... I would demand the principal's head on a platter. Instead of spending his time on the real problems of kids at his school (like drugs, alcohol, bad behavior, academic failure, etc. -- every school has these problems, Christian schools included), he conducts a witch hunt based on malicious gossip that a couple of students are lesbians.

And this witch hunt has achieved exactly what? He hasn't "converted" these girls to heterosexuality, if they were even lesbians in the first place. He certainly hasn't demonstrated any of the Christian virtues of forgiveness, mercy, understanding and love, which one might naively imagine that a Christian educator would want to teach his students. Nor has he set a good example of leadership for his faculty and staff. What he has done is anger the girls' parents, divide the school, and trigger a lawsuit that will suck down money that should have gone towards educating his students.

Firing this nimrod would be the smartest thing that this school board could possibly do, regardless of how they feel about homosexuality. It's clear that he simply does not possess the level of wisdom and judgement necessary to run a school.

I don't know anyone who married strictly for money, although I do know women who have stayed married for money. Most of them were older women who were frightened of being left in poverty by divorce because they did not have marketable skills and good work experience. One younger acquaintance married a programmer who later hit paydirt when his dot-com was sold. She doesn't really love him any more, but has stayed married because he can provide her with a lifestyle that she could never have afforded on her own. He seems to view her as an accessory, kind of like his ranch (where she keeps show horses), Ferrari, and plane. I don't know what will happen to her if he gets it into his head to trade her in for a younger model; hopefully, she will find a good laywer.

I think money is often an indirect factor for selecting a husband. Many qualities of a good husband are also qualities of a person who is able to make decent money. Being stable and responsible enough to hold down a job, for example, or having the intelligence and self-discipline to complete a college degree, are signs that a man has the potential to be both a good spouse and a good earner.

Cindy Crawford has massive wealth and a successful career, what did Janet Reno have?

Power.

See also Angela Merkel, Margeret Thatcher, Madeline Albright, Golda Meir, Hillary Clinton, Indira Gandhi, Aung Sang Suu Kyi, Dianne Feinstein, Condoleeza Rice, Patty Murray, Vigdis Finnbogadottir, Barbara Boxer ....

... is that they can sometimes be bought pretty cheaply. One would think that you'd have to be a major playa to influence these jokers, but apparently not. DeLay gets Ashcroft to shutter an Indian casino after a piddly $1000 donation to his PAC. Santorum tries to muzzle the National Weather Service (and bad-mouths it after Hurricane Katrina, when it was the only federal agency that performed well) for a measly $5000 from AccuWeather. What great value they are to their owners -- whoops, I meant donors!

I kept my name when I got married because I didn't feel like changing it. (My rationale at the time was that I was marrying my husband, not becoming him.) This confused a few people and mystified a few others (I have some relatives who still address letters to me by my husband's name -- and I've been married for 14 years and they're on MY side of the family!), but overall things worked out swimmingly.

And then I got pregnant. I wanted to give the baby my last name because, as I pointed out to my husband, I knew that it was mine. He wanted to give the baby his last name because he already knew that it was mine!

We compromised and combined our two last names to make a new surname for our kids. Now we have three last names in the family. It has gone pretty well. Everyone knows who is who, there is no doubt about who is whose child, and my kids have a last name that is unique. I get called by the kids' last name occasionally, but such is life.

We were fortunate enough to have short last names that sounded harmonious when combined, though, so this solution is not for everyone.

Other creative solutions to the name game:

- A friend with last name that's difficult to pronounce goes by his wife's surname, which is short and easy to say. However, they plan to give his last name to their first kid to carry on the family name.

- Another friend and his wife picked out a completely new surname when they got married, and BOTH changed their names.

Half of all men don't want a wife with a sense of humor.

Half of all marriages end in divorce.

Want to bet these groups overlap?

... is that quite a few normal conservatives -- and by "normal", I mean reasonably thoughtful people, not knee-jerk wingnuts -- take her ravings seriously. By design or intuition, Coulter goes straight for the scaly reptile brain, below the level where logic applies. A conservative former co-worker used to quote Coulter's rantings about Christians being persecuted in the US as support for her own feelings of victimization. This woman was hardly a victim of anything and was normally pretty open to other points of view, yet I could not convince her by reason or example that Coulter was just trying rile people up and that there was little or no substance to her ravings.

I still can't decide whether her repulsive public persona is the real thing, or just her schtick. Either way, it's kind of pathetic.