I love the spelling bee too. The kids are just fantastic. Like you, I'm a competent speller, yet I only recognized a few of the words that the contestants tossed off with such ease. It just so happens that one of the words I did know was that winning one, Laodicean. It harks back to Revelation 3, where the people of the church at Laodicea are being criticized for being lukewarm in their faith.

Given everything that he has to do his best to deal with during the week (and how hard he is clearly working at it) you won't find me begrudging President Obama and his wife the occasional special date night...even in New York.

In fact I'm glad to see a couple in the White House who have the kind of relationship that includes making this kind of effort to keep some romance in their lives. I'm also glad to see them support the arts...especially theater, which is a passion of mine. As for the cost, I agree with others who have pointed out the cost of President Bush's frequent trips back to Crawford, which never seemed to draw a complaint.

If they had any empathy...they wouldn't be Republicans in the first place!

What Ronald Reagan really did that was the most harmful was to make it idealogically OK to shirk our responsibilities for the "common welfare". By promoting the idea that government can't do anything right and that government is always the problem he laid the groundwork for the mulish opposition of today's GOP to virtually any action to meet the real critical needs of this country. This is a major reason why it is so incredibly difficult to address issues such as the economy, the environment and health care the way they need to be addressed.

I saw something on the network news about that image that President Obama said looked like him. The resemblance actually was pretty amazing! (LOL)

In the original series weren't Holly and Will the CHILDREN of Dr. Rick Marshall? I vaguely recall thinking that Holly was kind of cute and spunky, someone I would have liked as a friend. But if they're turning those characters into adults, apparently to allow for some mild sexual joking...let's just say it doesn't sound encouraging. And yes, it does cause me to question just who this movie is meant for.

There are some (too many) people who will simply never be able to accept that someone with the name Barack Hussein Obama is anything but Muslim. Those people tend to give themselves away by insisting on putting inordinate emphasis on his middle name.

I find the arguments defending the validity of the election results unconvincing. The speed with which the results were announced after supposedly counting paper ballots following greatly extended voting hours is also very questionable. The case for fraud here seems pretty strong to me.

Face it, nothing Obama could say or do would satisfy his Republican critics. Whatever it is, they'll say it isn't the right thing. That's just what they do.

When will the politicians learn that this kind of thing ALWAYS comes out in the end. Given modern communications it's virtually impossible to keep a secret.

I caught a snippet of an interview with Debbie Rowe the other evening while I was flipping the dial and, if I caught it correctly, she was basically saying that she thought of the kids as being more Michael's than hers. I might have gotten it wrong...I didn't see the whole piece...but it didn't give me a very good impression of her motherly instincts.

Some people are just never satisfied. We complain constantly about politicians regurgitating standard talking points or using sound bytes to deal with complex issues. Then when someone actually attempts to give thoughtful, detailed responses to serious questions he is derided for being too "cerebral" or "boring". Yeeesh!

There must be something in the air in the South that makes people completely unreasonable. My (ususlly) intelligent brother has been living in Texas for quite a few years now and I can definitely see the effect. While he has never specifically mentioned the "issue" of Obama's citizenship his attitudes on issuses such as global warming and health care have definitely been influenced by the forces of unreason that seem to be running rampant there.

Maybe the EPA should look into it.

Thank you for the information on the actual percentage of ALL taxes that the wealthiest 5% pay and it's relationship to their percentage of income in this country. I have always suspected that their share of taxes was not in fact anywhere as out of line as many of them like to imply, and I'm happy to see that confirmed.

It always angers me some to hear the multimillionaire crowd whine about being "burdened" by taxes. Being "burdened" does not depend on the amount you pay, but on how much you have left afterwards. I don't care how much you are paying, if you are still left with millions when it is all done you are NOT BURDENED! The people who are actually burdened are the people in the range just a little above the threshold for having to pay income taxes, where every additional dollar in taxes can actually make a real deifference in how well they are are able to provide for their and their family's basic needs.

Oh come on! As if any Republican would hesitate to invoke Ronald Reagan if it suited their purposes, even the day after his funeral.

If people are frustrated and scared it's because they have been deliberately whipped into that condition by the misinformation and outright lies propagated by the radical right.