We'll see how making the Coq au Vin ahead of time works

    I'm ready to stick a roasting pan of Coq au Vin in the oven. Of course, it's after 10 p.m., which makes things a little late.
    I was at Sam's Club the other day and bought a big package of chicken legs, which is what I use for Coq au Vin. This dish has to be prepared a bit ahead as it needs from two to five hours to cook. As a practical matter it means I have to prepare it in the morning, when I'm not at my best. On Monday and Tuesday I had a terrible cold, and on Wednesday I just never got around to doing it.
    I wasn't about to let roughly 24 chicken legs go bad. So tonight I fixed the kids the Mahatma Saffron Rice and cream of mushroom soup casserole. I then immediately started on the Coq au Vin, which I stuck in the fridge to await our next evening meal.
    I'll cut to the chase. Tomorrow's supper is ready. All I have to do is stick it in the over. The only question in my mind is whether it will be as good after sitting for 15 hours in the fridge. It might be better!
    I'll post a comment to let anyone interested know how it turns out.

Pardon final step in rehabilitation, but many want only punishment

    I admit to some surprise over the massive round of pardons issued by outgoing Mississippi's Gov. Haley Barbour. Yet the outrage also raises another question: Do we want our penal system to rehabilitate prisoners or merely punish them?
    Historically we wanted our penal system to do both. Yet the comments I've read in social networking and news sites suggest that most people want punishment, and after that more punishment. And then more. They aren't interested in rehabilitation.
    We all know that in many -- maybe even most -- cases rehabilitation isn't possible. A lot of the people who go to prison are just bad eggs. They can't be rehabilitated. Yet most of the people pardoned by Gov. Barbour seem like prime candidates for rehabilitation. In fact about 90 percent of those receiving pardons were already out of jail. Some had been out for 20 years or more. They are, by definition, rehabilitated. All the pardon did was allow them to hunt, vote and perhaps get a professional license.
    One of the things that is most troubling to all of us is to see a murderer go free. Yet the fact is that there is a fine line between murder and manslaughter, and many murders are the only crime a person ever commits. They become enraged and act out. Someone who is in prison for a first offense of murder, said murder not being committed for the primary purpose of theft, and who behaves as a model prisoner, is one of the least likely people in the jail to commit another crime.
    The Florida Bureau of Prisons produced a report on prisoner recidivism. I didn't study it at length, but it appears to have some interesting statistics. I've reproduced below a chart from the report showing factors affecting, both positively and negatively, male (but not female) recidivism rates. Note that the female chart is different. For example, black males have a higher-than-average recidivism rate but black females have a lower-than-average rate. More time in prison increases the recidivism rate for males while lowering it for females. (Yes, I know I've misspelled "ameliorating" in the chart.
    Our of Barbour's more than 200 pardons, my guess is that after the dust settles there will only be a dozen or so that really rankle. It just doesn't bother me for someone who has been out of jail for many years to get a pardon.
    This doesn't mean I'm not scratching my head over some of these pardons. I am. In some cases I disapprove.
    But this ought to give us a chance to ask ourselves some questions about our penal system and what we want it to do. Do we want it to rehabilitate prisoners or merely punish them. We ought to want both. But if we refuse to allow fully rehabilitated prisoners to return to society then we've decided that all we really want our penal system to do is punish and not rehabilitate.
    We need to do both.


(Click to enlarge chart)

Facebook apparently just wants to make us all really mad

    I guess when an Internet company gets popular they have to start making people really mad. So it is with Facebook.
    For example, Facebook has something called "Timeline" view. I'm not sure what it is, but it is a terrible thing, and if you ever change to it you can't change back. Do a Google search and read (hear) the screams of anguish.
    Now Facebook has blocked the sharing of Blogger posts. No kidding. When I recently tried to share a post I was told my blog had a link that was "too spammy." Well, it turns out virtually everyone who uses Blogger is considered "too spammy."
    I've figured out a temporary workaround to the Facebook block. Apparently it only blocks Blogger status updates and shares. You can still post a blog post as a comment to an existing status update. So I guess that's what I'll do for now; I'll create a status update and then comment with a link to my post.
    Keep working at it Facebook. If you try hard enough you will kill the goose that laid the golden egg for you.
    Of course, you could treat us like valued customers! I suppose that's too much to ask.

Taxing other people for public good is not Christianity

    It's been increasingly common in recent years for liberals to suggest that people who don't support lavish government spending aren't good Christians, or even can't be Christians.
    I actually attended a funeral in Oxford back in the 1990s where the pastor of one of Oxford's largest churches stated that he didn't see how anyone could consider themselves to be a Christian and not vote Democratic in the upcoming election. The comment came in reference to the fact that the deceased was a "Yellow-dog Democrat," but it is evidence of just how nutty some members of the Religious Left are.
    If you read the Bible, it's clear that Christ instructs all of us to help the poor, the sick, and to help each other. And Christ did just that in his personal life.
    What I have not been able to find in the Bible is Christ instructing people that it is good to force other people to help the poor, the sick or to help each other. Christ never agitated for forced charity.
    We know that Christ helped the sick and dying. But there were countless millions of sick and dying during Christ's time and he didn't help them all, even though he doubtless could have. Does that make him a bad Christian? (See, by the way, On Borrowed Time to understand the implications of doing away with death).
    We know that Christ could take a few loaves and fish and feed a multitude, which he did not because the people were in need but because he wanted them to stay and listen to his sermon. Yet the fact is that life at the time of Christ was hard and millions were starving. Christ did not feed them, even though he could have.
    Today's liberals would say this makes Christ a "bad Christian." I disagree.
    Let's consider what would have happened if Christ had simply handed out free food to everyone from the time He turned 13 until His crucifixion at 33. This could have been done by having Mana fall in the mornings, just as it did for the children of Israel during their 40 years in the Sinai.
    Yet what would have happened if Christ had done this? We know that in a subsistence society such as existed at that time population explodes when the food supply increases. Assuming a world population of 200 million on Christ's 13th birthday, it's safe to say that population would have increased to 600 million by the time of his death and the cessation of his miracles -- at which point 300 million to 500 million would have starved to death.
    Today's liberals would have berated Christ for being a bad Christian for not just feeding everyone willy-nilly. But as a matter of public policy Christ was right and the liberals are wrong. He was right not to have caused the starvation of hundreds of millions of people, even if it meant making hard choices.
    None of this is to say that welfare programs are good are bad. I think some are good and some are bad. Sometimes the programs are good but the rules are bad. But I support or oppose them on public policy grounds, not because I think being for or against them makes me a good or bad Christian. Likewise, I don't consider others to be good or bad Christians based on their support or opposition to these programs.
    It's not my job to rate the piety of others. But it doesn't make one a good Christian to support the taxation of others to carry out one's Christian duties.
    The fact is that two Christians can have differing opinions about what policies are in the best long-term interests of society. As long as they are sincere, their viewpoints are valid reflections of their Christian faith. They can have opposite views and still be good Christians.
    In the arena of politics and government, decisions ought to be made based on good long-term public policy, not by making baseless charges that one's opponents aren't good "Christians." There is a place for religion in politics, but that place is in one's own heart, not by publicly challenging and denouncing the faith of others.

They can't ban Tebow's Bible verses

    Miracle man Tim Tebow pulled out another overtime victory, this time against the the New England Patriots. Tebow's 80-yard touchdown pass on the first overtime play was the fastest overtime win in history.
    Tebow passed for a total of 316 yards. 316? 3:16. Looks like the Bible verses are back.

Dictator Obama has arrived; will we allow him to stay?

    The dictatorship has arrived. The only question that remains is whether true Americans will stand up and throw Barack Obama out of office. It will not be easy -- he and his socialist supporters are willing to stop at nothing in their quest to have a one-time feast on America's seed corn.

Let me sidetrack my blog post here. I've called Obama a socialist. Whenever someone does this they are often ridiculed or called paranoid. Obama seems to deny being a socialist, and in his defense he does behave like a crony capitalist at times.

But the fact is that Obama and the Democrats constantly want to make America more like Socialist Europe, even though Europe's left-wing social experiments have thrown it into chaos. But whether socialism is good or bad is beside the point. My wife and I both have friends in Europe who are socialists. Everyone or virtually everyone in the Labor party in Britain is a socialist. Tony Blair is a socialist. Europe is full of socialists and they call themselves socialists. Obama's political views are certainly as liberal as those of Tony Blair's and those of other Europeans and therefore he is, by definition, a socialist.

    After Congress refused to pass the Obama-supported DREAM Act, which would have simply granted amnesty and citizenship to young illegal aliens who claimed they were attending college (merely enrolling anywhere would get them a 10-year reprieve), the Obama administration simply ordered the Immigration and Naturalization Service not to enforce the law. Essentially the administration passed the DREAM Act by executive order. (Another sidetrack: I'm all for allowing brilliant people to stay in American no matter how they got here; but allowing any moron who can shamble into a community college and register free citizenship is an affront).
    Now Obama has made four "recess" appointments to positions which require the advice and consent of the Senate during a time when the Senate was not in recess -- one to the new Consumer Protection agency and three to the decidedly anti-Southern National Labor Relations Board. Admittedly the Senate was only in pro forma session, but this has been used by Democrats to block Republican recess appointments and as a senator Obama was on record as supporting the tactic. As president he's changed tunes.
    As a practical matter I believe either the Constitution or Senate rules should be changed to require an up or down vote on each and every nomination presented by the president. Neither party should be allowed to "bottle-up" an appointment indefinitely. But the Democrats started this business of refusing to act on nominations and the Republicans only followed suit. Whoever's to blame, it's not good for the country.
     The problem is deciding which party gets the benefit of the new rule. Democrats deprived George Bush of his fair share of judicial nominations, for example. For things to be even Republicans have to prevent Democrats from being appointed. Whatever party is in power when the new rule is adopted will get a windfall of new appointments. But surely some compromise can be made where some bipartisan appointments can be made.
    But just because I believe the system should be changed doesn't I support violating the law. Obama has ignored the rule of law by purporting to make recess appointments while the Senate is not in formal recess. His "We Can't Wait" campaign is a threat not only to the Constitution, but to every American.
    We Can Wait. In fact, We Must Wait. We can support the Constitution. And we can throw this dreadful thug out of office.
    Senate Republicans have a duty to the Constitution not to allow a another Obama appointee to any position to be confirmed and to remain truly in session until this man is cast out of the presidency. We Can Save America.

I found details of long-ago bike trip up the Mosel and Rhine

(Click to enlarge)

    When I was 14 I took a bicycle trip of Europe with a group out of Florida. It was a three-week trip loosely affiliated with a Baptist church out of Sarasota, Fla., under the direction of the Rev. Tom Watson and his two sons. I suppose I saw their advertisement on the bulletin board at the Holly Springs First Baptist Church Activities Center. I stumbled across my tour materials recently.
    It was a fun trip. There was a devotion time every night, and personally there was a little too much religious emphasis for me. But if you sign up to go it's something you put up with. Patricia Kennedy from Holly Springs also went and had a good time. Her sister, Sylvia, who was 19 or 20, went and was unaware of just how much of a church trip it was. She stayed for a week and then had enough of nightly devotions and went home.
    Our trip started in Luxembourg, and fresh off the plane we visited the American World War II cemetery. We then took a bus to our campsite, in Remich, on the Mosel River, which divides Luxembourg from Germany. From there we rode up the Mosel and then the Rhine, and made good time, as we made it to Cologne in four days. By comparison, some of the Mosel bike tours suggest Trier to Koblenz in six days; on that schedule it would have taken us at least eight days to reach Cologne.
    It looking at our itinerary, shown above, it looks like the trip organizers tended to bunk us down in out-of-the-way towns. I'm sure it was cheaper! We stayed exclusively in campsites, in four-person tents. Some of the campsites were actually pretty nice.
    The first part of the trip was easy biking. We rode up the Mosel and then the Rhine, so it was almost all flat land. It was only after Brussels, when we visited the site of the Battle of the Bulge, that things got tough. I think they call it the "bulge" because there is a "bulge" that you have to go over. No fun! On our first day we peddled 22 miles. On our last day we went more than 60. So we did increase in stamina as we traveled.
    Sites I remember: Trier, Burg Eltz Castle, Cologne, Holland countryside, Amsterdam, Brussels, Waterloo, Bulge, lots of neat, little villages.
    I'm not sure what happened to the Spinning Spokes program. It survived for a number of years. They were doing three tours a year, owned bicycles and had a couple of vans that would take the tents and kitchen gear. I guess nothing lasts forever.
    I'd love to take another bike trip up the Mosel and along the Rhine. There are companies that will sell you a bike trip for top dollar, but for the price they're charging I'd want a limo. I'd like to just take off and stay at youth hostels -- after all, they do have family rooms. Jinny informs me they aren't for our family!
    It was fun once. My guess is that it would be fun to do part of it again.