I thought the idea for the article was refreshing. To write an article about an ethnic group without being racially self-conscious is an achievement today.

Last week I watched an NBC special about the first few years of Saturday Night Live. They replayed a skit in which Steve Martin called Richard Pryor the N-word to his face. I was surprised the censors didn't bleep it, but even more surprised that it ever made it on the air in the first place.

Prior generations had their own problems with racism, but at least they had the decency to let it all come out in the open. In some ways our time is worse -- we won't talk about it, the way Germans won't talk about Nazism. This is a shame. We have lost something.

That was a beautiful essay about a great singer I will not forget either. Pavarotti died just this morning; to have concocted an essay of this quality in such a short period of time is an accomplishment.

Unless, of course, you had the obit in the drawer, waiting for the inevitable?

Nonetheless, fine work and a fitting tribute.

You are not doing the baby a favor by letting the parents have their way. From personal family experience, I can tell you that if a parent is not made to stand on his own two feet, he or she will never do it. If the roommate and girlfriend are allowed to sponge off LW now, they will continue this behavior their entire lives.

Raising a kid is tough, and many people cut corners if they can. This includes putting responsibility for the child off onto other people. Once you let a friend or relative do something like that in the name of the child, they will pull the same crap again. LW should not be surprised if this family shows up in the pouring rain at his doorstep in about a year, saying they got evicted and have no place to go.

LW should do the baby a favor and tell them to get out. A dose of responsibility is will help the child in the long run. If they get a lawyer and come back at him, he should tell the lawyer he will be glad to move as long as the parents buy out the lease.

But don't let them get away with this scot-free. The kid deserves better than that, even if the parents don't.

Like most Bush people, Mary Peters is a Neo-Segregationist. This is a person who bashes minority groups for the purposes of consolidating a majority. This used to be an approach reserved for white Southern politicians against black people, but the Republican party has dusted it off for the 21st century.

The general approach: any time you are in political hot water, pick out a minority too small to swing an election and abuse them. Works like a charm, every time.

This is the politics of the future? We can only get X percent of a group's vote, so screw 'em?

I am offended that the best plan political thinkers can come up with is to to circumscribe an interest group, then write them off. When a politician is elected, he represents EVERYONE, even the people who didn't vote for him. How does a leader expect to get general public support when that leader systematically cuts entire populations out of the election message?

Do you know who shares this philosophy, besides Karl Rove? John Bolton, the annoying former U.N. ambassador. Bolton has repeatedly argued that the president's primary fiduciary responsibility is to the people who voted for him. He calls this odious idea "democratic theory."

It is a very short step from the ideas in this article to John Bolton country. The Democratic Party's plan for the future seems to be to behave as much like the GOP as possible, and I don't like it.

I didn't get to see the question the student asked, which reportedly was long and rambling, and disorganized. It is possible that this young man was mentally ill. Mental illness tends to show up in college, when young people are separated from their families and in unfamiliar surroundings for the first time.

I don't know for sure, but it is something to think about. It would be awfully sick if this student turned out to have a mental illness and the police treated him like that.

the right veggie diet can increase energy. This is not because of the vegetables themselves but because vegetarians eat fewer calories overall and less processed sugar. Most Americans eat far too much food, and I think lower cal diets with higher fiber will make people feel better.

The point is not to eliminate all meat. Just to eat a lot less of it. You're just not going to convince me that the Greek maxim of moderation in all things is wrong.

I can't believe I read these words in this article: "But can we put the ethics aside for now?"

You want to put the ethics aside where children are concerned, just go right ahead. I won't be reading any further.

But it is apparent here that Resentful is really angry at her own parents. Proof? She recognizes consciously that her anger is irrational, but she still cannot help herself.

This anger is displaced anger at her parents. She resents that her fiance has parents that have provided in abundance what her own parents did not. There is probably guilt too, guilt that in marrying her fiance she would be replacing her own absent parents with somebody else's.

She needs to acknowledge her anger at her own parents. Then she needs to confide this with her fiance. It wouldn't hurt to use the world "jealousy" to describe it.

I know that, given the hard road Resentful has traveled, we want to absolve her of her feelings. But she needs to acknowledge the anger as jealousy, or she will never vanquish it.