Of course, as Doug Bandow noted earlier today, eating animals can also save endangered species by giving people an incentive to harvest them rather than destroying their habitat or exterminating them.  People owning animals helps ensure their survival, too: that’s part of why there are a heck of a lot more chickens than passenger pigeons (a now extinct species which were once as numerous in America as chickens are today), and far more cattle than buffalo.

Eating locally, touted as good for the environment, often isn’t: one study found it was better for the environment for English people to eat lamb that was imported from New Zealand rather than raised in England.  And culinary prejudices often keep people from eating local foods that truly do tax the environment less, like cicadas, which are very tasty when microwaved for just a short time, but which few people eat despite the fact that they can easily be collected in large quantities when they periodically emerge from the earth.  (In the Washington, D.C. suburbs, they come out in huge numbers once every 17 years).

But here’s another question: if cellulosic ethanol does take off, what impact would that have on the clichés we use?  Would we have to scrap the old saying about separating the wheat from the chaff, and instead talk about separating the chaff from the wheat?

Quite apart from the fact that such legislation interferes with employers’ freedom of contract (is it really so unreasonable for a movie studio to cast a thin person rather than a fat person in certain roles, or for an airline to want a thin flight attendant who can move easily up and down the aisle and allow passengers to pass by rather than a fat flight attendant who will block the aisle?), it’s also not clear why such legislation should focus on fat people, who can often control their condition, rather than other people disadvantaged by mother nature, like short people.   (I became fat in 1993, but then lost the weight by eliminating alcohol, butter, and extremely fatty foods from my diet.  But short people cannot change the fact that they are short).

After all, most Americans are overweight, so it’s not as if fat people are a tiny minority.   And being fat is not as disadvantageous (at least for men) as being short.  For example, fat people of both sexes are more likely to get married than short men, and short people are less likely to get promotions than people of average height like me. 

A women’s studies professor quoted in the article supports fat discrimination legislation as a way of destigmatizing fatness.  (Some colleges now have “fat studies” programs, whose professors are often drawn from existing  women’s studies programs).  But even if that were truly possible, destigmatizing fatness might do more harm than good to public health.  In my wife’s native France, obesity rates are lower than in the U.S., and lifespans are longer (despite all the cheese, foie gras, and red meat they eat).  Part of the reason is that they simply eat less (not healthier).  Why do they eat less?  Partly due to the shame factor.  My French-born wife’s (thin) best friend told me, with disapproval, that in France, “it is a shame to be fat.”  Shame is not a pleasant emotion, but maybe it’s better to be shamed into losing weight than to be dead from obesity-related conditions, like diabetes, heart diseases, and weight-related cancers.  Those obesity-related conditions are a legitimate cause for concern for the insurers and employers who end up paying for them.

On Friday, IGN reviewed GTA IV, giving it a highly elusive perfect score. Calling it “masterful” and an “American dream,” IGN says GTA IV is the greatest game in nearly a decade. Since the press embargo ended this morning, many other reviewers are reaching similar conclusions.

No real surprises there. What’s surprising, however, is that unlike its somewhat one-dimensional predecessors, GTA IV offers unprecedented character depth along with an “Oscar-caliber” storyline. And it also depicts the ugly downside of crime in the same vein as epic films like Goodfellas and Scarface, retelling the classic story of a struggling immigrant coming to America in search of fortune, haunted by the experiences of a past life.

Naturally, Grand Theft Auto’s release has re-ignited public debate over how games affect kids and whether new laws are needed to protect children from the gratuitous violence found in many video games. GTA has been a favorite target of politicians for the past eight years, and the usual suspects like Jack Thompson and Tim Winter have predictably spoken out against GTA IV. But parental controls are more robust than ever, as Adam has documented, and some have even suggested that kids should be playing Grand Theft Auto. Despite the recent explosion in hyper-realistic violent games, violent crime rates have been dropping across the board. Maybe games like GTA are just another harmless outlet for kids to express violent behavior, much like playing cops and robbers.

As game budgets have swelled and public interest in gaming has expanded, more games than ever transcend the stereotype of gaming as a juvenile pursuit with little artistic merit, reminding us that games can be artistic expressions on par with books, movies, or songs. Critics whose gaming experience consists of having played Pacman in an arcade may belittle gaming as a trivial pastime, but anybody who has played Bioshock or Gears of War or Oblivion knows better. Games can critique the harsh realities of modern society and offer insight into the nature of the human soul in ways that less interactive forms of media cannot. Likewise, games deserve both critical admiration and legal protection.

Of course, GTA IV is no Mona Lisa. But the way things are going, it’s entirely possible that the next timeless masterpiece of artistic expression will be created not with a brush or pen, but with lines of code.

U.C.L.A. Law professor Eugene Volokh discusses a free speech controversy over a ruling imposed under New Mexico’s gay-rights law, which has been cited by ENDA supporters as an example of a growing consensus in favor of banning sexual orientation discrimination.  A photographer was ordered to pay $6,600 by the New Mexico Human Rights Commission for refusing to take pictures of a civil-commitment ceremony planned by a lesbian couple.   That seems hypocritical on the part of the State of New Mexico, since it itself does not recognize gay marriage, or treat civil-commitment ceremonies as being analogous to marriage, yet it punishes wedding photographers who likewise do not treat gay civil-commitment ceremonies as being the same as marriages.    

The ruling raises two interesting questions.  First, does the ruling violate the free speech or freedom of religion of the photographer, given that taking photographs has long been regarded as expression that is original and copyrightable and that wedding photographs are often very distinctive and involve content-based choices and artistic judgment?  Professor Volokh believes that it does violate freedom of speech and freedom of religion, and I agree that it violates both the First Amendment and the New Mexico Religious Freedom Restoration Act, based on cases like Hurley v. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Group of Boston (1995).

Second, is the ruling even based on a reasonable reading of New Mexico’s gay-rights statute, given that that law bans discrimination based on customers’ sexual orientation, not based on the type of ceremony they wish to promote?  After all, there is no evidence that the photographer refused to serve gay clients in general, only that she would not take pictures of a civil-commitment ceremony, i.e., promote a particular message.  That is not discrimination based on a customer’s sexual orientation anymore than it would be discrimination based on a customer’s religion for a gay photographer to refuse to photograph a religiously-motivated anti-gay demonstration by a reactionary minister like Fred Phelps, or discrimination against blacks or women for a photographer to refuse to videotape a feminist or Nation of Islam event.  (Arlington County, Virginia, recognized that fact in rejecting sexual-orientation discrimination charges against a business that refused to duplicate gay-rights videos).

It is common for wedding photographers to turn down certain types of weddings for reasons unrelated to discriminatory animus towards a customer.  And a civil-commitment ceremony isn’t legally analogous to a wedding, since it doesn’t create the same binding commitments as a marriage, so photographing weddings but not civil-commitment ceremonies is not itself discrimination.  Thus, the New Mexico Human Rights Commission’s ruling against Elaine Huguenin and Elane Photography and in favor of complainant Vanessa Willock should be reversed.

America has lost a great patriot. The Second Amendment has lost a faithful friend…And so has every American who cares about the Bill of Rights, individual liberty, and Freedom. My heart is heavy, but not without a sense of pride. Pride in a man who devoted his life to his profession with grace and dignity. Pride in an American who devoted himself to civil rights, to correcting injustices around him, and to standing up for what he knew was right.

Heston, of course, was known not just for his activism in support of gun rights, but of for civil rights for all Americans (as LaPierre alludes to), having marched in protests with Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and others. To some, this made him a “paradox,” though I can’t think of anything further from the truth. A belief in personal freedom and the equality of all people before the law are twin foundations of the American idea. Heston understood and believed in both. Here’s to keeping that understanding alive.

To anybody who would say such a thing, it’s worth asking, “What do you actually want from politics?” Naturally, people who see political engagement as a sign of civic virtue and who believe that more choices in a democracy (regardless of what those choices are) are always a good thing are likely to respond with stale bromides about…political engagement being a sign of civic virtue and more choices in a democracy being a good thing.

Thus, real-world examples of very interesting politics can act as a better defense of America’s gloriously dull — by world standards — politics. Take your pick: Kenya, Sudan, Lebanon, Iraq. Say what you will about any of these countries, you can’t call their politics dull!

However, politics being “interesting” isn’t always bad. There is a bad kind of dullness to American politics that comes from the excessive reverence often accorded to American politicians. (I wonder how many American reporters who must endure covering the stuffy U.S. Senate envy their British counterparts who cover the boisterous House of Commons.)

For that reason, it’s refreshing to see interesting politics of the good kind — that of politics playing out as a spectacle in which the politicians act like buffoons, with the end result that any person with common sense would be embarrassed to show reverence to them. Which brings me to Italy.

Britain’s Observer reports today on a feud between Italian rightist candidate Daniela Santanchè and Alessandra Mussolini, the granddaughter of Il Duce, who has entered politics herself.

Santanchè, 46, a former ally of Berlusconi, is now heading a small party called The Right. In a week in which she descended on a Gypsy camp near Milan, wearing high heels and an elegant trouser suit to argue with residents and slam illegal immigration, Santanchè also found time to warn women not to vote for Berlusconi, ’since he only sees us in the horizontal’. The media mogul had done little to suggest otherwise, claiming the previous week that he would not be sending TV showgirls into parliament this year, ‘because with them we do other things’.

Quick to defend Berlusconi from charges of sexism was Mussolini, 45, whose career path has taken her from an actress who posed topless to pop singer to a European MP who casts herself as the tough-talking housewife of Italian politics, once claiming ‘better a fascist than a faggot’. Calling Berlusconi ‘gallant’, Mussolini spat back that Santanchè was ‘horizontal, politically’, after clawing her way into politics thanks to the backing of Gianfranco Fini, who has renounced his neo-Fascist roots and joined the Berlusconi ticket.

The response was minutes away. ‘I believe Alessandra’s grandfather Benito is turning in his grave at the sight of her working as an assistant to (Fini), who said Fascism was the absolute evil,’ said Santanchè. ‘Berlusconi on the other hand would probably like to wear Mussolini’s boots; after all, he wears lifts in his shoes already,’ she added caustically.

‘Benito came to me in a dream last night,’ replied Alessandra, as the row dominated the news, ‘and he told me exactly what he thinks of Santanchè.’

Of course, I’m glad these people have no chance of ever having political power in the United States, but at least their fight is being waged with words and not violence. Still, even with the deserved ridicule such behavior would earn politicians here, I’ll take the kind of politics which most people can easily ignore any day. When political contests are dull, your property, freedom, or even very life don’t depend on the outcome.

May those who complain about America’s dull politics live in interesting times. (Thanks to Margaret Griffis for the Observer link.)