Most husband and wife stuff is private, but I disappointed my wife in a very public way and the only way to really apologize is to make it public.

One night last year, I think it was a Saturday, a tweet went out on Cali Lewis’ account about global warming being a hoax. It became a big controversy that ended with Leo Laporte saying he no longer wanted to work with her. People are split on the issue of anthropomorphic climate change so thousands of people rallied around her and thousands slammed her.

There is a major problem, though. She didn’t write that tweet and she didn’t hit the update button. I did.

Since we started GeekBrief.TV, I’ve studied media successes to learn techniques for growing an audience and keeping them interested. Publicly writing something controversial is usually a very good thing to do. You don’t loose as many people as seems logical because people want to stick around to see what you’ll do or say next.

When Cali found out what I did, it obviously it made her angry.  To her, politics is private and divisive. She doesn’t enjoy it in the least.

I apologized, but also argued my case about the benefits of the controversy. We had recently had dinner with John C. Dvorak and he explained how he has used controversy in his long career as a tech writer to keep people paying attention. I thought Cali bought-in to the idea of creating controversy, but I was wrong.

She was deeply hurt by what I did. She is the kindest person in the world and she didn’t want to embarrass me. She’s lived with letting everyone believe it came from her because of our relationship. The only way I can make it right is to publicly apologize.  A private apology is utterly insufficient because what I did pushed her into a public, political battle she didn’t want to fight. She lost friends and business opportunities because of what I did. I hope this blog post will mend some of those relationships.

I also want to apologize to friends of GeekBrief.TV and followers of Cali’s tweets. The controversy experiment just wasn’t worth it, especially without her participation. I’m sorry.

The political part of my heart is unshakable. I don’t believe in political compromise. I believe in political victory. My personal politics is influenced by the grace and love of Jesus and it’s enhanced by the political philosophy of Ronald Reagan. Smaller government is better for the freedom of individuals. That’s what I believe.

My political conversation is going to be at NealPolitik.com. There, I will be raw, truthful and fully focused on blogging on behalf of individual liberty.

I’ve been working through an internal struggle since McCain introduced us to Palin. I don’t like being political in my public life because politics is so personal and I don’t want to risk alienating folks who disagree or don’t enjoy rational, political discourse. With Palin, I’m all-in at least one more time. If she disappoints me by using power to restrict liberty, I will go back to ignoring politics.

Twitter serves as an amazing pressure valve, but it’s much less satisfying that I would like because someone might follow my tweets because of what we do professionally and have no interest in my late night ranting. This morning I woke up with a great idea. I created a different twitter account for “Neal After Dark.” The new Twitter account is where I’ll stand on the porch yelling at the kids to get off my proverbial lawn.

The idea of having place to blow off political steam, where people know what they’re getting if they follow that account seems kind of liberating.

The “After Dark” account is Twitter.com/lateniteneal. Follow at your own risk.

I’ve writen about my need to stay away from politics in order to maintain mental stability. There are things done and said on the left and the right that totally throw me off my game. I haven’t called myself a conservative since President Bush called himself one, but this election year, putting on the old jacket of Reagan conservatism feels pretty comfortable.

I’m a Christian who loves science. In school, one of the things that drew me to science was the scientific attitude of skepticism. My teachers taught me there are very few irrefutable laws in science and it’s the job of a scientist to continual test what we know what we don’t know. I LOVE that! Skepticism is the guide. Since my university was a Christian university, it wasn’t all that difficult to keep matters of faith and science separated.

The science I fell in love with in school was never self-assured. It is a constant quest of discovery because the moment a scientist becomes sure, the motivation to keep searching begins to die.

From my perspective conservatives separate faith and science well, because faith in God does nothing to squelch the desire to learn why and what this world and beyond is all about. Progressives seem to take scientific ideas and turn them into absolutes. They take it for granted that evolution is a fact and global warming is caused by human activity and then adopt an air of superiority that says, “anyone who disagrees with evolution or global warming is a backward idiot.” If you’re on the left and you want to understand why we love Sarah Palin, this is exactly the reason. We’re tired of our opinions being dismissed by the media when they determine our positions to be inferior.

Charles Gibson interviewed Sarah Palin with such an overwhelming air of superiority that I want to slap the man. He asked questions with a tone that said, “You don’t really believe that …” or “You can’t possibly think that …” and “Are you sure you want to answer this way?” Sarah, for the most part, stood up to him, but the reason Gibson infuriates me is that he asked questions with the implication that conservatism is an invalid foundation for political discussion. Conservatives have no responsibility to answer to a media who hates them and I think they should stop trying.

Normally I cope with politics through distance. I can listen to NPR and rarely get upset (the exception is commentary from Dan Shore), and I can listen to Rush Limbaugh (but when Rush ends and Hannity starts, I can’t turn the radio off fast enough). Distancing myself keeps my blood pressure in check. I focus on technology and I’m happy.

This year is different because I’m emotionally investing my heart in the success of Sarah Palin because she echos the Reagan idea that government isn’t the solution. Government is the problem and the best thing government can do for people is get out of our way. Her record in Alaska is one of slashing and killing wasteful government programs that don’t work or don’t matter, and I trust her to do the same on the national stage. There’s precedent for that type of vice-presidential role, too. Love him or hate him, that’s what Al Gore did as vice-president. Clinton gave him the task finding and exposing government waste. I want John McCain to give Sarah the same task. I want her to dress Washington waste like one of those moose (mooses? meese?) she hunts.

This year is different also because I’m reading a ton of left-wing blogs, which oddly enough, I find more comforting than infuriating. It’s Big Media that frustrates me because they claim non-bias. The left-wing bloggers see Big Media as biased in a completely different direction than I see it and I find that heartening.

Here’s my question to anyone nice enough to stop by my psychology experiment of a blog… How do you cope with politics? I hate it because it separates people? I hate it because it puts me in a mental state where I feel out of control. I hate it because it raises my blood pressure. Whether you’re a conservative, a liberal or a crazy mixed-message Libertarian like me, how the heck to you cope?

Sarah Palin has hit a nerve with me. I’m trying to understanding it by writing about it.

In just over two weeks, I’ve gone from being a non-registered, non-voter with a 90% laissez faire attitude about what government does to being all-in for a person I want to see become president.

Being disaffected by politics didn’t mean I was without strong political beliefs. It meant I was without hope that anyone strong enough to articulate and push a strong Libertarian message would ever be motivated enough to run for office. My political foundation has been shaped by the speeches of Ronald Reagan and the writing of Libertarians like William F. Buckly and Camille Paglia. I believe God created us as vessels of free-will. We can do good. We can do bad or we can do nothing. I believe in freedom of choice across the board because that’s the system illustrated in the Garden of Eden.

Coming out of school, the Republicans held sway with me because their rhetoric was closer to Libertarianism. The Contract with America gave me great hope that I could see wasteful government spending come to an end. When that didn’t happen. I gave up and dropped out. If the political system’s intention was to screw itself, I wasn’t going to hang around and watch.

I had a little (unfounded) hope that Democrats would learn from Clinton’s Republican-Congress-Assisted fiscal restraint. As my fellow Christians seemed to grow more and more enamored with political power, I hoped for a new kind of Democrat party … one that was socially liberal and fiscally conservative. That hope was very short lived. It’s clear that the roots of socialism are too well established in the Democrat party.

I didn’t plan to vote this year, like I haven’t voted for the past several years, and then along came Palin.

It starts with the fact that she’s a woman and I’m a feminist. I don’t have much respect for men in general so men have to prove themselves in my life, but I’m likely to give a woman the benefit of the doubt. Margaret Thatcher said, “In politics, if you want anything said, ask a man; if you want anything done, ask a woman.” Oh Man! I can’t tell you how much I believe that, but for me, it goes beyond politics. I’d rather follow a woman than a man in almost any circumstance.

Beyond being a woman, Sarah Palin is a strong communicator who warmly and smoothly articulates her message in a way that attracts even people who disagree with her. It isn’t a quality that can easily be faked. She comes across as a politician who is genuine and I trust her. That never happens with me so I’ve been reading every blog post and news story about her. Memeorandum has overtaken Techmeme as my favorite Web site.

What I’ve learned about her, is that her enemies fear her because she is so damn effective. Lies about her record in Alaska are jumping up like popcorn, but they don’t stick because all they are just popcorn. She’s slashed government spending on things that don’t work or don’t matter in Alaska. That’s something I’ve always longed to see a politician do. She stood against and exposed corruption in the good-ol-boy networks and I don’t even want to get started on what I think about good-ol-boys. She learned from mistakes. Yes she originally supported the Bridge to Nowhere, but realized it was wrong and killed it. The Alaskan Democrat Party Web site credited her with killing the Bridge to Nowhere (and then took down the page after her nomination).

Camille Paglia is a lesbian, feminist, pro-abortion writer who supports Obama. She writes more eloquently than I ever could about why my friends on the social left don’t have a legitimate reason to fear Sarah (based on her record) and why feminists in particular shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss her.

I want to see someone go to Washington and kill programs that don’t work or don’t matter. Sarah Palin is the first person I’ve seen who just might do it.

This year I’m going to vote for John McCain, but I’m really voting for a future Sarah Palin presidency. I want to have a daughter one day and I prefer a woman in the White House when my girl (or boy) is growing up.

I feel like I have to weigh in on this. The church Sarah Palin once attended appears to believe people can be “healed” of homosexuality.

Background: I’m a born-again Christian who loves … is that the word? I value gay people. I believe God blessed the planet with gay people and I don’t care if anyone agrees with me. Gay people make the world a better place in many, many ways. As a Christian, I cannot deny that the Bible calls homosexuality a sin, but I don’t care. My position is that, if God thinks it’s a sin, He has the power to change it and if He wants too … I’m okay with that, but I haven’t seen evidence of it, and I hope He doesn’t.

In my life, I’ve seen gay Christians who love God and their committed relationships are blessed by God.

Let’s just call it a sin since the Bible does. So is gluttony and we share God’s grace for that. Divorce is a sin that Jesus talked about (He didn’t talk about homosexuality), and the church has largely extended God’s grace to divorced people.

Sarah Palin may or may not be where I am in my belief that we should love gay men and women whether they stop being gay or not. I hope that isn’t what God wants. Lots of Christians hope God wants them to change. Either way … it isn’t up to us. It’s up to Him.

What is up to us is that we love each other the same as we love ourselves. I extend a bunch of grace to myself and therefore I extend almost an unlimited amount of grace to anyone who doesn’t hurt me personally.

I believe the church will move toward extended unconditional love to every person who walks the planet. Sarah will too. Is she there yet? I don’t know, but if she loves Jesus, I know she’ll get there because He loves and died for me … just as I am.

I’ve taken a break from the Internet over the past week. I haven’t checked email or twitter in days. My goal is to avoid political discussions because no one is going to change my thinking, and I’m not really interested in trying to change anyone else’s thinking.

Sarah Palin has inspired me in the past week. I haven’t experienced it before but it helps me understand how Barak fans must feel. Sarah hasn’t inspired me because I share her political beliefs. I share some of them, but as a Libertarian, I’m pro freedom across the board and my sense of Sarah is that she isn’t. I like her because she seems to stand for getting the government out of my way so I can succeed or fail in contrast to Obama and Biden who think I need their help.

Both Obama and Biden have shared their dissapointment that the Republicans didn’t talk about the middle class at the RNC. I’m blown away that politicians, who think they have my best interest in mind, don’t understand that the term “middle class” is offensive. Maybe that’s a big part of the reason those of us with Sarah mania sees her critics as a big bunch of elitists.

Alcoholics describe their experience with alcohol in a way that very nearly mirrors my experience with political news. I have to try very hard to avoid partisan political discussion because even a small amount of exposure can send me spiraling into depression and ultimately a sense of despair. Some people can handle it. I cannot.

Growing up, I watched This Week with David Brinkley with my grandfather on Sunday mornings. I loved Sam Donaldson, Cokie Roberts and George Will. That was where my addiction started and by the time I was in college, I was a political news junkie. I listened to Rush Limbaugh for three hours a day and National Public Radio the rest of the time. On Sunday mornings I recorded the political shows so I could watch This Week, Meet the Press and The McLaughlin Group back to back.

At some point there was a shift away from politics being a positive form of entertainment. It because a source of frustration for me, especially as I began to think of myself as more of a Libertarian.

When Rush Limbaugh returned to his show after re-hab, he talked about how it’s much easier to be a happy person when you distance yourself from politics. That was it. I walked away and now, as much as possible, I try my best to stay away from it. I’d rather be happy than right.

I’ve exchanged politics for technology because technology offers real solutions rather than false promises and power grabs. On Brief 377 we covered a Silicon Valley company called LS9. They’ve genetically modified bacteria to feed on wood chips or straw and excrete crude oil. Within just a few years their technology very well may eliminate our dependence on foreign oil. The political arguments haven’t changed much in years and years. Technology can transform our lives virtually overnight.

I won’t always be able to avoid political discussions, but I’m trying as hard as I can. Live is much more fun without it.

I’m a Libertarian. I think I have been since I was five-years-old. My fundamental value is a belief in the right to be free. Since the Great Depression, government has slowly taken more and more power and responsibility away from individuals and it did it mostly with the consent of American people.

I’m a Reagan kid. He was called the great communicator, and it makes sense to me because I could comprehend his fundamental belief in limited government even as a young child. Liking Reagan made me feel like my political home was in the Republican Party. William F. Buckley, the great Libertarian intellectual and friend of Ronald Reagan, convinced me that I was really a Libertarian more than a conservative. Buckley felt at home in the Republican Party and that was good enough for me.

Newt Gingrich and his Contract with America was yet another welcome mat that made me feel at home in the Republican Party. I even used to call myself a conservative. Not anymore though. The Reagan Revolution is over and Republicans have rejected his mission to shrink government control over our lives.

I’m a Libertarian who believes government is too big and it doesn’t serve the goal of making men free. Not one of the three candidates for president believes in Reagan’s message that government is the problem not the solution.

McCain sounds like a Democrat when he speaks against tax cuts that are “for the rich.”

Hillary fundamentally believes in tax-payer funded healthcare one group at a slippery-slope time.

Obama understands liberty the least when he says things like, “We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times.” He should be saying, “Yes we can!”

If we truly are in an energy crisis, isn’t it tame we roll up our sleeves and fix it? To do that, we have to strip away irrational regulation that keeps us from getting oil wherever we can find it. We need to build clean nuclear power plants that will be ready to charge our future electric cars (or whatever we end up with). We need to innovate like never before because there are solutions out there. Energy is everywhere and if America is still the great nation I grew up pledging allegiance to, we’ll capture it and improve the lives of people around the planet.

If someone starts talking like that rather than about regulating my thermostat setting, I might register to vote, but for now, I’m still politically homeless.

Someone posted a comment on BigTrip.TV:

I’m interested to know what you’re doing to offset the carbon emissions from this “trip”.

I love that he put the word trip in quotes, as if it’s somehow suspect and not really a trip at all. Surely our true intention is to destroy the planet as we know it with our harmful carbon emissions. I don’t care to argue, so I replied with a joke, “We’re going to eat more cows.”

We live in a time where environmental fascism is being pushed so hard and so often, that thinking, logical people are bending over and giving into global, irrational, unscientific peer pressure. You can’t turn on a television anymore without hearing environmentalist nonsense about being green to save the planet. The planet is not in danger.

As a thinking person, I can’t base my opinions about the environment and global warming on emotional arguments like those offered by Al Gore and his allies in Hollywood. My gut feeling is that their arguments are nonsense, and oh you cannot imagine how much, I would love to ignore these people and just go with my gut.

My gut instinct is based on simple logic. If scientists cannot accurately predict the weather next week, they also cannot predict the weather next century. It’s the same logic I used to discount disaster theories about Y2K. When everyone was worried and spending millions of dollars on solutions, I changed the clock on my computer to see what would happen at midnight, January 1, 2000. Nothing happened, so I knew nothing would happen anywhere else, and I was right.

I can’t rest with simple logic, though, because the people making arguments based on emotion appear to be winning public support. In order to continue to believe what I think is true, I have to spend time reading the science behind the arguments to see for myself it the emotional arguments have scientific validity.

The emotional argument is that the scientific community has reached the consensus that global warming is a reality and it’s caused by human activity. Global warming is necessarily bad, and since it is caused by humans, it can be corrected, but only if we act now before it’s too late.

There is nothing scientific, rational or even reasonable about that argument. To begin with, scientific fact isn’t determined by consensus. I worry about the state of science education if we don’t remember what we learned about the difference between law and theory in science.

It is a fact that the existence of global warming and its causes are based on climate models that could turn out to be accurate, but could just as easily turn out NOT to be accurate. It is also a historic fact that warmer periods in the past have resulted in global economic prosperity, so global warming, if it exited is more likely to be good for us than bad for us.

It is not, however, a fact that global warming exists. The planet hasn’t warmed since 1998, and 2007 was cool enough to offset all warming that has taken place over the past century.

One of my favorite presidents in history is Teddy Roosevelt. He loved nature and he lead us to set aside parts of our nation to be preserved in a natural state. Nature is good. Pollution is bad. Protecting nature is good. Making people feel guilting for using resources is evil.

Rather than bowing to environmental fascism, religious fundamentalism or any thought system not based on reason, I choose to embrace logic and balance. I have full confidence, when we go too far as humans, a little something God built into nature called homeostasis will bring everything back into balance.

My favorite climate scientist is Dr. Roy W. Spencer. He just released a book explaining climate science. It’s called Climate Confusion. It’s based on science not emotional arguments and I highly recommend it.

If you read this and disagree, feel free to post scientific research that contradicts what I’ve written. I would love to read it, but I’m not going to get into an emotional argument with anyone about science.