Ooh, Me, Over Here, I've Got Some Spending You Can Reduce!

I caught a hair of the Republican debate tonight. Seems like every Republican is bent out of shape about all the spending. That's apparently the big problem of the Bush years. Not the unnecessary wars or the expansion of unlawful executive power, to such a degree that every candidate up there except for Ron Paul asserted the right to pre-emptively attack another country without consulting Congress (paraphrased Paul: Have any of you read the Constitution?). No, it's spending that's the issue. Government's just too darn big and spending too darn much. This is a big line on the campaign trail, too.

Hey, I know where to start paring things down: how about getting abstinence-only education ads off my teevee?

4parents.gov is a government website run by the Department of Health and Human Services that is meant to provide parents with “information” to help “teens make healthy choices.”

But this “information” is not grounded in science. A recent federal report concluded that abstinence-only programs have had “no impacts on rates of sexual abstinence.” Yet the latest public service announcement by 4parents.gov “encourages parents to talk with their kids about waiting to have sex.”

In the ad, various children say that they want their parents to talk to them about sex and tell them to “wait.” Near the end, the narrator says, “Tell your kids you want them to wait ’til they’re married to have sex.”

Abstinence-only education is useless, not to mention riddled with lies and misstatements. And we're PAYING to publicize it.

I'd love to see one of those candidates break with fealty to the religious right and decry THAT spending.

UPDATE: Yes, it goes without saying that this kind of stuff is fine, but SCHIP is too expensive. Right.