despite what Cary seems to think. 3 beers in the evening, loaded once a week? A nine year old who throws temper tantrums? You're kidding! Get over it and get over yourself. These are not real problems. Your kid throws temper tantrums because they get him more attention from you. The cat is 15 years old, a good run and it shouldn't be a problem to see him/her off with the dignity a boon companion deserves. Hell, have a couple of beers in the evening with your wife after the kids go to bed and forget about bullshit like "self actualization". Relax, stop looking for problems and enjoy yourself.

Enough! I want a candidate to stand up and say there is too much of this patronizing talk about faith. This government is being stampeded into accepting religion, and the pandering of the Democrats is going to make it that much harder to disable bullshit like abstinence programs.

needs to remember people don't have "faith" in science. You can perform a test and check the outcome against the results of similar tests. Other people can read about these results and make up their minds. Secondly, I have never heard Hedges and Harris argue that humanity is steadily "progressing" towards a godless utopia, or a utopia of any sort. They seem to argue that as man gains more knowledge about how the world and the universe function, large scale fill-in-the-blanks style memes, like religion, become harder to sustain and attempts to sustain them lead to the conflicts we have today. To compare "the new atheists" (only two people as far as I can tell) to the entire fundamentalist network and its enormous coercive power is absurd.

Seems a shame Milbank couldn't call Shays' office and ask who he was referring to and then call that person for a reaction. I thought that was what reporters do.

I dunno, it doesn't look good if your lawyer proclaims your intention to follow the law rather than asserting that you did. I smell a plea bargain.

Wow. What a bunch of sanctimonious busybodies. Seriously. Is this crossing guard/hall monitor attitude really as prevelant as it seems in this letter thread? Yikes!

Personally, I don't see what the big deal is. If you can justify eating meat, do so; if you can't justify it, well...

As a veggie I have to justify myself at almost any group meal I attend. "Why don't you eat meat?" etc. Then after cajoling me into talking about it, they get defensive ("I don't eat that much meat, really.") and angry. It's a pattern that is repeated at every public and family function I go to. All of my veggie friends go through it. Yet any veggie who does the same to a meat eater is considered to be abusive or harassing. It seems unfair to me.