Andrew’s Miracle Drug

I didn’t get to see Wednesday night’s debate on ABC, but I’ve read enough on the Internets to know that I’m glad I didn’t see it.

Hillary and some members of the press think that Barack deserved some “tough” questioning about things that were on people’s minds - like lapel pins, if Jeremiah Wright loves America as much as Barack (seriously: wtf kind of question is that?), etc.

Fair enough.

As Cogitamus asks, why isn’t John McCain being asked equally tough questions? What about his relationship with fraudster Charles Keating? What about his adulterous past? What about his wife’s drug abuse?

If it’s fair to expect the Democratic front-runner to answer barely-relevant, personal questions, then surely it’s fair to ask similar questions of St. McCain.

…but not really, because since my last post I became a daddy!

My wife is doing great and our beautiful baby girl is healthy and wonderful.

Can you imagine going through life as Chastity Beltz? How about Tiny Bimbo?

John Tierney at the New York Times finds even more atrocious names.

Hat tip: Sullivan.

This has to be one of the most obvious stories the Tribune, or any newspaper for that matter, has ever printed. People without health insurance are more likely to suffer from chronic sickness and die than their insured counterparts.

And yet I don’t fault the Trib for running this monument to obviousness. Anything that calls attention to the dire situation millions of Americans are in is fine by me. Maybe these kinds of stories will fuel enough public outrage that people push their legislators to do something. Maybe reporting that people, and even Utahns with jobs (!!!) are dying because of inadequate care will motivate our Legislature to take some substantive action on the problem. Maybe.

I’m not holding breath.

I haven’t been following the FLDS-San Angelo story terribly closely, but everything I have read concerns me deeply.

There’s the obvious concern about the children, but also about some massive state action resulting in needless harm to both children and adults. Echoes of Waco, in other words.

Or perhaps more accurately, echoes of the Short Creek raid in the mid-1950s.

Voice of Utah pointed out the absurdity of evacuating an entire town’s worth of children because of one anonymous tip.

Besides being, at least on the face, unconstitutional and a vast abuse of state power, it seems that this is the sort of action that will only further entrench the FLDS. Members will see themselves as being persecuted by the government for practicing their religion, and will bond together even more closely. A siege mentality can’t be all that far off.

Update: The FLDS are already sounding the anti-government call. “The hauling off of women and children matches anything in Russia or Germany.” Good work, Texas.

More and more young Utahns, according to the Salt Lake Tribune, are putting off or skipping higher education.

Only 62% of those enrolled in Utah’s four-year institutions returned for their second year, 10% fewer than the national average. The Tribune article doesn’t explain their methodology, so it’s not clear if 38% are not enrolling for school immediately after their first year or fail to return after some specified time.

I always imagined that, if anything, our fair state would have a higher percentage of college graduates considering the LDS Church’s emphasis on education and the relatively inexpensive higher ed options available in our state.

But I wonder if the LDS Church actually contributes to some of these educational delays in some way.

The most obvious way that LDS culture might interfere with education, of course, is the missionary program. Mormon youth are eligible to serve as missionaries at ages 19 (for men) and 21 (for women), smack in the middle of a four-year college program.

I’ve often wondered, especially since I returned home from my mission at age 21 to face 3 and 1/2 more years of college, if both the Church and I wouldn’t have been better served if I’d completed my education first.

Further, “Utahns,” according to the Tribune, “tend to be ‘debt averse,’ leading some to prolong their educations.” Though Latter Day Saints have been counseled that student loans are an acceptable, LDS leaders have counseled members repeatedly to get out and stay out of debt. Perhaps that message has crowded out the message that student loans are acceptable in the minds of other Latter Day Saints.

So what do you think? Do missions and avoidance-of-debt counseling make us as Mormons more likely to delay or skip entirely higher education?