More to the point of the absurdity of this: Why isn't anyone questioning the choice implicit in the question? The obvious answer to the contraception dilemma is this: If you don't want children, don't f*ck.

This whole stupidity illustrates the need to separate health insurance from employment - and the government from the health insurance market. In a rational, undistorted market, Miss Fluke could purchase uninflated health insurance covering her contraceptives, without worrying about who provides the balance of the coverage. (When I graduated from college in 1972, no longer qualifying for my parents' group policy, I purchased individual health insurance. I think it cost $35/month.) The answer isn't Obamacare; the answer is to get the government COMPLETELY out of the insurance business.

I, too, consider my positions to be "no-brainers". I can't, for the life of me, understand how any thinking individual can possibly, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, embrace any "progressive" position. That being said, I don't believe they're necessarily evil - just immature and misguided. One of the many reasons I seldom talk to my sister (55).

Mishandled from the beginning. We should have decapitated (literally) the leadership, made it clear that, if they messed with us again, we'd be back in force, and left. If we were going to occupy the country, then we needed to occupy the country, not fiddle about while we got involved elsewhere. If we had, in fact, occupied the country, we'd probably be just about winding down. What we have instead is a huge boondoggle.

This was mishandled and misreported. The response should have come from the Bagram commander and gone something like this, "Islamic religious materials which were removed from the detention center library after having been defaced by detainees were accidentally sent to the base incinerator, where they were found and recovered by local national workers. Those materials should have been transferred to a Muslim chaplain for proper disposal. We sincerely regret this oversight. New procedures are being developed to ensure that it will not be repeated."

This was mishandled and misreported. The response should have come from the Bagram commander and gone something like this, "Islamic religious materials which were removed from the detention center library after having been defaced by detainees were accidentally sent to the base incinerator, where they were found and recovered by local national workers. Those materials should have been transferred to a Muslim chaplain for proper disposal. We sincerely regret this oversight. New procedures are being developed to ensure that it will not be repeated."

ARRRGGHHH!!! Ethanol, again! Ethanol is NOT a sustainable fuel. It requires more energy to produce a gallon of ethanol than can be recovered from it. Diversion of corn to produce ethanol does nothing to increase the availability of fuel while increasing the cost of a wide variety of foods, since corn is used to feed livestock and to produce high-fructose syrup, which goes into a whole bunch of things you probably never thought of, from energy bars to soda. It's far past time for the government to quit distorting the agricultural and energy marketplaces.

This has to do with hybrid vehicles how, exactly?

Mr. Buchanan has demonstrated that there are no poor people in America, something I've been saying for years. My parents first house was less than 1000 square feet; their last house, in a solidly middle-class neighborhood was 1470. I didn't live in a house with central air until 1992. With very few exceptions, no one is "poor". They just fail to take advantage of their opportunities. The biggest obstacle to success in our society is the lack of a two-parent household, which seems to be a problem of lower income groups. It's no accident that this phenomenon has paralleled the banishment of religion from the public square.

The problem is the popular vote for President, not the Electoral College. The states should place the electors on the ballot, not the presidential candidates. It would be up to the voters to determine who the elector would support before voting for him (grammatically correct pronoun).