I'm always amazed that I don't see more flags on bikes. I got hooked on bike flags when my kids started riding, and I realized how hard they were to see on little tiny bikes. $9.99, and voila, a long springy pole with an orange flag, and cars can see them. Most bike shops have flags, and most people don't use them. I think they should be as common as helmets.

No, a bike flag won't save me from a cement mixer, but in ordinary suburban riding, it might help someone see me. I think it's the springy movement that does it, it catches my eye as a driver when I see them.

... to this man's idiocy?

Wow. That's all I can say. Wow.

I gave up Catholicism for Lent, many years back, and Keillor's article reminds me why.

I love Christmas in church, the music, the dark, the candles, maybe it's just that I love the winter. I still miss Midnight Mass.

But Easter? Spare me. I went to Catholic school, where I spent hours in church doing the stations of the cross in the week before Easter... traipsing around church listening to Jesus's trials in gruesome detail, and somehow through a leap of logic I never exactly followed, feeling deeply guilty for having caused it myself through such grevious sins as forgetting to empty the cat litter and arguing with my brother over the last cookie.

Then add in my own parents harried-ness around Easter. My mom was (and still is) the quintessential Church Lady who sang in the choir and was on more committees than there are days in the month. My dad was a lector at church. My brother was an altar boy. Me? I was just a leftover, without a helluva lot to do (girls couldn't be altar servers then, I guess they are now). So I read a lot of books in dusty corners of the choir loft during a lot of early morning practices. And felt grumpy. And then felt guilty for feeling grumpy.

Easter always left me cold. A lot of death, maiming, blood, and the resurrection was supposed to be celebrated but I always thought it was kind of creepy. I mean, it's symbolic and all, but as a child, the "risen Lord" would have made me run faster than Scooby Doo in the other direction.

Oh, and add in a dorky dress, some uncomfortable tights, and usually a flurry of snow instead of the picture-perfect spring.

So I thoroughly enjoy Easter now in my secular way. My kids get "totally chocolate breakfast" and I make an effort to go for a hike or a walk somewhere and see some things growing. I'm fine with the bunny. I just can't get the singing... the story... all of it.

Good luck Garrison, and I hope you find what you're looking for.

from a company that does IT for commercial construction companies. The first indicator is a lack of investment in internal infrastructure. They saw this coming a year ago.

Show me some SUBSTANTIVE events from her years as first lady, both in the White House and in Arkansas, that rival those of an elected official.

Hand-shaking, hand-waving, motorcade-riding, banquet-eating, poem-listening, camera-smiling, and so forth are all very useful skills, I am sure. Add in a dose of reporter-chatting, sound-bite-making, and perfect-hair-posing. But really. Tell me something REAL about those famous 35 years of experience. Please. I'm listening.

I worked for a company that did IT work, which once had a contract with a large federal agency.

Large federal agencies, like ANY bureaucracy anywhere, are full of people. People do stupid things.

This agency had a TON of security in place, especially for outside contractors. Layers and levels of passwords (that changed all the time), on and on. I took all the requisite classes the agency required (seemed like once a month we had to waste two or three hours taking endless online classes on system security). I filled out the forms, stood in line, etc. But in the end, they had to give us access to the systems we needed, or we couldn't work. Too much controls and people end up wasting hours (and loads of taxpayer dollars) not being able to work because the security is too tight. The thing I need isn't here, it's there, and I can't go there. Gotta go track down someone, in some other office somewhere, to give me access. Two, three, four hours down the drain, at gov't contractor rates.

I could have done something stupid with the access I had. But I didn't. I got in, did my job, and left.

I would take away not that a security breach occurred, but that their systems could track it, and report on it. That's a good thing. If the state department hadn't set up their systems properly, they wouldn't have even tracked the breach.

Let's analyze the logic here.

Boys and girls in high school shouldn't have sex because it's immoral and the pope says not to.

If a girl gets pregnant, it's shameful. It doesn't really matter who the boy was, because the congregation can't see that. They can see the girl with the big belly and be disapproving.

Abortion is murder, and you should never, never have one.

A girl who is unfortunate enough to get pregnant out of wedlock should always give the baby up for adoption because that's the right thing to do.

Even if she does, we all still know what she did and she's a fallen woman.

If a girl or woman keeps the baby, it's better than an abortion, but not by much. She doesn't get a baby shower or any help, because she did the wrong thing.

But oh by the way, we're the culture of life.