question of whether declining to purchase health insurance qualifies as interstate commerce activity that can be regulated by the federal government dominated much of the back-and-forth in the courtroom.

 

In one of the cases argued Tuesday, the federal government is appealing a ruling striking down the law's requirement that individuals buy health insurance or pay a penalty - otherwise known as the "individual mandate." In the other case, Liberty University is appealing another judge's ruling upholding the law.

 

The judges also questioned whether the state VA has standing to sue over the individual mandate, reports The Wall Street Journal:

 

Virginia ties its standing to a 2010 state law that says people in the state can't be forced to pay a penalty for lacking health coverage.

 

"How on earth can there be standing if all it takes is Virginia to pass a statute and for the attorney general to come to court?" asked Judge Andre M. Davis … Judge James A. Wynn Jr. … raised the question of whether the state law was created simply to gain standing.

 

E. Duncan Getchell, Jr., solicitor general of Virginia, ticked off a list of what he called similar cases in which states including Oregon and Wyoming have sued on behalf of residents' interests. "We can't give ourselves standing by declaration," he told the court.

 

"Isn't that exactly what you just did?"Judge Davis shot back [sic]

 

Cuccinelli said he would appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court if the panel rules that the state lacks standing.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (eleventh item, Multiculturalism: Jihad By Other Means): The Wall Street Journal’s Law Blog reports that the American Civil Liberties Union and the Council on American-Islamic Relations filed an appellate brief with the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals to ask that the voter-approved amendment to the OK constitution barring courts in the state from using or citing Shariah law be struck down permanently:

 

Last November, Oklahoma City federal judge Vicki Miles-LaGrange enjoined the Shariah ban from taking effect, noting in her ruling that there was a “substantial likelihood” that the ban violates the Establishment Clause. …

 

“The State of Oklahoma makes no attempt to defend the practice of singling out one religious faith for official condemnation and disability,” the brief states. “Nor could it.”

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (third item, Sleepgroping): Talk about chutzpah! Rabbi Gavriel Bidany’s three of his 11 children have sent written pleas to Magistrate Judge Ramon Reyes asking him to spare their father from prison for molesting a 23-year woman on a March 27 Delta Airlines flight from Tel Aviv to NYC, on the grounds that they will become unmarriageable if their father is imprisoned, The Smoking Gun reports:

 

In a filing Monday, federal prosecutors asked Reyes to sentence Bidany to six months in prison for the misdemeanor conviction. Bidany’s lawyer countered yesterday with a sentencing memorandum requesting that he be spared incarceration and be allowed to serve any probation term imposed in Israel.

 

In remarkably similar missives, 21-year-old brothers Avishar and Ariel and their 22-year-old sister Eden all claimed that they had reached the age where they need to get married and start a family and that this would not be possible without their father’s involvement.

 

Mind you, prosecutors are recommending just six months in prison for the misdemeanor assault conviction so it’s difficult to believe they will be measurably longer of tooth after their father serves his time and returns to Israel. Well, maybe Eden should worry.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (last item, 10 Reasons Michelle Obama Should Be Proud – Really Proud – Of America): This latest installment in The Stiletto Blog’s ongoing series meant to help instill the necessary pride of country in Michelle Obama’s consciousness to enable her to serve as an unofficial ambassador focuses on retirees Marteen and Wiley Blankenship, who “collect disasters the way other retirees collect passport stamps,” The New York Times reports:

 

The minute they got the call from Southern Baptist Convention disaster relief leaders that tornadoes had ripped through the South, the Blankenships grabbed their sleeping bags and sturdy shoes and headed out from their home in Decatur, Ala.

 

Together, they have cleaned up after Hurricane Katrina, mucked out flooded homes in Atlanta and built houses in Sri Lanka. And for the past week they were camped out here in a rural part of northeastern Alabama where 48 lives were lost and thousands more disrupted in the storms.

 

Mr. Blankenship, 70, and Mrs. Blankenship, 69, heated up chili and Salisbury steak, handing it out to people who drove through a church parking lot and packing it into Red Cross vans that carry meals into the remote countryside.

 

And they did it all for God.

 

“I thought when we were done working that I wanted to travel,” said Mrs. Blankenship, a former flight attendant. “I just never thought it’d look like this. But it’s our calling.” …

 

Sitting on their inflatable beds in a Sunday school classroom here on what was their 48th wedding anniversary, they agreed that their main goal was helping people. There is no better feeling, they said.

 

The Blankenships, who pay their own way to the disasters, got their start when they answered a spiritual calling to volunteer for intensive disaster training through their church. But they never figured it would become the defining aspect of their lives.

 

“You think, ‘I’ll go every once in a while,’ ” Mrs. Blankenship said, “but then it gets to you. It becomes part of your life. When something happens, you’ve just got to be there.”

 

The Times reports that with nearly 95,000 volunteers rained to handle disasters like hurricanes and floods” the Southern Baptist disaster ministry is the third largest relief organization in the U.S., after the Red Cross and the Salvation Army.