Before last week, the U.S. House of Representatives was committed to making sure that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) would lose its entire $451 million budget when they passed a continuing resolution (H.R.1) de-funding the CPB in the 2011 federal budget. Similar legislation was introduced in the Senate by Republican Senators Jim DeMint (R-SC) and Tom Coburn (R-OK).

Funding for the CPB, which doles out money to National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), was a major debate topic in the showdown last Friday over the 2011 budget. Some members of Congress thought it was so important to de-fund public broadcasting, that they were willing to shut down the government over it. In the end, the threat to public broadcasting was eliminated when President Barack Obama negotiated CPB funding out of the “cuts” column.

So while this is mostly a moot issue for the immediate future, it is inevitable that CPB funding will come up again in the 2012 federal budget talks. and that means we need to talk about it, because CPB funds one of the best media organizations for parents and children currently available on the air: PBS. Let me tell you why you should give a crap that some members of Congress (probably even yours) want to kill PBS. Let me tell you what PBS has done for you lately…

Just in case you didn’t notice the byline two posts down, 8BitDad’s got a new contributor. 8BitDad welcomes Nicholaus Noles to the site, a dude you might already be familiar with. Here’s a run-down of why having Noles our our team is awesome:

• He’s got a PhD. from Yale in Psychology.
• He’s written for What They Play, and we’ve talked about him before.
• He’s written for IGN.
• He’s a father.
• He once did the Kessel run in roundabout 14 parsecs. Sure, it’s not “under 12,” but being that the Kessel run is 18 parsecs, it’s still impressive.

We heard that What They Play had a questionable future, so we wanted to make sure Nick had a place to get his fatherhood on.

We hope you look forward to watching Nick get it on as much as we do.

Wait…what?!

Recently, images of J. Crew Creative Director Jenna Lyons painting her five-year-old son’s toenails pink kicked off a mini media frenzy. Fox News commentator Dr. Keith Ablow criticized Lyons and J. Crew for celebrating transgenderism in children and emphasizing how “our culture is being encouraged to abandon all trappings of gender identity.” Looking over the coverage of this “gender debate,” several things pop out.