I don't like guns. I think they should be highly regulated. I think the risk from accidental use, crimes of passion, or people "going postal" exceeds the value of broad gun ownership in our society.

But I recognize that lots of people enjoy hunting and feel that owning a gun provides them some personal safety, or maybe they just like shooting at targets. And, one can quote statistics back and forth, but I don't think I've seen anything conclusive to show that one approach is safer than the other. We need a compromise.

Here are regulations I think are reasonable.

Gun owners should be required to establish that they know how to use and keep their guns safely. They must be able to establish that they have the equipment (gun safes, trigger locks) etc available to protect the guns from theft or accidental misuse.

Gun owners should be limited from owning weapons that are excessively dangerous. This means weapons that if misused could cause either massive deaths or overwhelm law enforcement. Teflon bullets, high caliber weapons, rapid fire full machine guns - I don't know exactly where the line should be drawn but I'm sure that a compromise could be reached.

I think bipartisanship is extremely desirable. "Post-partisanship" would be even better. What I want to see is politicians who stand up for what is right, and occasionally concede what is necessary FOR THE GOOD OF THE COUNTRY. I am sick to death of people changing their positions when they change power relationships - "I used to think deficits don't matter until it became your problem". I contend that the democrats have been attempting to be responsible, relatively non-partisan actors but the repubs have consistently put party ahead of country.

Now the question is, how do you maintain a reasonable stance and focus on what's best for the country in the face of an unreasonable bully?

This is more important than it looks, because it is really about the success of principle driven liberal government. How do you hold your principles in the face of a local bully? How about in the face of a Communist bully? Or a (small but significant) Islamic bully (ie, most muslims are probably not set on our destruction, but some certainly are).

The republican answer is easy: When face with a bully, no principle is as important as winning.

The liberal answer is a lot harder. Sometimes you've got to stand and fight. Sometimes you've got to swallow a compromise.

And, as the Serenity prayer would have it, the wisdom to tell the difference.

So where are the people talking about the nuclear option for filibuster? Repubs dominated Dems with a bare advantage in the house and swore that any filibuster would meet with the nuclear option. Now we've got near filibuster proof majority but we can't hold.

1. Do people really think that government run health care would be that much more bureaucratic and impersonal than insurance company run health care? Really? The sacred "doctor-patient health based decision process" isn't reality for a large number of people already.

2. Do they advertise medication for restless leg syndrome on tv and in newspaper magazine supplements in Germany? Part of the profit driven health care system is that there will always be some people somewhere talking about how to maximize profits by selling high margin "products". People have a natural tendency to over consume medical care, and the profit motive exacerbates that tendency.

All this anger seems to me to be whistling past the graveyard. If we make enough noise, we'll be safe. The thought of accidentally killing one's own child is so horrifying that we need to be nice and loud to keep it out of our heads. We gather around and congratulate ourselves for being so much better than THOSE horrible people.

I once arrived at work without having dropped off my daughter at daycare. I parked my car at work and there she was in her child seat in the back. Could I have not noticed her when I left the car to go into the office? Not likely, but not impossible. Could I have left her there long enough to do physical damage (in the mild climate I then lived in)? Even less likely, but still not impossible.

If (gods forbid) I did make such a grievous mistake you wouldn't have to punish me. Nothing you could possibly do would make it worse to me than: I would have killed my child. I'd probably have to kill myself. You could make an argument that you might as well stick me in prison if it made you feel better, it wouldn't make my hell any deeper.

the author wanders near the point when he wonders if maybe the trip is more about indoctrinating the evangelizers than it is about reaching new - uh, evangelees?

A well known indoctrination/brainwashing technique used by cults all over the world is to put people out in a non-supporting to hostile environment and have them promote and/or defend their dogma.

Many years ago when, to my shame, I attended an evangelical church briefly they were explicit about it. "These are techniques that communists and other evil doers use to cement their people to the organization, so why not use these techniques for god?"

I remember reading about a psych experiment where subjects were given some bland product and paid to promote it to their friends. Some were given some pittance of money for doing so, and some were given a much larger amount. They surveyed the subjects a month later and the ones who had been well paid were no more attached to the product than they had been before the experiment. The ones who had been low paid, however, were significantly more slanted towards the product. Internally, they couldn't tell themselves they had promoted this product for money so, hmm, hey I musta liked it!