I home-schooled my son from first grade through his entry into college. In my experience, most people worry about socialization needlessly. In fact, home-schoolers are much better socialized than their public school peers: they don't see adults as fearsome authority figures and are not intimidated by anyone's title.

As regards academics, only the religious-based home-schoolers seemed to be behind the curve in math, science and critical thinking (way behind). Those of us who were doing it for academic reasons (most of the families that I worked with) generally kept our kids several years ahead. My son started college with 75 (quarter-based) credits, one of his friends got his physics B.S. at the age of 18 and his brother is now FLUENT in Japanese, Korean, and Arabic. One fifteen-year old girl in our circle finished her second year of calculus last spring. Academic excellence is quite doable as a home-schooling family.

Unfortunately, homeschooling is a threat to many established powers: The local school districts get their state money based on enrollment, so we are "robbing" them. People who choose to spend their energy and time on their careers often think we are judging them as inferior parents and even grandparents may see our choices as a subtle indictment of how they raised us. In spite of the societal animosity and the major hits my wife's and my careers took, I would do it again in a heartbeat.

Limpballs owning the Rams would guarantee that there would be at least one team worse than the Raiders. Oh well, maybe next year.

There are millions of them. When you reach a certain age you will have one too and there is nothing virtual about them.

Okay, let's not count people who do not have legal status to be here. In return, let's not allocate federal dollars to any state in excess of what it has paid in. Of course, this will be a boon to blue states (particularly CA) and leave the red states even less desirable as places to live.

If we would all like to be "still breathing" in a few decades, the car sales we really need to see are goose eggs. Big deal if a higher percentage of the sales of these over-sized wheelchairs are a slightly smaller version of hugely obese, in a world where we need to cut GHG emissions by 80-90% in the next ten to fifteen years, they just can not fit (except for occasional use by those with disabilities).

Isn't South Carolina the place where last year, in response to a slight disruption of gasoline deliveries, a Community College closed for a week but the Wal-Mart stayed open? I just love those Southern values.

Let's see, President Obama is continuing to spy on Americans just like his predecessor, he is using a contorted interpretation of State's Secrets to keep victims of torture at the hands of Americans from having their day in court and there is even evidence that torture has taken place on his watch. Further, under the Convention Against Torture treaty, he is now complicit in the Bush regime's war crimes by preventing prosecution of those crimes. It is not the first time a war criminal has received the Peace Prize, but it is rare enough to take note of.

Also, it is not just the fact that he has refused to make any moves to end the two wars he inherited, it is the fact that he is trying to deny habeas corpus to people we hold in prisons in Afghanistan that really riles me up. Add to that the total disinterest in the gulag-like conditions of the Palestinians and I have to ask: What the hell is the difference between Obama and Bush? Meet the new Pres, same as the old one.

I beg to differ. Graf has a normal physique, it just isn't a common physique anymore. I, for one, will never get used to obese being considered normal just because most Americans are sedentary slobs. Our current lack of muscle mass and overabundance of reduced carbon storage is not the norm in human history. No wonder we have rates of heart disease, diabetes and cancer that are also outside of historical norms.

Another day older and deeper in debt.

These phony half-measure cap-and-trade bills will lead to an unsolvable nuclear waste problem (as well as widespread contamination of the air, water and soil near "well running" plants and potential disasters at other nuke plants). To go along with that, it will accelerate the off-shoring of what is left of our manufacturing sector since it will be cheaper to use Chinese coal to build our trinkets and ship them over than to build them here.

We are overdue to take climate change seriously. We need INDIVIDUAL quotas for GHG emissions, just like we had individual quotas for energy usage during WWII. These quotas need to take into account the entirety of emissions, be they Chinese coal or Venezuelan oil to ship the product. Added benefit: it will be necessary to manufacture locally to avoid a prohibitive emissions price.

On one point I must agree: America's cultural decline did indeed begin in 1980, the year the Republican Party adopted the "greed is good" permanent platform. Of course, Brooks being correct about anything is like the proverbial blind chicken finding a kernel of corn, it was bound to happen sometime.

A few days ago, the NY Times had an article about a two-year old Afghan whose broken skull was repaired by U.S. military medics/surgeons. I am willing to bet that his home village will not harbor any anti-American feelings, unlike the people in villages that have had weddings bombed. Maybe we should "invade" with thousands of physicians, medics and people to build hospitals, schools and bridges and just try helping people instead of shooting them.