So, he did something to protect himself in a way that did no harm to you. What, exactly, is the problem here?

As far as I can tell, the only issue is that you wanted him to trust you more than he did. Perhaps you are totally trustworthy beyond any possibility of betrayal, but nobody can ever truly know that for sure about you, anyway. He's not a mind reader. He might have every reason in the world to trust you, and yet still not trust his own judgment. More than likely, he's been betrayed in the past by someone he did trust.

Get over it. It says absolutely nothing about how he'll treat you (besides perhaps a perfectly sensible interest in a pre-nup). Believe it or not, it says absolutely nothing about what he thinks of you, either. It's merely an acknowledgement that it's a big world and we don't always know everything about everyone - or anyone! - in it.

I don't think it inherently constitutes a double-standard to think something should be legal, and yet disapprove of doing that act. Quite the contrary. Examples are as simple as belonging to a political party!

Certainly the pro-choice position in particular has long contained people who think abortion should be legal and rare.

...It's not like Bush wasn't repeatedly compared to a chimpanzee.

Hey Ramesees, that's nice, but at what point do WE get to call YOU out for promoting hysteria? If it hasn't happened in 6 months, will you come back and apologize for fear-mongering? How about three years? Will you remember?

I'm guessing not.

I think some people in finance are so taken with their ownership of the Republicans that they just clean forget about the fact that they own the Democrats, too. ;)

If they were introducing a gay MALE superhero, would anyone be inclined to respond differently?

This is Batman we're talking about. He was already roundly suspected of being in the closet (barely). I mean, c'mon, Batman & Robin were always modeled on Achilles and Patroclus...

Who the hell cares how well he played football? Sheeesh. Stay on topic at least mildly, please, Reid.

The simple reality is that there's no way to draw a "sexual/non-sexual" line in a general way. There's just too much diversity. If lawmakers tried to go around making everything that turned ANYONE on illegal, well, there just wouldn't be much left over when they were done.

Ah, yes, the Democrats compromise, and the Republicans don't; that's "bipartisanship" in our era.

Oh, my, he called him a talk show host. Wait, he is a talk show host. I guess telling the truth is something Republicans have to apologize for. Also, getting shot in the face was something that had to be apologized for. Remember - blame where it isn't!

Vaccines and STD prevention/education (not counting that "abstinence only" crud which doesn't work) are cheap and work. They create jobs immediately, and save money in the long run. That's exactly what we need in terms of economic stimulus.

In contrast, more cars over and above the quantities they already can't sell, from companies that are failing on their own merits, is not good economic stimulus - quite the contrary. It may preserve some jobs in the short term (no more per dollar than health care!), but in the long term reinforcing market failures just ensures continued failure.

I don't consider any of this research to be novel. It's long been known that women's vaginas reacts to sexual situations whether the woman is interested/aroused by them or not. I find the underlying assertion that "they're aroused and don't know it" to be kind of bunk - there's no evidence that the reflex reaction equates to wanting it, and quite a bit of evidence directly contrary. I suspect if you asked them more specifically about what was going on "below" the answers would line up much more with what was being measured "below".

The bottom line is that vaginas grease up reflexively at any hint of sexual activity, regardless of the woman's desire or lack thereof - and I'm pretty sure that the only rational explanation is that the reflex derives from prehistoric rape on an evolutionary scale.

I'm very happy with Obama's actions to date.

Consider, as others have pointed out, that what Bush did essentially with strikes of the pen, Obama is largely undoing, also with strikes of the pen. The primary difference is that Obama's actions are legal, and Bush's were illegal.

Now, given that the President has so much pen-power - to the point where the legality of what he ordered had no apparent impact on Bush - how do we prevent such abuses from happening again?

I'm not convinced that any mere legislation could suffice. The purely legal strictures were, IMO, as sufficient as they could have been. Bush and his cronies just outright ignored them. How can they have done that? How can the next "vigilante" President be stopped?

Here are my ideas:

First, the criminals involved must be prosecuted. That's just how criminal law works: if you can't stop a criminal (and you usually can't) you arrest and prosecute them after the fact. Laws against, say, shoplifting, for example, would be nearly meaningless if we only allowed them to be enforced by prevention. So, all the people that can be proven to have ordered or inflicted torture must be thrown in jail for their crimes!

Second, the willingness to uphold the law over the President's word must be considered to be a core qualification for Senate approval of a DoJ appointee. Another Alberto Gonzales should never again be allowed to hold that position!

Last, Bush should have been impeached. He gave what amounted to his own confession on national television. There was no excuse for leaving him (and Cheney) in power in the first place.