Let's take the focus away from the teenagers for a moment, shall we?

I mean, after all: the vast majority of adults in America believe that teenagers are incapable of responsible decision-making. Laws, schools, and even home life are constructed to remove most, if not all, power for choice from the teenager, usually with the justification that the teen has not reached some level of maturity required to have such power. There is no consistent measure of this required maturity: you can drive at 16, died for your country at 18 (younger with parents' permission!), but you can't drink until you're 21.

Even allowing for some restrictive laws to ensure safety, teens are still unable to make important decisions which directly affect their lives: they cannot choose their schools, their subjects of study are regulated, they are forced to take tests mandated by the state rather than learn about what interests them. Many families even remove the choice of extra-curricular activities, eliminating it or restricting the teen to certain, parent-approved activities.

To keep focus on this story: you can't buy birth control if you're under 18, can't see a doctor or receive sex education without your parents' involvement, etc. Add to this the classic teen problem of not being able to talk to your parents about anything (especially sex) and you've got a true blue case of a group of children who have been reared without the freedom to make important decisions for themselves. When it comes to teenagers in America, that's what we're looking at: millions of adults who are better informed than previous generations yet are even more restricted in their choices and liberties.

This only changes when the teen makes bad choices. Suddenly American adults forget that they've robbed the teen of every chance of becoming a free-thinking, responsible individual by insisting that the teen was unable to make proper choices and demanding those choices be made by parents, teachers or government. Suddenly 40-plus-year-old so-called "grown-ups" think that under-educated 18-year-olds possess the same wisdom, maturity, and experience that adults claim to have.

We want our teenagers to make good decisions, yet we never give them the tools or the opportunity to make those decisions. We rule their lives like mostly benign tyrants, dictating the majority of their activities and interests, until they are suddenly 18 years old, at which point we chuck them out into the world and demand they behave as if they've been there for decades.

These young women sadden me, but I don't entirely blame them for their choice. There's a school and a whole bunch of parents to blame, not to mention a church which promotes irresponsible reproduction and prohibits responsible sexual behavior and a society where babies are prized above all else (even the new Hummer). Ideas like this don't begin in school and can barely be found in school curriculum. Adults squeal "What a beautiful baby" over drooling, half-blind infants and shower them with love and affection. Meanwhile intelligent, responsive teenagers craving affection and love sit mulling the latest irrational discipline they've received, pondering how they can be more responsible (the usual complaint from adults) when no one will give them any responsibility or decision-making power. When's the last time you ever heard someone coo over a 17-year old and say, "What a beautiful teenager!" (Hint: if it's ever happened, the teen in question was either nose-deep in an adult's ass or in a quiet coma.) Consider the last time you heard someone complain about irresponsible teenagers (just moments ago on this letters page).

When teenage boys commit violent acts, society looks to hip-hop music and video games for a cause. As an earlier writer wondered, how much of the "baby fetish" culture has contributed to the ideas which seem to be held by these young women? How much of our tireless and absurd romanticizing of motherhood poisoned their minds? Would they have made such a pact if we praised the receipt of a bachelor's degree as much as we praise and laud the birth of a baby?

In rejecting public financing without making a real attempt at hammering out a deal to do so with the cooperation of John McCain, he broke repeated promises, and Republicans wouldn't let him get away from that easily.

Obviously Obama's true worry is not among Republicans but among the numerous, butter, cynical supporters of Hillary Clinton, who are currently the primary promoters of this story. It is their claims of "broken promises" which pepper this story; Republicans can't currently get near it because of McCain's own problems w/r/t campaign financing (which you would have read about here if Hillary had run against McCain, but Koppelman is anything but fair and balanced).

Anyone who can read and parse a sentence know Obama made no absolute promises, that his commitments to honor public financing were always stipulated on a similar commitment from his opponent. As their is no similar commitment, there is no broken promise. Neither legal theory of contracts and promises nor accepted common wisdom on same support the Koppelman thesis that Obama broke a promise.

Alex Koppelman, and by extension Salon Magazine, are simply proving they are unable to analyze the words of a black man without reading in their own fear, insecurities and resentments.