“It causes a lot of people, including me, great distress to see judges use the authority that they have been given to make raw political or ideological decisions. And no one, including those judges, including the judges on the United States Supreme Court, should be surprised if one of us stands up and objects. I believe this increasing politicalization of the judicial decision-making process at the highest levels of our judiciary have bred a lack of respect for some of the people that wear the robe. And that is a national tragedy.

“I don’t know if there is a cause-and-effect connection but we have seen some recent episodes of courthouse violence in this country. Certainly nothing new, but we seem to have run through a spate of courthouse violence recently that’s been on the news and I wonder whether there maybe some connection between the perception in some quarters on some occasions where judges are making political decisions yet are unaccountable to the public, that it builds up and builds up and builds up to the point where some people engage in—engage in violence.”

– U.S. Senator and member of the Senate Judiciary Committee John Cornyn (R-Texax), speaking on the floor of the Senate on Tuesday.

Yes, folks, you read that correctly—that is a United States Senator suggesting that violence against judges is a justifiable and understandable result of “judicial activism.”

UPDATE: Or, as Matthew Yglesias puts it, “I can’t really say what game John Cornyn thinks he’s playing by speculating out loud on the floor of the U.S. Senate that maybe judges wouldn’t get killed so often by demented rapists if they were more willing to bow to conservative theories of constitutional exegesis.”

Google maps has added satellite imagery. Here is the first house I remember living in when I was kid.

I forsee wasting a good deal of time today playing with this site.

It seems the Department of Health and Human Services has put up a new website. According to the homepage, “4Parents.gov is a guide to help you and your teen discuss important, yet difficult, issues about healthy choices, sex and relationships.” The page of conversation-starters is rather amusing, but once I was finished laughing, I re-read their suggestions, and found a couple of them somewhat disturbing, particularly:

I heard a commercial on the radio about always being prepared by having condoms. Do you or your friends think that condoms really make sex safe?

and

I was at the store yesterday and ran into Kendrick, Mrs. Jakes’ son. He joined the military after high school. What do you think you want to do when you graduate from high school?

Now, last I checked, the volume of data demonstrating the effectiveness of condoms as a means of preventing pregnancy and the spread of disease could only be classified as humongous, and yet here we have a government agency actively suggesting that they are not, in fact, effective. As to the other suggestion, I can’t help but think that it’s not a coincidence that of all the careers that might have been available to the fictitious Kendrick, he picked the military. Let’s see—war in Iraq not going so well, recruitment numbers are down… why not take advantage of this website to suggest to parents that their kids might join the Army?

From a hightly amusing letter from editors of Scientific American (go here for the full text if you don’t feel like paying):

Good journalism values balance above all else. We owe it to our readers to present everybody’s ideas equally and not to ignore or discredit theories simply because they lack scientifically credible arguments or facts. Nor should we succumb to the easy mistake of thinking that scientists understand their fields better than, say, U.S. senators or best-selling novelists do. Indeed, if politicians or special-interest groups say things that seem untrue or misleading, our duty as journalists is to quote them without comment or contradiction. To do otherwise would be elitist and therefore wrong. In that spirit, we will end the practice of expressing our own views in this space: an editorial page is no place for opinions.