Thanks for your thoughtful responses.

I still can't conclude that women are stoned to death more frequently than men, but it doesn't much matter to me either. I'm sure we can both agree that this form of punishment is brutal and deplorable, irrespective of who the victims are.

As to work/family decisions, I'm still not sure why you brought that up in a thread about stoning, but it seemed that you thought that because women earn less in the aggregate than men do in the aggregate there must be discrimination against them. My point was and is that that is not true. Of course there are isolated instances of sex discrimination in pay, but nothing like enough to cause the 20% gap you mentioned. As to whether women's choices in the matter are freely made or not, I guess that depends on your definition of "freedom." Do you consider that men's choices in the work/family arena are freely made?

And clearly, just as a matter of arithmetic, paying women for the extra 20 minutes per day of work they do would do little to change the pay imbalance.

Actually all I was saying was that Whedon is hypocritical which should be self-evident from the fact that his blog mentions nothing about the stoning of the man in Iran. If he were truly committed to confronting this type of atrocity, wouldn't you think he'd have at least brought it up? I would. Trudy b., I can only go on what he says and what he doesn't say. He opposes the stoning of women as do we all, but six weeks after his original screed comes another stoning event about which he says nothing. It's simple hypocrisy on his part.

Rachel F. I'd be interested to know where you get your figures on who suffers death by stoning and who doesn't. I've never seen those stats and I'd appreciate it if you'd pass along your source. In the parts of the world I know something about, men are victims of violence about twice as frequently as women. That's true of violent crime and of course they are far more likely to die in war and on the job than are women. So I'd be surprised if women are greatly more apt to suffer stoning than men, but as I said, I don't know the stats on that in Iran or the Muslim world generally, so I'd appreciate your letting me know.

As to women as president or earnings or housework, I'm not sure what any of that has to do with stoning in the Middle East, but in all honesty, you seem to be laboring under some misconceptions.

It's true that on average women earn less than men, but it's not for the "same work" as you say. The reason women make less is that they do less paid work. Sources: US Census Bureau and Dept. of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics. Fewer women are employed than men, fewer women work full-time than do men and, among those who do work full time, women still work about an hour a day less than their male counterparts. That accounts for the pay discrepancy.

As to housework, you're roughly correct on the greater percentage done by women, but when it's stated in minutes per day spent on domestic chores, the difference is about 80 minutes. According to the BLS Time Use Survey, women do about 170 minutes per day of unpaid domestic work including childcare and men do about 90 minutes. When paid and unpaid work are taken together, men and women do almost exactly the same.

As to women not being elected president, why don't women elect a woman? There are more women in the country than men and a greater percentage of them vote, so all you've got to do is vote for a woman. So will you be voting for Clinton next year? A lot of women won't be.

Whedon has nothing to say about the recent stoning to death of a man in Iran, reported by Broadsheet on July 10. You'd think that, with a topic as easy to take a stand on as death by stoning, even misandrists like Whedon could come up with something, but no. It's hard to buy the guy's supposedly passionate commitment to the cause when he only notices when women are the victims. When a man is stoned to death it doesn't seem to matter to him.

what Whedon's response was to the recent stoning to death of an Iranian man for adultery. Anyone know?

why Reid is calling for a vote on cloture and then moving on to other business. Why not just keep 'em at it?

this has been clear for a long time. I've tried to understand the Bush Admin from a realpolitik standpoint and it never works. There is clearly something of the messianic at work, which of course can be terribly dangerous.

Interestingly though, the same above-the-fray sensibility that Bush has would be ideal in a president who truly worked for good. What if we had a president dedicated, because of his Christian faith, to drastically lessening the income gap in America? What if his/her policies resulted in a serious recession but he/she kept assuring us that the end justified the means, that if we just stuck it out a little longer, all would be well? Would we be willing to trade that person for a Nixon/Kissinger-style presidency?

I'm totally down with forcing Bush to veto this and then overriding it. If 40 Senators want to filibuster this bill, fine. Let the people watch them explain how saving 39 cents on cigarettes is more important than poor children's health.

could cut into our war funding.