Firstly, I don't believe giuliani. His past performance as NYC mayer carries more weight with me than what he says to pro 2d amendment groups.

"Who needs a gun?" That's like asking who needs to speak freely. Especially when the government is willing to grant anyone a limited right to speak freely in designated and fenced off "first amendment zones".

So who, other than cops and the military, needs guns. Every citizen does. Take your pick, would you rather be an armed citizen or an unarmed subject.

Amazingly, people (other than those in power) are still eager to disarmed the citizenry. After all these years of being herded into free speech zones to be tasered, fire hosed, zip tied, pepper sprayed, shot (non lethally so far), and arrested. We have people being disappeared. Congress is actually debating the right to habeas corpus. Congress has voted to retroactively legalize the administration's criminal spying. They are about to retroactively immunize the private corporations that committed crimes at the behest of the administration.

We look over to Iraq where another private company, Blackwater, kills Iraqi citizens and can't be punished or even stopped. How long until that stuff comes to the US under the guise of private security?

By now, you'd expect people to realize that both the dems and the GOP support the erosion of civil rights. The more autonomous representatives and senators make stern clucking noises before voting yea.

With this backdrop of government abuse, some people still want an unarmed citizenry.

And I haven't even mentioned personal protection. Is everyone who is less then 6ft and 220lbs supposed to hire a krav maga expert before going to the ATM? Are the elderly supposed to cower behind bars lest a young thug steal their meds?

Basically it said "I will gladly pay you tomorrow for a sandwich today." Just ignore that the dems won't act today today. Elect 'em in '08 anyway! Then they'll really do something!

(please ignore that the GOP can win from either a slim majority or minority position.)

"...that calculus is based on the Panglossian assumption that House Democrats from conservative areas like southern Indiana would ever be willing to buck the White House on a vote that would be portrayed in Republican attack ads as not funding the troops in wartime."

Bullshit!

The reason those conservative areas elected a democrat is because they didn't want a republican. They wanted a democrat, perhaps even one that would help end the war. It also feeds back into the reality that those elected public servants value their seats more than the lives of soldiers and civilians.

Doesn't matter though. The dems from NY and CA forgot what they were elected to do. Why should the "southern Indiana" ones remember. Or care.

Wally is just another beltway insider and apologist trying to blow a smokescreen for the dems failure.

Kinda funny. "When you push an incompetent frat boy on the country, what you get is what has happened." Is that Bush or Kerry?

"We don't want ..." ???

I'm sure you don't. Your use of "we" is clearly the exclusive 1st person plural.

I can't follow the logic here. Why is the giuliani contest offensive or outrageous? Is it something about the sanctity of ground zero? That rudy is running for the pres of 911?

Would it be offensive if it was at cbgb (gone yet?) or the statue of liberty? What's the issue?

It looks to me like another case of screaming every time giuliani does anything. He acts, some people scream and point fingers.

Come to think of it, that is probably the right reaction. He is a thin skinned self aggrandizing proto-tyrant trying to poise his finger over the nuclear war button.

Let's all scram next time he takes a shit.

Umm, aren't the more recent statistics showing that young women are out earning young men in urban areas? Furthermore, the percentage of women in college is about 60%.

The first conclusion is that the wage gap is becoming a pretty shitty crutch. The best you can do is replace it with age bias between young and older women.

Second conclusion, of course younger guys are happy. The ones who don't go to college are hanging out, playing video games, and just kind of being guys with menial jobs. Lots of men are happy with that life style. Simple, no pressure, no sex - but there's always masturbation and porn.

It reminds me of an old lil' abner cartoon about the difference between girls and boys: Boys have their druthers.

Meanwhile, men who do go to college are getting nicely laid because the women are actually competing due to the ratio. Happy guys. That leads to the hottie theory. Hotness helps in the competition, but is a psychological mill stone. Unhappy girls.

This situation should change a bit in a decade or two. Those high earning women can hire hot guys as office decoration.

Hey, how do I get myself into one of those protected groups? Commerce is a federally protected activity and this would be a nice deterrent to anyone who coveting my cash.

Hate crime legislation makes no sense to me because we then have the classification of non-hate crimes. Random violence becomes the order of the day. Keep it dispassionate because some people are more comfortable with cold blooded killers than bigoted ones.