Calling a woman a whore is over the top.

She isn't a whore. No matter what we may think about her position regarding regulation of the Federal Reserve, it has absolutely nothing to do with her personal life. These are completely separate issues.

She may be a liar, a propagandist, a sellout and a corrupt official. But unless Grayson knows she is selling access to her body for money, he has no business calling her a whore. That is just a personal, petty insult, and I would hope our Congressfolk were above such playground antics.

It is exactly the same as if I were to denigrate Congressman Grayson as compensating for a small penis by taking up the cause of the uninsured. There is no connection between the two, and the inference is offensive.

An apology is in order and was delivered. Good on the Congressman, and I hope he considers his words just a bit more carefully in the future. Because his bluntness, properly applied, is doing a world of good for the Body Politic. Just keep it out of the gutter.

P.S. The Holocaust "apology" is hardly in the same class and was in no way mean-spirited or petty. Just an inappropriate comparison of a very bad situation to a catastrophe nearly unique in human history. Most of us will easily forgive a bit of exaggeration.

Rubin has nailed it, but hard.

Brilliant.

What is this crap about "spending my money to pay for terminating a pregnancy"?

Bringing the average pregnancy to term, with delivery costs and pre-natal care will cost at least 20 times as much as the average abortion. Why should I be required to spend my money to force a woman to carry a fetus she doesn't want?

There is a reason insurance companies cover abortions. It's much cheaper!

Forget about the social costs of unwanted children being raised by parent(s) who don't want them and can't adequately care for them.

We're just blowing money here in order to feel sanctimonious about women who are making probably the hardest decisions any person ever has to make.

Idiocy...

This was farking brilliant. Especially the Quantum existence of Reagan!

Andrew, I almost always appreciate your columns, even when I disagree with you. That said, in this case I think you are oversimplifying the situation.

If memory serves, the majority of AIG's CDO's had triggers which went into effect if AIG defaulted on any of its other CDOs.

There were trillions of dollars involved. I remember the AIG executive who quit over the bonus issue incidentally mentioning in his NYT editorial that his division at AIG had successfully unwound over a trillion dollars in default swaps in a single quarter.

Geithner playing tough on that field might have blown the whole thing up, taking the U.S. economy with it. And since many of the CDOs were held by non-US companies, the explosion of our economy may not have seemed so frightening to them, making it a lot harder for Geithner to use the potential failure of the U.S. economy as a threat.

Hindsight is 20/20. I am sure Geithner and Company made some mistakes, and have decisions they wish they had made differently. But I think their performance under intense time and consequence pressure was pretty impressive, IMHO.

They did save the U.S. economy, after all.

Oh, and before the bloviators start saying the Economy isn't saved until employment stagnation ends, just remember that businesses don't hire before the Thanksgiving, Xmas and New Years holidays. Doesn't make sense.

Look for the employment numbers to turn around quickly starting January 2nd.

You heard it here first, unless you read the Wall Street thread in Salon's Table Talk.

The quality of the first set of responses is very good. People are being thoughtful and thinking the issue through rather than descending into cheap sensationalism and alarmism (mostly).

They're leaving the needless hyping up of hysteria (ouch! hate that term) to the reporters instead, whose job is to hype.

Simple facts are:

Harry Reid's Senate bill dials back the stupidity of Stupak very significantly.

And, as one intelligent poster put it, the amount of money saved by THE INSURANCE COMPANIES for an elective abortion versus a problematic pregnancy will almost ensure the return of sensibility to the debate. Stupak will be a conference committee casualty, you betcha. Money talks in Washington.

We need to mobilize against Stupak and similar Stupakidities, and let our Representatives and Senators know we're tired of cheapshots against reproductive choice. Stupak himself ought to have a fat primary target pinned on his weasel back.

But the sky isn't falling. The intelligence and reasonability shown in the current crop of letters (with the Usual Suspects providing the exceptions) on this subject reassures me greatly that this is true.

We're hitting the back stretch on the healthcare issue. Yes, we can.

YES! WE! CAN!