We know about them because they're famous (or Harris is, anyway). But I'll bet long-term couples all over the state have been mutually proposing all weekend (a thought that makes me smile as I type this).

How big of a deal is this?

Holiday heart sounds like what you'd wish everyone to have at the end of the year, but it's really an arrhythmia associated with binge drinking.

Point one—shouldn't abortion be the default position for a pregnant girl who, say, hasn't finished high school yet?

I have to say, this is one characteristic of the anti-choicers that consistantly pisses me off as well:

Okay . . . I'm completely missing what terrible thing this man is doing.

I'm not nearly as disappointed in Weiner as I am in Pelosi. Did this woman not understand that every time she blathered about this topic to a reporter, the entire country was subjected to yet another news cycle about the congressman's junk? Or maybe she thought this sort of coverage was good for the Democrats? Or…

Indeed, but as you say, sending them to the office is key.

About these ultra-orthodox guys (and other fundies): if you have an hour and twenty-odd minutes to spare, you could do worse than listen to Robert Sapolsky's lecture on the connection between religion, schizophrenia and OCD.

Most of the clips from the GOP congresswomen were some version of "Blah blah blah, I'm pro-woman (as a Republican) because I'm pro-whatever we need to increase job growth and get our country back on track."

My view on whether they'd still be good people in a religion-free world is irrelevant.

I don't doubt that your grandmother's friend and the friend's husband are exceedingly kind, decent and charitable people.

What they're trying to imply is that an abortion—at a few hundred bucks, and most of that going for blood tests and such—is a huge money-maker for someone.

Years ago, a social worker told me that sometimes, when she had more than one equally-qualified family applying for the same baby, she'd hold up photos of the baby and the families and decide on the basis of which family she thought the baby went best with visually. She gave the impression that this was a common…

Honestly, why would anyone think that gender occurs as a binary?

I find that, if there are a lot of stalls at an urban farmers' market, prices for similar things vary widely.

Because "pro-life" is simply their preferred term of spin.

"Creepy smile" . . . that would be the expression usually seen on the face of someone savoring a moment of profound irony?

Well, what exactly do we think the former victim did? My guess is that she gave a well-received rant about what the letter-writer did to her in high school—probably only one (because even friends don't really like to hear this sort of thing continually)—and that her friends among the other school moms, and her kids…

Fortunately, if there's anything that's likely to keep him from reproducing, it's this little stunt. I imagine the women of Alamogordo are keeping their distance.