or in addition to a dog, the griever may want to happily anticipate grandchildren.

Of course she can't be sure that will work out, but it is something fun to think about.

For the present time, she could do charitable work with needy kids. Help in a church or other group's nursery. Volunteer at a preemie ward (many need rockers to care for newborn infants who do better being held and rocked for a long time). It's more long distance, but 'adopt' a kid through World Vision or a similar organization. It's not the same as raising your own little one, but it's close, and it's real.

not the subject of the article, but re: McCain - I believe he stayed in prison for the morale of the troops under his command. He was the senior officer.

Vote for him or don't, but saying he stayed in order to punish himself is rather shallow.

that the Bailout would have helped?

Maybe it would have hurt.

Maybe it would have been inconsequential.

If we all were CERTAIN the bailout was going to be a net positive, we all would have probably supported it.

It was a chance, that's all, with the certainty of a huge expenditure and a precedent-setting expansion of government.

The state is involved in marriage because the nuclear family is the basic and irreplaceable building block of a stable society.

Muslim, Hindu, Christian or tribal. I don't care.

The nuclear family is the nucleus of any culture.

The proper care and rearing of the next generation is almost solely in their hands.

There is great legal obligation between each other, their offspring, and the state as a whole.

Most of them are doing a job that no one else can do. Without them, there is basically no more country after a while.

Children have to get conceived, and reared, and educated, and supported, and nurtured. Ideally, as every legitimate study has ever shown, this is done by one mom and one dad.

Yes, there are exceptions. Dads run off or moms pass away or a child gets adopted by grandma and even homosexuals are adopting at present HOWEVER,

they are the exceptions and statistics show that children of these situations DO NOT do as well as children raised in a stable nuclear family by any standard of measurement.

To greatly increase the odds of a kid growing up to be a felon, a drug addict, an abuse victim, uneducated, or poor, assign him or her to a non-nuclear family upbringing.

Or, you can just stick your fingers in your ears and go: "la, la, la."

Responses to this post may list exceptions. I am aware of exceptions on both sides. But I am stating that as a rule the state must protect marriage between one man and one woman or our cultural decay will continue, with, as usual, women and children being hardest hit.

Party A and Party B is sounds, appropriately, as if it is adopted language from the old USSR. One of the first goals of the communist manifesto is the destruction of the traditional nuclear family.

I am not a Catholic, but I'll take a stab at your objection -

what if the whole world followed the Catholic teachings on sexuality?

1. Sex only within marriage. No fornication, no adultery. Just one man and one woman until death do they part, and only if they're married.

2. Basically no birth control (except for abstinence type methods, i.e., rhythm method or whatever you'd like to call it).

3. No divorcing except in the most extreme cases. Certainly no divorces due to someone in the marriage being unable to have kids.

4. No abortions.

5. No in vitro stuff etc., nothing that involves selecting and deselecting embryos and so on.

6. Celibacy of priests/nuns being honored and promoted. Many priests/nuns recruited.

In all honesty I imagine the birth rate may well stabilize or go down. And the children who are conceived, unless accidentally miscarried, would almost always get born into a stable two-parent family with siblings.

Like I said, I'm not a Catholic, but it sure sounds better than China. Maybe they are on to something.

Dred Scott is the activist Supreme Court decision that legalized slavery.

It declared black people to be 3/5 of a person, actually.

The Constitution did not legalize slavery.

It took the action of free states, and a Civil War, to overturn the horrible decision of the legislating Supreme Court.

Whoopi's comments were nuts and showed no knowledge of history.

You'd think a black person in America would know about the Dred Scott decision.

Because you aren't for the empowerment of ALL women. You are for the empowerment of LIBERAL women only.

"After all, insurance companies are motivated by the bottom line; they don't care about providing quality health care for people."

True, they are in business to make money.

But ultimately, they can't make money if they don't deliver on the care they are contractually obligated to give.

Some insurance companies try to cheat people. They get sued, or whatever. Sometimes, as a result of their negligence, people die. I consider that to be murderous.

To imagine that the federal government won't do the same thing - when they don't even have to worry about going out of business - is naive.

That's why I don't want a government mandated health insurance system. At least our current insurance companies have something to lose if they bail on their responsibilities.

I've had health insurance at times, I've had no health insurance at times.

I've had jobs sometimes, I've been unemployed sometimes.

I imagine that most Democrats and Republicans can say the same thing.