From Earth Times:

A planet has been categorised as the first waterworld planet. The discovery, named GJ1214b, is almost three times bigger than Earth and nearly seven times heavier, consists mostly of water.

The 'super-Earth', which has a hot, steamy atmosphere, was categorised by Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) scientist Zachory Berta and others.

He says, "GJ1214b is like no planet we know of. A huge fraction of its mass is made up of water."

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From the Washington Post:

Yesterday, WAMU announced the departure of news director Jim Asendio. This morning, WAMU held an event to bring together donors and WAMU staffers.

Those two events are connected, says Asendio.

The 60-year-old newsman says that he learned a little while back that a couple of the reporters under his supervision were scheduled to hobnob with the donors at the breakfast affair. Asendio voiced his objection to the arrangement: Under no circumstances should reporters be meeting with donors; that was a task for managers.

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From The Hill:

GOP presidential hopeful Newt Gringrich made a bold claim during a Monday campaign rally in Georgia, while mocking President Obama's plan to provide subsidies for plug-in electric cars.

"Here's my point to folks," Gingrich said to supporters. "You can't put a gun rack in a Volt."

But one Chevy Volt driver took up the former House Speaker's statement as a challenge...

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Years ago, before Rick Santorum's primary financial backer joked about aspirin and the inherent immorality of women who use birth control, before the candidate's own remarks on contraception created a controversy, before he became known for bold assertions that Protestants were agents of Satan, before he lost his Senate seat for man-on-dog arguments about homosexuality, the then Senator from Pennsylvania was widely known for attacking a grave threat to Free Enterprise. He went to war against weather reports.

It seems that one night, Senator Santorum stayed up to watch the late news. To his amazed horror, the local television meteorologist put up satellite images and quoted information that came from the National Weather Service. They were using information provided by a government agency, rather than purchasing it from a private business.

Senator Santorum was outraged. He introduced a bill designed to reduce the National Weather Service to issuing reports only after checking to be sure that the same information could not have been produced by private enterprise at fair market profit.

Senator Santorum's interest was not entirely accidental. A major constituent in Pennsylvania was the founder of a major broadcast center for weather predictions, AccuWeather. The Senator made the case for private providers of weather information.

With the support of my colleagues, we can pass this legislation to modernize the description of the National Weather Service’s roles within the national weather enterprise, so that it reflects today’s reality in which the National Weather Service and the commercial weather industry both play important parts in providing weather products and services to the nation.

Some lawmakers responded with incredulity. A United States Senator wanted to privatize the weather? The nation had just gone through several major hurricanes. Warnings had saved lives. Katrina had claimed a major city just a few months before. And Santorum wanted to restrict the public flow of information? There were businesses who could profit buy selling information on developing weather patterns, but this seemed like an idea doomed to bad ending for a lot of folks.

Supporters pointed out that Santorum's proposed law would allow for exemptions when weather patterns grew into situations of clear and present dangers to the public. When weather patterns developed into hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis and other imminent hazards, exceptions could be made. After all, there could be times in which emergency information would not be available for private purchase quickly enough for the market to work. Santorum acknowledged that there was a role for the National Weather Service to play.

All the bill would do would be to protect private companies. It make it against the law for the National Weather Service to providing any information, including marine, public and aviation forecasts, to the public, to schools and colleges, to researchers, to the media, or to emergency management personnel employed by states or local governments, if private businesses could sell similar information for profit.

And severe weather warnings would be an exception.

The bill was generally liked by large corporations like AccuWeather, the Weather Channel, and WeatherBank. Small companies like the Weather Underground opposed it.

In the end, it went pretty much nowhere. You still can see your local weather anchor show satellite images, and charts with fronts and low pressure areas. And if you write and angry letter to your local station about how you just finished shoveling large amounts of partly cloudy from your driveway, you can include the National Weather Service in your complaint. Nobody is perfect, especially regarding the weather. It still is an inexact science.

But lives have been saved. Property has been protected. Rescue efforts have been coordinated in advance. Life has been more convenient. Sometimes they get it real right.

If that is not enough, you can take comfort in knowing that we may soon have a Republican President who will kill such federal intrusions. We can still pay for our satellite photos and five day forecasts. As my tea party friends might point out, free weather is like critical medical care. It is not mentioned in the Constitution.

It's a favorite story. I've told it for years. It has the virtue of being true, with the exception of changing a name to protect the long gone. And it can illustrate almost anything.

Grandma Armbruster, a reckless elderly neighbor who had long before lost all sense of proportion, took a group of neighborhood kids for a series of riotous, dangerous, automotive adventures. Nobody not directly involved found out about the narrow escapes from tragedy. The kids loved it.

On one trip, she was pulled over by a police officer. Did she realize she had just roared through a stop sign? Grandma Armbruster was indignant. She lectured the startled police officer. She pointed angrily at the dust covered windshield. "How do you expect me to see a little stop sign through that dirty glass?"

Rick Santorum strikes me as honest to a fault. He blurts out every idea that has implanted itself in his mind. His later explanations remind me a little of Grandma Armbruster. Just a little. Other stories may fit better, but Grandma Armbruster remains a favorite.

One old fable has a defendant, accused of driving on a suspended license, explain why he is late to a court hearing. "It was unavoidable, your honor. I was involved in a traffic accident."

Sometimes the alibi is worse than the accusation. Sometimes an explanation is more startling than whatever is being excused. Rick Santorum does not simply misspeak. He talks the talk without any apparent recognition that his words are anything out of the ordinary. He seems perpetually startled by the reaction.

Other politicians have taken bold stands, gone against the grain, become profiles in courage. But what are we to make of his lack of anticipation? He has to be so used to communing with the most extreme of conservatives that his opinions seem to him to be unremarkable, completely representative of the national dialogue.

One recent critique of President Obama continues to make headlines. The President's governance is "not about you."

It’s not about you. It’s not about your quality of life. It’s not about your job.

It’s about some phony ideal, some phony theology. Oh, not a theology based on the Bible, a different theology, but no less a theology.

Okay, so a number of Americans on the right don't believe President Obama is a Christian. Santorum didn't really mean that, though. He says so himself through his National Communications Director, Hogan Gidley. Mr. Gidley's prepared statement on behalf of the candidate:

The President says he’s a Christian and Rick believes that and has even said so publicly many times. Rick was talking about the President’s belief in the secular theology of government.

So, according to the Santorum campaign, their goal is to replace our secular form of government with something Biblically based. It is an epic ambition. Presumably it would be difficult to amend scripture.

In fact, most of us assume President Rick Santorum, along with the Congress he would bring in with him, would have a modicum of restraint that would keep them from the stoning of disobedient children, the enforcement of religious rites, and the strict rules on the treatment of slaves that Deuteronomy, Leviticus, and Exodus would dictate. Still it is a startling new goal.

I don't think any of this is as calculated as it might seem. Certainly it appeals to the most conservative of the Republican base. But I think the candidate's bewilderment at the more general reaction is real.

Billy Crystal, I dimly recall, told a story about his very young boyhood. As a very little kid, he discovered a package of sanitary napkins in some corner of the family bathroom. He asked his older sister about it. What were they for? His sister told him they were for "special occasions." When Thanksgiving rolled around, his mother told him to set the table for an honored guest. His elderly aunt would pay a very rare visit. The poor aunt was shocked when she saw the sanitary napkins, every one neatly placed alongside the polished silver next to each plate. In the rushed gathering up and replacement that followed, as apologies were repeated and repeated again, poor Billy was dragged and carried by his father into another room. The father looked at his son in disappointment for a moment, in obvious wonder at what childish resentment had produced what had to have been a cruel juvenile prank. Finally, he brought himself to ask the question. "Why..." pause "... did you put those on the table?" Billy, in befuddled misery, responded, "It's a special occasion!"

I suppose it is the puzzlement on Rick Santorum's face, growing with each strange incident, that eventually convinced me that he is more akin to young Billy Crystal than to the indignant Grandma Armbruster. I confess that I brought her up mainly because she's an old favorite. She'll be back.

In actuality, Mitt Romney is the one with the dirty old windshield.
Rick Santorum is the one for whom every campaign event is a special occasion.

From the New York Times:

He crossed the Atlantic because it was there, and the Pacific because it was also there.

He made both crossings in a rowboat because it, too, was there, and because the lure of sea, spray and sinew, and the history-making chance to traverse two oceans without steam or sail, proved irresistible.

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The decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission was, with apologies to Vice Presidents, a big freaking deal. When the US Supreme Court said corporations can spend unlimited amounts to support politicians, that you can't put limits on the amount corporations use for political campaigns, they relied, in part, on a statement of fact.

When you're changing what it takes to campaign, you're messing with democracy itself. Your reasoning had better be compelling and the facts had better back you up.

The idea behind restrictions on corporate and union campaigning was to combat corruption of democracy. That's pretty compelling.

But a majority of five all agreed on this key finding:

...this Court now concludes that independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption. That speakers may have influence over or access to elected officials does not mean that those officials are corrupt. And the appearance of influence or access will not cause the electorate to lose faith in this democracy.

This was an extraordinary decision. It overturned enough precedent for Chief Justice John Roberts to defend overturning established law. After all, the minimum wage would be illegal and segregation in schools would still be the law if respect for precedent went to extremes.

But it was the facts on which the case rested that seemed a bit weird. Unlimited anonymous financial backing would not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption. That was akin to watching one cigarette executive after another testify before Congress, the American viewing audience, and the Lord God of all, that tobacco is positively not addictive.

It was like the arguments of conservatives that Photo IDs must replace traditional identification in order to prevent massive voter fraud. That such cases, nationwide, number literally in the tens, while the number of legitimate votes who would be denied their right to vote would number in multiple millions is simply not worthy of consideration. So it seemed with the corrupting influence of a tsunami of corporate cash.

There was another case in the courts concerning cash in campaigns. The Montana Supreme Court in the last few days of December looked to its own history and found a set of facts truer than what the US Supreme Court viewed through a glass darkly.

At issue was a Montana law that told corporations they could not use their funds to influence elections by spending on behalf of political campaigns. The law is a hundred years old. The Montana law was challenged, and the state Supreme Court took into consideration a set of facts not considered by the US Supreme Court.

The Montana "Copper Kings" of the gilded age made democracy in Montana into a shell game. Mark Twain once wrote about just one of the small group of wealthy manipulators, William A. Clark.

He is said to have bought legislatures and judges as other men buy food and raiment. By his example he has so excused and so sweetened corruption that in Montana it no longer has has an offensive smell. His history is known to everybody; he is as rotten a human being as can be found anywhere under the flag; he is a shame to the American nation, and no one has helped to send him to the Senate who did not know that his proper place was the penitentiary, with a ball and chain on his legs. To my mind he is the most disgusting creature that the republic has produced since Tweed's time.

Clark eventually went so far as to order his state legislators to elect him to the United States Senate. About a century ago he became Senator Clark.

Two United States Supreme Court Justices last week overruled the Montana Supreme Court. For the first time in a hundred years, corporations in Montana can go back to their old practices. But, as critics of the Montana law pointed out, you can't just ignore established national law, regardless of the facts supporting the logic.

The two Justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, pointed out that US law must prevail. But they also took note of the facts that the Montana courts had taken into account. Montana's gilded age corruption seems to be replicating itself across the nation. This year, a year less than two months old, seems already to have borne out the simple observation that the massive tidal amount of anonymous cash does less to inform than it does to deafen. Money is already corrupting democracy.

Sometimes legalese is obscure, considered even by Republicans to be too remote for anyone except a new credit card applicant looking through a finance interest agreement. One suggestion, that the United Supreme Court should revisit the Citizens United case and the facts, produced uncommonly understandable dialogue. Translated into standard English, the response of Justices Ginsburg and Breyer to that suggestion was "Well, duh yeah!"

"Back in my days, they used Bayer aspirin for contraceptives. The gals put it between their knees and it wasn't that costly."

- Foster Freiss, interviewed on MSNBC, February 16, 2012

It has been a thunderous few days. Republicans, having vowed to put aside cultural issues to focus on the economy, focused once more on ... well ... you know.

Foster Freiss, THE major financial backer of Rick Santorum, contributes heavily to other causes as well. He is a six figure level donor to Republican Governor Scott Walker's efforts to avoid a recall effort at the hands of outraged constituents in Wisconsin. But mostly he boosts former Senator Santorum. Mitt Romney is forced to battle for conservative souls by raging against any effort to interfere with employers who merely wish to exercise their religious freedom, standing against the immorality of women employees who may want to use birth control.

You would think the latest effort of Foster Freiss on behalf of Santorum, an appearance on MSNBC to joke about the promiscuity of modern women who use birth control, would produce a tidal reaction that would last for weeks. It still might. But, for now, there are other amazing events that eclipse it.

For one thing, the Honorable Darrell E. Issa (R-CA), Chair of the Congressional Committee on Oversight and Government Reform held a hearing on the entire contraceptive controversy. You can kind of get the tone by the official title of the hearing: Lines Crossed: Separation of Church and State. Has the Obama Administration Trampled on Freedom of Religion and Freedom of Conscience?

If you wonder toward what opinion the Chairman is disposed, you are just the movie goer to pay top price for the best seats at the premier showing of Rocky 9, just to find out who will win the final round.

Representative Issa had an impressive line of witnesses. Religious leaders and conservative college professors. They all had in common a disdain for the administration compromise that would provide contraceptives to women employees without requiring church related employers to do the providing.

That the witnesses were all men was a fact not lost on Democratic members of the committee. They asked that one lone woman be included. Their prospective counter-witness was a college student prepared to testify about serious health effects among her classmates because of denial of contraceptive coverage. One cancer victim lost an ovary. Contraceptives are a major part of treatment for ovarian cancer.

Issa and other Republican committee members insisted the issue does not concern contraceptives. They narrowed the focus to religious objections by their witnesses to contraceptives for women employees. The woman proposed by Democrats as a witness was turned away. She was not allowed to testify. Several Democrats boycotted the hearing.

Public opinion is so far away from conservatives on this issue Sarah Palin can't see mainstream America from her window at Fox News. It is the political equivalent of The Producers, the Mel Brooks musical about efforts to embezzle financial backing by making a Broadway production fail. "Springtime for Hitler" becomes a shocking hit in the fictional account. This new effort at GOP self-immolation does not seem destined for similar success.

It's like some sort of Mack Sennett silent film. A Republican sets his hair on fire. A conservative supporter helpfully hands him a hammer.

Groucho Marx, as a political leader in Duck Soup, yields to a plea for peace. The neighboring country, he is told, wants peace as much as he does. He is thankful. He will extend the hand of peace. He knows it won't be rejected. But suppose it is? How outrageous that will be! His anger at the prospect grows with each second.

I've always been entranced by the escalation of paranoia into indignation. I'm not talking about a clinical condition. Sometimes they really are out to get you. Remember Watergate?

Speculation based on no actual evidence transforms into outrage. It seems a contradiction to me. If a suspicion seems certain, something to be reasonably anticipated, part of the expected course of events, how can it be outrageous? If it is unreasonable, how would it be reasonably anticipated?

I suppose they'll do this. Why, how dare they!!!

When I encounter most anything written by CNN contributor Erick Erickson, I wonder if I will stumble into some new instance. Last year, just after Gabby Gifford was nearly assassinated and several of those around her were killed, a few folks falsely assumed the cheerleaders of violence, advocates of "second amendment remedies", might through their rhetoric have been partially responsible. I recall my own reaction, like most, as somewhat more confined.

Erickson's Groucho-like anger at President Obama was classic. Eric just knew, because it is so like those liberals, that they were advising Obama to put the tragedy to cynical use, and that the lamestream media would be predictably complicit.

We also know Barack Obama’s advisors are urging him to seize the moment and join the left in blaming the right for this violence. Not only is that disgusting, but should he, the media wringing their hands about the tone better call him out on it — but I won’t hold my breath.

Uh huh. He expresses peremptory outrage over the reasonably expected unreasonable actions. "Not only is that disgusting..."

So it was a pleasant surprise to find an actual insight last week. Okay. It wasn't exactly Erickson's insight. It was a spinoff from a Quentin Tarantino movie. Still, the application to a political figure was recognized. The insight is valid. Okay, it wasn't Erickson's insight, he discovered it in a TNR article by Chris Orr.

Still, we have to be impressed that a conservative reads The New Republic and occasionally recognizes, and is even open to, the wisdom that sometimes appears. Recognition of wisdom is a form of wisdom.

A Tarantino character riffs about Superman. Orr's summary is quoted by Erickson along with Orr's insight:

Superman was born Superman. It’s Clark Kent that is the invented alias, the pose, the “costume.” And in the way Superman plays Kent–weak, self-doubting, cowardly–we see his critique of the human race.

It occurred to me that the same is true of Romney’s desperate, if never terribly persuasive, impersonation of a conservative Republican. That persona–angry, simple-minded, xenophobic, jingoistic–is exactly what Romney (who is himself cultured, content, and cosmopolitan) imagines the average GOP voter to be.

That's good. I think my insight, the fact that Romney's most important constituency has an strange and unexpected distaste for him, may dovetail with Erickson's Orr-inspired epiphany.

The questions Erickson misses seem obvious. One is whether Romney's impersonation will work. And to the extent that it does, whether that means conservatives see themselves as he does. And to the extent that they see themselves that way, whether they, in fact are accurately self-defined. Which is to say they are "angry, simple-minded, xenophobic, jingoistic."

Here is the Tarantino clip from Kill Bill: Volume 2, and a good pre-impersonation, I suppose you'd call it, of Eric Erickson via Duck Soup.

In response to Burr Deming's Religious Freedom and Contraceptives

For conservative legislators, freedom of religion means freedom for financial providers of salaries and benefits. They should control the extent of group benefits. If you want to violate the private beliefs of your employer you ought to pay for it yourself, without the benefit of group membership.

- Burr Deming, February 14, 2012

The question of what health insurance covers should be determined, first and foremost, by its effect on one’s health.

If I belong to a religious sect that teaches that we should not use medicine, but that we should let God treat our children, and then my child falls off a house and dies because I did not call an ambulance, should this be allowed in the name of religious freedom? If so, who else should we kill in the name of religion?

Should any religious fanaticism be a factor when deciding a health matter?

Catholic companies are free to deny their patrons coverage via religious authority. They should not be free to opt out of coverage based on religious doctrine. Their religious authority means they can forbid the use of birth control. Any employee that agrees with the backward concept, will obey, and will not use birth control. Any employee that disagrees with the notion will use her health insurance and will use birth control. She was not bound to Catholicism because she works for company X, so there is no conflict of interest.

Backward Company X did not buy her birth control by providing part of her insurance that provided birth control any more than they would have if they had paid her salary directly and she used her earnings to purchase birth control. There is no difference. Either way Company X provided funds for her birth control.

This entire debate is complete political hypocrisy. The Catholic Church learned a long time ago that the masses that follow it are easily duped, easily told what to think, and easily convinced what not to think. This is what they label “Freedom of Religion.”

What’s next? Should we start drowning witches again?

John Myste also writes for his own site, where religious freedom is more than a label.

Please visit John Myste Responds

Our United States Senator from Missouri, Republican Roy Blunt, moves decisively against President Obama on whether contraceptives should be provided to women.

It's still clear that President Obama does not understand this isn't about cost — it's about who controls the religious views of faith-based institutions

The administration started last week in a bind over mandating Catholic run non-church hospitals and other institutions to allow for contraceptives as part of health care. There was a ton of push-back. The principle at stake was freedom of religion.

From the beginning, religious institutions, like churches, were not required to include contraceptives in health coverage to employees. The problem was not with religious institutions. Not directly. The issue had to do with whether non-religious institutions, like hospitals, that were owned and administered by religious groups could be subject to health insurance requirements, if those requirements were counter to religious teachings.

It pretty much looked like a no-win political situation for the administration.

Women's groups lined up pretty solidly for providing what has become a daily necessity for sexually active women, and even for women who are potentially active. The idea of seeking approval from religious authority for contraceptive use is regarded as medieval. The notion that this would be required by law was greeted with outrage.

Religious groups, in particular Catholic authorities, objected to being explicitly complicit in a practice that went against long held religious principles. You didn't have to be against contraception to hesitate about requiring something from a religious group that violated a tenet.

Polls came out that clarified things a bit. The proportion of people who supported the requirement was overwhelming. It turned out to be a huge political plus for the Democrats.

Still, the administration seemed to waver. Some folks sensed an impending sell out. Sure enough, an announcement came. there would be a compromise. At the heart of what seemed a settlement was an important fact. The cost of pregnancy is much greater than the cost of prevention. Pregnancy is a financial loser for insurance companies. Insurance providers live by cost-benefit analysis. Insurance company cost turned out to be a key to a proposal that surprised all sides.

Catholic authorities would not have to provide contraceptives.
And the institutions they run would not have to provide contraceptives.
But their insurance companies would have to provide contraceptives.

At least some Catholic officials were happy. Insurance companies were okay with it. Women's groups were enthusiastic. Democrats were great with it.

Even Catholic Bishops cautiously pronounced the modification a step in the right direction. After some deliberation they hardened their hearts. The policy change was "unacceptable and must be corrected." Republicans quickly joined in the opposition.

Which brings us to the Republican alternative. Senator Roy Blunt leads the charge. He proposes legislation forbidding insurance companies from providing contraceptives as part of group coverage if it violates the religious teaching of a church. Or the beliefs of a religious group running an institution. Or the beliefs of an employer who is not a religious group. Or the conscience of an individual owner of a business.

If an employer says he doesn't like it, the insurance company must keep it back. Senator Mitch McConnell, leader of Senate Republicans, is enthusiastic about the Blunt approach. Other Republican legislators are joining in, promising to bring to a vote the new restriction on contraceptive coverage for women.

The heart of the matter is the nature of religious freedom. How far outside of the workplace should an employer's decisions go?

The administration proposes that religion is a matter of individual choice. A woman gets to decide.

For conservative legislators, freedom of religion means freedom for financial providers of salaries and benefits. They should control the extent of group benefits. If you want to violate the private beliefs of your employer you ought to pay for it yourself, without the benefit of group membership. Think of it as a sort of dress code. After hours, you can express yourself at your own expense. During business hours, you had better dress as your boss instructs. Whether casual Fridays are optional will be decided by company policy.

As Senator Blunt almost points out, the issue is about who controls religious views and religious practices: You or your severely conservative boss.

From Architizer News:

Frank Lloyd Wright is generally considered to have been an arrogant, irascible curmudgeon, whose voracious egotism was and remains legendary. But he could be a gingerly grandfather as well. Case in point, the Jim Berger doghouse.

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We do what we know is wrong, and we enter into a world of hypocrisy. A friend whom I admire once rejected my invitation to go to worship services. "I do not wish to be a part of organized hypocrisy." I answered, and we both laughed. "That's not fair. We're not organized."

We do what we do not know is wrong, and we sometimes are caught, awkwardly realizing in an epiphany that we are wrong, and have been all along.

As Christians, my fellow worshipers and I do have reason for hope: not only for forgiveness, but for redemption. We look to examples from the past. Fearing for his own safety, Simon Peter denied even knowing Jesus. Later on, Saul of Tarsus was widely known and feared for his relentless persecution of Christians. He was on his way to hunt them down when he was struck with ... something.

Simon Peter became the Apostle Peter.
Saul of Tarsus became the Apostle Paul.

More recent examples are not hard to find. "Amazing Grace" was written by John Newton, a slave trader who hunted and took people into captivity, transporting them to a lifetime of slavery. He became an outspoken opponent of slavery.

Those of us who live with the crushing knowledge of lesser wrongs can take some comfort in those who recovered from worse.

Sometimes I wonder if, in their dreams, such icons were still haunted by memories. Was Paul awakened in the night by the vision of Stephen, stoned to death, as a younger Saul held the cloaks of the killers, cheering them on? Was Newton's sleep ever troubled by the faces of those he delivered into a life of servitude?

Forgiven as they were by God, they never had the chance to experience any expression of forgiveness by their victims.

Amid the countless private wrongs committed toward others, those of my generation share a common wrong. We were complicit in the cultural flaws of our upbringing. Accidents of geography or family upbringing gave some of us an unfortunate head start on racism. That mitigates. It does not excuse. Some of us still embrace the sadder teachings of our youth, when experience and history should have given us better.

Almost all of us were part of a more general attitude toward those who had a different sexual orientation. They were not "gays" in those days. They were perverts. We referred to them with casual epithets that we generally don't use today. Yet many of us find our upbringing intruding in unguarded moments. Others continue to embrace a bigotry that traces back to those terrible days, nostalgic for the past. I sometimes recall my reaction as a teenager.

A small article in a 1960s newspaper had reported on the trial of a man arrested in a restroom for soliciting sex from an undercover police agent. The solicitation was the suspect tapping his foot under the wall of an adjoining stall. Police said this was well known by homosexuals as a sexual signal. The judge found the man not guilty. Tapping a foot under a stall did not meet the standard of proof required for a guilty verdict. The man went free.

I remember agreeing with the reasoning and the verdict. How awful that an accusation of something so shameful was based on something so innocent. The poor fellow could have been tapping as some tune ran through his head. Who among us could be the next to be falsely arrested?

It did not occur to me at the time, or for many years thereafter, that the awful crime for which the accused was arrested was not awful and ought not to have been a crime. I did not reject the thought, exactly. It was not even that I did not give it a second thought. I did not give it a first thought. Rejecting homosexuality as perversion seemed at the very core of normalcy.

Many of us like to think we are beyond all that. Growth in mind and spirit sometimes does come with the experience of history. Consciousness is raised. Old bigotries are challenged. Those of us with a faith in redemption are helped by a personal hope.

And yet, there is not much we can say to those who experienced our unthinking rejection in a less enlightened youth. Except, perhaps, to point to the mitigation of growing up in the middle of unexamined bigotry. We should know that mitigation does not excuse.

We can promise to do better. We can try, in little ways and, when opportunities arise, in large ways to stand with our brothers and sisters. We can look to protect today's children from the bigotry that still survives, looming large, threatening young lives.

And we can ask of those we joined in hurting the same as we ask of our Creator: an understanding we did not extend, a forgiveness we do not deserve.

From the San Francisco Police Department: