wanna bump feet?

I like nothing more than weighing in on issues where there is no absolute “right” or “wrong”, and even more when no one will ever really know “what happened”. So I have to weigh in on this Larry Craig thing. My points are as follows:

A) Worst case scenario, this guy tapped his foot against another guy’s foot in an airport restroom stall. Is it a crime every time a guy propositions me for sex? Or is this worse because he allegedly propositioned another man?

B) That transcript they released today sounds to me more like a scared guy wanting to catch a flight than it does like someone who knowingly did something wrong. The officer is, in Law & Order speak, “leading the witness”, and is obviously trying to convince the guy that the easiest way to make this go away is to plead guilty.

I think Larry Craig could be convicted for stupidity in pleading guilty (although given his high-profile position, who’s to say avoiding the spotlight isn’t a better way to go?), but soliciting gay sex? Not enough here to demand his resignation.

Unless, of course, the officer was underage.

chlorawhat?

Search for “chloramine” on PennLive.com and the only hit returned is yesterday’s article about a woman protesting Pennsylvania American Water’s decision to start putting the chemical in our water.

This isn’t news.

What is news is PAW’s decision. I’ve done the same internet research as this woman protesting, and maybe more as I still have access to McDaniel’s journal subscriptions. Most of the sites are hysterical (not hysterically funny, just hysterical), but what seems to emerge time and time again is that there just isn’t a whole lot of information available about the risks of chloramine.

We know that chloramine creates fewer by-products than chlorine alone — but not what all the remaining by-products do to the human body. We do know that chloramine itself is one of the harmful substances produced when chlorine interacts with organic matter. The EPA doesn’t even pretend to know whether or not chloramine causes cancer. Scientists — not hysterical citizens — have linked chloramine to increased blood lead levels, and anemia.

It is, of course, the responsibility of each citizen to be as informed as she wants to be. We should not, especially these days, rely on the mainstream media to accurately report everything that might be important to us, nor should we necessarily take at face value everything they do report.

But come on, guys — if you thought a woman who did internet research was worth writing an article about, maybe you could break out your notebooks and go talk to the people who actually know something?