... there's a problem. What's the alternative? Karzai's wrong to sign this law, but the people who he's fighting are even more anti-woman, to the point of barring a woman from leaving her house without a male escort. He's signing because he's in a position of weakness. Demanding that the West "do something" is to demand that our troops die, forever.

Or maybe I'm wrong and there is something that can be done? What? We can demand that they not pass repugnant laws, but then what's the followup when they do it anyway?

Is there an alternative to advocating a variant of the neoconservative agenda? They said that they wanted to impose western-style capitalist democracy by force; should we impose western-style respect for womens' rights by force instead? It's not that I don't care about the women suffering in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but I don't think dropping bombs in their heads in the name of fighting the theocrats helps them much.

The premise of this column appears to be that the generally liberal Salon readership needs to have conservatism explained to them. But conservatives have no shortage of media outlets; they appear on every editorial page and their arguments drive the narrative of most mainstream media.

If the columnist had any interest in, or talent for, producing original arguments or explanations, it might make a contribution. But he appears not even to understand his own side. He takes shots at Steve Schmidt: "But I question the wisdom of adopting political strategies proposed by the fellow who led a losing GOP national campaign, one that rejected conservative values as a general rule, and that couldn't even win in a state like Virginia, which went to the Democrats for the first time since 1964." Schmidt's motives transcend politics: he has a lesbian sister, who he loves. But rather than addressing the argument, we instead get a variant of "Schmidt's a *loser*, nyah nyah nyah".

As more and more gays and lesbians come out, even in red states, more and more people will find themselves with gay family members and friends, and the traditional political arguments won't wash.

Nice use of the passive voice: the voicemail was leaked by someone, and that someone was Baldwin's ex-wife or her lawyer. As vile as the original message was, making that message public, so that everyone that poor girl knew would hear it, would know that her father called her a pig in a fit of anger, was more vile. Winning a nasty divorce case and destroying the ex-husband was more important than any collateral damage to the daughter.

Expressing strong criticism of others' speech is also protected by the First Amendment.

I used to be puzzled by complaints from conservative students that they had no free speech rights on campus, when what they meant was that if they expressed their lame opinions, people would attack their statements. They often came from backgrounds where everyone around them shared their prejudices, and felt that they had a right to be approved of. Somehow being denied the approval they think they deserve is supposed to be a denial of their free speech rights.

... was that she thought better of Israel than she should have. She opposed the treatment of the Palestinians, but she couldn't even conceive that non-violent resistance by an American citizen would be responded to by lethal force. She thought that having Americans lie down in front of houses would keep the Israelis from destroying those houses. She was wrong. She underestimated the cruelty that she was dealing with.

... so clearly she's fed up.

The private health care insurance industry is based on getting the cheap people into your pool and pushing the expensive people into someone else's pool. Piecemeal efforts at fixing this, by prohibiting discrimination, limiting ability to decline based on pre-existing conditions or genetic testing, etc. just makes the industry try harder to find legal pretexts or other tactics (example: try youth-oriented marketing to turn off the middle-aged).

The only solution is just abolishing the private health insurance industry. It's a broken concept, and in countries where they don't have it, people live longer and spend less money on health care.

Yes, abstinence is a sure-fire way to avoid pregnancy (barring rape), and school-age kids are often under a lot of pressure to have sex before they are ready. So, by all means, emphasize abstinence. But it can't be the whole story, and it can't be ethically taught by telling lies (some programs falsely claim that condoms are completely ineffective, for example) or with scare tactics.

When someone's body is mature enough to produce offspring, that someone has to know things work.

The latest "Dear Wingnut" article is #2 on the "Most read" list. Camille Paglia's awful self-indulgent dreck also places highly on that list.

As long as Salon readers click on that crap, Salon will run it, because the ad revenue is based on page views. The fastest way to make it go away is for everyone to stop reading it. Just don't click.

Apparently a story about Rush Limbaugh's alleged anal fixation is more important than this one.

We are constantly told that men are more likely to do Y and women are more likely to do X, but there's almost always a large variation and a substantial overlap. Some women shop online, others don't. Some men watch video online, others don't. But it's very rare to find a characteristic that is as strongly correlated with gender as height is. Yet it doesn't shock us to see a tall woman or a short man.

Oh, another thing: if a study is reported in the media, it's more likely to be an outlier (thus wrong) than a study that isn't reported in the media. That's because the media focus on the unusual, the unexpected, "news". If there are five studies and four confirm the conventional wisdom, the press will all report the one that doesn't. And then they'll forget to follow up when the study is discredited.