Anonymous, you can take your "rich Jews" comment and choke on it. If you have any points to make, pal, they pale in comparison to your mentally retarded bigotry. Go to hell.

Leftwing Pharisee, this secular humanist Jew is adamantly opposed to circumcision. I don't care what some ancient text(s) written over the centuries by various religious zealots instructs people to do. I'll think for myself, thank you very much. Male babies have no say when people like you slice off their foreskin. YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO DO THAT TO ANOTHER HUMAN BEING. You can defend it all you want on the basis of your religious dogma, but that dogma is based on the concept of children as property, and that, like other forms of slavery (as condoned in your bible) are no longer tolerated in our society.

Religious zealots may indeed continue to mutilate their children, until such time as the law says otherwise (and let's pray to the flying spaghetti monster that that time comes soon), but you are different only in degree from your fellow barbarians who mutilate girls' genitals or stone people to death based on their backwards superstitious beliefs.

If "torah based" Judaism is thriving in comparison to other forms of Judaism, that is because the rest of us cultural/ethnic Jews are moving away from the superstition altogether and embracing instead secular humanism. You and your ilk can wallow in your superstitious swamp, but it is you, my friend, and people like you who occupy the endangered species list.

May the law save babies from superstitious adult men who want to slice pieces of skin off them as a tribute to their bloodthirsty god.

McDonalds is guilty of foisting garbage food on impressionable young children through the use of cartoons and clowns, and of sponsoring egregious cruelty to animals, but they are legal, or better or much, much worse. Until then, parents still control what toddlers and tweens eat, so parents can be parents and tell their kids no.

Sorry Joan, but I don't think that the burning issue of the day is whether or not Barry Bonds gets invited to the White House. In fact, I don't think that question even makes it into the top 1000 lukewarm issues on people's minds. It's right down there with John Edwards haircut and Hillary's hint of cleavage.

C'mon Joan and Salon, you can do better that this. What's next: will Batboy endorse Kucinich?

What are you doing here? Shouldn't you be masturbating to thoughts of your own intellectual superiority?

You asked what was wrong with a family having 17 kids. What's wrong is that the world is overpopulated with humans, and it's getting worse. Compounding that problem is the fact that first world individuals, especially middle class and wealthy Americans, use an inordinate amount of resources. I.e., individual American's environmental footprints are much larger than those of citizens of other countries.

The last thing the world needs is 17 more Americans and, I would add, the last thing America needs are 17 additional religious extremists.

Dark Horse:

I believe in zero population growth, so I don't agree with your remedy.

Anonymous:

If I were in charge of reproduction rights, you'd go to the end of the line.

I'm a Democrat. I'm used to supporting lost causes!

Seriously, while I am for ZPG, I am not an activist for that cause (aside from not having kids of my own, and the occasional letter to the editor when the opportunity arises).

I support some causes that I think we might actually attain, like universal health insurance in the U.S.

I support some causes that have varying degrees of success, like animal rights.

As for ZPG, I believe that nature and human behavior will conspire to make that come to pass without any need for activism. In fact, I expect that negative ZPG, to the tune of billions of people, is headed our way.

Why should anyone expect Colin Powell to suddenly develop a conscience and start telling the truth? He helped create the cover-up of the Mi Lai massacre in 1967, and he did his lying best to bring us perhaps the worst foreign policy disaster in U.S. history, the Iraq War.

This man has blood dripping off his hands. Were he to tell the truth now, he'd probably go insane.

C'mon people, get real. China is run by a bunch of murderous thugs. They murder, they torture, they lie, they cheat, they steal. They're like Bush, only much worse. Why on Earth does anyone expect those bastards to keep their word on anything?

The world should boycott these Olympics. China is run by barbarians and in a rational world would be an international pariah. But of course, they sell a lot of cheap crap and work for pennies, so of course our own glorious leaders and titans of capitalism kiss their ass (when they're not admiring it).

If any of the Democratic candidates truly oppose gay marriage, they've lost my vote. If they publicly oppose gay marriage for fear of losing voters, they are, in my opinion, misguided for the reason stated in the subject line above.

Maybe Dennis Kucinich is the best choice after all, one thinks, but then, one thinks for 4 more years of a Republican Presidency, featuring one of the horror shows now running for that privilege, and fear does become an unfortunate but real consideration.

Still, that doesn't excuse the other Democratic candidates' waffling on this vital civil rights issue.