From bill S.84: "the images used to verify the probable gestational age must be reviewed with the woman seeking the abortion."

Clarifying which meaning of the word review really doesn't change things. Whatever Webster's definition you use for "review," you can't do any of them without experiencing the data. The data in this case is an image. You can't smell, taste, touch or hear something that is purely an image (you could possibly smell, taste, touch or hear the paper the image is printed on, but that's about it). You have to see an image to review it.

Which kinda makes me wonder what they'd do if the pregnant woman were blind. An embossed, Braille-like depiction of the ultrasound?

Keith Richards has done some freaky drug stuff? We had no idea!

Didn't Whoopi Goldberg use to do "Slim Fast" ad spots until "Slim Fast" dropped her for saying something Whoopi Goldberg-like?

Who else can we add to the list of celebrities-both-hired-and-fired-for-being-precisely-who-they-hired-in-the-first-place?

I ask this in all seriousness: What is it about smoking a parent's cremains that is so horribly depraved? It isn't obvious to me.

You wrote: "How about someone eating their parent's corpse? Would that bother you?"

Yes, it would. Mainly because it still looks like a person. I eat chicken but don't like how they include the chicken's head at authentic Chinese restaurants. I don't like my food to look like the animal it came from.

What if the body were chopped up and sauteed with a little garlic and oil, you might ask? Yeah, it's still weird, but less visually disturbing to me.

Ultimately, I guess I consider cremains way different from an actual body. People keep cremains on their mantle, in lockets, sewn into dolls. They vacuum them up and throw them out without much guilt. Not so with corpses. Corpses are still, well, corporeal, too real. Not so with cremains.

Unless your crime was selling your vote, I don't see why you should permanently lose your right to vote.

Jill S writes (in part) "in theory, if you had enough criminals voting, they could make the illegal things they like legal." My suspicion is that such people never bothered voting to begin. Career criminals wouldn't vote anyway.

Which leaves us with the people who made bad choices, got caught up in bad situations, did their time and now want to start anew.

They've done their time, they've already been punished. There is no public safety issue such that society needs them to forfeit their voting rights. If you want these former felons to be invested in society and its laws, let them be a part of the process. In fact, encourage them to be informed voters. It should be part of their rehabilitation.

P.S. I agree, Jill S, that the drug wars add a whole new dimension to unfairness in felons losing their voting rights.

Screw the quote. She's no "pinko commie hippie." Regent is Pat Robertson's school, "Christian Leadership to Change the World."

They tout "150 graduates serving in the Bush Administration."

http://www.regent.edu/general/about_us/facts.cfm

lmwilker, I was skeeved out by the "Neglected Children" essay, too. To be fair, though, it seems the entire contents of her Regent's webpages are a decade old, when she was 23. I'd hope people wouldn't judge me too much by some of the nonsense I wrote then. Although, frankly, her writings read more like those of a college freshman than those of someone in school for her J.D. Anyone know of any current info on Goodling or any of her current writings?

"We've brought democracy to Iraq. They are now free to voice their hatred for us!"

I can't believe Dubya forgot our anniversary. Maybe he was hiding out in one of those giant bunny costumes at the White House Easter Egg Roll.

Dash writes: "Couldn't we have just sent Oprah?"

Wow, Oprah totally would have handled this better.

I find it interesting that Bush spent "Fall of Baghdad Day" making his immigration reform sales pitch. Bush wants to improve border patrol in places like Yuma, Arizona. Here's a suggestion: stop sending the Arizona National Guard to Iraq and keep them in Arizona where they can patrol the borders.

According to the Arizona National Guard website:

More than 3,000 Arizona Army National Guard and Air National Guard soldiers and airmen have answered the call and been ordered to federal active duty in support of Operation’s Noble Eagle, Enduring Freedom, and Iraqi Freedom since September 11, 2001.

http://www.az.ngb.army.mil/

"And it just amazes me that these young men and women know the stakes. They understand what we're doing."

-Don't they deserve a Commander-in-Chief who also "knows the stakes" and "understands what we're doing?"

"In order for this country to be credible, when the president says something, he must mean it."

-I find this truly ironic, because I've never seen someone use the phrase "in other words" so many times in one statement. Doesn't one use "in other words" to say something again using "other words" to clarify one's statement? There's no clarity here, and I have no idea what he's getting at.

pgm, I agree with you completely. I think Goodling's overriding credential was being of the "Right frame of mind."

"This is not a meeting in order to compromise. This is a meeting to discuss the way forward."

Whoa, did Perino mean to be that honest?

And the way forward is "my way or the highway."