Another losing issue

Long run, gay rights are yet another losing issue for the Republicans. That's what it is to be conservative: You drag your feet against progress, but it inevitably overwhelms you.

I know this because I was sitting in a car late last night talking with my Republican doubles partner, and she told me that she had been maid of honor at the marriage of two of her softball teammates. It's the one thing she'll admit we Democrats have right.

Granted the younger people I know live in Massachusetts and they're a self-selected set with some selection bias, but they all favor gay rights. As the old normal ages out into cemeteries, the new normal will be gay civil marriage. Though not for some time in Utah, Idaho, and the Deep South...

Safety? I got mine, you've got mining

Looks as though Murray Energy sent its miners underground with at least glaring neglect of their safety. They died, ho hum. How's that for the investment class?

Romney's credibility

Mitt Romney was lying about his abortion views when he ran for governor of Massachusetts in 2002. He was always anti-choice, but he knew he couldn't win with that position in Massachusetts, so he said what he had to say to get elected. He told honorific stories of his mother's pro-choice leanings even though all the evidence indicated she had held no such views. A man who would lie about his mother is truly a man who would lie about anything.

Romney also knew that he could run and win honestly in Utah but that that would be a political dead end, and he had the Presidency in mind from the very beginning. Just what America needs - another dishonest scion of a failed Republican.

In 2002, Romney did provoke Shannon O'Brien into trying to find some way to make a distinction between their views, and she made consistency of the age of consent and the age of parental consent to abortion an issue. This only made her sound extreme, even though it was perfectly reasonable. The moral of the story is to attack his credibility instead of his position.

Of course, Romney can't admit his duplicity, even though it would help him if the ardent anti-abortionists could trust his current desire to overrule Roe v. Wade. But admitting the truth would cast him as an opportunist, which of course he absolutely is.

Mitt Romney believes he is entitled to the Presidency. He does not feel obligated to sell himself truthfully.

First clue

Robert E. Murray was completely certain that an earthquake caused his mine's cave-in rather than the other way around, and his certitude was the first clue that might be full of it. The media lapped it up in their usual haste, but at least in this case the AP followed up.

So did the LA Times, which found that the Murray mine uses a dangerous technique called room and pillar:

The final column to be slashed is known among miners as the "suicide pillar."

We may never know what in all likelihood took the lives of six men, but the liability management plan may already be in place. The civil standard of proof is preponderance of evidence, and a plausible story goes a long way toward blunting seismographic records.

It's also interesting that three of the miners are Mexican citizens. I'm guessing this is not a union shop, and I wonder whether they were working legally.

Update: Murray a complete phony. See Crooks & Liars.