Isn't it ironic that conservatives regularly chastise moral relativism except when it's applied to their pet issues?

How Scalia can call himself a Catholic/Christian is beyond me. I simply don't know how someone can defend the position that torture is exclusively excruciating physical pain analogous to shredded body parts or whatever the hell he managed to parse out.

I'm with everyone who thinks there's no such thing as humane capital punishment, mainly b/c of the psychological burden carried with it throughout the entire appeals process. Given the ban on "cruel and unusual" punishment: how is there anything more cruel than premeditated murder on a restrained captive? It has been reduced to a simple semantics game--excruciating? or merely painful? I also think it speaks far more about us, the society that permits it, than it does about the criminal.

I felt compelled to write a quick reply assuring you that I appreciate your honesty and thoughtfulness even though Salon readers were sure to cream you. But all the letters written so far seem to say the same thing. LOL--I guess Salon letter writers aren't as nasty as their reputation.

I guess I don't get your logic. I mean, isn't choice an integral component of adoption? OF COURSE parents who ask for healthy adoptees would take care of delayed biological babies the same way as everyone else does--with a heavy heart and a mix of patience and frustration. But adoption ISN'T birth. Why would you CHOOSE something with so much heartache if you didn't have to? Thank god there are people who do. But, really, most of us wouldn't choose a difficult path given an alternative. The major advantage of adoption over biological birth is the notion of choice. Good for you all if you would check the box on the adoption forms that says "I'll take anyone." Most people wouldn't. This is just one view.

To the person who complained about the author exploiting her husband: I'm getting tired of this sort of objection. People use it on Anne Lamott and anyone who writes in the personal essay genre. What on earth are people supposed to write about? That's what "personal essay" means. I guess this is a marital issue that they can work out for themselves. If he doesn't like it, he can ask her to stop or leave. In the meantime, his vote against the adoption wasn't an indictment on his character but a recognition of his limitations.

Ever try to explain to kids that something called the Environmental Protection Agency is actually trying to keep state governments from protecting the environment? That's the conversation I had this morning with my sons. The only way I could easily explain it was to say that federal agencies are political bodies. Wouldn't it be nice if they weren't? If their missions were pure, kind of like NRA and NARAL and ACLU? Those organizations' goals remain the same regardless of which party is in power. I would like to think the EPA operated that way too. Maybe appointments at those agencies should expire on a different time schedule than federal elected officials'. Something like that.

I just finished watching CNN's replay of yesterday's debate (I missed it live), and I noticed this exactly: Hillary is the rational, evidence-based, policy wonk; Obama is the inspirational speaker. Writers on Salon and elsewhere have been making this point all along and for the first time it was crystal clear. The thing is, Hillary is right. I mean, she's that person who knows what she's talking about, has the facts to back it up, and is almost never wrong. She's exactly the kind of person I am in arguments with my husband (He wants to make general points and wave a broad brush against my "mood for the last six months" while I am giving specific examples to back up my point about the argument at hand.) Hillary represents the kind of scientific way that I look at policies and current events--I always criticized my friends who would talk about "trusting George Bush to do the right thing in Iraq" when I was asking for specific evidence of Iraq's WMD or Saddam's danger to us.

So why do I like Obama? It's really strange. I suppose, god forbid, this is how people felt about W--that whole thing about trusting him to do the right thing even though there weren't any specific policy issues to back up their trust. Not that there's anything in common b/t BO and W--just that I can finally understand that thing about just totally trusting him to make good decisions in the White House, even though Hillary is the one doing the actual work to prove her credentials. She was exactly right in the debate: she HAS BEEN an agent of change all along--she has fought tooth and nail all her life for children's and women's issues. My parents are dittoheads in Buffalo and they think she's a carpetbagging devil, but even they admit that she's the hardest working Senator who's ever served them.

But Obama...He truly transcends politics-as-usual. There's something about him. His poetic, hope-filled speech is accompanied by an intelligence--and I place great stock in intelligence--that makes me think he'll make the right decisions once in office. It's like we all understand that specificity invites criticism, so we're giving him a break on all the policy details, letting him ride into office and knowing, just knowing, that he'll decide things just like we want. The only catch is that we all may want different things, so some of us are bound to be disappointed.

I can't really explain my attraction to Obama other than admit it's his inspirational invitation to hope--an appeal to the "better angels of our nature" kind of thing. In the meantime, there's Hillary, plugging away with all her unlikeable exactitude about precise policy issues that matter deeply and that she's right about.