Great piece.

When my wife and I started receiving these messages on Facebook last week, we were aghast and, frankly, insulted. My point (similar to your own) is this - if there is a categorical moral imperative to help this hypothetical hapless person, then anyone posting that Facebook message is personally obligated to help that person REGARDLESS of what I or anyone else chooses to do. Yet you don't see any of the posters rushing out to pay the medical bills of anyone. Yet they feel smugly entitled to imply I should do it. Either it's a categorical moral imperative to help, and they're hypocrites, or it's not, and they have no right to make the sweeping demands they seem to be making.

Actually the ethics of this...

It states the obvious. Crazy government spending cuts across party lines. Nobody in Washington, it seems, gave a hoot about fiscal responsibility until the grassroots backlash started gaining momentum earlier this year. Near the end of the Presidential race it looked like McCain was actually trying to out-flank Obama to the left! I know that. Tell me something I DON'T know.

So what's the point of the column? That we should fold our tents and go away, let Obama and his minions wreck the economy and hand us socialized medicine? The column is either trying to discredit the more reasonable Republican proposals, in which case it's irresponsible, or it's crying over spilled milk, in which case it's pointless. Take your pick. ...

Way to miss the boat, Neil. The issue here is allowing the President to address school children in the classroom at all. I don't want that, and neither do millions of other Americans. Speaking for myself, I don't want Republican or Democratic Presidents in my kids' classrooms at school. Period. Get the net. Once more the left is bungling, by trying to pretend that outrage over the planned speech is manufactured from inside the RNC or some other dastardly right-wing organization, when it's really just a grass-roots reaction to something distasteful.

And, until President Narcissus and Team Obama got dreamed up this idiot speech, Neil, my kids were going to be in their classrooms ACTUALLY LEARNING SOMETHING for an hour which...

I spent time in college at an Episcopal Church-sponsored orphanage in Honduras. A wonderful place that saved young boys (some as young as four years old) from a life in the streets of Tegucigalpa. The people running the place were an Episcopal priest and his wife, with the help of a host of other teachers, some of whom were Christian and some not, but all of whom were religious in one way or other.

Lumps and all, it bears remembering that Judeo-Christianity is the most liberal (in the classic sense) social force the world has ever known. Respect for the individual, qua individual, is an almost uniquely Judeo-Christian idea. No one on the left can ever re-create what Judeo-Christianity has accomplished. Modern leftist ideas...

and I rated your article "5 stars." But stop with the cheap shots against the legal profession. Please. As an attorney, I can tell you a great many of us in the profession understand quite clearly the asininity of Holder's decision and are profoundly disturbed by it.

The concept of using the criminal justice system to prosecute foreign terrorists is wildly out-of-line with common sense for a host of reasons, many of which you touch on. And you're right - one problem is that we're dealing with a new category here that doesn't precisely fit the prior model of "civilian" versus "traditional military" action. Terrorism is something new, an essentially military action carried out against civilian targets through quasi-civilian...

Well, the emotions are certainly running a little high over the death of Ted Kennedy, aren't they? Concerning the "buying forgiveness" bit - the nub of it is, you really can't buy forgiveness - even from the Catholic Church. It would be great if you could, I'd cash in on it. That program would beat "cash for clunkers" by a country mile. It simply "don't work that way." What happens at the pearly gates between Ted and St. Peter would be interesting to witness, but alas, St. Denis, we won't be there to see it.

Also, this idea of forgiveness is a little misunderstood. "Forgiveness" doesn't ignore or discount the wrongs a person did. Quite to the contrary, it presupposes a real wrong - a real moral indebtedness. ...

Okay, I'm a conservative, and I disagreed with Senator Kennedy on almost everything (not everything, but almost everything) and of course he got a pass on Chappaquiddick, and I completely agree with Mona's column. Yet I'm Roman Catholic, and, as the late Joseph Cardinal Bernardin once said, "we're in the forgiveness business." So, in that spirit, I forgive Ted Kennedy his faults, and hope his better nature overcame his lesser nature in the end. Ted Kennedy had a LOT of flaws, but in the spirit of forgiveness don't forget (for example) that Ted and his wife were very kind to Bob Novak after Novak was diagnosed. That's from Novak himself. I hope that higher and better side of Senator Kennedy's nature was at the forefront as he faced...

I'm with you. I'd rather see this monstrosity fail, but conservatism will come out the winner in the end, because this healthcare "reform" plan will bring on the worst fiscal calamity in the history of the United States. John and Jane Q. Public will not give up their love affair with this snake oil until they have been individually and significantly punished for imbibing it.

Just as an alcoholic must hit "rock bottom" before even potentially seeing the light, so the moderate and liberal voter needs a cold slap in the face and a few years sleeping in the(proverbial) gutter before there's any chance of common sense dawning. In a strange way, I'm actually grateful for the abject lunacy that is the Obama Presidency, because...

If independent voters shifted against these goons in percentages like we saw in the Virginia and New Jersey governor races, Obama, Pelosi, Reid and their minions couldn't buy enough votes to steal anything. Problem is, these independents still don't get it, and maybe never will. Sad, really.

apparently the average "independent" voter in America never understands anything, never listens, and never - and I mean NEVER - learns anything from prior mistakes. Everything you said in your column is true, yet none of it will soak in. I hope I'm wrong, but, right now, I don't see why I am. Loved your column though.