A moment of Carter nostalgia. (Not totally apropos, but bear with me.) If you'll recall, one of the promises Jimmy Carter ran on was to give amnesty to the Viet Nam draft dodgers. This was a BIG deal at the time. And (I had to check) on the day after he was inaugurated, he did so.

I remember - I was in Boston at the time, tutoring in a magnet school in the South End - hearing this on the radio, and tears pouring down my cheeks.

Obama could still do some things to change my impression of him, I'm saying. I had doubts about Carter, big ones. But that January day? He was my hero, no doubt. (Unfortunately, couldn't always carry through on things that he couldn't do all by his lonesome,...)

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We can't afford not to have single-payer!

do that happy dance...and take a moment to think about the abstinence-only gag rules here in our own schools, and the speech rules in our own clinics too.

Here's mine that he doesn't want to leave that domestic gag rule in place, from an April report of his remarks to a Messiah College forum quoted in the very anti-ed, pro-abstinence-only LifeNews.

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- During the faith forum at Messiah College on Sunday night, pro-abortion Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama made it clear he doesn't support abstinence-only education. Instead, he wants comprehensive sex-ed that includes contraception and birth control.

Though unmarried students who have signed a no-sex pledge to remain abstinent until marriage attended the event, Obama said their decision wasn't enough.

"What I have consistently talked about is to take a comprehensive approach where we focus on abstinence," he said. "I do believe that contraception has to be part of that education process."

Later in the forum, Frank Page of the Southern Baptist Convention talked about the abstinence-only education program True Love Waits and mentioned its success.

Page said it "has been credited by the government of Uganda for lowering the AIDS infection rate there dramatically from 30 percent to 6 percent."

Obama repeated his belief in forcing contraception-based sexual education into the abstinence-only program.

"[There] should be a strong education component and I think abstinence education is important. I also think that contraception is important," he said.

Obama also appeared to indicate he doesn't want the government funding just abstinence-only education.

"So I don't want to pluck out one facet of it. Now, that doesn't mean that non-for-profit groups can't focus on one thing while the government focuses on other things," he said.

and sources in a Bloomberg article suggest that Obama will return to a science-based policy on sex ed both inside the US and outside.

and because in other areas, he wants to keep -- or expand -- Bush's programs--NCLB, and Faith-based funding.