I don't like the no free throws/10 second clock in the last 2 minutes. That makes the last 2 minutes a different game than the first 38. Two sets of rules, two different games.

You have to keep the rules the same throughout.

I think the answer is to go back to the old NBA system of giving extra free throw tries. After a team commits, say, its 10th foul, the fouled team gets three tries to make two shots. Then, after 15 fouls, it gets 3 freethrow attempts.

Then there is a penalty for excessive fouling at the end of a game. It becomes more likely the team in the lead will hit more freethrows, and trailing teams will not be able to close leads.

but as someone who opposes abortion you will not get any sympathy from me by complaining that access isn't easy enough.

I don't know a way around this problem, but you have convinced me that abortion rights people will never be satisfied until abortions are as easy to get as aspirin. These kinds of statements simply make us anti-abortion people feel that there is not going to be any compromise. This depresses me.

A 24 hour delay and "biased" counseling is to high a hurdle for terminating a pregnancy? It often takes a greater time commitment to get pregnant in the first place.

I often find Michelle Obama supercilious, but I am completely with her on this one. She is saying that Americans are too self-satisfied, and ignorant -- not by lack of ability, but by choice. And this is wrong why?

I am amazed we are fighting a war so unpopular and millions are not marching on the streets. Why, when our school systems are so bad, are parents not outraged? Why does no one care that we are tapping domestic phone calls and torturing people in U.S. prison camps? It is because, as Michelle Obama says, we are satisfied with the way things are.

I hope she says more things like this. It will send the far right into fits and expose their materialist complacency once and for all.

"50 Cent, he don't know, so don't ask Fiddy."

I guess we can at least say proclaimed ignorance is honest. But if I were a black man, I would think I had a little bit invested in a race between the first black man and the first woman with a serious change of being elected president.

Can anyone imagine black musicians in the past being so coolly noncommittal? Miles Davis, Paul Robeson, James Brown, Parliament, even Jimi Hendrix or Louis Armstong would have said so much more. When did it become hip to be apathetic?

Ugliness has become so pervasive in this country that those who choose to behave with dignity are in the minority, and will be sought after just because they are nice.

That's what I miss about Al Franken. Other than Rachel Maddow, Airamerica has been a wasteland without him.

You mean this is an option? Great, let's give it a try! How could they do worse than the people who have run the war so far? The average orthodontist is capable of writing an order that says, "Get out of Iraq, right now" and signing it.

Those six words ace out 8 years of Bush defense policy.

I didn't see the debate either, thank heaven, but saw that one of the questions put to Obama concerned his not wearing a flag pin.

I think any reporter who puts this question to a candidate should be forced to resign. We live, excuse me, used to live in a free country, a place where people got to choose what clothing they put on. How could the interviewers so cravenly kowtow to the neo-Nazi effort to make everyone wear flag pins?

There are bad issues in this campaign, but in my opinion, this one is by far the worst. People are dying in Iraq, and the press gives credence to the battle over what kind of jewelry Barak Obama wears.

How much lower can you get?

Both candidates claim they intend to expand health care coverage. But they both just promised not to raise taxes. Now I'm no financial whiz or anything, but it doesn't take a lot of smarts to figure out that neither Obama's nor Clinton's health care plan can work without new taxes.

I guess both will say that eliminating the Bush tax increases on the rich will pay for their plans, but we hear the same claptrap from Republicans every day of the week. It won't work. We are running record deficits as it is. No health care initiative will float without tax increases. End of story.

McCain's health care proposal is nothing but a reshuffling of existing programs, but now I will have to go back and look at it again. Since Obama's and Clinton's plans are now DOA, McCain's is the only one left that has a chance.

It would be suicide in the fall election if Obama or Clinton bolted and ran as a third party candidate, but maybe this is a necessary step. Plenty of European nations have third parties and do just fine. I suspect after a few election cycles the new third party would siphon off a few voters from the GOP and a few from the Democratic party and they would be roughly equal.

Why the hell not? I for one an tired of the infighting and would rather see three candidates competing in the general election than hear the word "superdelegate" ever used again.

The Constitution does not say there have to be only two parties. Washington didn't think there should be any political parties. With three parties instead of two, "triparitisanship" would be a requirement and politicians would have no choice but to work together.