Things don't line up -- that's why so many complaints about jumbled. Right now there six, count 'em SIX columns across, but two of them are capped by one double width column with a bigger font headline. Nothing lines up going across. My eye can't scan those dipsy doodle lines across the various headlines. If you only had 2 or three columns, it wouldn't be so bad, but six? Criminy, you could fit a dozen if you used the full width.

The varying weights -- headlines bold, text medium, author name faint enough to make me think I had to clean the screen to get rid of the obscuring dust. But then some are red. Gee that makes sense.

Too many little miscellaneous links scattered all over -- across the top are threww disconnected rows. Zillions at the bottom.

Requires javascript to no useful end. For instance, go to War Room or similar, and every story has that damned "continue" link which uses javascript to insert the remainder. Cute but pointless. I have presumably not read stuff at the top, so why would I have to skip it to find the stuff I have already read? If it were not already downloaded and waiting to be made visibe, it might be marginally faster on dialup, but it serves no purpose.

That awful huge red banner stretches clear across; why is the content squeezed into narrow columns in the center?

I think you've got it. They are in love with a fictional white antebellum south where slavery and blacks themselves were out of sight, out of mind. Most southern whites were sipping mint juleps on the front porches of their mansions or working on their muscle cars or fightin' duels with damn Yankees. All this hypocrisy goes right along with their warped sense of states rights (see the national post office censorship, the congressional gag rule, and the Fugitive Slave Law for examples).

I remember reading a few years ago that typical new drug developments spent more on the marketing campaign than on real scientific R&D.

Yes it is disgusting. Then they whine that they need to extend the patent life and eliminate generics to recover their costs.

Something I have not seen discussed is that the rape did not take place in the US. I suppose if it were on a US base overseas, that would still count as a US crime, but if not, if it took place in Iraq, even if a private contractor base, does US law have any jurisdiction over the matter? No doubt Iraq has its own rape laws, but I haven't seen much to impress me on that count.

How about some real reporting here? Does US law apply to a case between US citizens when overseas and not in US territory?

Slavery is fundamentally incompatible with democracy, and it was slaveholders increasingly bizarre desperate attempts to pretend otherwise that led to the civil war.

First you say "Abortions, ergo, are down as well, from an estimated 45.5 million procedures in 1995 to 41.6 million in 2003." Then you say "The estimated number of unsafe abortions actually "changed little" during the same period, says the study. Ditto the rate of unsafe abortion: from 15 in 1000 to...14 in 1000."

News flash: a quick math check shows those to be the same ratios within rounding limits: 45/15 is 3.03, 42/14 is 2.97. And yes, you do have to round the results, given that one figure only has two digits of precision, but even if you don't, the ratios are too close to be considered different.

Yet you say the good one is "down", but the scary one is "little changed".

Innmeracy strikes again.

No, even that brief overthrow of the Taliban was a waste and accomplished nothing. If we had left right after, they would have come right back. No matter when we leave, they will return.

There is NO point in the Afghan war which was good before and bad after. It sure satisfied a few egos to throw out the Taliban, but it was temporary and a waste of effort. It was and remains a complete waste.

Now if Bush had specifically gone after Osama bin Laden and nothing else, that might have boosted morale and left a warning to would-be imitators. But he didn't do that, and nothing accomplished in our Afghan war has been or will be permanent.

There was not a single point during the Vietnam war which anyone can point to and say "Here was when we had done good before and bad after. Here was when we should have pulled out, but not before."

I'm sure many will argue that we at least did good by overthrowing the Taliban during the initial invasion, but that is an illusion of the same kind as the domino theory. No matter when we leave or could have left, the Taliban would ave come right back in, just as the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese (for they were the same, Vietnamese to whom the labels "nort" and "south" were meaningless) were destined to take charge again once the imperialists left.

Just pull out, Obama. There is no future there, and it will bankrupt your social policies. You are not quite doomed to one term, depending on how thoroughly distaste for your stupid war compares to memory of Republican malfeasance.