Have you not watched Top Chef at all? The magical ingredient is now called "pork belly" not just simple "bacon." The chief distinction being smoking/lack thereof. Every dish on Top Chef last season (even desserts) seemed to have included pork belly as a prime ingredient. Trend.

As for me, I am a lifetime bacon fan. If someone wants me to have it in a cocktail, hey, I'm up for that!!!

You may hate to play the doctor card but you did it anyway and used it in the classic MD's put-down: thinking that only an MD has the "right" to be called doctor. Rude, inaccurate, and arrogant.

On behalf of all Ph.D's (who have MORE right to the courtesy of "doctor" based on academic tradition)and other trained medical professionals.

Marian C., Ph.D., or Doctor Marian, to you.

Dear LW,

Leave. Whether in haste or slowly as Cary recommends. It took me 14 years, and I hope it doesn't take you that long. Leave before there are children involved. Not because a divorce would hurt them but because you do not want to be responsible for the damage he will do them. If you have a daughter he will break her heart.

Leave.

He is jobless and she is supporting him while he goes to school (again). Yet he chastises her over the budget as if it were his money. Case closed.

It's bad enough that Michelle Obama has to endure the deprecation of her accomplishments and submersion of her identity into mommy-hood, but this is absolutely ridiculous. Comments on any professional woman's "butt" or other physical attributes are demeaning no matter who they come from. In case you don't realize this, Michelle Obama's accomplishments are NOT YOUR accomplishments. Her achievement does not reflect on YOU. You are free to think whatever you want about the importance of your ass, but you are an ass to even bring this up.

Secretary Leavitt has offered the Senators an excellent way to call attention to this issue, but let's not kid ourselves that this rule would actually ever get issued. If Leavitt had any intention of letting it go through, he would certainly not have created a blog post letting the nation know that this proposed rule had been leaked before he ever saw it. Such leakage was the kiss of death for any proposed rule. Methinks someone within HHS was just trying to have a last hurrah.

What else remains to be said? A man desires more than one partner. This is pedestrian. A woman desires the security of one partner who is totally committed.

And thus we are ever different. There is no simplicity here, Cary.

Last fall, I was sexually assaulted while attending a professional conference out of town. A sex predator took advantage of the fact that I wasn't guarding my food and drink with my life (insert irony here) and slipped a sedative into them while I was conversing with a professional colleague. When I came to, 3 hours later, I found I had been beaten and who knows what else. The pig-dog was still in my hotel room, gloating over his success, when I called for police. The ever-helpful (sarcasm intended) police decided that the predator was just having some fun with a consensual partner and that I was lying---despite my obvious despair and injuries. To top it off, the police decided to charge me with filing a false police report for having summoned them to help me. A felony charge I might add.

This is the point where I should note that I am a 53-year-old, overweight academic, mother of two daughters, and very happily married for many years, who would never dream of going "out on the prowl" for some action.

And this is not an isolated incident in America. Every year, there are many similar cases reported by victimized women in this country. Women who are subjected to false stereotyping and made to suffer from authorities' beliefs in rape myths.

When are WE going to get some justice?

Instead of wasting your tears on the purported (but unverified) abuses in some other country, how about some support and action on behalf of the many doubly victimized women right here at home? Women who can show you the evidence of their victimization?

I can't even remember what happened during the sexual assault (thankfully). But I sure as hell remember the abuse I was subjected to by the police, including threats, coercion, and the exorbitant costs to defend myself against false charge.

Where is the justice in that?

Just in case any of you aren't aware of it, it's quite possible to be arrested and charged just for disagreeing with a cop who has an attitude.

Woman giving lip is just as likely (more?) to be tossed in jail than a black man. Cops in this country are out of control. They seem to think that their authority is completely unlimited and that any lie they care to dream up to justify their behavior is just fine.

The problem is that juries and judges give the police that license. You CANNOT get a jury in the US to disbelieve a cop's account of anything. No matter how rankly obvious the lies are. Defense attorneys routinely advise their clients to plead guilty to things they DID NOT DO in order to avoid being convicted of same because only the cops' word is considered by juries to be the truth.

Americans---if you were on a jury, would you really be able to absolve an innocent person who was accused by a corrupt and lying cop? How would you know the difference and how hard would you fight to clear the innocent? No, truthfully...