Prime Minister of Thailand, Samak Sundaravej was forced to resign on Tuesday because he hosted TV cooking shows!

Excuse me?

Apparently the country’s Constitutional Court ruled that he had violated the constitution by hosting a cooking show claiming “the defendant has violated Article 267 of the constitution, and his position as prime minister has ended.”

Samak hosted the TV show Tasting and Complaining for seven years before becoming prime minister. He broke a constitutional prohibition on private employment while in office by appearing on the show after becoming prime minister.

I think Thailand has larger issues to deal with other than if Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej has a cooking show..like I dunno…child prostitution?

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It’s May 16th, I’m Gina Telaroli and this is TakePart.com’s look at the week in social action…

Central China was hit with a devastating earthquake today measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale. The quake is the worst to strike the world’s most populous country in decades. The state-run Xinhua News Agency currently estimates over 8,500 people have perished as a result of the disaster, tragically including 900 students who were trapped under the rubble of their collapsed school.

The epicenter of the quake was in Sichuan province, in the hilly region of the Middle Kingdom leading up to the Tibetan plateau, but its force caused skyscrapers in Shanghai and Taipei to sway. The shockwaves were felt as far away as Thailand and Vietnam. You can view video of the quake shot by a student in Sichuan province after the jump:

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Spitzer’s prostitution scandal and the outing of “call girl” ashley alexandra dupre, have provoked quite a reaction and much debate. Yet, the debate about legalizing prostitution has yet to surface. Is it time for the United States to decriminalize the world’s oldest? If we acknowledge that prostitution will never go away, wouldn’t we, as a society, be better off if prostitution were legal? Prostitutes would be less stigmatized and victimized. Prostitutes would have protection from the violence which haunts them, and more access to safe sex education, resources, and testing. The debate over whether prostitution is “moral” or “immoral,” liberating of exploitative strikes me as academic. What we do know is that the “problem isn’t going away.” So the question is, do we live in a state of denial and hypocrisy? Or do we think rationally and act compassionately?

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