The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that one in six Americans has herpes, and 48% of African-American women are infected.

James thinks he knows the answer.

“The problem is worse in the African-American community because there is more promiscuous behavior,” James wrote in an email.

James dismissed the suggestion that genetics may play a role in herpes infections as “a crock.” He then dismissed the suggestion that “biological factors…make women more susceptible” to herpes as “horsehocky.”

Don’t you just hate it when politicians use technical terms like that?

James also said the genetics claim is an insult to other races that “were not as promiscuous or immoral.”

That African-American women have a higher rate of herpes infection than men or other races could have a lot of possible reasons. Promiscuity could be one of those reasons, but to assume that from a report that breaks herpes infections into gender and racial categories says little about promiscuity.

Herpes infections can be from genetics, gender, promiscuity, education and the lack of preventive methods or a host of other possible causes.

When a prominent African-American in Mecklenburg County challenged James’ assertion, James eventually claimed that he was 1/64 African-American and that allowed him to address the issue as a “brother.”

Maybe he was joking, but I do not think so. If there is promiscuity going on, it is coming from the ideas that James’ keeps spewing. The man is embarassing.

In a slight return to reality, James tried to back up his charge by asserting that fewer African-Americans marry, and 75% of their children in his county are born out of wedlock.

Fewer marriages and more out of wedlock children are supposed to mean that African-Americans are promiscuous? In truth, all that means is that people who do not get married still have children.

Since these people are not married and have sex, that probably fits James’ definition of promiscuity.

Now if only he would give a definition of “horsehocky”.

Some in Oklahoma have a problem with this.

Oklahoma State Senator Steve Russell introduced an amendment to a bill that lets the state destroy information associated to hate crimes investigations so that federal authorities cannot access it. The bill passed the State Senate 39-6.

If that is not thumbing one’s nose at the federal government, then I am not sure what is.

Russell claims the purpose of the legislation is to prevent prosecutions from being taken away from local law enforcement officials. Yet Russell did not appear concerned with local jurisdiction on hate crimes before the LGBT community was included.

Russell is pandering to anti-gay activists who believe that the federal legislation creates a new class of “thought crimes” that include the suppression of anti-gay Biblical passages.

Russell and his supporters conveniently ignore that the text of the Shepard Act includes that “Nothing in this division shall be construed to allow prosecution based solely upon an individual’s expression of racial, religious, political, or other beliefs or solely upon an individual’s membership in a group advocating or espousing such beliefs.”

That is not the only extreme interpretation Russell makes of federal hate crime law.

 “Sexual orientation is a very vague word that could be extended to extremes like necrophilia,” Russell said.

If he wants to go that far into distortions, Russell should have included incest and pedophilia as well.

Hate crime legislation also includes the word “religion,” but Russell does not seem to be concerned that the vagueness of that may include Satanists.

Doesn’t anyone believe in common sense anymore?

Hate crime legislation has been around since 1969 at the federal level. That was just fine for people like Russell when it involved protections based on religion and national origin but now that it has branched into sexual orientation, they are concerned that someone is going to take away their right to read the Bible and think freely.

“The bill gives the federal government power that was not given to them in the Constitution,” Russell said.

That sounds a lot like a rehash of the old arguments used against the civil rights movement.

Horsley read of Elton John’s comments that Jesus was a “compassionate, super-intelligent gay man who understood human problems.”

Horsley, a devout Christian of some sort, posted a YouTube video of himself threatening to kill John. He has been arrested and jailed pending a $40,000 bail.

“We’re here today to remind Elton John that he has to die. What Elton John has done is desecrated the image of the Lord Jesus Christ, blasphemed the Lord Jesus Christ,” said Horsley.

Horsley opposes abortion because he sees it as contrary to God’s laws. Obviously, he does not care for gay people either, or at least those he thinks blaspheme Jesus.

As odd as Horsley’s violent trait of Christianity is, it does not begin to touch upon his past sexual habits that have included everything from watermelons to mules. When Horsley was in the Air Force, he also had sex with men. Horsley called that “gross.” However, the mule “loved” him, or so Horsley said.

Horsley is so bizarre that he makes Elton John seem normal.

• According to this analysis, China is actually broke or will be by 2030 when its citizens are old and no money has been put aside for their retirement.
• North Dakota state Rep. David Weiler has been charged with domestic assault for the second time in a year.
• Illinois money problems are so bad that state legislators are getting eviction notices for their offices because their landlords have not been paid.
• Opposition to Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is coming from a new political group…the Purple People.
• Boston.com has a slew of Kim Jong-il images as he visits a steel mill, shoe store, vodka distillery, fishery operations and other places. Kim has an entourage that keeps notes on his the wisdom he imparts on how to run these ventures. Oddly, the only picture of Kim smiling is when he is holding a bottle of vodka. He is also pictured with what are probably the only pineapples in North Korea.
• Utah lawmaker Kevin Garn has resigned two days after a hot tub incident with a 15-year-old girl became public.
• The city of Vallejo, California wants to turn an ancient Ohlone Indian village and burial mound into a park. Indian leaders are upset that the parks restrooms are situated right over the burial grounds.
• New South Wales, Australia, is the first government in the world to let a person classify one’s gender as “non-specified.”

The 15-member board is filled with seven die-hard social conservative Republicans, three moderate Republicans and five Democrats.

The social conservatives hold a firm control of the board as they almost always vote in a block and can draw at least one vote from the moderate Republicans.

The social conservatism on this board does not just advocate wanting to halt abortions or bringing prayer into the schools. No, they seem to favor extreme views of the present and hold as idols figures that have long been discredited by history.

Stonewall Jackson, the Confederate General, is listed as an example of effective leadership. Confederate President Jefferson Davis’ inaugural speech is compared to Abraham Lincoln’s speeches.

Thomas Jefferson was struck from a list of figures that inspired 18th and 19th century revolutions and replaced by St. Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and William Blackstone.

Yes, Jefferson was in France during the Constitutional Convention, but he was the primary writer behind the Declaration of Independence and numerous other tracts.

The real reason Jefferson was bumped happened to be his position on church and state. Although Jefferson was not at the convention, he was not an uninformed bystander. Jefferson knew what the Constitution and Bill of Rights were about. In 1802, as President, Jefferson coined the phrase “separation of church and state.”

Board member David Bradley challenged supporters of that notion. “I reject the notion by the left of a constitutional separation of church and state. I have $1,000 for the charity of your choice if you can find it in the Constitution.”

Bradley, backed by his allies, have created a curriculutm that emphasizes the Founding Fathers and Constitution as heavily influenced by Christianity, except for that deist Jefferson, of course.

As President in 1802, Jefferson wrote in a letter, “Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his god … I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their ‘legislature’ should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between church and State.”

Back then the intent of a “wall of separation” was to protect religion from government interference. Today, it is government that needs a “wall of separation” to protect itself from religious interference.

Jefferson’s view was heartily backed up by James Madison who is widely recognized as the father of the Constitution. After retiring from the Presidency, Madison also wrote of the “total separation of the church from the state.”

Jefferson and Madison took their interpretations from the religious clauses of the First Amendment. Known as the Establishment and Free Exercise clauses, they are familiar to all. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

Apparently, David Bradley has problems understanding “no law” and “religion” in the same phrase. No wonder the Texas schoolbooks are getting smeared by half-truths, distortions and outright lies.

If Bradley ever comes to his sense, he should send the $1,000 to the Jefferson Legacy Foundation. They can use the money to help clear up all the smears directed at the third President.

With these distortions, it would not have been surprising to see the board determine that Jefferson and Madison were actually Kenyan-born socialists who never should have been Presidents.

If it was just Jefferson, it might be one thing, but the rewriting of history by the Texas Board of Education includes a dearth of references in the text books regarding Hispanics. It is Texas, not Maine. How that can happen is a head shaker.

The board decided that it did not like the phrase “democratic” when referring to the United States government, so it was changed to “constitutional republic.” It also voted to discuss the unintended consequences of the Great Society legislation, condone McCarthyism as truth and dismiss the internment of the Japanese-Americans as having anything to do with racism.

However, my favorite is how they want up play up country western music as a cultural movement, but removed hip-hop from the same discussion.

It almost makes one want the Texas secessionist movement to succeed.