As a Christian who homeschools her children, I was glad to see that you pointed out that not all Christians nor homeschoolers support the Pearls' methods. I cringe whenever a case like the Paddock's comes out because the media seem eager to portray homeschooling as suspect. It can't be that the parents are misinformed or abusive or just plain crazy--it must be the homeschooling!

You mean a rich, privileged, football player/frat boy was racially insensitive? What are the chances?

I am saddened by the number of writers who consider abortion to be a morally neutral act. Abortion is the destruction of a human life. Unfortunately, many pro-lifers see that fact as superceding all other circumstances and use it as a justification to guilt-trip pregnant women and bludgeon them with pictures of dismembered fetuses. On the other hand, many pro-choicers portray the embryo/fetus as a benign growth, refusing to even acknowledge that it is a human life. Given this climate of one extreme vs. another, I applaud Kissling for constructively begninning to address the issue.

So let's review:

--Pregnancy 1: She's happy, she wants to have the baby, the man insists on an abortion, she has the abortion, and the decision affects her in profoundly negative ways for many years

--Pregnancy 5: She's happy, she wants to have the baby, the man insists on an abortion, and despite her previous experience she schedules an abortion

What is wrong with this picture?

My hope would be that those readers who would be incensed by the reverse scenario (she wants an abortion, man coerces her to have the child) will be equally indignant about the author's situation. Yes, she is responsible for the choices she made, but her story illustrates an issue rarely mentioned in discussions of abortion--how often is the choice of abortion not really the woman's choice at all?

In 2003 while flying out of Kiev, I remember how surprised I was at security personnel's relaxed attitude. First, a man asked us whether we were taking any money or religious relics out of the country (they were apparently unconcerned with weapons), and then our bags went through an xray machine. I'm not sure how the screener knew how to interpret the blob-like images in black and white on the screen (not that it mattered--she was talking to a friend and wasn't paying attention).

When I arrived in Frankfurt, I had to go through security again, but this time the screeners were equipped with impressive, full-color 3-D xray machines. As my bag went through, the screener gasped, "You have scissors in your bag!" She looked quite stern as she removed the blunt child-size scissors from my backpack.

On the same trip, when flying out of RDU (to Frankfurt), I set off the metal detector. The hand scanner revealed something in the area of my chest. The screener grabbed the bottom of my bra and said, "Oh, it's just the underwire in your bra," and let me go. I realized later that the stiff pointy wire, if removed from the bra, would make a pretty good weapon--certainly more effective than the confiscated scissors.

I also heartily endorse Alan Rickman. Good addition of Terrance Howard by another poster, and I would add Clive Owen to the list. In addition, I'm anxious to see Casino Royale tomorrow--Daniel Craig was amazing in Layer Cake. In some of the Casino Royale previews, he's seen coming out of the water in a bathing suit, a la Sean Connery in Dr. No. As Borat would say, "Very niiice."

I didn't want to read too much about the movie before seeing it, so I read the review after getting home this evening from the movie. Stephanie, you were absolutely right. Casino Royale was fantastic--exciting, funny, and touching with some fresh twists to the Bond film-requisite car crash/stuff blowing up. And the review's gushing about Daniel Craig's physique was also accurate; his personal trainer should get a medal.

Oh, yeah, and my husband liked the movie, too.

I agree: more topical, engaging, and useful articles like this one and fewer stories of yuppie ennui. Great article.

That noise you hear is the stomping of little readers' feet as they, in the midst of their tantrum, cry, "Make the bad woman go away or we're cancelling our subscriptions!"

Someone who can piss off this many people must be on to something. Welcome back, Camille.

I went to Virginia Tech for undergraduate and graduate school, so I'm pretty familiar with the layout of the school (in fact, I lived in the dorm where the first shooting took place). As others have pointed out, isolated shootings in general are not unusual, and even if the university had acted and shut down classes, where would the students have gone? Back to their dorms, where someone just got shot? The campus is huge, spread out over a large area with over 20,000 students. Even if university officials thought there was possible danger of another attack, what would they have done with all those people?

Tony will not die and he won't go into witness protection (what, the Feds figure out where's he's hiding and convince him to testify, all in one episode?). I also doubt that David Chase will be melodramatic and end with a terrorist attack or AJ-goes-nuts-and-kills-everyone plot. Instead, more of Tony's crew and at least one person in his family will die, leaving him a hollow king with no kingdom.

For much of this season we've seen the de-glamorization of the mob lifestyle. Think about how in seasons past even Dr. Melfi and Eliot were fascinated by it. This season Tony has been more and more unlikeable, and we see his lack of respect for even the mob code of ethics (a fact Phil mentions in Sunday's episode). The only "justice" possible for Tony at this point would be the loss of his family, whether his immediate family, his mob family, or a combination of both.