When Ariel Sharon thinks you're too right-wing ... it may be time to reconsider your positions.

Just saying.

Denver Health Medical Center, where I used to work, is in fact located in Denver, not Boulder.

Anyway.

I'm a former medic and a veteran of Desert Storm, and I have to say I'm appalled at the effect the Iraq war is having on the military medical system. Although our record the last time around wasn't perfect (witness the repeated denials, lasting to the present day, that there is any such thing as Gulf War Syndrome) I can truthfully say that troops wounded on the battlefield in the last war were always treated promptly and fully for all their injuries. We certainly never tried to convince battle casualties that their symptoms were, so to speak, all in their heads.

I've said for a long time that bad wars make bad armies. This story is further proof.

... manipulate the language to our advantage. Start using specific terms over and over until they sink in to the public consciousness. Think "death tax" and "axis of evil." Here's a start:

"Jack Abramoff, a known associate of Bush family consigliere Karl Rove ..."

any science which has political implications with which the person using the phrase disagrees.

In other words, "junk science" is junk terminology. Like "political correctness," it's become a catch-all phrase used in an effort to cut off debate. Don't like what someone is saying? Slap it with a pejorative label and hope that will make people stop listening. The depressing thing is how often this tactic works.

All I know is that, as a child of one parent who was just barely a Boomer (born in 1947) and another who came just barely before (1943) I'm damned glad to have grown up in the, er, echo of the Boom. I like the world of sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll my generation (call it "X" if you insist) inherited from our parents. I like the fact that I can work a respectable job with a beard and long hair and nobody thinks it's worth mentioning, that I have friends of all different races, that I can wear blue jeans everywhere, that "the church of my choice" is no church at all, that I call my boss by his first name, that I'm a liberal and a libertarian and a veteran and a grad student and straight and gay-friendly and all the rest of the freedoms, large and small, that I and others my age and younger exercise every day, all at once, without contradiction, usually without thinking about just how extraordinary those freedoms are.

This is what freedom looks like: not just the absence of foreign tyranny, but also the absence of those stifling social mores which can end or destroy lives just as surely as a bullet to the head or a jackboot in the face -- an absence, I should add, from which conservatives benefit just as much as liberals, no matter how much they may hate to admit it. And it was our parents who bought that freedom for us, for which I will always be grateful. In fact, about my only disappointment is how eager so many Boomers seem to be to sell themselves and their generation's accomplishments short; given that they're still the largest identifiable demographic group in America, that seems a sure recipe for bringing back the bad old days. That's certainly not something I'm eager to see, and anyone who doesn't see the danger isn't paying attention.

"Butt-kick for your life" -- sheesh. But the currently fashionable celebrations of neo-Victorian femininity need to be countered; Fuller's warning about women "opting out" and not being able to find a way back in is an important one, not deserving of mockery. Try not to, um, throw the baby out with the bathwater, okay?