Also, the Washington Posts’s take.

Joe Barton would like to apologize. Since, you know, the GOP made him apologize for the apology that he issued to BP.

Remember kids: pandering will only get you so far.

The problem is that Puerto Rican birth certificates are somehow extra ripe for being spoofed, forged, and otherwise used for nefarious purposes. The US State Department and Department of Homeland Security estimate that around 40% of forged US passports were obtained using birth certificates from Puerto Rico. That’s obviously a very serious and scary thing. The government’s solution, though, seems particularly ham-fisted: they’re simply going to invalidate any Puerto Rican birth certificate issued before July 1, 2010.

From my reading of the article, it seems that a large part of the problem is the way that birth certificates are passed along to and for in Puerto Rican society. From the end of the article:

Only 45,622 children were born in Puerto Rico in 2008, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. But more than 860,000 certified copies of birth certificates were issued by the Puerto Rican Office of Vital Statistics the same year, according to the Office of Management and Budget.

That is an insane discrepancy between people born and birth certificate copies issued. Over the course of a lifetime, so many people in Puerto Rico request extra copies of their own and their children’s birth certificates, and really have no idea where the extras are now. Of course unscrupulous people are using Puerto Rican birth certificates; well-meaning citizens have made things easy for them by having so many extra copies of real birth certificates floating around. If that doesn’t change, will the goverment’s new measures make any difference in the long run?

I’m upset with The Wall Street Journal for taking my favorite imaginary band name (Bachmann-Palin Overdrive) and making it into the headline for a rather run-of-the-mill story. Fools! You need to save that kind of awesomeness for your A-material. No wonder print journalism is dying. Also, I’m not sure whether the idea of Palin-Bachmann 2010 is more amusing, or more frightening than just about everything else ever. It’s a thin line, folks. (Although I already know what should obviously be their theme song.)

I think that somebody could make a reality show of these two saying “Alaska” and “Minnesota” non-stop. I’d DVR the crap out of that program. Oh dear god, the accents! If these two had to exist and come from anywhere, I’m happy that it’s states with such interesting-sounding names. And then Tina Fey and her Mini-Me could spend hours and hours mocking them on SNL. I’d watch that, too.

I so often enjoy the world in my head much more than the one that I’m physically inhabiting.

If you would stop bending over backwards to commemorate a violent, racist legacy that has been tirelessly whitewashed (yeah, I said it) and romanticized, you wouldn’t have to apologize for omitting any related mention of slavery.

You’re welcome.

**

I googled Confederacy links to include in this post, but many of them made me want to vomit, weep, or perhaps vomit while weeping, so I’ll just skip those today.

What you can do:

• Become a NJ library champion
• Become a BCCLS (Bergen County) library champion
• Contact your legislators online (scroll down)
• Send a letter to your legislators Related: Find out who your legislators are
• Who doesn’t like a good rally? Join the May 6 rally for libraries in sexy Trenton, NJ
• Join the “Save New Jersey Libraries” Facebook Group. This is one of the most visible and least useful ways to support something, so make sure you do at least one or two of the other things, as well.

* Those are my vices, although I will admit that they’re not nearly as exciting as hookers and blow.