I had a lot of problems with the idea of stripping Florida and Michigan of all of their delegates and basically disenfrancising all of the voters from these states to punish them for moving up their primaries. At the very least, this is an extremely antidemocratic solution and goes against what our nation is supposed to stand for. You cannot punish a state political party by rendering the votes of these citizens invalid.

It was also a major mistake politically for the party. Florida is a must-win in the general election and it's not exactly inspiring to the Democratic voters in these states that their votes didn't matter in the primary, but they are asked to vote for the Democratic candidate in the general election. The voters in these states deserve to have their say.

Will it change the balance in the deligate count? I don't know, but that doesn't mean that restoring their deligates or requiring a re-vote would not be beneficial to both the party and the process. The convention is promising to be contentious enough (which is not necessarily a bad thing) but there will be nothing that leaves a more sour taste in my mouth than to see the deligates from these two states sitting silently and having no part in the process.

I'm seriously posting this question to all of Obama's supporters who are complaining that Hillary is not stepping aside to grant Obama the nomination (and it would be granting him the nomination because he certainly hasn't won it yet). Is this the lack of fortitude that we have to look forward to in the general election?

Hate to break it to you folks, but Obama has his serious weaknesses. If he's not able to withstand a long, painful and bloody battle in the primaries when he's running against a fellow senator of his own party who has very similar policy views, then how the hell can we expect him to withstand the Republican slime machine? Because McCain and his supporters will be more than happy to throw every scrap of mud they can dig up on Obama. Obama will have no choice but to get down in the dirt with them to fight back, or face a stunning defeat.

And please don't tell me that he's a different kind of candidate and is above that. John Kerry thought that the Swift Boat attacks were low and didn't warrent a vigerous response because 1) he felt that acknowleging them would only lend them credibility and 2) he wanted to appear above the fray. These ads are credited with helping to sink his election hopes. He appeared weak and the Republicans were able to make a war hero look like a poser next to a draft dodger. Politics is a rough sport and if you're not willing to get into the fight and fight with every breath you have to win, then you have no business being in the game.

John McCain is about a tough a character as you are ever going to find and he certainly will not back down, even if he's behind. He will fight tooth and nail every inch of the way. If Obama and his supporters cannot do the same, than he is the wrong man to put on the ballot.

I think that part of the reason for the huge amount of confusion and debate regarding autism and its possible causes is that autism is not a simple diagnosis that can be simple to pinpoint by it's symptoms. At one time an autistic child was easily recognized by a specific set of symptoms but now the diagnosis is used so widely and for such a broad range of symptoms, ranging from mild to crippling that it's no wonder that we are unable to make much real progress in therapies or coming to real conclusions of what the cause (or causes) might be. Instead of being a specific disease it has become a catch-all for a variety of disorders that might not be remotely connected except that the child might express one or two symptoms similar to another completely different disorder.

I think that part of the problem are some of the advocacy groups that in their efforts to gain as much awareness and help for these families have possible, have pushed to have such a wide spectrum of symptoms and disorders all classified as autism. This makes providing a diagnosis, treatment, therapy and cause so difficult because there is no one specific disorder. It's not all that different from the days when any child who showed some mental disability or slowness to learn was simply classified as "retarded" no matter how severe their disability was. Children with ceribal palsey were lumped in with children with Downes syndrome, and with children with classic autism.

A child with Asperger syndrome is very different from a child who developes autistic symptoms later in life and both need very different therapies. My sister-in-law who is a teacher for autistic children has spoken endlessly that the term "autism" has become too generalized and unspecific to be useful in determining what kind of help a child might need.

In this specific case, the child in question does not have "classic" autism, but an underlying genetic disorder that had similar symptoms to autism. As the author noted, this does not mean that all children diagnosed with autism have this disorder, or that all children with this disorder become "autistic". Thus, it is a huge mistake to cite this court case as any kind of proof that vaccines are a cause of autism.