Unlike tough-guy wannabes like Giuliani and the rest of the Rethug presidential hopefuls, McCain has personal experience of being imprisoned, tortured, and forced to sign a false confession by the North Vietnamese when he was a POW.

"Lady parts" and "girly bits" are not so bad, either.

McClelland would be better off spending his time training instead of complaining. Even if he were an elite distance runner, he has no business telling others to stop racing.

Apparently Paul's "pro-personal liberty" and "small federal government" ideology doesn't extend to women.

Wanting to overturn Roe vs. Wade is reasonably consistent with a belief in limited federal government, since that would throw the abortion issue back to the states. However, Paul goes far beyond that. He wants to federally define conception as the beginning of life. This flies in the face of his purported devotion to a limited role for the federal government. It would greatly expand the role of the federal government by granting it powers it does not currently possess to ban abortion and several forms of contraception that potentially interfere with impantation. How does this possibly square with his supposedly libertarian philosophy? A true libertarian would leave this decision up to the woman involved.

I'm with you. I disagree with many of Ron Paul's positions and wouldn't really want him to be president. But I'm glad he's a candidate because he's raising issues that none of the other candidates are talking about and forcing them to confront them.

We buy them to meet our computing needs. And we've never resold them; we use them until they croak. We got 8 productive years out of our 1996-vintage PC and still would be running Linux on it except that the motherboard went south. The monitor from this PC lasted 11 years. Our 2000-vintage PC is still going strong with memory, DVD RW drive and hard disk upgrades. Same goes for our 2004-vintage PC; we recently put an additional 2 GIG of memory and a new hard drive in it and it runs just fine.

Did you think your publisher was printing your books purely out of the goodness of his heart? He wants to make money off you. And he's a conservative, too; you should have expected that he'd try to cheat you of your royalties. That's what conservative free market economics is all about!

Of course, when you're the one getting the short end of the stick, the situation is entirely different! Suddenly the lack of regulations in the free market doesn't seem so yippy-skippy and wonderful when you have to hire a lawyer to get your fair payment from your publisher.

Are against firearm waiting periods. Apparently a person who wants to buy a gun is assumed to have thought through the decision, but not a woman who wants an abortion! Also, I thought the gun waiting period was supposed to give time for a background check on the purchaser, which doesn't apply for abortion.

And did Brightstar really come out in favor of MPREG?

She was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes when she was about 10. She kept her disease under control with insulin injections until she unexpectedly got pregnant. Every one of her doctors recommended that she get an insulin pump to get her blood sugar back under control. However, the bean counters at her health insurance company claimed that it wasn't medically necessary and refused to pay for it! She had to appeal again and again until her case finally got to the level where an actual physician evaluated her claim and approved it.

We now make jokes about her bionic pancreas, but what she went through to get it is no laughing matter. Getting an insulin pump has made her life much easier and improved her health. It will probably allow her to avoid many of the long-term complications of diabetes. And it saved her insurance company the thousands of dollars it would have cost to hospitalize her if she had not been able to get her blood sugar back under control, not to mention the pregnancy complications that would have ensued! But of course, the bottom line rules all. The one-time charge for the insulin pump was all that the parasitic bean-counters at her insurance company gave a damn about -- never mind its benefits.

Hearing about this struggle was an eye-opener. If she had to put up with this kind of garbage to get a medically necessary device, I am not surprised to hear about other diabetics who are floundering through our screwed-up health care system. Diabetic girls with eating disorders who might benefit from an insulin pump are probably going to have to walk across broken glass to get one.

Put yourself in her shoes. Maybe she thinks you're too busy getting ready for work in the morning to have time for a cup of joe with her. Perhaps she even feels like you dumped HER when you found your nice new job. You'll never find out until you talk to her.

So pick a weekend day or a day you're off work and invite her over for coffee. Tell her you've missed her company and would still like to share a pot of java with her sometimes.

She may come around if you take the initiative. And if she doesn't, look for another friend to have your morning coffe klatsch with.

Eat your ice cream and crinkle leaves between your toes while ye may.

And Garry Owen and bebop, you guys wrote some great letters upthread. Thank you for your service to this nation.