Katherine - thank you for the link, and yes, I do remember reading your piece. I remember thinking at the time that it was unusual for addressing this very issue.

Your efforts notwithstanding, I continue to believe that, as a matter of routine, the need to stop human population growth is downplayed, scuttled, and avoided by commentators of all ideological stripes. The right is hostile to it because of their fetishization of fertility; the left (and some of the non-religious right) because it at least appears to violate standards of privacy and self-determination.

The discussion in your piece is a veritable template of how this debate often goes. The one who dismisses concerns about population, Prof. Connolly, at first tries to taint all efforts at control with the legacy of the totalitarian Chinese "one child" project, a guilt-by-association tactic that is little more than red-baiting, and frankly, is disappointing in a person of his accomplishment and intelligence. He finally deflects the issue by stating that we should simply focus on making family planning and birth control available everywhere.

Few on the left side of the political spectrum are going to take issue with his latter point, but it's beside the point. On the one hand, environmentalists tell us (correctly) that the earth's resources are finite, but then, on the other, often sidestep the logical conclusion of that idea, which is that the earth has a finite carrying capacity. Just because we haven't reached it yet doesn't mean we won't. In fact, logic dictates that we will, but by then it may be too late.

Moreover, does anyone want to live in a world populated (bespoiled) only by vast numbers of human beings, where virtually all wildlife has been eliminated either through overconsumption (e.g., fishing), pollution, or habitat destruction? Why does there continue to be this misplaced reverence for humans to procreate at will and without regard for its consequences? Simply to ask that question is not to invite the birth control gulag, which apparently is what many fear (liberals have been cowed by the right on this), but it does involve a reexamination of age-old prejudices and a badly needed reorientation of societal priorities. What are we afraid of?

For an interesting (fictionalized) take on the world that produced Larry Craig and, for that matter, the modern Republican party, I would recommend Thomas Mallon's novel "Fellow Travelers," set in the witch-hunt atmosphere of Washington, D.C., during the time of Joe McCarthy. The plot concerns two young men, one a State Department employee, the other a Senator's aide, who have an affair that culminates in different, but equally disastrous, consequences for both.

The novel makes the point, which can also be found in histories of the era, that communism and homosexuality became conflated in post-WWII American culture. To be one was to be suspected of the other, which is helpful in explaining why gay men growing up in that environment would have been drawn to the red-baiting strategies of McCarthy, Nixon, and many other prominent Republicans. Psychologically speaking, if one were demonstrably anti-communist, then that might also mean one could expunge homosexual leanings as well. At a minimum, it would provide cover.

I would argue that the twin hysterias of anti-communism and anti-homosexuality were a major part of the American collective unconscious through the rest of the Cold War (e.g., Reaganism), and still play a role in retrograde politics. The way the right always portrays gay people as being "in conflict" with "family values" (as opposed to just being a part of a family, which, of course, gay people actually are) echoes Cold War rhetoric about communism's threat to the American Way of Life.

In this context, the actions of people like Larry Craig and others who grew up in that hothouse of post-war anti-communist politics is completely understandable, though it should go without saying that such facts also do not in any way negate Kirby Dick's valuable project to expose hypocrisy.

Regardless of what other worthy candidates exist, I now fervently hope that Sotomayor is nominated and confirmed to SCOTUS just so you can have years and years of fantasies of her persecuting you. I'm sure you can incorporate a Latina element into the regular sessions with your dominatrix.

Really, I don't even care about her qualifications relative to others'; I just want to see you organize more "tea parties" and fat-assed, middle-aged militias. Oh, never mind about the latter. It might actually require you to remove yourselves from the couch.

As for that majority rule thing - funny how that never applies to items like universal healthcare or investigations into official wrongdoing. On those, the public can, in the immortal words of your fellow traveler Tom Friedman, "Suck on this."