Having "unlawful sexual congress with a minor" is a heinous crime that should be punished. Yup. No question.

But here's my problem with your post, Kate. Well, several problems, really.

First--if I may start out by taking the end of your post to begin with--you tie yourself in oratorical knots at the end. "Shouldn't we be honoring [the victim's] wishes above all else? In a word, no." Well, maybe not above "all else," but I think it's idiotic in a 32 year-old case by a person who's not a repeat offender to not weight them pretty heavily. Your assertion otherwise is, um, fairly absurd.

Second, you contradict yourself. First, you insist that our laws are to insure justice, and then you note that our laws are supposed to work on behalf of "the people." Kate, the victim is one of "the people". Indeed, she's the person with most vested interest. And her preference is to let it drop. But you don't think we should honor her wishes. You're kinda contradicting yourself there, honestly.

Another thing to consider is, why is Polanski being arrested now, 32 years later. The guy isn't out robbing banks; he's not a repeat sexual offender (so far as we know); he's certainly not presenting any further danger to the United States or to the State of California by remaining free. So we should celebrate that law enforcement people and court time are being used to "catch" this guy 32 years after the fact when even his victim says to drop it? We shouldn't prefer that the Swiss police be chasing or investigating other crimes that are a bit more relevant to what's going on in the world now? We shouldn't stop and say, "Yo, how about you stop trying to serve 32 year-old warrants against flashy and publicity-creating perpetrators, and concentrate on things like investigating potential terrorists, or solving some of the hundreds of crimes that go unsolved every year, or using the court's time to try cases of people who are currently waiting in prison, or use those resources in any one of a dozen different productive ways?"

That's my main objection, frankly. What's the point of all this? And your article is the point: to generate coverage and news and publicity and attention, not to close the casebooks on a 32 year-old crime. And to argue anything else is to be disingenuous.

(Finally, I would also point out that your constant drumbeat of "he raped a child" makes you seem more like an angry crusader rather than someone making a legitimate argument. I can't speak for anyone other than myself, of course, but I don't need to be banged over the head 5 times before I understood your point.)

Exactly.

I sent Baucus a letter several weeks back. It was ignored. My guess is that if you're not in his state, he ignores you. Nice to be him.

Right now, his "job" is to chair the committee that happens to be where a public option for national health care reform will either get a boost, or suffer additional damage.

National. That means everyone in the nation. That means he is working for me. And so is Charles Schumer, and Chuck Grassley, and Jay Rockerfeller, and everyone else on that committee. So if I want to influence policy, I need to contact those people too, not just my useless Senators (Hutchison, Cornyn) or my counter-productive Representative (Lamar Smith).

Which doesn't mean I haven't contacted them.

Next time, you might want to consider all the facts available to you prior to rendering the "nimrod" judgment. Or not; there are definitely plenty of people out there who are more than happy to render judgments based on little (or no) data. To each their own, I suppose.

Even if one accepts Brooks' silly thesis, isn't it fascinating that he places the beginning of our horrific moral decline at the year the "Reagan Revolution" took place. Gee, you'd think he might consider drawing some other conclusion about moral decline and Republicans running the government, but I guess that eluded his eagle-eyed gaze.

I have never before seen people so good at self-delusion as this current crop of Republicans. Really, it's amazing.

Abrogating portions of the first and fourth Amendments, locking up US citizens indefinitely after arresting them with no warrants on spurious charges, warrantless wiretaps on American citizens with no pretext, sharing of wiretap information for no reason (e.g., overseas calls between members of the military and their spouses), politicizing the Justice department, obstructing justice by destroying evidence . . . the list goes on and on.

No, that stuff wasn't enough to worry about the country being turned into an unconstitutional police state, but giving everyone adequate health care, oh my God! Lock and load!

These people are loons. Seriously. Dangerous loons, so we have to pay attention to them, but loons nonetheless. (Hypocritical loons to boot!)

I don't think the GOP wants people to die; I think they simply don't care, so long as they can get re-elected. Seriously. Unless the lack of adequate health care affects them directly--by someone in their extended family getting sick, for example--they just don't care.

Grayson is over the top, no question. But from a public policy perspective, callousness can be just as deadly as evil intent in this area. Sad but true.

Can you take Lomborg to task next? Pretty please?

I don't know why, but that particular guy drives me crazy.

You know, I don't know if you're Jewish or not, but I'll tell you: I read your response and all I could think was, "This sounds like a guy who just finished Yom Kippur."

So as a guy who broke his own Yom Kippur fast with a California roll (fake crab) and maguro sashimi, I just had to say that your answer made me laugh. Not in a mean way, or a knowing way, or a snide way; I just laughed. So thanks.

So, did Limbaugh call out Frist on his radio show, or is Frist just spineless all on his own? Just curious.