I have no love for the telecom industry but in this case they were acting in good faith, complying with a govermnment order. Shame on the Bush administration for asking them to do so, but the telecoms should not be subject to lawsuits for this. I think this is a case of people who despise the telecom industry for other valid reasons pouncing on this issue out of a kneejerk reaction.

I find it so sad that my the kosher among my in-laws and the vegetarian amog my friends and neighbors will never experience the wonder that is truly good pork, because it is one of the few things in life that suggests to me that there truly is a loving God. Of course, the mosquitos that bite me while I'm manning the BBQ might suggest otherwise, but maybe that's just to remind me of the circle of life.

I'm waiting for the day when a terrorist swallows a bomb - or shoves one up his ass - and puts an end to this stupidity by showing what can be done. At which point, TSA wil start requiringthat all airline passengers change into unitards and be knocked out with sleeping gas before getting on a plane. They will start putting people in coffin-shaped cages and the baggage guys will load them on the plane. When they lose your luggage, they'll lose you too, so at least you won't be separated. It will be far more pleasant for all involved.

A forest with farmland is no longer a forest, and farmland with McMansions is no longer farmland but a desert with solar panels is still a desert. I know there are ecosystems and tortoises and all that, but we need harm reduction right now. If that means spoiling a Kennedy's ocean view or carpeting the desert with solar panels, that is preeferable to stip-mining in W. Virginia, oil drilling in Alaska, and global warming putting half the world's rich coastal ecosystems under water.

I work at a non-profit that has a homeless shelter. Most of the residents are young mothers and their young children. They get assistance finding housing and education, learn how to cook and manage household finances, etc. Young women with no babies get none of this. So in a sense, it's not becoming a teen mom that makes poor women more successful later on, it is the services we reserve for poor families and our reluctance to help out single, childless adults.

Of course, there is also the fact that for many teen girls, pregnancy is a wake-up call. She knows if she doesn't want to lose the kid to foster care, she needs to clean up her act and stop engaging in risky behavior.

Stella Artois was already the Bud of foreign beers so this is somewhat appropriate. At least in this deal, they get Budweiser's record of consistency. Bud may be mediocre but it's the dame mediocre every time, unlike Pennsylvania's Yeungling, which can range from delicious and complex to skunky and gross.

At my local beer distributor (it's a PA thing), Bud, Yeungling and a newly-resuurected PA brand, Reading Premium, are all $20 a case. The Reading tastes like a simple easy-drinking beer is supposed to taste, and all is right with the world.

Does every home in Texas have a little display by the thermostat that shows the price of a killowatt hour at that very moment and a programmable shutoff to all uneccesary appliances when a pre-selected price ceiling is reached? Can a user stitch from one power source to another at the touch of a button, hour by hour, or automatically find the lowest rate available in real time? No? Then there is no competition, only exploitation.

Without transparancy and choice, the free market fails. That's why deregulated power, consumer-directed health care plans, and other schemes don't work the way Economics 101 would suggest. If you don't know the price, can't easily switch providers, and can't live without the service, you will end up paying through the nose.

Does anybody really believe that oil companies will sell cheaper oil in America because they drilled on our shores to get it? The price of oil is set on the global markets - producing more in America has exactly the same effect as producing more in Iraq, which is a helluva lot more likely.

Iraq's government wants to commit to a timeline for withdrawal, but McCain says we can't, because we haven't won yet. But we have been successful! The mind boggles.

This is the second Salon essay I've read recently to feature a woman complaining about her huge breasts. I don't usually look to Salon to fulfill my more purient interests, but if I'm reading about huge breasts, I want pictures. Any yes, Summer kinda sucks, and it is probably no comfort to Rachel but as a man who hates summer, the breasts (and legs) of all the Rachels of the world are only thing that make it bearable.

So now I guess Wall Street will sober up with only its faith in free markets, steal some board elections and invade a sovereign investment fund or two.

It is a bit of a paradox, but multiculturalism and freedom are, in many cases, incompatible. So far, we have been able to balnce religious wackos and democracy in the US, mainly because we have had lots of space. But really, how can you believe in freedom if that freedom includes religions that deprive their asherants of freedom?

There is really not a "black America" that has all these problems, there is a subculture of blacks who are dysfunctional. It has roots in two things that happened in the 60's - the end of sharecropping and the welfare system, which was geared towards women and children, devaluing husbands and creating a culture of single parenthood. This culture is pernicious and destructive, so it draws in kids who came from decent black families as well, but overall its members are decendants from that sharcropper-to-welfare cohort.