I'm more than a little uncomfortable with discussions of the quality of anyone's Jewishness, Christianity, Hinduism, et al. First, weren't we all a little glad that Lieberman's deeply held religious feeling might blunt the Right's sole ownership of God in 2000? While he did harsh on Clinton in 1998, didn't we all feel that, well, he was a religious guy and we in the center and on the left respect religious feeling? We could spare him, since the whole spectacle turned to a debacle anyway.

While it was inevitable that Senator Mr. Lieberman's religion would be a prominent aspect of his political life, please spare us the debate about the worthiness of his fervor, the level of his devotion, or the lack of adherence to the Halakha. Our alternating disdain-embrace-disdain of Lieberman's religiosity and the pronouncements made thereof only point up how deeply unwelcome religion should be in the nation's political life.

I wonder why after 26 years, she still calls the jerk who left "Dad," and the guy she loved as a father "Stepdad." If your father ditched you, your mother, and your sisters, and is now preparing to dump his 70 year old wife, it sort of indicates the guy is in this for himself. More hair-pulling and breast-beating from those who still wish to retrofit their families into some sort of ideal. Get over it, tell him to beat it, come to your senses, and move on.

Pardon us for aging.

This is for the LW who exclaimed "Give me a break." Can you tell me just what it is about this article that makes it a joke? Your seeing the alternative to such agressive vote suppression as leaving the polls unmanned shows your contempt for the discussion in its entirety. Your last line ("This is the pathetic trash that drives reasonable people away from the democrat [sic] party.") perfectly illustrates the point of the article: voter registration is a goal in and of itself, yet your mockery of it bolsters the belief of many (myself included) that voter suppression is a specific Republican goal in some states.

Maybe Democrats are just wary of any Republican initiatives that involve changing the rules of voter registration. Remember that in three (three!) presidential elections -- 1876, 1888, and 2000 -- the Democrats won the popular vote yet somehow managed to lose the electoral votes each time. Consideration of this point will go a long way in explaining how deeply troubled many people are when Republican-controlled state governments seek to regulate registration drives. I won't be coy or disingenuous -- many of these drives do benefit the Democratic Party because of the sympathies of the previously unregistered. Seeking to suppress these drives with obstreperous regulations is de facto disenfranchisement, and it is something at which Republicans of late have excelled.

Articles such as this usually raise more questions for me than they answer, viz.,

Why do we still use terms such as "Israel's moral authority"?

Why are the various departments staffed with experts churning out report after report that not only go unread but are usually actively ignored?

Why is Israel lauded for following UN resolutions when its present borders far exceed those stipulated in its original UN mandate?

Why do these people suck at their jobs?

The LW says that, with two ex-wives, the kids are grown and gone, so I'd say that puts him in late middle age. Why is this important? Well, it places him in that generation just before the liberation movement started and therefore he may still be burdened with all sorts of self-imposed nasty images. I mean, notice the way he describes intimate sexual acts for Christ's sake. This, especailly the use of the spectacularly vulgar "poop chute," is what gay male relationships are all about for him -- not commitment, not enduring love, not finding one's soul mate, but corporeal cavities. I don't think he's necessarily a closet case (or maybe he's so far in that you could not illuminate that closet with 50 suns), but I do think he is looking for a submissive partner without the challenge that women have presented to him so far.

It feels so good when that Psych 101 course can be used.

The security pros and proponents have won -- we will never again be able to enter a building or walk through an airport with anything resembling ease and trust. We have somehow doomed the next several generations to ever-increasing security, placing "order" above freedom of movement. Police make policy, while holding discretionary powers, regarding security (meaning you can skirt the policy if you know the right people), and all of this begins to amount to an untenable public life.

Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan decried the "garrison state" that Washington, D. C. had become and was actively working on changing the status quo when he died. It would not surprise me if we someday see a massive bunker in front of the Capitol named the "Moynihan Freedom Plaza."

Remember the halcyon days of 2000 when some thought that a CEO would make a perfect president? Commanding, confident, decisive, and the ability to lead were traits that many patched onto Bush (on skimpy evidence). Now we know that CEO's can also be hubristic, hostile to criticism, disdainful of those deemed not in their class, intemperate of those who disagree, ever-aware of their entitlements, and in constant need of syncophants. Within the confines of corporate America, such social criminals are to be expected. When in charge of a nation's agenda, though, these alpha-types can bring ruin. Mr. Epps makes a fine point when he notes that Lincoln's being an attorney made him above all else a man who respected the rule of law. We now have ample evidence that to those who have achieved success in the corporate world, laws and a respect for the rights of others is for those further down -- you know, as Leona Helmsley once said, "the little people."