SOUTH DAKOTA, FIND YOURSELF ANOTHER COUNTRY TO BE PART OF. The home state of George "Acid, Amnesty, and Abortion" McGovern is now about to enact a crackpot abortion ban, the only discernible purpose for which is to instigate a Supreme Court case that will overturn Roe v. Wade.

In a humorous coincidence, over at that Crunchy Con site we discussed yesterday, the stupid hippies are addressing the age-old question, "How're You Gonna Keep 'Em Down On The Farm After They've Seen the Farm"*:

Further, Caleb might be willing — I certainly would be — to use social policy, at least in a soft way, to encourage a certain amount of immobility, or at least stop discouraging it. E.g., I've long thought that it would be good policy for localities experiencing brain drain (we might refer to these localities as "every small town in the Midwest") to offer to pay off a certain portion of student loans for those of its own who come back to the community after school.

Of course, once the bright young things whom Caleb and Jethro and Zeke and Cletus want to retain in Bumfuck, SD via "immobility" realize they're living in a theocratic nuthouse, they may say screw the loans and opt for a more cosmopolitan environment -- like North Dakota.

Or, these hippies might be craftier than we expect -- see Manson, Charlie -- and may be working a more long-range plan to so damage our fortunes via an incompetent Federal Government that we are forced to submit to government by God-botherer. (See Kurtz, Stanley.)

Either way the future looks interesting. Just as Iraq may be learning from us how to run a corrupt "democracy," we may soon take from them lessons in civil war.

* joke stolen from Steve Allen