I, too, question the judgement used when selecting the photo to go along with "The Many Faces of American Muslims." Frankly, being a feminist, I am put off -- BIG TIME -- by the burka-like outfits and wish someone, somewhere would start showing Muslim women without them, which I believe is the way the majority of Muslim women dress here (and in countries where they're allowed to express their freedom to dress and act as they want). As to those who choose the traditional outfits and practices (but also want everything that U.S. citizenship provides) I think they're living in a fairy tale. Frankly, I think it's easy to be a Muslim woman in the United States with the protection of our laws to insure she's safe and able to go where she wants, when she wants, with whomever she wants. Where her rights are protected by law. Where she has a voice in what happens to - and around - her.

Before someone blasts me for not being PC, let me say that I've studied traditions and experienced some of the same requirements when I growing up in the Catholic faith--the ideas that women must be subservient, that they are second-class (or worse) citizens, that they are the property (if not by law, then by church teaching) of their husbands. That they are "unclean" after giving birth (that one practically sent me to the throats of the male-dominated hierarchy!). But, even with the silliness I grew up with in an ethnic Catholic family, I didn't have to worry about bieng forced into a arranged marriage, about hubby sending me back to the "old country" to live behind a wall, about having my children taken away from me for no reason other than they "belong" to the father, about being murdered by relatives because I was raped and "dishonored" the family... Muslim women living here don't, either, because the law protects them, unlike those poor women stuck in closed Islamic countries.

Just as I've broken free, so I think most Muslim women living in the United States have broken free of the teachings and traditions of Islam. We need to start depicting them as free women. Forget the veils. Forget the burkas. That's not reality!

Puullllleeeeezzzzeeeeee!

Well, guess I'll have to turn in my ticket so they can give it to some old neocon fart to attend..........

....Chuck Hagel! Hope he keeps at Lieberman since it's clear the Dems won't---but should.

Today's local paper says Senator Obama will be making his official announcement in Springfield----yes, in Illinois! The date hasn't been set yet, and I expect I'll be gone on vacation. But I'm glad he's doing it here. You see, the local bar owners are complaining about loss of business since we passed the smoking ban a few months back. Whether there is a real economic loss to the city or not hasn't been proved yet, but we can always use the added revenue if it hasn't. So the mass of media people coming here to Central IL for the announcement will be a great boon to our economy with hotel rooms, restaurants, gas and such. Plus, it gives local residents a chance to see the junior senator up close and personal---a rarity in these parts since he's been elected to the U.S. Senate.

I've been seeing a chiropractor for years--first one and then his associate, whom I still see. Their practice is considered the best in the area. The two of them over time have diagnosed problems that my medical doctor never caught---but wound up consequently treating (because it was out of the field of chiropractic services). I have lots of confidence in both and would recommend them to anyone.

But, if I experienced what LW has described, I'd run--not walk--away from further treatment by him because...

...one routine procedure in a "adjustment" involves the snapping/cracking of one's neck. First to one side and then the other. Almost every time, I joke to the chiropractor that "one day I expect to see my head rolling around on the floor" after the procedure. I'm making a joke, of course..but the procedure does make me nervous, even though, as I've said, I have complete confidence in my chiropractor (and in her boss before her).

Given that LW is concerned about the mental/emotional stability of her chiropractor, I think she's right in being concerned about his ability to provide such precision manipulations. Forget about being PC. Forget about trying to make things right between the two of them. In fact, if I were her I'd not only report the him to the state's regulatory agency but I'd warn my friend, and never provide another opportunity for him to snap my neck off and send it rolling across the floor.