if pressed, the White House will tell us that our fearless Decider also has the power to "de-covert-ify" a CIA agent any time he wants to (just like he can declassify classified docyuments, or parts of documents). And he de-coverted Ms Plame the day before Novak's column appeared. (But maybe Ms Plame didn'r get that email on her new status because it was sent from Karl Rove's comuter). See? No harm done!

When Benetton had a 2-page ad showing a young man dying of AIDS (as iin breathing his last) while his anguished family sat around his hospital bed?

I wouldn't have automatically assumed "hoax", but were I a journalist, I'd verify (and I'm so glad it wasn't Benetton's campaign).

See any future chemists, microbiologists, environmental engineers or geologists (just to name a few relevent fields) wandering through this "museum"?

Neither do I.

I (straight female who adores her straight husband) am the navigator in our household. I find the alternate routes (by looking at a map!) when construction or accidents force us to find a Plan B. (Not that my husband is an idiot when it comes to maps: he can read them perfectly well, but why bother when I'm in the car?) And if I'm driving and he's navigating, he's been known to say "That's our exit" as we sail by it, in the left lane.

I thank a middle-school obsession with Tetris for helping my poor female brain rotate objects in space. And I thank my Dad, who took me on many a college interview roadtrip all over New England, where I was the Navigator (his half-kidding reasoning: if I couldn't find a school, I couldn't apply.)

I don't see how this is their "right" to contravene a doctor's decision in prescribing a legal and safe medication for a patient.

I am deeply distubed at the pharmacist saying bcp's "aren't safe": by what satandard? THe FDA's? THe AMA's? The prescribing physician? By a double-blind peer-reviewed study apropos to the woman's medical condition?

Are here any other legal, FDA-approved medications the pharm. refuses to stock based on their "unsafeness?" Any at all? (Penicillin, for example, could kill me. It is very "unsafe" for me to take it. Did the pharm. ban that one as well? Rogaine is very "unsafe" for pregnant women to be exposed to it. Is that gone from the shelves as well?).

If there is a legal leg to stand on here, the law should be changed. I understand businesses have some control about what they do and do not want to sell, but a pharmacist acting as a doctor, gate-keeper and political activist (never mind acting like God), crosses a line.

If a pharmacist has this much trouble dispensing bcp's to an infertile woman, I wouldn't trust them to fill my kids' flouride Rx. They should find a n occupation that is less taxing on their morality (and their brains).

But, I completely agree with the latter part of your letter: we have a moral obligation to refuse to shop where we don't agree with the shop's practices.

Of course,m I don't know how many pharmacies there are in this town in Montana. And I don't know if they'ree all run by like-minded pharmacists. What do we do then?

The word "assault" conjures up a scenario of brutal, physical force. Perhaps that's not what happened here. But iven if the detainee initiated the contact (which is not suggested by the article, I'm thinking "best case" scenario), it's still a form of coersion: if the guard likes me, maybe I'll get out of here faster/get better treatment, etc. The guard is culpable, and iMHO, criminally negligent at best

Of course, I view he entir detainee center as an "assault" on the inmates. This kind of set-up is un-American,.

that 17-year-old girl is getting the psych treatment she desperately needs.

Wouldn't all us liberals be happy if they called it "The Creation Faith Center" or something? I think it's the word "Museum" that's bothering us all. It's the reappropriation of a word.

Here are some quick on-line definitions of "museum":

A museum is typically a non-profit, permanent institution in the service of society and of its development, open to the public, which acquires, conserves, researches, communicates and exhibits, for purposes of study, education enjoyment, the tangible and intangible evidence of people and their environment." This definition is taken from the International Council of Museums (ICOM) Statutes

a depository for collecting and displaying objects having scientific or historical or artistic value (wordnet at princeton.edu)

A building serving as a repository for a collection of natural, scientific, historic or literary curiosities or objects of interests or works of art and designed to be viewed by members of the public.

And there are many more. While the Creation MUseum does fit some criteria in these definitions, it misses in the key point of a place that presents knowledge. Nowhere in hese definitions do the words "faith" or "religion" or "dogma" come into play. Museums aren't places where we look at a complete lack of evidence to a hypothesis and say "this is truth."

My Dad is a registered Independent in NH (so he can vote in Presidential primaries). I live ... elsewhere, so technically our votes don't cancel each ther out, but let's just say we've probably never backed the same horse.

We have a lot of fun trying to "convert" each other to the other's pov. And trying to influence how Dad might vote in the primaries (one year my brother had a Jerry Brown sign on the front lawn, just to tick Dad off).

Looks like I know who to suuggest for 2008!