I find it odd that people think just because something is small (a birth control pill) that it must cost nothing to make. iPods are small. Try buying one for a penny.

The main thing you are paying for when you buy products like this is safety. A pharmaceutical company could sell industrial grade estradiol for pennies, but something tells me no one wants to buy a pill that is 10-30% impure, depending on the batch.

The whole Vioxx situation, as well as the recent scandals with leaded toys, should convince anyone that we want drugs that are as safe as we can get them. That means they will cost a little more.

I don't think BCPs should be completely free -- people tend to waste things they will not pay for -- but $10-20 should be the target price. I am against abortions, and this seems to be the best alternative. Although -- lets be honest -- abstinence isn't the end of the world if you don't have $20 to spend.

And by the way, why can the boyfriends pony up the money?

I drove a standard-issue Toyota Passeo in the 90s. It got 43 on the highway, high thirties in the city. It had a back seat, though small, but people could sit back there in a pinch.

I can't figure out why a car so small only gets 40 mpg. Drop in a diesel engine and I bet it would top 50. Why not just make it electric? The Smart car seems so half-baked, hardly smart at all.

Perhaps candidates have no choice but to fight fire with fire. If a candidate is on the trail and being constantly bombarded with hostile questions from bird doggers, it would be natural for the candidate to try to respond by planting questions of her own to neutralize the effect.

There might be a more honest way of doing this, though. The candidate could shrug off a bird dogger, by saying, "I answered that question many times lately, find my answer on my website," and then explaining to the rest of the audience the problem of bird dogging and why she felt the need to do what she did.

The other way would be to change the town hall format. Have a host who asks all questions. Questioners would write the questions on an index card and then the host would ask them. To maintain neutrality, the host would be either a politician from the town or a reporter. With this system all questions would be anonymous, which would encourage the shy to ask something. Also anonymous questions mean no grandstanding.

When I was in college in the 1980s, I picked up a copy of the WSJ in an airport and was amazed at its quality. On and off I was a subscriber until 2006. Then I canceled.

The reason? A journal editorial that effectively said Louisiana should not get and does not deserve Katrina recovery money. I thought the editorial especially mean spirited and partisan. And hypocritical, considering the "money is no object" stance it took towards Iraq.

A newspaper editorial can be critical of government but should at least make a showing of impartiality. How can a paper claim to fairly cover Democratic politicians when it spews this bile? The WSJ is well on its way to being the favorite target of liberals, along with Fox News, just as the NYT is for the Republicans. The difference is that the NYT is broad based enough to maintain grudging respect. The Journal is rapidly losing that.

This is the argument sprung on anyone who tries to defend civil rights these days. Why care if the government is listening to your calls? Why worry if security singles you out while you board a plane? Why be concerned if the government wants to hold you for a couple of days without charges? You have nothing to hide, right?

The same question should be asked of the federal government in this case. Why not allow the lawsuit? The U.S. Government has nothing to hide, right? Right?

I would love to subscribe to newspapers this way. You could buy a subscription service, perhaps one that allowed you to choose from any of 3 or 4 newspapers each day. Hook the ebook up to the internet at bedtime, and in the morning your local paper and the LA Times are loaded and ready.

Ebooks have the potential to create entirely new distribution methods for print. Amazon already has an online service where you can buy short stories for 49 cents. One of the problems with short works, like essays, poems, and short stories, is that you either have to buy a whole magazine or a whole book to get a single story. Stephen King could clean up if he made all his short stories available for 49 cents a pop.

Ebooks could also resurrect the serial. A writer could release a story online in small increments. Readers could subscribe to the whole series or buy one section at a time.

Writers would profit because they could sell their work and collect a higher percentage of the royalties. No distribution costs. It might hurt big publishing houses somewhat, but it would get publishers back to doing what they are supposed to be doing -- consulting with writers to produce better writing, instead of promotion, which most serious writers are suspicious of anyway.

All we need is a decent delivery system.