http://gayrights.change.org/:

We’re all used to Fox News giving a platform to some rather bombastic voices. Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, Cal Thomas. The beat goes on, so to speak, with provocative voices that like to get a rise out of their audiences.

But this morning’s Fox & Friends might have taken things to a new low. In a segment talking about teenage pregnancy, the show decided to bring on Bob Enyart as an expert. Enyart is an anti-abortion and anti-gay activist in Colorado and a member of the group Colorado Right to Life. But his past is not only controversial, it’s downright devious.

Check out this track record: (1) In 1999, he beat his stepson so badly with a belt, that police came and arrested him, charging him with a misdemeanor. He served 60 days in jail for the crime. (2) When Dr. George Tiller was murdered walking into a Church, Enyart said Tiller’s death was nothing more than an “occupational hazard,” because Tiller provided abortion services and reproductive health care to women. (3) Enyant used to read the obituaries of people who died from AIDS on television, while playing the song “Another One Bites the Dust,” in the background.

So we’ve got someone who served time in prison for child abuse, who believes that doctors who perform abortions deserve to be murdered, and who sings “Another One Bites the Dust” whenever someone dies from AIDS. Congratulations, Fox News. You’ve managed to sink to an even deeper, more disturbing low.

Send Fox & Friends a message that “experts” like Bob Enyart don’t deserve the national platform that the cable news network provides. Are his views really what the network wants to send?

edia Matters for America notes that Enyart is just another in a lengthy line of controversial guests that Fox News has given air time to. It’s almost as if the network isn’t interested in checking the backgrounds of the people they bring on to pontificate.

In addition to Enyart, Fox & Friends gave Bradlee Dean — the controversial religious rock singer in Minnesota who suggested that it’s moral to kill gays and lesbians, while at the same time headlining events for the likes of Rep. Michele Bachmann and GOP gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer  — the chance to weigh in on the construction of an Islamic Center in the vicinity of Ground Zero. And Fox & Friends also gave air time to former Saturday Night Live cast member Victoria Jackson, who since giving up comedy and a career in the early 1990s, has become a bit of a fringe political activist, arguing that President Obama “bears traits that resemble the anti-Christ.” Sheesh. That makes Sharron Angle look as articulate as Winston Churchill.

Shouldn’t Fox & Friends be doing a better job of screening their guests, in order to avoid giving air time to people with inappropriate, and at times seriously violent, point of views? Yes, everyone has the right to free speech, and nobody is taking that away from Enyart, Dean, Jackson or any other activist. But to give these people soapboxes on a national morning talkshow? Doesn’t that just legitimate their troubling views?

Send Fox & Friends a message that good journalism … heck, mediocre journalism … demands better. There’s a reason news channels don’t bring on the Westboro Baptist Church to talk about the U.S. military, or the Ku Klux Klan to talk about race relations. That’s because these groups, while having the right to believe very hateful things, don’t have the right to be given a megaphone on national television.Demand better of Fox News, and Fox & Friends.

http://www.fearofdriving.net/

http://www.cmcrossroads.com/

Merge-a-phobia
Aliases	“Merging is Evil”, Merge-Aversion
Symptoms	Folks that are afraid to branch because they are terrified of merging difficulties. This is typically accompanied by the “merging is evil” mentality that results from having seen too many merges gone bad. They are once bitten, thrice shy.
Causes	My guess is this often results from merging that was performed as an afterthought, rather than branches and integrations that were thoughtfully considered or anticipated (the old, “they didn’t plan to fail, they failed to plan”). Other contributors are those who used other VC tools that don’t have the nicer merge facilities, or which don’t support nice names for branches (1.1.1.2 is a lot less mnemonic than /main/mybranch/1).
Effects	Locking and serial development is used in place of branching. Efforts are made to assign each significant portion of code to an exclusive owner. The problem is, if any serious parallel development is needed, having an exclusive owner doesn’t necessarily prevent the need to branch. Even if you are the only one who modifies a piece of code, you may still need to turnaround a quick fix while a significant feature or enhancement is in progress.Sometimes strict locking is appropriate; but when it isnt (and for parallel development efforts it typically is not) then attempting strict locking often results in a lot of people twiddling their thumbs, waiting for someone else to checkin the file they need to checkout. The resulting deadlock and resource contention can be far more costly (in terms of wasted time and effort) then the time and effort that goes into integration and merging (provided the latter is done intelligently – which is what “Streamed Lines” is all about).
Recovery & Prevention	The trick here is merging with aforethought (rather than merging as an afterthought). The failed merging efforts most merge-a-phobes fear aren’t a guaranteed result of any merging attempt. Just because one uses branching doesnt mean merging nightmares must ensure. The problem is not branching and merging per se, the problem is failing to ponder and plan an overall strategy and tactics for performing branching and merging in the context of the porject and it’s project team.Patterns like selecting appropriate branching styles and merging styles should get you started on the right foot. Making sure you integrate early and often will help keep you on track. There is no one pattern presented here that will cure all of these fears and problems; but almost every single pattern presented here provides some way of addressing these issues in various situations. Using the patterns together addresses the larger issue.