The vast majority of people in Minnesota are sick to death of the the wrongend wingnuts impugning our excellent and completely transparent election, recount and contest process and the National Republican party using it as a delaying tactic while we are represented by only 1/2 of a Senatorial Delegation in Washington.

Between the inaninty of Michelle Bachman, the stubborn, self-serving intransigence of Norm Coleman, who has proven to us that he cares about nothing and no-one but himself (a decidedly un-Minnesotan attitude), and now Governor Pawlenty, who appears ready to jump on that same bandwagon, most of us good Minnesotans are seeing all too clearly that we have nothing in common with what the Republican Party has become.

The more these folks pursue this subversion of our most recent election, the longer they will dwell in the wilderness in Minnesota Politics. Right now we're looking at about 20 additional years (they've already suffered major losses in the past two elections). Up until now, Governor Pawlenty was the exception, but if it becomes clear that he's going to attempt to subvert Minnesota state law in favor of the wishes of the National Republican party, he's TOAST, too.

Considering that Jesus was a member of the Jewish faith for his entire life, it should not be surprising that many protestant churches and families celebrate something akin to a Seder as part of their commemoration of Jesus' last supper with his disciples.

Just as Jesus adapted his final Seder for his own purposes, breaking the matzoh, which was commonly used at that time among the poor as a substitute for the lamb or kid (goat), then proclaiming that it was symbolic of the way his body would be broken, etc...

So many churches and Christian communities begin their annual commemoration of this event on "Maundy Thursday" with an adapted Seder. Doing so adds much deeper meaning to the event and connects us to the entire heritage out of which Jesus was born.

I wonder if Senator Inhofe remembers the Bushco philosophy that caused us to attempt to go into Iraq on the cheap, creating total chaos and resulting in the spending of a great deal of money and the unnecessary extinguishing of many American and Iraqi lives before we could re-establish order? It's one thing to cut defense programs for wars we're never going to fight. It's something else, again to just be stubborn, stupid, and insist on doing things your own way when all the experts (who turned out to be right) are telling you it will fail.

As to Rep. King... I'd suggest he visit a few places where gay people are accepted and welcomed, then a few places where they'd be likely to be shot or at least bashed and see which of those places is more reflective of healthy community and culture (and no, he can't compare the sex shops of some inner-city areas to small towns in Iowa - he can only compare the gay sex obsessed neighborhoods to equally sex obsessed straight neighborhoods - around the average overseas military base, for instance).

The credit card companies and the credit ratings agencies are any better now at determining who might be a good credit risk than they were before.

So they've decided that giving credit to any warm-blooded creature that was still breathing, then hauling them into "arbitration" or having the courts write orders for payments from non-existent income wasn't working out too well for them. They've changed a few key variables on their magic eight ball risk-prediction spread sheets and decided that if you live in an area that's losing a lot of jobs, you're automatically a bad credit risk yourself...

When will they learn that a one size fits all, impersonal, computerized, regional approach to evaluating creditworthiness is doomed to failure, not to mention raising interest rates on their good customers to make up for their own losses in CDOs, CDIs and CDSs? Will they ever make up some of those losses by reducing salaries and bonuses for those responsible for making and pursuing the policies that caused those losses in the first place?

Will they ever realize that they need to use solid, mutually-verifiable math in their credit card and loan agreements and their evaluation of investment vehicles and opportunities, and save making decisions based "risk" and "reward" for their trips to Atlantic City and Vegas?

Consumer spending is likely to stay low until the CC companies start accepting the losses brought on by their previous ill-advised policies, start helping their customers instead of driving them into bankruptcy, do their part to get everybody's head back above water so that consumers have a bit more discretionary income instead of offering up every last cent they can spare (and even those they can't) on the altar of rescuing their bankers from those bankers' own stupidity.

Lacking that, our bankers will continue to pursue their (unintentional?) project of the total destruction of the American economy.

(being Irish myself, I refuse to honor him with an "O") having the wonderful sense of humor of most of the loudest bloviators on the right did not understand Mr. Ebert's letter at all!

Like the types of dysfunctional con artists who are, themselves, easy marks, Mr Reilly, dishes out nauseating mountains of rotting pig manure (the MOST odiferous variety) every day in the vile sarcastic tone so loved by those on the far right (and yet he manages to eat with the same mouth from which such offal constantly issues forth), but being the target of sarcasm, himself, in this beautifully well-written letter, no doubt leaves him scratching his head and uttering a truly Homer Simpson-level grunt of incomprehension.

And create societal structures to support long-term male-male relationships and this problem evaporates in place of a society that maintains it's stability no matter what the gender balance of the population. Gee... that almost sounds like a natural evolution of society to deal with new realities. Imagine that! HMMMM. (the seven last words of any society... "We've never done it that way before.")