I am no fan of all the products marketed to children, so I agree with the author on that point. But I don't think a little TV hurts kids. Before I became a parent I swore I wouldn't let my daughter watch TV, but when she became a toddler and I was at home with her all day, I started turning on Sesame Street when I needed a break. I only let her watch PBS, and it's always been a relatively small part of her day. I don't think it's hurt her one bit. We read, cook together, go to the farmer's market, play at the park, walk around the neighborhood, and do many other things throughout the day.

I am really sick of alarmist books telling us all the things parents are doing wrong, when what we really need instead is more support. One letter-writer asked what parents did in the old days. I think back then there was usually a neighbor, grandparent, or aunt around to help out. I also think a lot of the strict no-tv people have help of some kind: extended family, nannies, babysitters, day care. When it's just you and your child, all day long, and you need to get something done, your options are pretty limited. If I didn't turn on the TV my daughter would be climbing on the bookcase or taking everything out of the trash can. Or, if I confined her to her room, screaming. Not an option, because we live in an apartment. Maybe if we all had access to low-cost, drop-in childcare we wouldn't let our kids watch so much television.

I don't understand the dilemma for these pharmacists. Let's say I'm a Southern Baptist and I believe drinking beer is a sin. Then I get a job in a grocery store that sells beer, but I refuse to let anyone buy beer in my checkout line. I would get fired, and rightly so. I mean, why not just go into a different line of work altogether? What about people who believe taking any medication in sinful? Can they become pharmacists, but refuse to fill prescriptions, period?

I first discovered Baghdad is Burning several years ago. It brought the war home to me in a way that the wall-to-wall news coverage couldn't. Riverbend, I am glad you are safe, and I hope that you will continue to raise your voice against this terrible war.

I went to several protest marches in the runup to the Iraq War. I haven't been to one since. It seems futile. No one listened to the protesters, and now the bell cannot be unrung. Even if we withdraw now (and I hope we do), the chaos and killing will continue for many years to come.

It's not that I don't care. I just feel really powerless.

The relationship between a woman and the fetus in her womb is unique. There are no parallels. Unless you've been pregnant, you can't understand. I can't imagine how hard it must be to relinquish a child who has grown in your womb, depended on your body for sustenance, kicked against the inside of your belly. Never mind the agony of labor, and the real, permanent physical toll that pregnancy takes on your body.

As for "choice", it seems to me that only one of the participants in such a transaction has a real choice. A woman in the U.S. or Europe may choose to be a surrogate, or support herself in some other way. But given the harsh realities of life in the third world, surrogacy may be a woman's only means of supporting herself and her family.

If we really want to *help* third-world women, why not just give them the means to support themselves without having to do something that would be imaginable to most middle-class women in the U.S.?

We are in our mid-thirties, and we have student loan debts that will be with us until we retire. We pay huge health insurance premiums every month, then pay huge co-pays every time we see a doctor. We are praying for house values to drop enough that we can afford to buy a little two-bedroom in a decent neighborhood. We make money, we save diligently, we eat a lot of lentils, yet we still don't have anything approaching the lifestyle my parents did when we were kids.

I hate seeing those money-management shows that say you should put X away for retirement, and Y for your kids' education. Where exactly is the money supposed to come from?

I don't have any answers, but I worry for our future.

I thought Hillary's speech today hit all the right notes.

If you want to know what Obama will do for women, watch this:

Trying again:

http://www.blogher.com/blogher-exclusive-barack-obama-answers-policy-questions-women-who-blog-video

Obama answers women's questions.

I'm a New-Orleanian-in-exile (I moved away a long time before Katrina), and you captured the real essence of the city, good and bad, in this article.

I find her political views appalling, but I think she's a great speaker who will appeal to a certain subset of conservative American women. Certain phrases like "a servant's heart" were designed to speak to evangelicals, and her shout-out to the mothers of special-needs kids will also resonate for them. (Of course a lot of what she said was outright untrue, or at least misleading.)