Well then, all those "Wendy stands with Texas women" ads that keep popping up asking me to donate sure fooled me.

First, I must mention that the 20-week cutoff has largely been fully debunked. If you're going to try to argue that one can be pro-choice and support the 20-week cutoff, you'll find little support here. As it has been pointed out over and over again, those bans serve only to limit women who seek to terminate…

Where have you seen that? All I've seen are the appeals online saying that Davis "stands with Texas women." Which, uh, now seems to be in dispute. All the celebrities who have been stumping for her all use the abortion rights angle heavily to induce donors to give. Maybe in Texas she's been talking it down, but she…

But that's not the point. Wendy Davis built her entire campaign momentum around a filibuster in favor of abortion rights. That is why most people who donated to her and supported her DID so. If not for that filibuster, would most people know who she is? If she really believes what she's saying now, she misled these…

So basically we're supposed to understand that Wendy Davis is trying to compete with Martha Coakley for the fastest torpedoing of a Democratic campaign in recent history? Okay, good to know.

She's reached the point where you truly cannot tell what is a lie and what isn't. It's tough to believe what she says about her parents, partly because she's allowing her daughter to largely be raised by them. So if she's telling the truth, she's knowingly allowed these people to assume a chunk of responsibility for…

Self-harm isn't a mental illness. It's a behavior that serves as a diagnostic marker for actual mental illnesses. You just made the same error as above - just because something is in the DSM doesn't make it mental illness. By that logic, Tourette's, Alzheimers and autism are mental illnesses. That's your logic.

You missed the argument. I am not arguing that addiction cannot meet the medical standard for a disease. But you are saying "mental illness" and disease interchangeably. You said above that the apa recognizes addiction as a mental illness due to it's inclusion in the DSM. That thinking is flawed.

The difference is that, fundamentally, almost all addiction starts with a choice. Organic mental illness does not. You missed my point, I think. Addiction may play strongly with the mental sphere, but it is not organic. Overcoming addiction fundamentally implicates willpower and the ability to control oneself. Mental…

Um, if you actually read the DSM (which I have), substance abuse is placed on a different diagnostic criteria - away from organic mental illness. If you actually read the page you linked to, you will notice that nowhere on the page does the term "mental illness" actually appear. Addiction is classified as a…

As somebody with am organic mental illness, personally, you should know that many people with mental illnesses don't really like addiction being classified as much. Addiction is a physical and chemical dependency - not a mental illness. My illness didn't start when I put something foreign inside my body - it was there…

Given up? No - because that would presume that they ever actually tried in the first place.

Sadly, it's not exactly rare. Most cops and prosecutors know that rape investigations - especially those that involve drinking - are likely not going to result in convictions - or probably even prosecutions. Thus, they have very little incentive to even try.

Days like these are when I'm glad to be German - we just get around the debate by ditching Santa. Krampus is where it's at, bishs!

First: Santa Claus is whatever you want him to be. A fictional character has no set form, image or shape. They do not have to adhere to any exact description. If that was not the case, Emma Watson could never, ever have been cast in the Harry Potter movies (since she really didn't look that much like the Hermione…

To me, I just disliked the term because it never encompassed enough. It always suggests that our cultural default is to uphold women who are not "sluts" and shame those who are. The reality is that women will get shamed no matter what she does. If she is comfortable with sex and has a lot of it, she is a slut (or even…

Isn't it sort of sad that a woman who gets assaulted and who admits to doing a really dumb thing two times in her life needs to do an interview to rehab her image? She needs to correct her public image while the actual person who assaulted her will basically continue to live his life as though little has happened.…

Man, how conflicted is this gonna make Bill Donahue? I'd hate to be inside his head right now.

I think what the Pope is fundementally doing is trying to get the Church back where it initially started and where it used to be. One of the Church's defining theological hallmarks was always (and is still supposed to be) that faith alone cannot get you into Heaven. You must complete many acts of kindness, good will…

Well, it doesn't work for you. There's plenty of people here who love Old Navy (I don't, but again, that's just me). I'm not sure what your actual argument is - is it that you've had bad experiences with cheap stuff? I've had bad experiences with expensive stuff. So? Frankly, the worst experience I ever had was with…