Patricia, I think we are both morally superior to the guy who keeps weirdly accusing you of smoking too much pot. However, I think you are applying a ridiculously high standard to this blog. The sentence is part of the whole paragraph and is easily read as such.

I mean.

It doesn't make sense unless you know what "cultural and political showdown" she is talking about.

who are related to their victims, perhaps it would be more appropriate to keep fathers from sitting next to their daughters.

Which (for the less irony-enabled readers of Salon) I bring up just to get on the "this is idiotic" bandwagon - not to actually suggest keeping fathers away from their daughters on planes as a real possibility.

commander in chief of the army. And many of us are thinking of those less fortunate at the holidays, even if we're also celebrating.

And I think you can give a tasteful banquet without 23 dessert offerings.

It makes me feel sympathy for them, even though I am not normally so inclined. I even felt bad for Limbaugh with the drugs and O'Reilly after that phone sex thing, although it doesn't seem to have affected their careers much after all. Maybe this won't affect Romney either - and truly, I don't think it should. I don't think it's his responsibility to know the immigration status of the guys who work for his lawn contractor. But you might expect someone who felt this strongly (in public) to be more careful instead of getting caught in the Hav-A-Hart Sow & Mow trap.

Before you jump on Traister for calling you a caveman, how about applying your highly civilized close-reading skills to the sentence? The "caveman" mentality is the idea that men are cretins. She is suggesting that men are actually more complicated - you know, like women! The other half of humanity!

If you take a minute to read, maybe the ejaculations of injustice would, you know, be more in your control.

And, BTW, if you're all hot and horny and you didn't take your pill yet, you could practice a little patience. And how about foreplay? Oral sex! All contraception has limitations, and I sympathize with not wanting to take chemicals to control my fertility. But the idea of stopping in the middle of sex for a condom is pretty ridiculous too - and in practice it's a serious buzzkill. We're just more used to it.

In terms of speeding madly toward Armageddon, Bush is doing a heckuva job!

tinkled on by a garden hose of brutish idiocy. It's almost sad. Try harder next time, hero.

The fat, ungroomed preacher's wife? Come ON, people. Even if it IS real (and how can we possibly expect these women to stay in shape if they have to keep popping out babies while waiting for God to "close the womb"?) overweight wives don't make preachers gay.

Responsibility for the sexual relationship "goes both ways," does it? I guess in the case of gay, married preachers that phrase takes on a whole new meaning.

Because of the standardizing voodoo the medical establishment uses to determine due dates, "20 weeks past fertilization" would average roughly 22 weeks pregnant. That means all major organs have developed and you've started "showing" and feeling movements (unless there's something severely wrong with the fetus, though of course there likely IS, if you're getting an abortion at that time). Perhaps the good folks at NARAL are reacting the way I am. I don't give a damn about the science - especially since doctors until pretty recently didn't even offer anaesthesia for infants receiving circumcisions because THEY allegedly didn't feel pain. If I had to have an abortion after I had developed a relationship with a wiggly person I already thought of as my baby, I would ABSOLUTELY want to be offered anaesthesia for the fetus.

Of course, the politics of the matter are another issue. For all we know (will someone who has had a late-term abortion weigh in? Probably not, since hardly ANYONE has them), women are already offered that option and the whole thing is just another circus. (Gosh, do I sound cynical?)

Still, I am so glad to hear that NARAL is being open-minded about this issue, because I really don't want the pro-choice community to be viewed as the NRA is. I hate that the right keeps cooking up ways to put us into double binds (the late-term abortion thing is a huge one, and this looks like part of it) that make us look stupid either way we answer. And I wish that the media would actually let the public in on why certain people choose late-term abortions at the advice of their doctors (usually something like uterine cancer in the mother or a fetal disability so severe that the baby will not be viable if it lives to the full term of the pregnancy) - that this is not some frivolous decision that some woman woke up one day and didn't feel like being pregnant anymore because she was getting too many stretch marks. But I don't think it's totally outrageous to have legal guidelines about when late-term abortions are acceptable and when they're not. And it freaks me out that I might get slammed by my pro-choice sisters for saying that in public.