See, we can't use "holocaust" (a word popularized after 1978 from the title of a wildly successful NBC mini-series; hi-jacked to depict only one people's horrors) for anything but the plight of European Jews. At least in America, that is. If one does, the quasi "race card" slur is "anti-semetism.

I live in Phila., don't love animals as passionately as Stu Bykofsky and haven't cared much about the Eagles since Bednarik left. I've been to the Blue Horizon a couple times in the last 20 years, and I know that Tony Danza is an ex-boxer, so he should be able to take a punch better than your average Phila. teacher.

"Officials said it wasn't clear that any CIA interrogators were ever informed of the limits laid out in the Justice Department memo. A number of people could say honestly, correctly, 'I didn't know what was in it,' said a former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the inner workings of the interrogation program" -- this further solidifies Yoo's "law-writing" as settled law and distracts from his actual crime by designating the criminality to underlings, in that: "ignorance of 'the law' is no excuse for violating it" -- slick!

Of Hillary Clinton's statement, "She reminded Kenyans of how the United States played a large role in brokering a peace treaty last year between Kenya’s warring political parties but said that 'unfortunately, resolving that crisis has not yet translated into the kind of political process the Kenyan people deserve'” -- she ought to shut up about election violence in Kenya. The Dec. 2007 election between incumbent Mwai Kibaki and challenger Raila Odinga was monitored by the International Republican Institute (and paid for by the U.S.) which also conducted exit polls showing that the challenger Odinga clearly won, but the Bush administration ordered that the exit polls not be released (apparently because Raila was educated in East Germany and it probably didn't help that he named his son after Fidel Castro). But the hypocritical United States is always pushing for democracy around the world EXCEPT when we don't like who won (as we can easily see in the case of the Hamas victory in Palestine).

Soon after Obama got into office and way before reading this, I wondered if the right wing (even before Cheney's 8 years) spiked the White House water supply access or are allowing some type of controlling gas to be emitted from the basement. During the campaign, I was really afraid of McCain winning because he said he would have turned my "non-combat" related VA healthcare benefits (I LOVE my socialized medicine!) over to the insurance companies. Then, INCREDIBLY, after assuming office, Obama made a statement or speculated about turning ALL veterans health services, INCLUDING those of the wounded, to the whims of the private insurers. That was all you heard of it though, I guess there was a backlash (I certainly sent my emails). He's either brainwashed, uninformed, out-of-the-loop or naïve (as in: if he had grown up in a black neighborhood, maybe he wouldn't be such a sucker).

These anti-abortion-holy-rollers would be the first to scream when unwanted kids, who'd be more likely to grow up with chips on their shoulders and thus more inclined toward criminal behavior, got in their way; they'd denigrate their mothers and decry the failures of the "system." Frances, as far as DeLauro trying to "find an uncontroversial area of common ground with those opposed to abortion," that's like the Obama administration trying to reach out "to moderate elements of the Taliban" or the FBI looking to cooperate with moderate elements of the Mafia. These, like moderate anti-abortion activists, don't exist. They need to be fought.

The very first commenter under this article, Serai1, has the right attitude when she wrote "Not every liberal is a whipped pussy unable to say the supposedly unsayable."

To all the frothers out there:

If you don't like abortion, don't have one.

Otherwise, it's not your business.

Social Security is supposedly solvent into the 2040's, so if we had previously risked/invested (stored it?) in a "Sovereign Wealth Fund," we might not have anything left now, as the crashing worldwide economy and drop in prices would have affected it. Why mess with it? The private sector knows there's a lot of cash there and they could invent devices (as we've seen with credit default swaps) that make it hard for non-Wall Streeters (and apparantly even some Wall Streeters) to scrutinize or understand. Yeah, congress is stupid but as far as reforming with "progressives, not paleo-tards" it seems like the supposed "progressives" around today are regressing.

"AARP prevents any meaningful reform of Social Security." So we should turn it over to the crooks on Wall Street?

Talk is cheap.

(Reality check 2: How many things has he promised us while campaigning only to abandon or evade now that he's in office?)

Wow. Obama's accent got even "blacker" than Hillary Clinton's accent when she spoke in her Selma, Alabama speech during last year's primary campaign.

So it's still possible to invent settlement that legalizes torture under John Yoo's guidelines -- thus justifying the use of waterboarding. But if an interrogator is REALLY evil and deviates from OLC guidelines by insulting the detainee's mother from a fifth corner he might be looking at serious jail time.

As far as gay marriage, I empathize with any citizens who aren't being treated equally. But we could avoid all this If we got back to basics: it violates the church/state separation that the Constitution's Establishment Clause guarantees us when the state empowers clerics to marry (i.e., legally unite) a couple, whether gay OR straight. Leave this administrative function to the government (city hall) to issue the license, register and authorize the union, without the unnecessary pageantry and superstition (find a cleric to opiate your union afterwards, if you want).