Mr. Conason excoriates the right for smearing Fitzgerald, but giving Kenneth Starr a clear pass. The implication is that they are being inconsistent, since the two are clear parallels.

But I seem to recall many a liberal voice (mine included!) raised in protest against Starr, and yet none of these voices are complaining about Fitzgerald. Surely all of us are just as inconsistent.

Wait, you say! That's not a fair comparison -- Starr really did have an agenda, just look at the leaks, the total lack of any prosecution, and so on. All of which may be true, but begs the central question; if it is not inconsistent to have different opinions about Starr and Fitzgerald, surely it is not a fair basis to criticize those who do so.

Mr. Conason, there are so many things to criticize about the right-wing politicians in Washington, do you really need or want to create something that looks so much like a straw man?

Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney surprised pro-choice groups last week by withdrawing his plan to exempt public hospitals in his state from a new law requiring them to offer emergency contraception to rape survivors, the Boston Globe reported.

Did you mean "private" instead of "public"? Otherwise I am having some trouble understanding the article.

I think you overestimate the impact of missing the big signing bonus when you come out of college. This is because of the existance of insurance.

Top propects can buy an insurance policy for their last year in college against major injuries that hurt their draft chances. That way Bush can afford to play knowing that a serious injury won't take away his big signing bonus -- it'll get picked up by the insurance company instead of the team.

Having said that, it's still a lot of money, since he'd get a salary, the signing bonus will probably be higher than the insurance payout, and there's a lot of time value in getting millions of dollars now instead of next year. But the gap is a lot smaller than $10M vs. nothing.

Some friends of mine used the following rule: if the first child is a girl, then all the children will have the mother's last name. If the first child is a boy, then they'll all have the father's name.

That was the kids get to have the same last name, which they thought was important. And there was no notion of whose name was more important.

How on earth is this sensible? Was anyone injured? Is ultrasound a threat in some way?

This seems like random government interference to me. Does "keep your laws off our bodies" not apply to people who could afford ultrasound machines?

So the wealthy get to have cancer-free offspring while the poorer continue to take their chances?

I see this sort of argument a lot in this blog, and it really doesn't make any sense at all to me.

New things are expensive. Early adopters pay more. This is true for electric cars, medical technology, and mp3 players. It's true that the rich get to have them and nobody else does, but only in the beginning.

Early adopters drive technology development. If nobody buys something, then it doesn't continue to get funded, and dies before it gets cheap. If the early adopters do like something, then the kinks get worked out, other companies start doing it, and innovation and competition drive down the price. Future consumers pay less for a better product.

This is just as true for new medical procedures as it is for anything else. Consider Lasic eye surgery, just as an example. It has been around for about 10 years, and in that time it has become significantly safer and the price has dropped by 75%. It's not covered by insurance, and purely optional, so it seems like a good analogy to in vitro cancer screening in that way.

If you argue against new medical procedures on the basis that only rich people get them, then not only will the rich people not get them (which doesn't seem to me to increase the happiness in the world, rather the opposite), it means that nobody will. And now you're denying not just current rich people but future middle class people.

Please rethink your common "only for rich people" argument, at least when it comes to technology.

I'm not sure that the women who have been so horrifically treated are victims of polygamy per se, instead of just being abused and coerced by an evil society that happens to also practice polygamy.

If girls were forced into marriage or sex at 13, required to be docile at all times, and completely deprived of all rights, but in a monogamous society, would they be better off than the girls in this polygamous group? I'm not convinced.

I think these are (hidden) victims of a repressive and abhorrent cult, and the polygamy thing is just a bit of a red herring.

"Evans told reporters that he had already taken and passed a polygraph test administered by his attorneys..."

He passed a polygraph that was performed by his own attorneys? This is supposed to be evidence of his innocence?

Maybe he did it and maybe he didn't, but this piece of "exculpatory evidence" is basically the same as just believing his lawyers when they say he didn't do it. I hope for his sake that they have something better up their sleeves when this thing goes to trial.