the benefit of withdrawal as a contraceptive, should we not be comparing it to the only available alternative at the time: not withdrawing?

that we can't trust the United States judicial system to decide who the criminals are, and the United States penal system to lock them up and hold them?

Instead, let's throw out centuries of jurisprudence back to the Magna Carta, let's trust intellectual giants like George Bush and Dick Cheney to make our decisions for us. They can't be expected to explain, of course, since it's, you know, secret.

Our Anglo-American judicial system has been in pretty much continuous development for the last 800 years. Even though a splinter group of the U.S. Supreme Court stole the election for Bush in 2000, it's fairly easy to see why the Bush administration in specific and the Neocons in general don't trust the judicial system.

When you think about it, the main purpose of the judicial system in our society is to determine the truth and tell it to the public. Yeah, sure, the system is subject to the same human frailties as the 12 citizens sitting in the jury box, and is a damned scary place to be if you're a young black man, but over the centuries the citizens have agreed to believe that judges and juries do a fair enough job of finding the truth, and that they will speak that truth to power.

It is easy enough to see why Bush and his followers so fear public judicial review; they can't stand the truth. It is just baffling to try to understand why Mr. Constitutional Law Professor would agree with them.

I remember the time, must have been back in the 90's, when Operation Rescue, the fetus-worshippers, would converge on Wichita every summer. George Gardner, the empath who then ran College Hill United Methodist Church, made national news by warning his congregation that the nasties were hijacking the name of Jesus Christ. Sure enough.

The sainted Martha Genevieve, my mother, who may well have been the kindest human being to live in the 20th Century, and who had devoted the end of her life to College Hill, asked me why Wichita could not just call out the fire department and flush those rude strangers down the gutters.

Wichita had its dose of the BTK serial killer, church deacon and cub scout leader. Now that sweet little Kansas town has another lunatic to apologize for.

The fact that Randall Terry and those who take him seriously has not choked on his tongue is proof that God has a sense of irony that I cannot penetrate.

This crime needs to be prosecuted as a hate crime.

Hate crimes are different, because hate is contagious.

I've been waiting since the first announcement for Patrick to explain this to us.

Anyone remember the outrage on the right when Homeland Security had the temerity to suggest that there might be terrorists lurking among the religious loonies?

The name Timothy McVeigh comes to mind.

Dr. Tiller's death will not be in vain if this new beam of light forces some of these cockroaches to scutter for the crevices and hide in the dark for a generation.

As I understand it, they are building houses on land they do not own.

Why do we not call them squatters?

I double-dog-dare the Republican Party to announce right now that Rush and Palin (or whoever, so long as Rush is on top) will be their ticket for 2012.

The result should silence them for generations.

I assume that the esteemed Mr. Wiesel did not weep as he remembered his father. The crystalline structure of his soul has been forged by the fire of continuing to be alive, and by the hammer of memory.

My own soul is not nearly so tough.

Like Charlie Payne, I was born and raised in Kansas when that was a source of pride, and believed that people were fundamentally decent, until life, other people, taught me different.

can we expect those XY folks in My Party, who currently own the White House and the Congress, to grow a symbolic pair?

It seems that all the Dems who are backpedaling so furiously are white men. Except one is half-white.

We currently have five rich, old, white, conservative, Catholic men sitting on the Supreme Court. Not to mention the real affirmative action uber-con who must see Thurgood Marshall in his nightmares. Look how well that has worked out for us.

Maybe it's time to admit that only the XX folks have the stones to stand up for Ms. Sotomayor?

Can we all just wait? Never has any man had so many problems to solve. He has, you know, been in office for a whole five months.

Norman Borlaug may turn out to be one of the greatest perpetrators of evil in the history of H. sapiens.

The longer we put off dealing with population control (more people were born in the U.S. in 2007 than in any year in history), the more humans that are going to die horrible deaths when we finally discover that we have exceeded the carrying capacity the thin shell of this tiny liquid planet.

It's always amusing to hear earnest folks talk about saving the earth. Fact is, Gaia got along without us fine for millenia, and she will get along without us fine when we are gone, as we be as surely as the T. rex.

What folks want to save is the scientific/technological way of life that I like to date from the Principia Mathematica, a mere eye-blink in earth's history.

Talk about your economic bubbles; we humans may be the greatest of all.

That Andrew Leonard was cool in an earlier life?