Tuesday, December 12 is...

Virgin of Guadalupe (Latin America)
Jamhuri Day (Kenya)
Constitution Day (Russia)
Neutrality Day (Turkmenistan)

Here in the blogosphere, of course, it's never Neutrality Day. Some things I refuse to remain neutral on today:

That happy-go-lucky group that everyone loves, the Iowa Board of Regents, has made another decision sure to thrill audiences statewide: a 5.2% tuition increase (7.2% if you have the unfortunate problem of not being an Iowan). There's nothing quite like making it harder for Iowans to go to college to repair a damaged reputation.

There's some talk (finally) about re-working the 2000 foot laws to make them...what's the word...less dangerous, but it'll never happen, because people like Mary Lundby (R-Head in the sand), continue to give quotes like this:

Senate Republican Leader Mary Lundby of Marion said Republicans would resist any changes that would ease the requirements of existing state and local residency laws. She said she would like to see the Legislature enhance even further electronic monitoring of offenders, for which funding was improved last year.

Lundby balked at complaints by the law enforcement groups that the laws are difficult to enforce. "When law enforcement want to get out of doing their job, they always tell us they don't have enough resources," she said.

Or, in other words, if law enforcement groups can't track 6,000 newly transient or homeless sex offenders, leaving the state of Iowa even less sure of their whereabouts than it was before, that's not a bad law, that's poor law enforcement. It takes some giant balls to say that. The line is simple at this point: the 2000 foot law has made the problem worse with sex offenders instead of better, so the thing to do to make our children safer is to rework the law. But if you rework the law, Mary Lundby will attack you for not thinking in the best interest of the children, and it'll cost you. I just love partisan bullshit.

State 29 seems to have a personal vendetta with Roxanne Conlin, but in fleshing out said vendetta he does raise one valid point:

Why isn't Roxanne Conlin out suing Rod Aycox and the Loanmax? Do you think Aycox overcharges the average (poor) customer between $10.50 and $57 for each car-title or payday loan they process? You can bet on that.

I'm not a lawyer, so I'm unsure if the state has the legal footing to sue Loanmax. Anyone want to help me out on that? Anyone else want to sue Loanmax?

Finally, one of the things I'm kicking around in my head today, via Freakonomics: Write your six-word memoir. I'm still working on mine. Feel free to leave yours in the comments if you choose to participate. Try not to make it as emo as the ones people left in the comments at Freakonomics.

KL