The U.S. government is keeping secret the exact location, within California's Inyo National Forest, of the world's oldest living individual tree (4841 years). Wait till Glenn Beck finds out about this conspiracy!

Equally strong argument as fetus is person therefore abortion is illogical, is it not?

Use of violence and intimidation in pursuit of political aims.

"Never tell me the odds," said Han Solo as he piloted the Millennium Falcon on a seemingly suicidal course through an asteroid field. Yes, I picked an adolescent male example. But seriously, do these preemptive procedures measure up to the "do no harm" standard of medicine? Is is really better to "know" you have a 60% chance of cancer and use that to make a choice to be 100% certain of major loss? Is that smarter or more rational than, say, Bush invading Iraq after 9/11? As for the reaction of the woman's significant other, he can no more force himself to stay attracted to a radically altered body than the woman could control her fear enough to wait and see if she'd actually get cancer or not (40% is still a significant chance of "not"). Rationality isn't in the equation on either side, and that's the fairest thing I can say.

Of course that would be Merrill Markoe, who was the original head writer and essentially co-creator of Letterman's NBC show. And who was also Letterman's girlfriend for 10 years. Obviously the NBC show had a very strong female influence but that influence was inseparable from the female in quesetion being romantically involved with Letterman.

The human skeleton has pretty consistent proportions and so a thin person who does not add to that provides a consistent design template. If you start adding fat, it becomes a question of how much fat and that is unpredictable. If the canvas size is not set, an artist's ridged, "perfect" design idea must give way to a range of possibilities. There are probably fashion artists who just don't like to deal with that. They want to serve their creative interests more than serve the needs of consumers.

I think he's experimenting with being more himself in an effort to get more laughs. When he mimicked Obama's measured, almost robotic delivery, it was hard to be funnier than Obama. Bush and Clinton actually had funny parts of their personality that could be exaggerated. Obama doesn't give impersonators much to work with.

The portrayal of John Stamos's character on ER trying to raise his late girlfriend's teenage daughter was relatively free of cluelessness. In film, I recall Contact, which although sci-fi and only briefly showing childhood scenes of Jodie Foster's character, shows a very idealized widowed dad.

There's the minor issue of France, not exactly a rogue state, standing behind him all these years. Not saying France is right, just that we live in a world where rule of law is sporadic and often subordinated to personal or national interest. Making an example of Polanski won't change that. It won't prove that the guilty are always punished and the law is always upheld. The next man to consider sex with a 13-year-old won't think Roman Polanski got away with rape because it was OK but because he was a wealthy celebrity who could live in France. Celebrity cases are automatically more expensive and time consuming and I have to believe budget-challenged prosecutors could be spending their time and money on more immediate cases. The system loses sometimes and there are probably cases that would be worse to lose, with victims who are still children and perpetrators who are still dangerous.

Apparently H1N1 is known as "pig aids" among the school-age set, a name that is completely inappropriate and yet hilarious and perfectly reflects how kids have absorbed and transmuted adult hysteria.

Running scared? If someone is wildly exaggerating and ignoring evidence, is the correct response to point out the evidence every time a false claim is made, or be quiet and let the exaggerator and his demonstrably false claims have the last word? It's running scared to try to get at least equal time for reality?

By definition it's not winning but pretending to. That's what Hoffa says he wants to do?

Talk about unequal.

It's obvious that if the right-wing media consistently implies, or flat-out says, that the U.S. government is illegitimate, some nutcase could be incited to take violent action. I can already anticipate the irony of the right wing's declarations, following a serious incident of domestic terrorism, that Obama was unprepared to deal with terrorism. What the nutcases don't blow up, the right will seek to destroy through even more draconian security laws, extrajudicial intelligence gathering and torture than 9/11 brought us.

Find models of other prisons in the U.S. and elsewhere that do things better and ask the Southern prisons why they can't do that. What's needed is outside perspective, not a rehash of fearful and negative arguments that, without outside perspective, would inevitably be decided the same way as before.

Just what constitutes a political event, for the purpose of triggering (pun intended) your proposed gun-free zone? An event where an elected official appears? A candidate? A group of protestors where no officials or candidates appear? A perimeter around said event? What about an independently formed rally in proximity to said event? Or a rally in another location timed to coincide with the event?

My point is politics can and does happen anywhere. The Secret Service already bans weapons in the venue of a presidential appearance and other very high-profile events. The so-called "free speech" zones foisted upon us during the Bush years should not be a model for further compartmentalization of the other nine Amendments.

When GE took over NBC in 1986, David Letterman, then at NBC, took a camera crew and a fruit basket over to GE headquarters, only to get thrown out of the lobby by security. The "GE handshake" was Letterman extending his hand and the security guy waving to turn off the camera.