All that I could think as I read the NYT article about this was:

"Considering that the next Republican candidate will be running as far away as Bush as possible, this smacks more as Republican spin than anything else."

In the next few months, I predict that we'll see more and more prominent Republicans coming out as *omg SUDDENLY* "disillusioned" about our president, and supporting who they claim is a kinder, gentler, smarter kind of Republican. But considering who runs the Republican party these days, what are the chances that this chosen candidate will be any different?

Women have to tell their bosses when they're on the rag!? Shocking! That's potentially embarrassing, totally unrelated to anything to do with their jobs... and just plain weird!

Wait, you mean they just have to have a health check? Where one of the (presumably many) questions is "date of your last period"? Umm, okay... have you ever filled out a form at the doctor that you didn't have to answer this question? Because I haven't. A woman's mentrual cycle, or lack thereof, can be indicative of many things, and if the date of her last period was more than 45 days ago it raises all sorts of red flags that a doctor might not otherwise catch.

A country faced with many public health crises requiring all the people it can get its hands on to have a physical isn't enough to get me riled up. Tell me that men aren't required to get a similar physical (absent the period question, but most likely with other questions that a man might not want to share with his boss), and then we'll talk.

As much as I love the idea of the Bush administration (past and present) eating their own, this all sounds a little too good to be true. Maybe Comey is just on a revenge kick: I don't know much about him. I know that he appointed Fitzgerald right before getting the hell out of Dodge (to be a lawyer at Lockheed), so maybe he is a decent, upstanding guy who has no qualms saying what he knows.

But, on the other hand, positing Ashcroft as being completly against the wiretapping program? I do have a hard time buying it. The hospital didn't have security that Mrs. Ashcroft could call? And why wasn't this story leaked until now? There certainly seemed to have been quite a few people involved!

I can't help feeling this way: I'm a cynic by nature. So maybe it is all above board, and maybe Ashcroft is the poor, sick duped hero here... but when a story is this good and this convenient, I can't help but wonder who is profiting from it?

I, too, went to Coldstone because everyone always raved about it being the best ice cream ever. And I love ice cream: I can finish off half a pint in one sitting. But there was something really wrong with the taste: I ate about 5 bites and felt ill. I put it in my freezer at home, and tried again the next day: okay, but with a very weird aftertaste and I still couldn't finish it. I don't think I even got a quarter of the way through it.

Thank you for writing this, and thank you all the other commenters who couldn't finish theirs either. I thought there was something wrong with me to find it so disgusting and to not even be able to get an inch into my cup!

Another Boston area ice cream shout-out: Libby's in Waltham. No mixins, but some great flavors and very rich ice cream. And they aren't forced to sing to you, either!

You forgot to mention that she had to travel to South Africa to find a doctor with such lax ethics that he was willing to purposefully make a mother out of a woman who will be nearing 80 when her children graduate from high school.

No wonder her older kids are appalled: there's a rather high liklihood that they're going to be made guardians of a set of twins sometime soon. We can joke all we want about how "60 is the new 40" but medically, it's not. Watching my parents and their friends (all healthy, active adults with excellent medical care) as they go through their 60's it's a surprisingly rapid decline... eyesight, hearing, joint health all go and there's not much you can do about it.

I find it somewhat appalling that you lump this woman in with same sex parents.

Maybe he didn't go about it well, but it is a very legitimate point. Regent is a terrible law school, barely accredited, with abysmal bar passage rates. Yet while the Bush administration has been in office, their grads have been hired for some very prestigious posts.

It seems to be a blatant case of faith over talent.

I wouldn't have a problem if the father were 40 and the mother were 60. When one parent is 40, it's likely that she or he won't be using a walker at the child's high school gradation (and that's a pretty good scenario if that's the worst thing that's wrong with an 80yo).

Many adoption agencies and IVF clinics have rules about the COMBINED age of the parents for this very reason. It would be nice if there was a high chance of at least one parent being relatively lucid during the teen years.