I teach at a regional state university, and although I teach business courses, my lunch table consists mostly of PHD's in physics and biology. One day we were discussing the politics of nuclear disarmament and one of them said "Nuclear technology is old technology. It is over 60 years old. Anyone can build a nuclear bomb with a large enough budget." This statement took me aback for a second and I said, "You mean anyone with a PHD in physics," and they all pretty much agreed. Whether we like it or not the technology is not that difficult to develop in today's world, and we do have to learn to live with it and its ready availability.

So, in the name of "patriotism" this guy is supporting treason! The true stripes of right wing commentators are coming through loud and clear.

I am appalled at the stupidity of John Kyl's self-centered comments. Every man needs pregnancy/prenatal care if he takes his responsibilities as a man seriously. Clearly, Jon Kyl and is ilk don't really believe in the family values they so loudly proclaim.

I bought one about two weeks ago as a birthday present to myself. I had been thinking about it for awhile and decided to go ahead. I almost sent it back the first day when I went to the Kindle bookstore and saw they were featuring Glen Beck's new book and other right wing crappola. The company execs must be idiots to think their market is mostly those nut cases.

Wasn't the issue of Obama's citizenship decided when he was a given a US Passport? He lived abroad as a child with his mother in Indonesia and traveled abroad when he graduated from college, and thus has held a US passport since he was a child. He got his passport long before he was a public figure and had to provide a birth certificate in order to get one. This whole issue is just a lot of craziness.

This is a very inspirational story about the ambiguities of life and the complexities society faces today. My heart goes out to the family. Issues of life and death are complex and need to be decided by those most directly affected.

In the early 1940's Harold Stassen was Minnesota's young and very popular Republican governor who was considered Presidential material. He resigned midterm to enlist in the U.S. Navy. He was elected governor of Pennsylvania after that, but never made it to President, even though he kept trying for the rest of his life.

If the pro-life movement really does represent the will of God, why do evil zealots feel so comfortable among its members?

The religious aspect of this terrorism cannot be overlooked. In the 1500's the Catholic Church boiled Protestants in oil for their religious beliefs. Now they are sending out their trained assassins to murder them in their churches. The Catholic Church itself bears some culpability for this terror.

Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita is an ELCA congregation. The official ELCA statement on abortion contains the following statement: "Although abortion raises significant moral issues at any stage of fetal development, the closer the life in the womb comes to full term the serious such issues become. . .The church opposes ending intrauterine life when a fetus is developed enough to live outside a uterus with the aid of reasonable and necessary technology. If a pregnancy needs to be interrupted after this point, every reasonable and necessary effort should be made to support this life, unless there are lethal fetal abnormalities indicating that the prospective newborn will die very soon." In other words, in some rare circumstances late abortions are ethically permissible. This killing was more than just a murder. It was also a religious hate crime.

She needs to be carefully questioned regarding her beliefs on reproductive rights and privacy. Even if she is more open minded than her male counterparts, her views are likely to be more reflective of Catholictheology than they should in a country that supposedly has a separation of church and state. Catholic views on abortion and reproductive rights are given much more deference by the mainstream media and pundits than they deserve, but the squeaky wheel gets the grease, and the Notre Dame protesters may very well have achieved their objective. Obama claims not to have questioned her on her beliefs on this issue. My guess is he wants to make peace with the Vatican and has given the Catholic Church exactly what it wants -- control of the American legal system by a super majority that will impose Catholic reproductive theology as American law.

The U.S. Courts of Appeal are the court of last resort in most cases. Very few cases ever make it to the U.S. Supreme Court. The judges there are very white and male. The women and minorities who do serve on them are primarily conservatives appointed by W. As for the Supreme Court, I would like to see more geographic and religious diversity. Like the previous writer, I too am concerned that the court is dominated by one particular religion, and one that has a particular political agenda, but I think one reason that has happened is that this court is mostly a coastal court (primarily an East Coast one). It has very little geographic diversity. There are a lot of things I like about Sonia Sotomayor, but despite her compelling personal story, she is basically an East Coast elitist like most of the others on the Court.

Does anyone else wonder whether all those heart attacks have left Dick Cheney with some irreversible brain damage? I have always heard that can happen. I agree with the comment that he is irrelevant. There is no reason why the press should pay so much attention to him. They would be doing him a favor by ignoring him just as they would anyone else with a mental illness who made similar speeches.