Once again, the Republican party falls back on their old standy excuses: 1) I didn't know anything 2) Okay, I knew, but I didn't know how serious it was 3) Well, I knew it was serious, but the Democrats have done things just as bad. Lie, Minimize, Obfuscate, Attack.

If Republicans put half the effort into winning peace in Iraq that they put into winning elections, we might actually have a change of accomplishing their goals of establishing a democracy in Iraq. If they spent half the energy attacking terrorists as they do attacking Democrats, we would live in a much safer country. I wish that these charlatans could figure out, once and for all, that the United States has real enemies - and Clinton isn't one of them.

Abortion is not cool or uncool. It's just a medical procedure that allows women to choose not to have an unwanted (or, sometimes, severely damaged or life endangering) baby. There are a lot of reasons to not want to have lots of abortions without even considering whether it's moral or not - it's simply better to not get pregnant than to have an abortion. We encourage people to exercise and diet to reduce their risk of needing heart surgery, not because heart surgery is immoral, but because heart surgery is a medical procedure and it's better to prevent it than to have it.

I believe that abortion is a morally neutral act. My right to have control over whether I have a baby or not is an unambiguous good. Making sure that wanted babies have every opportunity in life is an unambiguous good. Abortion is only one tool in our arsenal to ensure that women aren't forced to carry babies they don't want and that every baby is a wanted baby.

I'm beginning to wonder if this would be an entirely bad thing. They can take along a few other southern states that seem to want to drag the U.S. back into the 18th century (or maybe the 14th). Then, the rest of us can deal with the challenges facing a modern nation.

It's time. All of the thinking people currently in Texas can trade places with conservative Orange County residents. Then Texas can leave the U.S. and form it's own little fascist nation, with "Under God" prominently displayed on it's money and "No Queers" as it's state motto.

It's the same question, isn't it? And the answer is the same. Of course not. She is one person, who makes decisions for herself. She is not representative of women everywhere or black women everywhere or anybody else. I can disagree with her politics without feeling as I have to disagree with the politics of all black people everywhere. The reality is that powerful women, like powerful men, sometimes make mistakes. For that matter, so do not-powerful women and men, of all races and religions.

"If somebody had this info, when they had it, we could have dealt with it then."

The problem is that HE had access to this info, and HE decided to not deal with it, but to simply take the word of the offender that there was nothing going on. Apparently, to Republicans, bad behaviour among their own only becomes serious when the public finds out about it. Having a sitting congressman sending unwelcome sexual communcations to underage staff members isn't a bad thing - unless he get's caught. As they say "IOKIYAR" (It's Okay If You're A Republican") is the new, unofficial, motto of the Republican Party.

I don't know what republicans you've been talking to, but everything I've read by republican writers tells me that being gay is shameful. Fundamentalist Christians believe that it's an abomination. I think that the media's reluctanct to "out" gay politicians is simply indicative of the reality that being gay will destroy a republican polician's career. As long as the republican party continues to covet the votes of right-wing religious zealot's, and as long as right-wing religious ministers continue to maintain loyalty among their flocks by demonizing homosexuality, there will be no safe place in the republican party for GLBT people. This is what happens when a political party blurs the lines between politics and religion in order to win elections.

I was thinking about this article when I wandered off to free republic (I like to browse to see how the other half thinks). There was an article posted talking about homosexuality and pedophilia. The logic used to present the arguments was inherently flawed, but a number of posters supported it unquestioningly. The basic argument is that sexual predators who prey on members of their own sex are homosexual. This makes every man who ever molested a boy a homosexual pedophile. The scary part was that a lot of people seemed to discount that there could be any form of homosexuality that didn't target youth. They have demonized homosexuality to the point that they see it as inherently evil and therefore gay men MUST be deviant in other ways, as well. In their sick, twisted minds, these people have conflated "gay" and "pedophile". I don't know why any GLBT person would want to be associated with a political party that embraces people who think this way, but I can see why that person would want to stay closeted.