No Sh*t, Sherlock...

Ahhhh yes... News Dump Friday, that time honored tradition of our government. The theory is that by slipping stories potentially damaging and/or embarassing to the Administration into the Friday afternoon news cycle, it'll mitigate the fallout. The assumption is that we'll have the weekend to forget about it, we'll be too busy to keep up with the news or it will just sort of blend in with the normal news cycle and we'll never see it. Errrrrr... yeah. So you can well imagine that this Administration has used News Dump Friday very, very extensively.

One of the big stories in this installment of News Dump Friday is... are you ready for this? Are you sure? Get ready.... Abstinence-Only Education doesn't work! I know, I know, contain your shock and disbelief. Stunning news, isn't it? A study, ordered by Congress into the $175 million dollar a year program and conducted by Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. has found that students who took part in sexual abstinence programs were just as likely to have sex as those who did not. Additionally, those that attended Abstinence-Only courses reported having a similar number of sexual partners as those that did not. The report goes on to say that Abstinence-Only students had sex for the first time at roughly the same age as non-Abstinence-Only students... 14.9 years old.

"I really do think it's a two-part story. First, there is no evidence that the programs increased the rate of sexual abstinence," said Chris Trenholm, a senior researcher at Mathematica who oversaw the study. "However, the second part of the story that I think is equally important is that we find no evidence that the programs increased the rate of unprotected sex."

But of course, Bush Administration officials were quick to say that we shouldn't draw any sweeping conclusions from the study. Gee, sweeping conclusions like what? That 175 million of our tax dollars are being flushed straight down the toilet each and every single year? Of course, flushing tax dollars down the toilet and perpetually pushing failed programs and policies is a staple of this current Administration.

This report comes as Congress is set to consider renewal of the block grant for Abstinency-Only education this summer.

"This report should give a clear signal to members of Congress that the program should be changed to support programs that work, or it should end when it expires at the end of June," said William Smith, vice president for public policy at the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States.

Here's an idea... how about using that $175 million a year on programs that actually work? How about acknowledging the reality that wagging our fingers and telling kids to not have sex isn't working and providing some real education about things like pregnancy and disease? If it's so important for advocates of abstinence-only to teach morality, maybe they should try teaching it at home. It's quite obvious that it's not working in the schools, so why continue pouring money down a useless hole? I think that $175 million a year could do a lot of good in a lot of different areas.

~Kevin S.

Happy Rwanda Genocide Day, Sudan!

April 6, 2007 marked the 13th year since the 1994 genocide in Rwanda that took over 1 million lives in 100 days. Four years passed, the ICTR (International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda ) had not even convicted one person for their role in the genocide, and President William Clinton visited Kigali airport in Rwanda. With the engines of Air Force One running, he encouraged the world to "work together as a community of civilized nations to strengthen our ability to prevent and, if necessary, to stop genocide." He then laid out a plan that would "increase our vigilance and strengthen our stand against those who would commit such atrocities in the future."

I guess he didn't speak for George W. Bush.* Because four years ago, genocide slithered onto Sudan's horizon. Bush recognized it as such, all the way back in June of 2005 when he announced he would end the killings in Darfur by "working with NATO to make sure that we are able to help the AU put combat troops there. And, as a part of that, I believe a transport plane of ours, for example, will be a part of this mission."

Go Bush. His commitment to end the first genocide in the new millennium was firm, as evidenced by the complete lack of funding he provided in the budgets. USAID received about $20k a year to end the Darfur genocide and to keep the peace in southern Sudan, an area trying to recover after 22 years of civil war. He took further steps to shore up this commitment by excluding funding for Darfur from the 2008 US budget, set to begin in October of 2007.

The danger of this long and drawn out mass killing is that it becomes accepted. It becomes how the people living in the areas are defined. And while it is shameful that Anna Nicole Smith's death receives far more coverage than the intentional murder of 400,000 people (with 2 million to go), I find it even more embarrassing that college students are able to generate 12 times more money through a few bake sales and charity functions that my own government.

I don't want my country to be known as the number one exporter of hollow rhetoric and broken promises.** Help end the genocide.

Join. Act. Make a differnce.

~Lila Schow
Because Responsible Citizens Clean Up After Their Government http://goodusgov.org/

*Given how quickly he forgot about Rwanda, I doubt he was speaking for himself, either.

**