Too bad we can't penalize people for poor choices. Breast cancer at 35? You get treated. Heart disease at 40, and you weigh 300 pounds? Well what did you expect? Too large a portion of what we call health care in the U.S. is actually rescue care. Saving people who haven't had access to medical care, or who just plain said "screw it, they'll fix me later". As the article implied, too many people don't want to take any responsibility for their health. And these are the same people who will cry the loudest if you try to take some of their benefits, because giving more to someone else might mean less for them. In the end it's about the greater good, and we're all going to have to understand that we can't do every thing for some people and nothing for others, but we might be able to something for everyone. Change won't come easy, we're putting responsibility for change in the hands of politicians, and we know they hate to have anyone mad at them, better to do nothing.

And please, every Republican politician, and free-market booster who thinks that competition will fix everything in health care; come to a large urban hospital and have some real health care workers show you around for a day or two. We'll show you the waste, greed, and just plain stupidity, that keep the costs of health care high.

I gave up the cereal thing about two years ago in favor of oatmeal or granola. That said, the author resorts to the worst kind of scare tactics in the article, in listing what goes into cereal. Just because an additive is a chemical (trisodium phosphate) doesn't make it dangerous. Everything is a chemical. Some are good, some are bad. PCB's, those are dangerous. Trisodium phosphate, your bones are full of it.

Get a grip everyone. We live in an eighty year old house, filled with lead paint painted surfaces. I've removed lots of that paint myself over the years. Fifteen years ago the water lateral to our house broke (the line that brings the water from the village main to our house). It was, a one and a half inch lead pipe, through which all water to our house had be traveling for over 60 years. Yes, that means drinking water.

Our two children lived their entire pre-college lives in this house, while I was working on it, and drinking that foul water. One is in graduate school, and the other is pre-med. Amazing, no apparent ill effects. Just like all their friends in similar housing in our village. I'm not advocating lead by the teaspoonful, but please worry about the real dangers, cigarettes, obesity. Doesn't anyone remember the supposed danger from all those cell phone towers that were sprouting everywhere a few years ago?

If I recall correctly, Waukesha is very staunchly conservative ... not the sort of place where I'd expect a group like that to be based.

As my boyfriend is Indian, we've long since noticed how brown skin, a foreign surname and a hint of a beard set off mental alarms. One of the last times he flew, his identification was checked against his ticket on five separate occasions.

A few days after the London bombings, we were facing the encroachment of roaches into his Atlanta apartment. One night, we discussed having him set off a roach bomb and spending the day elsewhere.

The next morning, as he dropped me off at the train station so I could go to work, I leaned back into the car and said cheerfully, "Don't forget to bomb today!"

I walked away, and about thirty seconds later, realized what I had just said to him and started looking frantically around, but no cops were rushing the car. Later that day, I joked uneasily about the incident with coworkers.

Reading the story of Alpizar (and before that, Menezes) makes me not just uneasy, but scared. For my boyfriend, and his family, and just about anyone with brown skin and possibility of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

If this is winning the war on terrorism, then what's losing?