Somebody should point out to Justice Kennedy that even if there are women who claim to have come to regret their abortions, there's no suggestion that the regret was caused by the abortion itself, as opposed to, say, the unrelenting tide of guilt-inducing propaganda these women have been subjected to.

As far as "informed consent" laws are concerned -- they have never been about giving balanced information, they've been about giving tiny bits of information, however speculative, inaccurate and sensationalist, intended to induce guilt; and withholding information, however truthful or accurate, that might actually validate the decision to terminate the pregnancy. Surprisingly, guilt gets induced. Who knew?

And Allie:

I have a little rule which I find useful in all fields of life: if someone feels the need to lie to prove a point, it's probably not much of a point.

Thanks, I just had to see that again.

Where have I read this before?

If some enterprising lawyers can start taking these cases based on a % of winnings/pro bono, that should get the court to reverse itself pretty quickly.

There aren't going to be any cases. The SCOTUS has killed the law entirely.

See, the damages a woman can sue for would be, theoretically, the difference between what she earned and what she should have earned. Cutting her rights off after six months worth of employment doesn't add up to enough of a dollar amount that would be worth hiring a lawyer for. It doesn't add up to enough money to compensate a lawyer, even if it was taken on a %age basis.

The law works only if the dollar amount the woman stands to gain is big enough to make it worth the time and expense of litigation, after taking into account the fact that she will never be hired again for the rest of her life once the lawsuit is filed.

That has to be a typo.

I'm gonna have to weigh in here with the writers who point out how misleading this article is. The betting-on-football analogy is totally wrong: it doesn't explain anything about CMO's or derivatives that can't honestly be said about any other form of investment security. The problem here isn't fatcat Wall Street investment bankers, from New York City no less, writing opaque disclosure documents (to be honest: in my youth I helped write disclosure for mortgage-backed securities). The problem is more that dishonest salesmen were writing loans to equally dishonest borrowers. There's no amount of disclosure on earth that can compensate for the fact that a borrower who claimed an income of $175k actually only earns $50K. What makes these securities worthless is the fact that people were encouraged to fib just a little to qualify for the loan -- and they went along with it. If enough people do that, the little fibs add up to one giant fraud.

The difference between investing in derivatives and outright betting is the same as the difference between taking medicine and doing recreational drugs. A derivative is no more a "bet" than any investment in any company. If you know that in any given geographical area there is a five percent chance that a $100,000 mortgage will default, you probably won't buy that mortgage off the bank, because most of us aren't willing to risk $100,000 that has a 1-in-20 chance of being lost. But, if you pool that mortgage with a hundred other identical mortgages, you suddenly have something that a hundred different investors can afford to buy in for $100,000 apiece -- because even with that 5% default rate, the accumulated mortgages are generating, say, 12% (interest, late fees, points, blah blah blah) which means a net return of 7% per year, plus whatever gets paid down from proceeds of foreclosure, maybe another 2-3%, and that's easier to stomach. The risk is no longer all-or-nothing; it's something you can quantify. It makes it easier for people who are honest to get access to lenders who are honest.

Selling in tranches doesn't diffuse anything. The high-risk tranches are always sold to institutional investors who are well able to bear the loss and fend for themselves.

The problem came in because some astonishingly high percentage of these borrowers apparently falsified their incomes -- in collusion with agents working on commission.

For once, I agree with the President. Gonzalez's job was to turn the DOJ into a branch of the Republican National Committee. All those investigations were clearly impeding Gonzalez's ability to do what he'd been hired to do.

John McCain tiptoed into the fray Tuesday night when he called the Craig case "disgraceful."

We feel your pain, Senator McCain. You're sharing the Senate Men's Room with a guy who, according to the police report, doesn't even bother to flush.

Dodd and Richardson had reportedly agreed to debate in Spanish before the other candidates complained that this would unlevel the playing field.

Hold on a sec -- so the idea is, somebody who has the ability to speak Spanish in front of a Spanish-speaking constituency is taking advantage of an "unlevel" playing field? Like, maybe, highlight their unique ability to represent this demographic?

Isn't the whole idea of the campaign to get the candidates to differentiate themselves for the voters?

Ick.

I'm no big fan of any of the Republican candidates, but I found this refreshing:

"The line-item veto is unconstitutional. You don't get to believe about it; the Supreme Court has ruled on it."

How refreshing! Reality isn't optional! Now that we have a candidate who believes in an objective reality, let's ask about things like, you know, evolution, global warming, whether Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, and whether the Constitution includes a system of checks and balances that limits the power of the Executive Branch.