I have a phone and pretty decent text-entry ability. But as far as I know, the process you describe also requires, you know, knowing girls you can text in this manner and having their numbers. And if that falls under the category of 'too easy' then I must be retarded. Either that, or it shows just how caught up you are in the female perspective, where your only issue is whether to accept the advances constantly coming at you, of which you more or less have your pick.

On another note, you should be aware that for a Broadsheet writer on Salon, the time-honored practice of injecting a bit of personal information into an article to better connect with your readers is akin to diving naked into a pool of salivating angry sharks. Seriously, I don't know how you guys even keep writing. You must have some pretty thick skin.

Um...no. The race we're talking about is the Democratic primary, which she would very much have to quit in order to launch an independent campaign. In fact, her claim that she is not quitting the race is, if anything, an assurance that she will not do what you're suggesting.

It would be silly to try to defend Russia from all of the charges mentioned in the Foreign Affairs article. Putin is not a good guy, and the impact he's had on democracy in the region is pretty awful. But there are two things to note. One, Russia still has a hell of a long way to go before it gets anywhere near as bad as China in terms of the lack of democracy and civil freedoms, and China is a member of the G13. Two, all the tough talk and saber-rattling from neocons is used very adeptly by Putin and his kind to shore up support. Americans who think that average Russian citizens are grateful to them for helping dismantle the USSR are hopelessly deluded. Nationalism is HUGE in Russia and has been every since the fall of the Soviet Union. I cannot stress how much Soviet nostalgia there is, both among the older generation who are now young enough to have just missed the Stalin years and remember the relative stability and prosperity of the Kruschev era, and among the younger generations who grew up in the corruption and disarray of the 90's. Already, NGO's have a ridiculously hard time operating in the region because they are constantly accused of being Western spy organs. Americans need to get it through their head that people don't like them, and when they threaten another country the immediate effect is that the internal reformers lose credibility by being associated with the US, and the populace coalesces around the hardliners. Which I guess is what McCain & co. want to happen in the US as well.

...was the claim that OPEC wants to spread communism AND fundamentalist Islam. Because you know, everything we disagree with is exactly the same.

I'm probably gonna get yelled at for this, but are we just supposed to assume a priori that this is a wrong policy? I understand that the motives behind its proposal by the Christian Right are despicable, but surely one can admit that the policy itself makes some sense and has some justification (unlike fighting for warrantless wiretapping when you can just get a warrant and when you don't even need one for foreign communications). Isn't it just another form of quarantine for the sake of public health, which nearly every government has practiced in some form or another? I imagine people will respond with an appeal to human rights, but I don't think that even the staunchest defenders of illegal immigration would place the freedom to move across national borders in the same category of basic rights such as habeas corpus or protection against illegal search and seizure. I'd be interested in hearing more on why you think this is completely unacceptable.

It's interesting to watch the debate on whether homosexuality is biological or social, but the researcher's remark comes off an overstatement. About the only scientific consensus that exists so far is that it's a mix of biological and social factors. To me, the main problem with flat out declaring that it's a biological matter is that it ignores history. Are we to believe that the Ancient Greeks were biologically different from us on such a widespread scale? Seems a bit ridiculous, and I have yet to see this simple question addressed (perhaps another letter writer can enlighten me?)

I think there is a tendency to overstate the biological component and a strong socio-political incentive to find biological explanations in order to further the cause of gay rights and counter conservative arguments against them. This sometimes strikes me as odd when you consider that there has long been a strong current within the gay community that resists what they see as the normative 'medicalizing' (and implicit pathologizing) of their orientation, and emphasizes homosexuality as a lifestyle choice. The question for me is: do we really need the biological explanation in order to defend gay rights? Is it not enough to defend freedom of choice based on precisely that?

Let's see...these bases have working roads, housing and dining facilities, electricity - just the sort of infrastructure that's been almost nonexistent in Iraq since the invasion. There are hundreds of them, and they are huge. Surely this is the 'reconstruction' that we've been talking about all this time! Why not...let the Iraqi people move in there?