Her husband ... is the presumed leader of the house, but it's a leadership that mostly exists as some sort of fantasy. To an outsider, there's only one captain of the family ship, and for some reason unfathomable to me the woman has embraced a belief system that conceals this fact from her.

What's worth noting is that all these programs that compel women to embrace their inner Stepford wife also perpetuate a deeply belittling portrait of men. In their view men can't handle equality, changing gender roles or a few extra household chores. They can't change. They are treated as toddlers manipulated by mothers who make them feel important, powerful and above all dominant.

Sorry for such a long quote, but I just wanted to point out that the "unfathomable reason" in the first paragraph I quoted is quite thoroughly described in the second.

Giuliani thinks Iran looked into Ronald Reagan's eyes for a few minutes after his election and suddenly released the hostages. Is he that dumb, or does he think we are?

Preaching to the base, many of whom believe exactly that. Indeed, they also cite "Ronald's Rayguns" for dismantling the Berlin wall and collapsing the Soviet Union.

About the "adding his last name to the children's surnames" thing:

Your surname IS your last name.

...And the problem is what, exactly?

In fact, deciding to campaign against GM crops hasn't ever been evidence based. But again, crusading against something and then looking for evidence for your cause is putting the cart before the horse. Look at the evidence, and then decide what should be done. And all the evidence thus far is that GM crops are safe.

I think you've missed the point. The philosophical underpinning of the anti-GM movement has always been that the proof of safety should come first, and is not adequately satisfied. Certainly large elements of the movement stray from that standard (specifically in that there is no standard they would accept), but it is a very heavily referenced perspective.

...President Bush has sent a letter to Nancy Pelosi threatening to veto "any measures that 'allow taxpayer dollars to be used for the destruction of human life.'"

And shortly thereafter, he vetoed funding for the Iraq war! It all makes sense now, right?

I like Colbert's comment that truth is a liberal value. I like it because the Republicans have effectively made it true, by so shamelessly embracing falsehood as their primary value. They really do condemn the plain truth as a partisan attack - and they do so repeatedly.

...as a matter of logic your statement necessarily means that it doesn't matter what women do men will have no right to complain for at least centuries.

No, no, not men in general, just you. ;) You've lost your privileges.

How can it be legal for a state elected offical to give a multi-million dollar gift to the wife of a US Attorney whose purview includes the state in which the elected offical serves??

Republicans don't fire people for being corrupt. They fire them for not being corrupt enough. His family took money, fine, but then he recused himself? Fired!

And Salon readers are usually understood to be well-read and intelligent. I think these threads prove otherwise - we're just as ignorant and navel-gazing as any group of Americans.

Thread posters are self-selecting and not a representative sample. You're absolutely right about every subject turning into a meaningless general comparison; murdering wives is wrong regardless of what culture you're in, but that tends to get overlooked as people try to make silly overall tallies. We're not going to improve cultures through deciding which culture is "better"; none are perfect, and none should be above reproach. Similarly, none should be categorically condemned, only specific practices therein. Regardless of whether you think it's "deserved" (I don't think anything as broad as a "culture" can be said to "deserve" in any way), it's not useful to, say, condemn German ale because of the holocaust.

But as long as they basically do nothing and send bill after bill up there that gets vetoed then why would any executive worry about it if he felt strongly enough about getting his own way.

Because if he keeps vetoing spending bills then he doesn't get the funding he needs to continue the war.

And of course in this manufactured "scandal", what is lacking is "any hint" that any law was broken, any proscution was foiled, any unlawful prosecution was undertaken, or that any unqualified person undertook any law enforcement responsibility.

You can repeat a bald faced lie as many times as you like, but you can't make it true and you can't make it seem sensible in the face of the fact that what you wrote is plainly and obviously false to anybody who's been paying attention.

I guess you just have to keep counting on the fact that most of the public doesn't pay attention and so can't adequately judge you and your party's lies.

Right now a woman can get a restraining order against a man based on hearsay testimony ex parte about her "feelings" of being threatened. With such an order, she can bar him from his home, take his children away from him and shut him out of a jointly held bank account.

Where domestic violence accusations against men are concerned, there is no presumption of innocence in the US.

From this, I gather that you do not understand what presumption of innocence means. Anybody can be arrested and locked up without a conviction; their rights are Habeaus Corpus (unless designated as an "enemy combatant", to our collective national shame) and all that goes with it. Restraining orders are challengeable in court.

You have not in any way refuted my point or even managed to further support your own, Parson Jim. I guess I'll count your latest post as further evidence that you have absolutely no clue what the presumption of innocence even means.