Men-in-power don't cheat with women-in-power, but rather with their underlings or sex workers or apparently with foreign nationals. How often (and with whom) do women-in-power cheat?

These are very small number statistics precisely because women are underrepresented in government. Perhaps the more difficult climb required for a woman to reach high office creates a much greater awareness of the risks of engaging in inane behavior?

Also, people say things for a reason. Perino (in her bizarre way) was attempting to pursue feminist voters without being a feminist. Clark-Flory was obviously drawing attention to the absurdity of such a position. Many of the letter writers are pursuing their own agendas.

In general one has reason to question any utterance in support of the speaker's own position. There is nothing remarkable about a former member of the Bush administration arguing that torture is an inherent moral good. They want to stay out of prison. There is likewise nothing remarkable about a laughably unqualified woman from that administration arguing laughable reasons that women might be deemed qualified to serve.

Pay attention, rather, to what people say and do in contravention of their own positions. For example, it is quite remarkable that the Obama administration is shielding Bush war criminals. Clearly there is some underlying chain of logic creating such actions.

Similarly, a senior spokeswoman of the Republican party states that male Republican officials are hypocrites. Why is Perino forced to rebut such a statement in the first place?

Truth demands rebuttal.

"America is neither a liberal nor a conservative country, but conservatives believe it skews to the right."

What self-identified conservatives believe is not the issue. Forget for the moment that our social, cultural, political, religious landscape is vastly multidimensional. Pretend that all this richness can be captured in a one-dimensional scale from Communist on the far left to Fascist on the far right. Ignore the inane choice of attempting to define the center with reference only to extremes.

This assertion still fails on the loose application of the word "skew". Picture a bell curve. It is captured by two parameters - the mean and the standard deviation. By definition - but not according to this anonymous party operative - the center of gravity of the country is precisely located where the mean of the distribution lies.

The mean is the first statistical moment. The standard deviation is the second moment. How broad is the distribution? Most people are located within just one standard deviation of the mean. Is this tightly clustered? Rather, one standard deviation (68% of the population) stretches all the way from Woodstock to Tulsa.

The "skew", however, is the second statistical moment. Is the bell symmetrical? Or is it squashed on one side? Republican dogma just appears to amount to an assertion that there is a long tail on "their side". From what this observer has seen, however, there is clearly a larger tail of divergent opinions on the left than on the right.

Should we next worry about the third moment? That's the "kurtosis" - an estimator of the peakedness of the distribution. Or has the absurdity of this exercise been demonstrated?

But the real issue - even in this imaginary 1-D vision of life - is that the American public doesn't form a bell curve at all. Politics since before Kennedy/Nixon has revealed a clear bimodal distribution - not one peak in the center, but two peaks on either side of the center. The average American lies squarely in the center-center of the political landscape, but the average American is a myth.

The essence of problem solving is a two step process:

1) characterize the problem

2) try various solutions

Iterate until the problem goes away. Neither of these steps relies on either a left-wing or right-wing ideology. Ideologies are about constraining the process by a priori assumptions about either the nature of the problem or about the range of acceptable solutions. The real world will decide the argument in the end.

All of humanity's problems scale at least a fast as the population. Compound interest applied to any positive rate of population growth shows that we must - sooner, not later - face our demons. At the current rate of growth, the mass of human flesh will equal the mass of all life on Earth in under a thousand years. Obviously this won't happen. The only question is whether the solution implemented will be of our own choosing.

Ideologies need not be layered on static antediluvian world views. Rather, a truly Conservative point of view requires prudence. Prudence in problem solving means accommodating the worst case scenario even if you can't imagine it occurring. A truly Liberal point of view requires pragmatism. It isn't enough to be right about the problems, you also have to pursue successful solutions.