NPR has been toting water for the Republicans for a LONG time - this is nothing new. "Experts" on their stories are far more likely to be members of right-wing think tanks than anything else; the American Enterprise Foundation and the Heritage Institute are biggies. These are nonetheless never identified as right-wing organizations. Reporters from the Washington Times are frequent guests, and the opposite side of the political spectrum is almost never represented.

When they do have "balance", it's FOX News style - a passive, straw man liberal vs. a raging, domineering conservative. Try timing the comments - I have. The Republicans invariably get twice as much air time, at a minimum - if the Democrats get any say at all.

And that's why I'll never give a dime to them.

NPR has been toting water for the Republicans for a LONG time - this is nothing new. "Experts" on their stories are far more likely to be members of right-wing think tanks than anything else; the American Enterprise Foundation and the Heritage Institute are biggies. These are nonetheless never identified as right-wing organizations. Reporters from the Washington Times are frequent guests, and the opposite side of the political spectrum is almost never represented.

When they do have "balance", it's FOX News style - a passive, straw man liberal vs. a raging, domineering conservative. Try timing the comments - I have. The Republicans invariably get twice as much air time, at a minimum - if the Democrats get any say at all.

And that's why I'll never give a dime to them.

Sorry, my NPR letter shouldn't have gone here - there was a glitch. I don't seem to be able to delete it, though?

As a former resident of Connecticut, my one wish is that Weicker register as a Democrat and destroy that sanctimonious hypocrite in the primary. Lieberman is a true whore, and I am ashamed that the Democratic Party hasn't expelled his sorry ass.

Chalk me up as another person who remembers hearing (somewhere) that critically wounded soldiers in Iraq were being bustled into planes as quickly as possible, so that if the plane was off the ground before they died the death "didn't count".

Which leads me to the macabre thought in my subject.

In any case, I'd very much like to see more reporting on this subject.

I haven't seen the movie, and I'm not going to. The original movie was perfect, so why on EARTH would anyone remake it?

Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder. ZERO MOSTEL and GENE WILDER! That says it all. No offense to Nathan and Matthew, but they could practice for a hundred years and never be one-TENTH as good as Zero or Gene.

Now I'll have to put up with a media blitz of reviews that ignore the elephant in the room - that remaking the original version of The Producers is like remaking Casablanca (which was also done). Stupid, pointless, and utterly venial.

Side note: I couldn't agree more about Andrea Martin - she's wonderful, and all too often wasted. That seems to be the curse of all alumni of the brilliant and underappreciated SCTV, with the possible exception of Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara.

It would have been very helpful to know what the consequences have been (if any information is available) of the effective elimination of abortion as a right for Mississippians.

Have the number of back-alley abortions gone up? Are more women dying from botched amateur abortions? Are damaged children being born?

On a more subtle level, the article mentions that Mississippi has the highest number of teen births in the United States. Have those numbers gone up as access to abortions has decreased? If so, by how much, compared to state-wide population growth or shrinkage?

Has the number of children living in poverty gone up? On welfare? Using food stamps? Suffering malnutrition? How about the number of families with children living in poverty, or lacking health care?

We need to know these things.

The loss of abortion rights will have consequences, presumably. Consequences that the government and the religious right will want to keep out of the mainstream media, which is all too likely to cooperate in a tacit conspiracy of silence.

Photographs of dead and bloody cheerleaders don't sell newspapers, after all. And they're a lousy lead-in for a commercial break, as any perky morning-news anchorperson can tell you.

On the other hand, if there ARE no negative results from the loss of abortion rights, we need to know that, too.

Please complete the story, or at the least stay with the issue and provide follow-up information.