One of the things that drew me to the Republican Party -- or at least the Republican Party of 1994-2000 -- was a sense of personal strength and perseverance. They demanded -- but also accepted -- individual responsibility.

This letter, Sarah Palin, and much of the current Republican Party lack any sense of individual responsibility or strength. Oh, the buzzwords are still there -- we hear about how the American people are so great because they work so hard unlike those out-of-touch liberals in Washington, etc., etc. But other than blowing sunshine up the working man's ass, Republicans no longer have any idea what it means to be strong and independent.

Real strength doesn't require bogeymen in the form of a media out to "get" you. Real strength doesn't hide behind sound bites and cheapshots, behind cutting off your opponents' mic or screaming at them. Real strength doesn't need to out-shout its opponents -- it is confident that it can out-think and out-work them. Real strength doesn't talk about "Democrat operatives" or imagine itself oppressed by the too-powerful forces of a vast conspiracy. Real strength goes to work every day and tries to do a better job, and remains confident that it will get the job done without having to resort to cheap tricks and petty whining.

And, yes, real strength doesn't tell its lawyer to threaten to sue anyone who looks into an issue. Real strength doesn't fear sunlight.

How on Earth did the Republican Party go from the party of personal independence to the party of personal oppression? When did we get so whiny? How on Earth can a party claim to value intelligent thought and independent responsibility, but spend so much time on cheap rhetoric and whiny conspiracy claims? It's sad.

Sarah Palin -- the universe is not out to get you. Your failures are yours and yours alone -- own them. They are not the product of Democratic "operatives" or a liberal media. We should not -- and will not -- sacrifice American indepence and personal responsibility by letting you pass your shortcomings off to someone else.

I don't understand the end game strategy for the Republicans here. If they succeed in delaying or stalling Sotomayor's nomination...I mean, Obama's going to be in office for three more years. He's going to install Supreme Court justices. Sotomayor is about as moderate a justice as you could expect under the current political landscape. Obama's not going to nominate Posner just because we pull some cheap political stunt. (Though he should...in my view Posner is the best living jurist not on the Court, and really should serve there at some point.)

Anyways, if you're not going to get a "better" (i.e. more conservative) justice by doing this, what's the strategy? To look "tough" and "mean?" Smear her just to say you could? Get "revenge" for Bork? Rile up your base to think she's "evil" so that they'll be motivated to hate her -- and so that in the next election you can say ridiculous things about how "ultra-liberal" Obama's nominees were?

America is not a damned game. Try doing what's right for the nation some time, and see if maybe -- just maybe -- honorable people start coming back to the Republican Party.

Or keep pulling divisive stunts, and see how marginal you can become.

I agree with the idea of deferring. I'm a lawyer, and I love this job and my life -- but not everyone does. What I've found is that life is about finding what makes you happy. For some bizarre reason, this work -- filing briefs, making arguments -- makes me happy. But it makes other people completely and utterly miserable.

Before you double or triple your debt by going to law school, you really need to find out what sort of person you are. In my experience, you don't learn that from traveling or backpacking across Europe -- seeing Venice expands your cultural horizons, maybe, but it doesn't tell you who YOU are.

Work does that. Real work. Preferably doing something related to law, to get your feet wet. If you walk in to a job as, say, a paralegal, and find the whole process fascinating...you know you've found what you want to do. If you walk in, figure out within a couple of weeks that the people around you are miserable and their work is (to you) totally boring...then you also know. And then you go do something else.

But until you know who you are and what you want, it'd be a mistake to dump hundreds of thousands of dollars on something that just isn't right for you.

It's slightly different, but this reminds me of the debate about the new proposed designs for the back of the penny. The new designs circulated, and many in the religious right were up in arms about them. Why? Because the designs did not include "In God We Trust." It was taken as a given that it was part of some plot to wipe God out of our lives -- taking In God We Trust off the back of the penny.

Oh, sure, all it would have taken was a few seconds to find a penny. And, sure, if someone had done so, they might have noticed...that, you know...

Ah, hell, I'm not going to spoil it for you. Check it for yourself.

(Or go to http://www.snopes.com/politics/religion/lincolncent.asp)

Apparently, the old saying was wrong. Apparently, people who will fall for anything nonetheless always stand for something. It's just always the wrong thing.