"Mitt Romney’s father was born in a small Mormon enclave where family members still live, surrounded by rugged beauty and violent drug cartels."

"This state of feeling in between, I would soon learn, defines nearly every aspect of Mormon life in the old colonies."

The settlers’ descendants, numbering several hundred in all, keep alive a culture that’s always been caught between Mexico and the United States, between the past and the present, between stability and crisis....

The Mexican Revolution played a critical role in the history of the Mormon colonies. Were it not for that 1910 uprising and the years of war that followed, Mitt Romney might have been born in Mexico, and might be living there today raising apples and peaches, as many of his cousins do....

And disqualified from serving as President of the United States.

When the first settlers arrived here in the 1870s and ’80s, some were fleeing a U.S. crackdown on polygamy. (The practice ended after a 1904 LDS edict that polygamists would be excommunicated.) They dug canals to channel the flow of the Piedras Verdes River to their crops, though the river’s waters dropped precipitously low afterward. But lore has it that the Lord quickly provided: An earthquake triggered the return of an abundant flow....

Biographers of the Romney family have pointed to the “indomitable will” of the forebears. But this characteristic, it seems to me, is common to many of the Mormons of the colonies. Their shared determination is one of the things that has allowed a relatively small number of English-speaking people to keep their language and way of life essentially unchanged for more than a century, despite being surrounded by an often hostile Spanish-speaking culture.

Leighton Romney, Mitt Romney’s second cousin, told me he hasn’t met the former governor of Massachusetts. (They have the same great-grandfather, Miles P. Romney, one of the 1885 pioneers.) I met Leighton the next day, on a visit to the fruit cooperative, packing house and export business he runs.

A 53-year-old dual citizen, Leighton has lived in Mexico all his life. Four of his uncles and one aunt served with the U.S. military in World War II. He knows the words to both country’s national anthems. Like people of Latin American descent living in the States, he hasn’t lost his sense of “kinship” to the country of his roots. “We’ve got a lot of similarities to Mexican-Americans,” he said. “We’re American-Mexicans.”

I wonder if the Romney campaign has a plan to roll out this American-Mexican dimension of the candidate. How should that be done? And are Americans ready at this point to absorb the story of how the government of the United States persecuted the Mormons?

"The 20 Best Small Towns in America."

Compiled by Smithsonian, placing "one quality above others: culture."

If you're like me, you'll go through the list looking for one in your state. And there is one in Wisconsin: Menomonie!

"Can legalized prostitution ever be safe and free of exploitation?"

"Or should laws against prostitution remain?" — a forum at the NYT with 8 contributors.

I was interested in "Nevada’s Legal Brothels Are Coercive, Too," which got some real pushback in the comments, including this from Madame Suzette:

It"s obvious that whomever wrote this article has never been to the BunnyRanch and does not have the proper knowledge to even comment on this subject.

I have been the general manager at the BunnyRanch going on 20 years, and whatever this article says it is just the total opposite. These lades are business women who do not have pimps.... Our housing facility are better than most of their own homes. They do not have to do anything they do not wish to do and can leave at any time. In fact we have limos that will drive them in style to their spa appts, errands and shopping. I have never witnessed any violence of any sort at the BunnyRanch ever. The most I have ever seen was perhaps a disagreement between two girls having the same type shoe. I personally would like to invite any one to come out to the Bunnyranch and see for themselves or at least watch an episode or two of the Cathouse.

All ladies before hiring are gone thru an extensive back ground check before they are issued a sheriffs card from the county.

And here's Antoine:

In a sink-or-swim Darwinian society such as we have, what form of work is not to some degree coercive? The need to pay for food, shelter, taxes and everything else all adds up to a form of coercion. The working conditions in brothels described above resemble conditions in other avenues of employment, including factories. It's difficult to make a living, and it's often an unpleasant experience. Everyone should have a choice as to how they want to do it-- even if that choice includes prostitution.

The nose tube...

... diet.

"The Pineapple And The Hare: Can You Answer Two Bizarre State Exam Questions?"

"A story and two questions on the New York state English exam taken by eighth-graders this week has stumped many — including Jeopardy! star Ken Jennings."

The story was written by the amusing author Daniel Pinkwater, but he didn't write it for the exam, and he didn't write the exam questions.

The story is funny and absurd on its own, but the questions, asked of poor students who are struggling not to appreciate the absurd but to get the answers right, are truly evil:

1. Why did the animals eat the pineapple?
a. they were annoyed
b. they were amused
c. they were hungry
d. they wanted to

2. Who was the wisest?
a. the hare
b. moose
c. crow
d. owl

No decent educator would torment students this way. It's an abuse of humor. The teachers should not be amusing themselves, and I feel sorry for the kids who may take a hatred of silliness forward into their newly gloomy lives.

"We know who the active denialists are – not the people who buy the lies, mind you, but the people who create the lies."

"Let’s start keeping track of them now, and when the famines come, let’s make them pay. Let’s let their houses burn. Let’s swap their safe land for submerged islands. Let’s force them to bear the cost of rising food prices. They broke the climate. Why should the rest of us have to pay for it?"

"In the summer of 1969, Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson, a staunch conservationist, was reading an article about the impact of college teach-ins on anti-war activism..."

"... when he had a flash of inspiration: What if the energy of these student teach-ins could also be harnessed to address environmental concerns?"

Tomorrow is Earth Day. Today, not thinking about Earth Day at all, we happened to go for a long walk in Governor Nelson State Park. It looked like this:

"I don't even know what to say. I don't know what Philip Humber is doing in this list."

"No idea what my name is doing there, but I'm thankful it's there."

There are 21 names on the list now, pitchers of perfect games.

The man who wrote Nixon's enemies list...

... Chuck Colson, dead at 80.

Medical psilocybin.

Easing your way down life's off ramp.

Why not? The boomers are aging. The death panels will be handing out prescriptions.

Turn on, tune in, drop out... indeed.

"Ode to Magritte."

A cool photo portrait... based on this famous painting and this... according to the photographer who can only remember the name of the first one — which is "Rape" — and not the second one — which is called "The Dangerous Liaison."

Looking for the image of "Rape," I got to a blog called WTF Art History — "For everyone interested in art history who has asked, WTF?" There's some amusing stuff there.

"Obama’s race to save the Rust Belt."

A headline at Salon that has us wondering if maybe, just maybe, Obama's race is the cure-all for everything.

Winning the recall election "It will send a powerful, powerful message that you can stick your neck out..."

"... you can make the tough choices and there will be voters helping you along the way," said Gov. Scott Walker yesterday.

"I think when we win, it will not only reaffirm what we did. It will send a powerful message to every politician…in our state and even in our city governments who are trying to take on the tough issues and do the right thing."

That "when we win" language caused the Chicago Tribune to headline its article "Wisconsin Gov. Walker says he'll prevail in recall," but Walker also said:

"[I'm] running to win, but I’m not afraid to lose.” He said the actions he has taken to stabilize Wisconsin finances will last for the long term, “even if people don’t see it the next election.”

Presumably, if he loses he'll be the GOP candidate in the next election, claiming credit for whatever goes well in the next couple of years and blaming Tom Barrett (or whomever) for whatever goes badly.

At the Dark Tree Café...

... why so gloomy?

"I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear..."

"... nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary."

"In France, they’d be unpacking their glorious foods and beverages. En famille! Not so here."

"We tend to like to plump down on a chair or a towel and feel the sun move from one point to the next. Or, in the inevitable quest for romance, we walk the shoreline, holding hands, thinking this is forever thoughts."

And by plump, she really means plump, based on the 7th photograph. Plump and well-oiled.

Reading between the lines, as I always do on Nina's posts — is there another way to read? — I'm sure I see that the people in France know how to live and we Americans do not.

Many people love to just stand in the water to cool off and that’s fun to watch too. Humankind, lusting for that refreshing moment when the waves gently tickle your legs or splash against your buttocks. Conversations in the water.

Plunge, why don't you, Americans? Get in over your ass, like the French!

"Baseball as a Road to God" — the name of a course at NYU.

Taught by John Sexton:

As the president of N.Y.U., Dr. Sexton could certainly teach any course he wanted. And as the former dean of its law school and clerk to a chief justice of the United States, he might have been expected to hold forth on jurisprudence. However, as a child of Brooklyn, as a scholar whose academic robe bears the number 42 in homage to Jackie Robinson, and as a practicing Catholic with a doctoral degree in religion, Dr. Sexton has for more than a dozen years chosen baseball and God as his professorial focus.

“The real idea of the course,” he put it in an interview, “is to develop heightened sensitivity and a noticing capacity. So baseball’s not ‘the’ road to God. For most of us, it isn’t ‘a’ road to God. But it’s a way to notice, to cause us to live more slowly and to watch more keenly and thereby to discover the specialness of our life and our being, and, for some of us, something more than our being.”...

The core of his original reading list — “The Sacred and the Profane,” by the religion historian Mircea Eliade — remains central to the class all these years later. Eliade’s essential insight, at least for Dr. Sexton’s purposes, is his concept of hierophany, meaning the manifestation of the sacred in the world. So, just as much as Stonehenge or the Kaaba or the Western Wall or St. Peter’s Basilica, baseball in Sextonian teaching affords such a locus for faith.

Hey, this reminds me of what my father used to say when I asked him why he didn't go to church. When we kids were little, the parents took us to church — we went here — but later they opted out. My father, who liked to play golf, said "God is every bit as much on the golf course as He is in church." I'm putting a capital "H" on "He," but it's not like he said it with a capital "H." That answer annoyed me, by the way. I was a teenager.

Madison's Mayor Soglin talks about letting nonprofit property owners make voluntary payments instead of taxes.

Voluntary payments? We were just talking about that in the previous post! Who makes charitable contributions to the government? What is Paul Soglin talking about?

Such a program, which would likely exempt smaller nonprofits, could produce several million dollars in annual revenue as service costs rise, state financial support remains unpredictable, and political pressures and changes in state law limit the city's capacity to increase taxes.

This is about bringing in new money, not switching current taxpayers into an optional approach.

The city has roughly 73,800 parcels valued at $21.5 billion, said Dave Gawenda, city treasurer. That includes 1,201 exempt parcels — excluding city, Dane County and Madison schools property — valued at $5.7 billion. If state and university property is excluded, the city exempts nearly $1.5 billion in nonprofit property, which would produce about $15 million in revenue for the city if fully taxed.

Currently, 17 tax-exempt entities have negotiated arrangements with the city — usually after a change to the property — to make payments in lieu of taxes that will total $877,000 for 2012.

No one envisions the city will seek to get the full tax payment from all nonprofits.

In Boston, under its new program, nonprofits that own property valued at more than $15 million are asked to increase payments over five years until they reach 25 percent of what they'd pay if they didn't have nonprofit tax status, the city's website says. The system also gives nonprofits credits for providing benefits to the community.

Can someone explain to me why they pay voluntarily? It's not truly voluntary, is it? There's some lurking coercion, some extortion, isn't there?

IN THE COMMENTS: Irene said:

"Mandatory volunteerism" is the progressive's way of treating everyone like children. It's one of my favorite oxymorons.

Schools first introduce this approach by requiring children to participate in mandatory duties shaded vaguely as "voluntary" activities that benefit the community. Example: "Earth Day cleanup" for the grade schoolers or "orientations" for first-year law students that require arboretum clean-up or Habitat-for Humanity work.

If tax payment is shrouded in "voluntary" language, it makes the maliable feel like they are participating in the general good. Part of the progressive community. Part of the group think.

Elizabeth Warren chose not to pay a voluntary higher tax rate, which is an official option in Massachusetts.

No one takes that option, now, do they? But Warren — the Harvard lawprof who's trying to wrest Teddy Kennedy's Senate seat out from under Scott Brown, a Republican — has been lambasting Brown for voting against the so-called millionaire's tax.

As Warren deftly — and professorily — put it: "I paid the taxes that I legally owed. I did not make a charitable contribution to the state." Yeah, who expects anybody to make a charitable contribution to the state?

The state is all about compulsion. It's a crisp, cold force that says you owe, and we will punish you if you don't pay. So you do exactly that (if you're reasonably competent and rational). There's no warmth and love left over. If you're feeling charitable, you go looking for something more specific upon which to lavish your love-in-the-form of money. In fact, it would be kind of screwy to love the government like that, to put your love-money into the general pot from which the state pays all its general expenses, even if you want the people of the state to put you in a position to cause the government to rack up even more expenses.

Brown’s campaign called Warren a hypocrite for not checking the optional higher tax rate on her personal income. “The problem with running a campaign based on self-righteousness and moral superiority is that you had better live up to the same standard you would impose on everyone else," said the incumbent's campaign manager, Jim Barnett, in a statement. The Brown team said Warren earned over $700,000 in 2011, adding, “This is the sort of hypocrisy and double-speak voters are sick and tired of hearing from politicians, especially those who can't keep their hands out of others' pocketbooks."

Is it really self-righteousness and moral superiority?  Or is it a crisp cold calculation of what each person's share of the expenses is? You will be billed for that, and you will pay in a calm and orderly manner. There will be no love exchanged, no enthusiasm. It's just your share, that you owe, as determined by the democratic majority, who like to think that more is owed by those other people, those millionaires, and not little me. And it's not that $700,000 doesn't make Warren a good target for the democratic majority who would like to require more from somebody — somebody else. Obviously, she is. And I think she would agree!

When your vision is of the majority making the cold calculation and assessment, all you need to do to avoid hypocrisy is to pay what you owe... coolly and emotionlessly, with no extra gushings of love or cash.

Is Warren a hypocrite on the theory that she can't keep her "hands out of others' pocketbooks"? If she had a seat in the Senate and enough political sway, would she not vote to increase the tax rate for people who make $700,000 (or $500,000 or $200,000 or even $100,000)? I think she would. It's not politically wise to say that, but I assume she'd jack up tax rates if she could. In a calm, calculated manner. And everyone should pay their share, as determined by the government, to cover the expenses of the government, as determined by the government, in a Democracy where the people gave her — and people like her — seats in Congress.

There's no self-righteousness and moral superiority anywhere in this vision for America. It's just gray, bland exaction and compliance.

"In an unusual move during the more than 2-hour bail hearing, Mr. Zimmerman... briefly took the stand and offered an apology to the victim’s parents..."

"... who were in the courtroom."

“I wanted to say I am sorry for the loss of your son,” Mr. Zimmerman, 28, said, speaking publicly for the first time about the Feb. 26 shooting. “I did not know how old he was. I thought he was a little bit younger than I am. I did not know if he was armed or not.”...

According to their lawyer, Benjamin Crump, Mr. Martin’s family was “completely devastated” by the judge’s decision that Mr. Zimmerman could be freed on such a low bail [$150,000]. He also described Mr. Zimmerman’s apology from the stand as “self-serving” and said he considered it a ploy to help win his release from jail.