As a long-term cancer survivor (albeit not colon cancer), I do applaude Katie Couric for using her time/space on "Today" to encourage people to get tested.

But I am also grateful to see her go. We tend to watch the first few minutes of "Today" to get the local weather, and then click over to CNN and "breakfast w/ the O'Briens" as quickly as possible. Soledad O'Brien, for one, shows you can be a compassionate, intelligent journalist (note the term)without making every day a "celebration of moi", as Katie said her last day. Please...practically every day on "Today" was a celebration of Katie. We marveled at how the coverage scale had tipped to Katie and other tabloid fodder vs. real news.

Good work on colon cancer awareness, Katie, but I won't be watching CBS news any time soon...

1. Don't even get me started about BYU students...

2. If the mainstream media has treated us to articles about how the Bushes love their Mexican maid/nanny/whathaveyou, are we to expect the "Laura loves her gay hairdresser and designer" next, just in time for the gay marriage amendment votes?

3. Duh-bya doesn't give a s*** about anyone. Except perhaps a Mexican named Jose Cuervo or a dandy named Johnny Walker. I don't think he's trying to do anything these days that his handlers (Darth Cheney and Pudgey the Rove) don't tell him to.

...for exposing the dinosaur that's sitting right in the religious right's living room.

They don't talk specifically about gays/lesbians/bisexuals, et.al., because that would force them to look at their next-door neighbor, the young son they wonder about, that aunt of theirs who liked flannel shirts, etc. Real people. With hearts to love and minds to care. And wouldn't that just bring their world crashing down, to see them/us sitting right in front of them?

I had to laugh when I read the comment from one of these sad, sad people: "When marriage declines, children" do too. True. When my straight parents' 17-year marriage crashed and burned, my brother and I did suffer, and not just at that time. It no doubt has affected our relationships as adults (in many ways for the better, as we've tried to learn from their mistakes). But the reverse can be true, too. A strong bond of love, affection and partnership between parents can create a stable, loving home life for a child and a wonderful nest from which to grow.

So what if one parent is the same sex or a different one? Family values--love, respect, consideration, etc.--are universal...or should be. Sadly, the backers of this stupid and hateful amendment always seem to miss that point. The main value they pass along to their unfortunate offspring is hate, not a family value as I know them.

...A story about a decent, well-fitting bra for $12.99 that can be a quick "pick-me-up" (pun intended) or a story about $1K proms from the NYTabloid (continuing down the Road of Fluff and Nonsense)?

Give me the Queen Latifah story any day!

Perhaps one question that both partners need to consider is whether the wife is running toward the Peace Corp/helping in 3rd-World countries or running away from something (marriage? the relationship with the LW? growing up? responsibility?)

This is just the latest example of Hillary pandering for votes in the '08 Presidential race. Remember the "planation" remark? The "kids are lazy" riff? She's throwing all kinds of crap to the wall and seeing if the poll numbers tell her it sticks. It doesn't stick--it stinks. (And Howard Dean took a cue from her and pandered to the religious right on the gay marriage issue.)

Give me a Russ Feingold, Ted Kennedy or even (on some issues) a John Murtha any day. At least I know where they stand on issues and don't have to watch them try to stand on legs of Gumby-like bendability.

Thanks, Broadsheet, for again bringing to my attention something I'd never had read on my own.

To this former journalist and current patroitic liberal (NOT a contradiction in terms, thank you very much), Helen Thomas is someone I wish we could clone. I wish we could go to all those other news outlets (or former news outlets) and point to Helen and say, "Look you clowns, this is what a real journalist looks like, sounds like, asks questions like--IS."

I do find myself concurring, however, with Patricia Schwarz's comment about the WH press being lapdogs for longer than the Bush administration. I first spotted signs of it in the Reagan years, the dawn of the post-modern spinarama world in which we now live. It seems worst during Republican administrations. They'd tear into Clinton (as their corporate daddies told them to?) and then go back to their "I'm rolling over to show you my belly, please scratch it" mode.

You GO, Helen! You're nobody's lapdog and never have been!

<<I've heard she parties a lot and has lots of gay friends>>

If you're implying she's gay/lesbian (depending on what's behind that Adam's apple issue), that may be. Goddess knows, we in the LGBT community have had a lot of self-hating queers in our midst (Roy Cohn among them) but the last thing we need is Ann Coulter.

So no offense, but the members of the LGBT community I know don't want to claim her...then again, the majority of the straight community doesn't either...

Maybe the cockroaches would want her as a member of their species? ("Hello, White House office of Darth Cheney? Would you like to claim Ann Coulter?") ;-)

...if only the current graduating class did that with their commencement speaker while they had the chance.