Cenk Uygur of the Young Turks posted this over the weekend, a reminder of that which journalists should not have to be reminded:

The media isn't supposed to be neutral - it is supposed to be objective. There is an enormous difference between the two. And this is a difference that has been lost on the mainstream media for quite awhile now.

Conservatives have shouted from the rooftops that the media isn't being fair to them when they report news that shows conservatives in a bad light.

But it isn't the media's job to decide what is and is not fair to any political party. Their job is to report the news -- whatever it might be.

Republicans have pulled a very effective switcheroo on the press, substituting the concept of neutrality for objectivity. Whenever the press dares to report something that does not reflect well on the Republican Party, it gets accused of having a "bias." As Stephen Colbert would say, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."

If the media reports on a story objectively and it does damage to the Republicans, that is not a bias. That is a sad day for the Republican Party. The truth hurts. Of course, the same is true of the Democratic Party.

So, on this same weekend, we're reminded again that abstinence-only sex education doesn't work, and neither do abstinence pledges:

BOSTON — Virginity pledges, in which young people vow to abstain from sex until marriage, have little staying power among those who take them, a Harvard study has found.

More than half of the adolescents who make the signed public promises give up on their pledges within a year, according to the study released last week.

The findings have raised the ire of Concerned Women for America, a prominent conservative organization that advocates adolescent sexual abstinence.

"The Harvard report is wrong," said Janice Crouse, a fellow at a Concerned Women for America think tank.

"This study is in direct contradiction with trends we have been seeing in recent years," Crouse said. "Those who make virginity pledges have shown greater resolve to save sex for marriage."

Ladies Against Women self-describes itself as "outraged," which is apt because they're outraged over everything that's happened since 1903, by the "misleading" Harvard study. Why is it misleading? Because the Ladies Against Women CWA knows it's wrong!

“This new ‘finding’ by Harvard is misleading and deceptive. Those who have committed to saving sex for marriage are to be congratulated and encouraged,” said Dr. Janice Crouse, CWA’s Senior Fellow of the Beverly LaHaye Institute. “This study is in direct contradiction with the trends we have been seeing in recent years –– both teen pregnancies and teen abortions are down, and evidence indicates these trends are related to increased abstinence among teens."

Well, no, the evidence does not suggest that. In fact, the CWA cannot produce any scientific evidence showing that these trends (if they exist) are tied to abstinence or to virginity pledges. So Harvard conducted an actual scientific study to find out the actual scientific facts. Guess what?

For the Harvard report, researcher Janet Rosenbaum analyzed data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, a survey conducted by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. It is the only government-sponsored study that asks about virginity pledges.

The 14,000 survey subjects were interviewed in 1995 and reinterviewed in 1996 and 2001. They ranged in age from 12 to 18 and came from across the country.

Rosenbaum found that 52% of those who said they had signed virginity pledges had had sex within a year. And of those who had sex after telling the first interviewers they had taken the pledge, 73% denied in the second interview having made the pledge.

"This may indicate that they are not that closely affiliated with the pledge," Rosenbaum said.

The adolescents also were unreliable in reporting their sexual experiences, Rosenbaum said. More than a quarter of nonvirgins in the first interview who later took a virginity pledge said in the next interview that they had never had sex.

"That puts a lot of error in these studies," Rosenbaum said. Virginity pledgers, she concluded, "are more likely to give bad information — unreliable data — about their sexual history."

Medical testing is a more reliable gauge of adolescent sexual activity than their own reporting, Rosenbaum said.

No matter how much the LAW want to keep Teh Sex from happening, it does - and that tremendous pressure they put on teenagers not to have sex until LAW-Approved Heterosexual Marriage only means that they have Teh Sex and lie about it. Read this again:

Rosenbaum found that 52% of those who said they had signed virginity pledges had had sex within a year. And of those who had sex after telling the first interviewers they had taken the pledge, 73% denied in the second interview having made the pledge.

Emphasis added, in case the LAW missed it. When the kids were interviewed and admitted they'd been sexually active, thinking that their responses wouldn't be tracked, they just said they'd never made the pledge in the first place.

Every scientific study conducted by actual scientists using actual data shows that abstinence-only sex education does not work. The CDC was preparing a panel to go over these facts and try to figure out what to do, especially when faced by shrieking conservatives demanding that they pretend Teh Sex simply does not exist.

However, scientific reality has a well-known liberal bias.

Researchers organizing a federal panel on sexually transmitted diseases say the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention allowed a congressman to include two abstinence-only proponents, bypassing the scientific approval process.

Rep. Mark Souder, R-Ind., who chairs the House subcommittee on drug policy, questioned the balance of the original panel, which focused on the failure of abstinence-until-marriage programs. In e-mail to Health and Human Services officials, his office asked whether the CDC was "clear about the controversial nature of this session and its obvious anti-abstinence objective."

Last week the title of the panel was changed and two members were replaced. One of them was a Penn State student who was going to talk about how abstinence programs were tied to rising STD rates.

The panel is to be held Tuesday at the National STD Prevention Conference in Jacksonville, Fla.

"It was clear that there was not a scintilla of something positive about the abstinence education method," said Michelle Gress, counsel for Souder on the subcommittee.

Guess what, Ms. Gress? It's not the CDC's job to say "something positive" about the abstinence education method when science proves it does not work. It's the CDC's job to tell the truth, but it seems that you and your boss can't abide that.

Scientists have complained about increasing government interference. Last year, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration officials told coordinators of a conference on suicide prevention to remove the words gay, lesbian and bisexual from its program and add a session on faith-based suicide prevention.

This was the first time, conference organizers said, that a single politician had so clearly interfered and achieved such dramatic results. The concern, they said, was that studies on sexual behavior would not be made public if they jarred with the administration's views on abstinence and other public-health issues.

"At the CDC, they're beside themselves," said Jonathan Zenilman, president of the American Sexually Transmitted Diseases Association and conference organizer. "These people aren't scientists; they haven't written anything. The only reason they're here is because of political pressure from the administration."

Neither of the new speakers -- Patricia Sulak, an ob/gyn and director of the Worth the Wait program, and Eric Walsh, a California physician -- went through the peer-review process required of other participants, although CDC officials did not explain why. Both panelists were funded by the HHS, although others said they were told they had to pay their own way.

John Douglas, director of the CDC's STD program, declined repeated requests for an interview.

A CDC spokeswoman said she did not know the details but summed up the situation:

"It's real simple," Karen Hunter said. "It was unbalanced before. And now it's not."

Guess what, Ms. Hunter? It's not the CDC's job to balance facts with fiction. It's the CDC's job to find and explain the facts. If you can't accept that, you and everyone you work for should get out of public service and into a seminary where you belong.

There's a place for faith in the world, but it's not in peer-reviewed scientific research. If reality is too much for your sensibilities, have the courtesy to withdraw from it and find a quiet retreat somewhere instead of risking the lives and health of others.

May 6, 1957: The very last episode of I Love Lucy, "The Ricardos Dedicate a Statue," airs on the CBS Television Network. Desi Arnaz, Jr., born on the same day that Lucy Ricardo gave birth to "Little Ricky" on TV, is an extra in the closing scene. Despite constant rumors for decades, Lucie Arnaz is not in the episode.

May 6, 2001: Some guy starts working for my company.

May 6, 2001: Tom Negrino weds Dori Smith. By an amazing coincidence, they also start saving for their 5th Anniversary Dinner.

May 6, 2006: Tom and Dori eat. Some guy earns his Master's degree in music (specifically, conducting) from Oklahoma City University.

It's like a nexus of interesting things. I'm proud of all of you, even the I Love Lucy team, none of whom I personally know. Or impersonally. But congratulations. May we all do something so wonderful that people remember it 50 years from now.

Wait a minute…aren't the conservatives supposed to be the ones against frivolous lawsuits?

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - In the latest Vatican broadside against "The Da Vinci Code," a leading cardinal says Christians should respond to the book and film with legal action because both offend Christ and the Church he founded.

Cardinal Francis Arinze, a Nigerian who was considered a candidate for pope last year, made his strong comments in a documentary called "The Da Vinci Code-A Masterful Deception."

Arinze's appeal came some 10 days after another Vatican cardinal called for a boycott of the film. Both cardinals asserted that other religions would never stand for offences against their beliefs and that Christians should get tough.

"Christians must not just sit back and say it is enough for us to forgive and to forget," Arinze said in the documentary made by Rome film maker Mario Biasetti for Rome Reports, a Catholic film agency specializing in religious affairs.

"Sometimes it is our duty to do something practical. So it is not I who will tell all Christians what to do but some know legal means which can be taken in order to get the other person to respect the rights of others," Arinze said.

"This is one of the fundamental human rights: that we should be respected, our religious beliefs respected, and our founder Jesus Christ respected," he said, without elaborating on what legal means he had in mind.

So, in this case, by "respect," the good cardinal means "using the force of law to ban speech with which I disagree," which is clearly what "legal action" means despite a lack of specificity. Funny how "forgive and forget" was good enough for Jesus but not for Cardinal Francis Arinze. Jesus built 2000-year religion out of peace, love, and persuasion. Today, Arinze wants law enforcement to act against people who disagree with his beliefs.

And people wonder where the idea of the Catholic church "hiding the truth about Jesus" comes from.

Why, it just couldn't be that the Oklahoman would hide bad news about GOP candidates again, would it?

Maybe it would.

Chris Oliver, an Oklahoma City Republican, has announced he will run for the state House District 85 seat.

The seat is held by state Rep. Odilia Dank, R- Oklahoma City, who is leaving office this year because of legislative term limits.

Oliver, 42, has managed a small, family- owned business in northwest Oklahoma City for more than 20 years, he said.

So far, so good - until you realize that what the Oklahoman is not telling you is that Chris Oliver apparently is only a "Republican" because Oklahoma has no chapter of the America First Party. You remember those guys, right? They're the ones who left the Reform Party because the original members wouldn't let Pat Buchanan make it batshit crazy enough to suit them.

If you've never read the party platform, give it a whirl. They're classic 19th-century isolationists. No military bases outside the United States, a ten-year moratorium on legal immigration, no involvement with the global community, no UN funding. Plus all the domestic right-wing hits: forced Christianity in the schools (required prayer, required Ten Commandments, ability for parents to pull kids out of schools at taxpayer expense if anyone mentions that Teh Gay People exist, all the usual theocratic stuff), carving out special rights for heterosexual couples, eliminating about half the federal government, and so on. Only one amendment to the constitution has "special" status - the 2nd. Congress would have the power to reverse judicial rulings that "misinterpret" the law or the Constitution. You know the story - people who aren't them should be taxed to provide only those services that these guy want, and all law has to filter through their interpretation of the Bible.

Oliver, E.Z. Million, and David Wilkinson of Oklahoma were accepted as members of the America First Party National Committee three years ago, on May 20, 2003. Given that E.Z. Million is also running for office (lieutenant governor, for a single reason that now can't come to pass anyway), I think it's the same Oliver.

One of his efforts will be maintaining and improving the quality of the state's schools, Oliver said.

The key to improving education and academic achievements is better utilization of tax dollars, he said.

According to the America First Party, the "better utilization of tax dollars" is to have fewer of them and then not to spend them. The party, of which Oliver was a National Committee member, opposes federal funding of education. The Wikipedia article says they oppose state funding for education as well, but the platform just says that state groups should adopt their own education strategy. Since they have none for Oklahoma, perhaps they think schools are unnecessary.

They're on the record against vo-tech, school to work, sex education, "sensitivity workshops" (and by this, they mean them being told to be sensitive to others - they're all in favor of forcing you to be sensitive to their religious beliefs), "and a host of other programs that proliferate in our schools and seek to corrupt our children and undermine parental authority and traditional family values."

Being nice to other people "undermines parental authority" and "corrupts our children." Nice of them to make it that plain.

A more efficient state government would allow lower taxes and help Oklahoma compete with other states, Oliver said.

Oklahoma already has one of the lowest overall and corporate tax rates in the nation, and these charges of "inefficiency" always seem to come from the absolute nuttiest of the right-wing nutcases, the ones who explicitly want to drown government in the bathtub because somewhere, somehow, someone might be getting something that these people think he doesn't deserve.

It's the underlying movement behind all of financial social conservatism. Someone somewhere got welfare money she didn't deserve? Dismantle welfare! Someone stole food in New Orleans after the hurricane to survive? Leave them all to their fate! Some community somewhere got a museum or building that I'd never want to go in? Defund all community projects! If they can't have absolute control over it, they want it killed dead.

Jesus fed 5000 people from five loaves and two fishes. These guys want to build a fence around the food and dispatch 10,000 marshals to escort the 5000 back to their homes and make sure they don't get any food they didn't bring or buy.

Fortunately, the voters of House District 85 will have a genuinely good person on their ballot to vote for this November. But isn't it just amazing how the Oklahoman keeps leaving out these embarrassing details about GOP candidates? Like how they'd rather be America-Firsters but can't get that party on the ballot in Oklahoma?

Such coincidences.