I kiss both my parents on the lips - quick, very closed-mouth, puckered-up pecks. I cannot imagine it being a big deal.

That's the line we liberals were fed in 2000, too. Bush and Gore, not a dime's worth of difference between them, right? I'm sure if Gore had become president, he would have fired all of Clinton's terrorism people, ignored that "Bin Laden Determined To Strike in US" briefing, gone to war in Iraq, set up extrajudicial prisons, put Roberts and Alito on the Supreme Court, and all that. And if Bush had been the one going home emptyhanded in November of 2000, he'd have a Nobel Peace Prize by now for telling us all about climate change. Right?

...so I'm afraid that Jeffrey P. Harrison will have to find other reasons to spell Microsoft with a dollar sign.

It can be obtained, either as the gigantic file mentioned in the article or split into state-by-state data, by clicking on my signature link or going to http://www.fec.gov/DisclosureSearch/mapApp.do, clicking the "Export Contributor Data" button and selecting Obama on the next page.

... because anyone who doesn't think this is going to generate an awful lot of sympathy for her is nuts.

Children born abroad to one US citizen parent are US citizens, as long as their parent has lived in the US for a certain length of time. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_citizenship#Through_birth_abroad_to_one_United_States_citizen

I don't think this bill is worded well. What about kids born to two US citizens while their families are on a day trip to Toronto? Under the original "natural born citizens" language, there's a plausible argument that they could become president. If this bill is passed, it would be reasonable to say that they CAN'T, because they weren't mentioned while military kids were.

Why not just say that a natural born citizen is any person who acquires US citizenship at birth, rather than by naturalization? I've always thought that was the most reasonable interpretation of the "natural born citizen" phrasing anyway.

... a 50-year-old white feminist from outside Sheboygan, I knew she wasn't getting far in Wisconsin.

Just read his speeches and look at his voting record and try to tell me he's not a dreamboat.

Any protests from you are just going to further cement you in the "closet case" category in your boss's head. What you need is somebody with sufficient cred to tell her to lay the hell off, that she's sexually harassing you and making the world just that much harder for women to act in non-gender-normative ways. So, who's your angriest, dykiest lesbian friend? And how soon can she get there?

This past Monday at MKE, I saw a woman and her single under-three-ounce liquid-or-gel container turned away from a security checkpoint because she had neglected to buy it its own quart-sized baggie. Reason is not the operating principle here!

While Cary's advice on what you really OUGHT to do (move out) isn't too bad, his attempt at legal advice is unbelievably, horrifyingly wrong. Unless there's a whole lot to this letter that didn't get published, they are not your landlords. They can't do a damn thing to get you to leave... except the whole "bringing home a newborn" thing.

Move out on your own time. Let them know how you feel before you leave. And grow a spine.

Remember the speculation about Feingold's motivation for his last censure resolution? Everyone thought it was an utterly transparent attempt to grab the "radical" left-wing vote for a 2008 presidential run. Now that he's declared that he won't run in 2008, it'll be interesting to see what reasons people dream up for this one.

Of course, for those of us who have been Feingold fans for years, it couldn't be more simple - he is doing it because he thinks it's the right thing to do.

I think I'll dig my Feingold 2004 t-shirt out of the closet to salute him today. It's dark blue, with "Feingold 2004" on the chest and, running up the back of the shirt, a picture of a spine.

Talking only about carbon dioxide doesn't really address the problem. Why does burning oil or wood create atmospheric carbon dioxide? Because of the carbon in the cellulose or the hydrocarbon chain. Why does planting trees remove carbon dioxide? Because they convert it into carbon-containing cellulose in order to grow. Why do we have a carbon dioxide problem now, when we didn't before? Because we've been burning carbon.

I hate buzzwords, too, but this is one instance where they're right.

When I read about this article on boingboing.net, I was expecting it to be a wilful misinterpretation of the (probably correct) argument that fear of cameras increases obedience to red lights. No surprise if it had been, a fair amount of "X wants you to Y!" articles on the internet are based on that type of (rather irritating) premise. But lo and behold, it's actually true! He does want people to keep running red lights! Quelle surprise!