Mostly yes, but we are regressing on reproductive rights (quantifiably so — Mother Jones' has a good map of data).

If you look at actual legislation, we are moving forward on LGTB rights, backwards on reproductive rights, and kind of stagnating with race/civil rights. I think PART of what's making everything seem worse is that we're hearing about it so much, which is great. It's not a bad thing that there are 70something schools…

I meditate on ideas a lot, so even though I *do* procrastinate and do a lot of my work in a bit of a rush (I leave time to edit, though, or do now that I'm in grad school), I've been *thinking* about what I write in a couple days over the course of a couple weeks.

It's SO HARD. I am recovering from a really bad back injury, which means I can do MAX three hours at a time, usually less, and almost never more than four hours a day. I have no idea how to work at this pace.

Sure, but that's not *always* the right move. Sometimes, it is derailing, as when one individual does something far too horrible to be accounted for by either stress or larger societal issues. (Plus, it's not like her husband abandoned her here — he had a heart attack).

God, if the men hadn't realized something was up and gone through with it, it would have been SO traumatic for everyone involved.

I honestly don't know if that's a fair thing to say. People have weird fantasies, and as deeply uncomfortable as those fantasies make me, I don't think they necessarily mean that they would be raspists (and there is something VERY disturbing about putting people into a database based on their sexual predilections).…

I even ate a twinkie!

If she did non-harmful back-alley things to get access to the house, I would mirror your sentiments. If she went to elaborate (non-harmful) lengths to make the house seem haunted or something, I would mirror your sentiments. But there is a line after which no excuse is valid, and she went wayyyyy past that line.

But but but...if you're not working until the last minute, how can you be sure all the sentences are perfect??

Harvard? (Kidding-ish, but seriously, grade inflation).

Woah...the addition of crunchy cereal is brilliant!

Did this take into account co-habitating couples? A lot of people either never get married or live together for a decade first; for all intents and purposes but taxes, they're married.

Trauma can affect children in a much deeper and more lasting way than adults. I think *right now*, she probably has much less of an understanding than an adult would, but in part because of that, this trauma will reverberate as she gets older and fully grasps what happened. Plus, an otherwise healthy adult would have…

God, I'm sorry. That sounds awful.

Right...free speech doesn't mean "no one can ever tell you anything you say is wrong!" Free speech means the government can't punish you for voicing your opinion.

Yup. I had a really bad, walked off fine but could have killed me accident was I was nine, and I remember it (but little else from then) *very* clearly. And that does not begin to compare.

Absolutely. Most kids start grappling with mortality earlier than that (often bc of losing a grandparent or a pet). She probably feels scared and awful now, and as she hits 10, 11, 12, guilt could cripple her.

I mean, it's probably more on the parents who hired the instructor than the instructor who did what he was paid to do...

Not only is what the cops did absurd, but so was calling the cops in the first place. When a student doesn't follow the rules, you can give them detention. Or even a suspension, though that would have been a definite overreaction.