Weekend round-up (updated)

Dispatches from the Culture Wars on the Spanish-language US national anthem controversy:

Then it comes out that, during his campaign for the presidency in 2000, Bush actively campaigned among Hispanic groups and sang the national anthem himself in Spanish many times and that at his inauguration in 2000, he had singer Jon Secada sing "America the Beautiful" in Spanish. And where did they get the words for that scurrilous attempt to destroy our "national soul" by daring to sing the national anthem in Spanish? Maybe from the US State Department website.

Sammy Jankis on the skanky ho's . . . erm . . . "contribution" to the Australian citizenship test controversy:

OK, so if these are the values we're talking about, and an immigrant can recite these in a test situation, how does this guarantee that they’ll be a good citizen? Anyone can rattle off these sorts of ideas while actually holding conflicting beliefs.

Pandagon on the monumental failure that has been "abstinence education" in the US:

Virginity pledges are useless. Teenagers are eager to sign them because teenagers are eager to be normal. And they are eager to discard them because teenagers are horny and because generally what was abnormal one year of high school becomes normal the next, especially with regards to how common sexual activity is. So the only thing that abstinence-only is good at is amplifying the sense that contraception is abnormal.

And finally, Morons.org on how it is possible to take the whole "Jason and Nan from Little Britain" thing too far:

A 33-year-old man in northern Malaysia has married a 104-year-old woman, saying mutual respect and friendship had turned to love, a news report said Tuesday.

UPDATE: Dispatches from the Culture Wars on a recent pay-TV countdown of the "40 Greatest Metal Songs":

For the most part, I thought the list was pretty good. It was relatively free of the mostly horrid big hair quasi-metal bands of the mid to late 80s. There were a couple of exceptions, like I Wanna Rock by Twisted Sister, but I'll even give them Quiet Riot's Metal Health. There was no Poison, Warrant, Winger, Cindarella and the various other clones of one another that infested the top 20 for years. That relative absence wins some points from me. But there were still some choices I didn't like and a few songs they definitely should not have left off the list . . .

Enjoy the weekend!