Wondering why the auto makers didn't make a bigger objection to the new energy bill signed into law yesterday? After all, it raised standards for emissions control.

The answer became clear within hours, according to the New York Times. That same day, the Environmental "Protection" Agency decreed that states could not pass more stringent bills but would have to abide by federal standards. Sixteen states have waivers permitting them to develop higher standards for greenhouse gas emissions than the newly approved standards. But those waivers have been effectively nullified. 

EPA administrator Stephen Johnson says that federal law trumps science, and “Climate change affects everyone regardless of where greenhouse gases occur, so California is not exclusive."

Well, erm, yes--and so what? Hello, bigger government; goodbye, states' rights.

The automakers are elated. The states, starting with California, are filing lawsuits. 

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Still think sex education isn't for kids? By now, everyone who makes the mistake of reading newspapers or watching TV knows that 16-year-old Jamie Lynn Spears, baby sister of the recklessly fecund Britney, is pregnant. "It was a shock for both of us, so unexpected. I was in complete and total shock, and so was he (19-year-old boyfriend Casey Aldridge)."

Erm. Or . . .HELLO??!!!? You have sex, you should expect to get pregnant. You can drastically cut down the chances by using good birth control--the right way, and all the time. But you can't prevent pregnancy by wishful thinking. Or in this case, non-thinking.

Self-proclaimed parenting expert Lynne Spears, the girls' mother and someone few Tosans would adopt as a mom-model, didn't believe it. ". . . Jamie Lynn's always been so conscientious. She's never been late for her curfew."

Erm, HELLO!!! It's not the time of the night that predisposes girls to getting pregnant, it's the time of the month. That, and having unprotected sex. 

I guess someone should have taught Lynne that first. She seems to have grown up in a place with a Brookfield less-is-more state of mind when it comes to sex education.

In any case, there seem to be no responsible adults in this clan. Someone tell them that babies aren't fashion accessories. 

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Is there a common thread here? Knowledge of the facts of life (science + moral behavior) matters. Ignoring it has consequences. And so does "extreme" parenting, whether too rigid or too loose. 

Network TV has finally done what nothing else has done before: it made me decide to grow up.
 
The epiphany happened last night while watching ABC’s show Private Practice. And the moment of clarity? Realizing that I’m just not stupid enough to watch this junk anymore.

The segment, titled “In which Addison gets a showerhead,” was an exploration of various problems in “Lady Town.”

Lady Town, in case you don’t know, is a cutesy euphemism for The Private Place Whose Name Cannot Be Spoken. I trust it can be written, as long as I stick to medical terms.

We hear the expression, which will now become a part of the national vocabulary, from a dignified older woman.

We know she’s dignified because she's old. Has gravitas, which means she's more than a size 2.  Wears glasses, her hair is tightly pulled back in a grandma bun, not a fashion model chignon, and she wears a fierce expression that doesn’t qualify as an “ooooo, mama, that woman’s FIERCE” hot kind of fierce but as an I don’t put up with nonsense young man kind of fierce.

Anyway, when Dell, a surfer-guy--eye-candy--male-nurse--midwife, attempts to perform a pelvic exam on Dignified Older Woman, she tells him he is not welcome in that part of town on account of how he’s about 15 years old and it’s past curfew or something.

None of the doctors, all fabulously attractive and deeply mentally ill board-certified women physicians in their 40s, can bear to say the words “vulva” or “masturbation,” preferring eyeball rolls and gestures pointing “down there.”

Which gets us back to the showerhead. Apparently, although Addison is famously promiscuous, which is okay and probably mandated in TV "medical" show circles, she’s shocked, shocked I tell you, by the suggestion that a person “can scratch that itch yourself” without borrowing a predictably unacceptable albeit available man to do the job.

In case you haven’t seen the show, and I really don’t know why you would want to, each week the ensemble cast of actors who should know better get together to explore a theme in their impossibly posh clinic in Southern California.

There, four or five highly trained subspecialists will spend untold hours visiting your house and resolving your dilemmas without ever using unpleasant words such as “rape,” one of the problems last night in Lady Town. Or without ever saying “you’re 13 and you need to talk to your mother about sex,” another problem in Lady Town.

Way to learn how not to be!

Like many American women, I’ve spent my life being trained by TV images and lady magazines. More, ostensibly the most grown up of these, exhorts us each month to Be Fabulous Over 40, with the inevitable subtitle involving the word “sexy.” But in my 50s, it’s slowly dawning:

It’s time to get over ourselves and DO something fabulous. Mere sexual conquest seems so last decade. . .