Patrick Dostie, the state’s nuclear safety inspector, has been coming to work every day to a job he’s held since 1989 even though the position was eliminated in 2005 by the Legislature.

Lawmakers were set again this year to eliminate the job, along with the position of nuclear safety adviser, a post currently held by former Senate President Charles Pray.

The thinking was that with the Maine Yankee nuclear power plant closed and officially decommissioned, the two jobs and the $276,000 budget that supports them, aren’t necessary.

But Dostie, or at least his post, has been resurrected again thanks to late-night maneuvering by Sen. John Martin, D-Aroostook, who put the position back in through an amendment to the supplemental budget.

Shining the light of publicity on self-entitled government cockroaches, so voters can whack them with the rolled-up newspaper of their displeasure.

Man, I LOVE metaphors.

Big whoop, right?

Each coin will sell for $10, with all of the proceeds going directly to the US Boy Scouts. This, I have a problem with.

Now before I get flamed, let me explain. First off, I was a Boy Scout, way back when, made it to Life Scout, got lots of Merit Badges and Skill Awards, and was the Camp Cook. I loved being in the Scouts and had a blast. Of course, this was also before the Religious Nuts got a hold of the Scouts and decided that politicizing the Scouts for God and Heterosexuality was more important than just giving boys a place to be boys and burn off all their youthful energy.

However, my disappointment with the direction the Scouts have taken aside, using an act of congress to spend money to mint coins, coins that are legal tender, for public sale in order to raise money for a private organization is not what I pay those idiots to do! And that is not even taking into account the attitude that the Scouts are now a defacto religious organization. Even that aside, why is our government asking the Treasury to act as a fund raiser for the US Boy Scouts? Why not the Girl Scouts, or the Boys & Girls Clubs, or Big Brothers & Big Sisters, or etc?

Are the US Boy Scouts that hard up for cash? Do the Girl Scouts get overlooked because Cookie Sales are a better fund raiser than Popcorn and Pizza (or is it because the Girl Scouts got smart and stayed away from politicizing themselves and damaging their public image)? Does an organization serving children need to make it to their first centennial before they get a coin and the millions of dollars it will generate?

What Say You All?

The Florida Senate today debated and passed an amendment to impose a $60 fine on Truck Nutz, the novelty vehicle adornment attached to trailer hitches that resemble the dangling southern end of a northbound bull.

The popular accessory to truck trailer hitches is on its way to being subject to a fine in a bill debated — albeit delicately — on the Senate floor Thursday.

Although lawmakers said they’re widespread in North Florida, the bill says that displaying reproductions of bull genitalia — one version has the brand name Truck Nutz — on a vehicle or trailer can lead to a $60 fine, charges of a moving violations, and points against a driver license.

The ban was proposed by Sen. Cary Baker, R-Eustis, who said the items are “not appropriate,” even though he sees a lot of them in his district.

You know what?  I am not paying you people to debate moronic crap like this.  Our utility bill was over $200 last month because our local utility company tacks on a fuel charge roughly equal to our entire consumption charge for the month…yes, that’s right, doubling our actual utility bill.  How about we debate THAT instead of some moronic redneck vehicle accoutrement, eh?

This one is going to Glenn Beck, feel free to use any or all of it for yourself. Feel free to send it to other media members.

Mr. Beck:

I write on a small blog called The Line Is Here (http://thelineishere.org). I did a piece a few weeks ago about a New Mexico woman named Elaine Huguenin, a small business woman with a mom and pop type photography studio. When she refused to accept work from a lesbian couple based on her religious principles, the couple sued her for violating New Mexico’s anti-discrimination law: a law set up not to keep a business from accepting work they didn’t agree with, but to protect employees from discrimination in the workplace.

See my post about the matter here: http://thelineishere.org/?p=121

Since that post was written, new developments have occurred that I think go above and beyond poor judgment by the plaintiff. Mrs. Huguenin has just been ordered to pay for the plaintiff’s legal fees. Please see the following posts from other sites:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/article/20080225/CULTURE/256068479/1015

http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2008_04_06-2008_04_12.shtml#1207764182

http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2008/04/christian-photographer-fined-6600-for.html (this one actually shows the judgment that was handed down.)

What this boils down to is this: one of the lesbian couple, Vanessa Willock, is currently an EEO Compliance Representative with the Office of Equal Opportunity where she investigates claims of discrimination and sexual harassment. She is also a member of the Diversity Committee at University of New Mexico. I feel that her status as a member of the EEO Office as well as her being a member of the Diversity Committee gave her a feeling of righteous indignation that is completely unfounded. This woman then used her position, or possibly her influence, to bring this “case” to one of those Human Rights Commissions that seem to think that they have the right to tell decent, hard working people how to live their lives. The same kind of Human Rights Commission that is trying to bring down Mark Steyn in Canada.

Beyond the public embarrassment of being dragged in front of the “Commission” for two days of testimony, and beyond the public flogging Mrs. Huguenin was forced to endure for her religious beliefs, this woman has now been ordered to pay the attorney fees OF THE WOMAN WHO MADE THE COMPLAINT. Seriously, it isn’t like Mrs. Huguenin had a contract or accepted money then backed out because she found out on the day of the event that the couple was gay, which could have conceivably “ruined” the brides’ day. She was contacted via email and simply made the mistake of saying “no” due to her religious beliefs, not malice. Since when does a business not have the right to refuse a client that they feel isn’t in line with their business plan?

It would be patently unfair and unethical to force a photographer to produce images she was uncomfortable with if they were pornographic or illicit or even went against her political beliefs; but since this is an attack on her religious beliefs does that mean it is fair game? Is it even remotely fair to tell a woman who has been dragged through the mud that she has to now pay for the rope that dragged her?

I write to you tonight in the hopes that you can use your voice to bring this travesty of justice to a larger audience. I would hope that your voice, and your audience, could tell this poor woman that those of us who still believe in liberty feel that justice has not been served in her case. I would hope that you might even be able to start a fund for her legal defense and encourage her to take this ridiculous case to a higher court. (Possibly with a different legal team since her current one has failed to protect her, although since I wasn’t in the kangaroo pen with them, that could just be an uniformed opinion. I don’t claim to know all the details, but it seems that her legal aid tried a defense based on the First Amendment, but perhaps a better tack would have been case law as expressed in the findings of West Va. Bd. of Ed. v. Barnette.)

For the record, I listen to your show and share many of your beliefs about government and liberty, but just so you aren’t caught by surprise, I have publicly espoused my atheism. I mention that so you could see that even though I do not share your faith or even that of Mrs. Huguenin, I still feel that her rights to freely express HER beliefs have been violated.

You can contact me via the email address ted.bronson@thelineishere.org or tedbronson@gmail.com.

A nice-sounding bill called the “Global Poverty Act,” sponsored by Democratic presidential candidate and Senator Barack Obama, is up for a Senate vote on Thursday and could result in the imposition of a global tax on the United States. The bill, which has the support of many liberal religious groups, makes levels of U.S. foreign aid spending subservient to the dictates of the United Nations.

As I explained just a few moments ago to the nice young men answering the phones for Sens. Martinez and Nelson, the UN is incapable of managing its way out of a wet paper sack, and in no way should be placed in charge of any currency more liquid than Monopoly money.

Feel free to find your own Senators and voice your opinions to their nice phone-answering young men. You can just hear the clean-cut ooze down the line, I tell you.

For extra-bonus badness points, secreted in this bit of junk are these tasty nuggets:

In addition to seeking to eradicate poverty, that declaration commits nations to banning “small arms and light weapons” and ratifying a series of treaties, including the International Criminal Court Treaty, the Kyoto Protocol (global warming treaty), the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Ah, you crazy, idealstic kids. You really know nothing of human nature at all, do you.

The one thing that the government does well is punish criminals. The one thing they screw up more than anything is accurately define “crime”

Police in San Mateo County, California apparently first spent months investigating the small-stakes poker game. From this firsthand account, it looks like a couple of the officers were playing regularly for several weeks before sending in the SWAT team, guns drawn, last week. If California is like most states (and I believe it is), a poker game is only illegal if the house is taking a rake off the top. In this case, it looks like that “rake” was the $5 the extra the hosts asked from each buy-in to pay for pizza and beer.

Police also took a 13-year-old girl out of the home, away from her parents, and turned her over to child protective services. In addition to the charge of running an illegal gambling operation, the hosts are also charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Good thing the poor girl was saved before slouching toward an inevitable life of crime.

A crime has a victim and the victim in this story is who, exactly? Nobody showed up and found out that they had to pay some money for beer and food and were held against their will, were they? Did the homeowners pick-pocket their guests?

No, I think you’ll find that it is the State who will claim to be the victim here. You see, any time money changes hands, the Government considers a portion of that transaction to be theirs (call it a “rake”). When the government doesn’t get its share of taxes, it calls foul and does its best to extract the money via other methods.

Of course, this will be spun as “protecting the citizenry from gambling”. The nanny-statists will drool over the chance to prevent people from spending their money as they see fit. They’ll attach ridiculous possibilities and worst-case-scenarios as an excuse to keep that little girl away from her family. And in the process, they will expand their power.

I don’t do poker much. Usually when we play, it’s $20 for buy in, set limits on the pot, then we chip in whatever we can for food & beer, just like this story. And yes, I tend to lose all $20. But I do so voluntarily, and have a blast doing it. It used to be evangelicals that got their panties in a wad if someone was happy, now that role has been switched over to our “betters” in the government.

It’s sad to think that the police department considered a raid on a private poker game to be more important that using that same amount of energy going after the real criminals in our society. Instead, they’re going to ruin many lives (including that little girl’s) to save those same lives. And hey, the money they confiscated from the party? Bonus!