Vasumurti, if you needed a blood transfusion to live and I was the only match, the state could not force me to donate blood to you. The state should not be able to force a woman to donate use of her body to a fetus either.

The airlines have learned well from Republicans: turn people who should be allied against each other and they won't notice who's really benefiting.

Kate Harding is right that this is mostly going to be used to avoid paying for bumping people. It's a subjective measure at the gate, so when a flight is overbooked the fattest few people will be bumped (and not compensated the way a volunteer would have been) and when the flight is at capacity or underbooked, those same fat people will be welcomed aboard (to take up as much of your seat as they like). The airlines don't care if you're comfortable, this is about money.

My brother travels frequently and has gotten a lot of travel vouchers (and upgrades) from simply sitting in the airport reading and waiting for the next plane. American Airlines will save a lot of money by bumping a fat guy and putting him in that seat instead. That will make both customers unhappy, but the airline doesn't care.

You don't get it. If the flight is overbooked by three seats, the gate personnel will look over the entire crowd of people waiting to board, pull over the three people who look fattest (no matter how light/heavy they are relative to the general population) and tell them they're bumped. The gate personnel will be under strong pressure to do that, because it means not having to offer travel vouchers to three volunteers. The bumped customers won't squawk because they'll feel ashamed and they know what the general reaction will be.

Do you really believe the airlines are doing this for your convenience and comfort?

Welcome to the unpaid midnight cleaning crew*, Ms. Williams. Your task today is to walk behind Carrie Prejean and clean up her poop. She'd help you, but, *giggle*, she's not a feminist, she's an equalist/humanist!

*all credit to Echidne

The article was written by a woman, Araceli Cruz. That doesn't surprise me. Part of why men don't do their full half of childcare and cleaning is because women don't expect them to.

I've lost count of the times I've heard female relatives and friends talk, with a bizarre sort of pride, about how they do all the cooking, cleaning, and non-Kodak-moment childcare because "it's just easier".

Alice isn't a princess, she's a queen. She becomes Queen Alice by playing chess :)

Princess Tiana's gown is hideous. It looks like all the bath-towel-neckline wedding gowns that have been inexplicably popular for the past decade. Oddly enough, Princess Tiana's actual wedding gown (which has wide straps and a square neckline) is very pretty and her veil is beautiful. I'd like to see that veil become an influence on brides.

When that creepy guy appeared at Susan Hill's house, she should have (remotely) opened the door and then shot him as a home invader.

I'd have been much happier today if Randall Terry had been killed instead and the leaders of NARAL and Planned Parenthood were standing around (trying not to smile) saying, "we had no ties to the killer, we hope no one will blame us."

The pro-choice movement needs its own Act-Up/Black Panthers. I'm particularly thinking of how Act-Up had a policy of outing hypocrites. Maybe it's time for the pro-choice side to stop being so squeamish and learn to hit back in-kind (with complete deniability for the more respectable branches, of course). It's merely the Prisoner's Dilemma; when someone betrays you, hit back or they'll never learn that it's in their best interests not to betray you again

I'd vote for "forced-birth terrorists" or "anti-choice terrorists". Though I usually just refer to them as "Conservative Christians" as that term also describes their terrorism against gays, women in general, and non-Christians.

If he hadn't been busy terrorizing doctors, you know Scott Roeder would have been stalking an ex-girlfriend. He didn't care about the wittle-bittie-babies, he only cared about harassing and controlling women. The forced-birther movement simply gave him a way to hurt a lot of women at once, rather than the two or three he could have terrorized and killed on his own.

Great article. I second the vote for a movie of this!

Robert Simms, go to France or Scandanavia and you can see such a system right now. We'll never have something like that here though. Americans are too afraid that if a few pennies are taken from their taxes to provide services their neighbor will somehow get more of the goodies.

"As for Chelsea the "prop"...I guess we lived through different Clinton Presidencies. I recall that she was pretty much off limits to the media. The Clinton's protected her as much as they could. They wanted her to have as normal a life as possible."

jebldmm, she was off limits in the sense that the Clintons didn't let the media exploit her. Instead, the Clintons exploited her themselves. Remember that photo op after Clinton admitted he'd had an affair? Bill and Hillary walked across the White House lawn with an uncomfortable Chelsea between them as a human shield.