what's your point? People who want birth control can buy it. Birth control is a choice, there's no reason that it should be covered by an insurance plan. The issue is that it *should* be readily available to anyone who wants it, not that it should be freely doled out. You're fighting the wrong fight.

And as for Viagra, that is a treatment for a medical condition, you really can't make a fair comparison. Pregnancy is *not* a medical condition.

....I just had a baby, so I am curious as to whether "Appoggiatura" can enlighten me as to why, during the 9 months of pregnancy, I had to see a doctor once a month, then twice a month, then once a week, til the birth. Does that suggest a "medical condition" perhaps?

No, it suggests that you made a personal choice to see a doctor. The increasingly medicalized nature of pregnancy is a fairly recent invention by a an increasingly fearful society.

....I also wonder if he who knows so much about pregnancy can tell me what happens to my fellow pregnant women when they develop high blood pressure, diabetes, etc. that occurs for the duration of the pregnancy -- maybe I'm missing something, but those sound like "medical conditions."

You're more likely to get a cold when it's snowing. Is "winter" a medical condition?

....Nobody seems to have mentioned that birth control pills cost upward of $30-40 a month for women.

Much less than what many poor women, the ones that you're presumably concerned about, spend on cigarettes.

No one is arguing about "insurance coverage of pregnancy". I'm not aware that anyone is writing preganancy insurance, although the concept is interesting. Doubtful that it wold be cost effective, though.

The issue is whether health insurers should be forced to give out birth control pills for free. Of course, it's not really for free. The idea of insurance is to cover risk. If a company has to pay for a product that is in use all the time irrespective of any medical condition, i.e the risk to the insurer is 100%, they are clearly going to increase rates to pay for it, so nobody wins anyway.

The fact of the matter is that there are many ways to avoid pregnancy, birth control pills being one of them. If that's your preferred method, then of course you should have access to them, but why for free? It's a choice.

did anyone figure out yet why the fuck Salon printed this pathetic apology for an article ?

because they refuse to admit that it's actually utterly corrupt.

who do you think reads the Times?

thanks, I needed a good laugh.

Yes, it's wonderfully Orwellian. But the answer is easy. Bring the regular troops home, cut off funding, and leave those bastards from Blackwater et al to figure it out for themselves.

equals number of self-indulgent tossers with too much time on their hands.

You say:

I hope the Republican '08 candidates look at those numbers, turn to their campaign managers and say: "Remind me why I'm sticking by this president and pandering to his base?"

Actually, I really hope they don't. The more debates they have where they try to out-Bush the shrub, the better for the eventual Democratic candidate.

According to KK, the question "Do you think Bonds did or did not knowingly use steroids?"

Had the following answers:

Blacks: 37 percent yes

Whites: 76 percent yes

The only problem with this is that it's not a yes/no question. Think about it.

The Sex Pistols predicted the whole thing thirty years ago ...

God save the queen

The fascist regime

They made you a moron

Potential H-bomb

"I don't know what Magic Johnson does with his time most of the time, but I have a feeling it would be pretty cool for me if that happened more often."

Given that Magic is HIV Positive, you might want to think carefully about that.

until one of these idiots dies in a puddle of blood, and see which way the lawsuits fly.

It's painfully clear that the man is not capable of a coherent thought of his own - I'm actually pretty shocked that he's even capable of quoting somebody else's less than coherent thoughts.

from RealName ... managed to squeeze a False Dichotomy and a Slippery Slope argument into such a short post !

Now you've added a Strawman to your list. If you look closely, I have not expressed an opinion regarding drug users. In fact I am strongly in favor of decriminalizing *all* drug use. However, I don't believe that this has any relevance to the immigration issue under discussion, which was why I had ignored your rant in the topic so far. I think that you are expressing causality where no evidence for it exists.

I mean, really, come on. It's nothing at all, is it?

She must be washing and brushing that mane a couple of times a day, and look - no split ends, nothing. Must be Clairol - after all, Eve, you're worth it !

'Pepper' is really not very good, and Revolver, Abbey Road & the White Album are all much better. It's the songs, stupid. Stop living in your sixties haze and actually *listen* ...

(and about the 'war' on drugs) doesn't mean that he isn't wrong on almost everything else.

Actually, it's an innocuous term that just means an idiot. There are rumors about some earlier derivation from rhyming slang, but that is not relevant to recent usage over the past few decades.