livendive

No, they are not. One is a small piece of skin and the other is the whole organ. To make your analogy stick you'll have to compare removing the clitoris to removing the entire penis. You're wrong. It's removal of the skin surround the clitoris, not removal of the entire glans. It is identical to removal of the male foreskin. Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

Doesn't matter...it's a mother's choice/responsibility to make hygienic/medical decisions for her child. If she want's other medical procedures done around the time that is her choice, but it's more practical to preform circumcision at birth rather than as an adult. Do you feel the same way about a father directing a doctor to perform a clitoridotomy on his infant daughter? Personally, I'd have no interest in altering a child of mine, regardless of gender. Imagine if you didn't want your son circumcised, and a doctor did it anyhow "for his own good", what would your reaction be? Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

Abortion is a good example, but not the way you imply. An abortion is a woman exercising rights over her own reproductive organs. If a woman tried to force her teenage daughter to have an abortion, that's an entirely different matter, because its someone else's crotch. Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

Regular washing and condoms would have a much larger beneficial effect than permanently removing a part of the body. It seems logical that the hood around the clitoris would similarly harbor bacteria, yet we don't remove that. Also, nobody has ever died of appendicitis after having their appendix removed, so why don't we force that on kids? How about forced BMI management, or a prohibition on Happy Meals? The bottom line is there are better solutions than forced circumsion, and clear examples of similar situations in which potential benefits are not used to justify forced, permanent disfigurement. Circumcision is a pre-dark ages religious ritual that has been so prevalent as to distort the public perception of 'normal'. Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

79...much better than I expected given family history and some lifestyle choices. Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

Many of the studies that have indicated such protective effects were actually secondary evaluations of studies that concluded exactly the opposite. Regardless, castration would likely have a much stronger correlation with reduced STDs, and most, if not all potential benefits of male circumsion would likely have a similar effect for females. Yet we don't approve of castrating boys, or remove the skin encasing a clitoris. If the benefits aren't realized till a person becomes sexually active, the decision can wait till then too. Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

Agreed. I meant to restrict my argument to forced genital mutilation, as of a child, rather than voluntary, by an adult. I see a significant difference. Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

Circumsion is an oddity in modern culture, as I'd have thought the days of socially acceptable genital mutilation would be far behind us by now. Hopefully the time is not far off in which people only remove body parts that have something wrong with them (e.g. tonsils and appendixes), and only adults can decide to alter their own genitals. Why is male circumsion ok, but clitoridotomy (aka hoodectomy) taboo? They're both the exact same thing, removal of skin enveloping the glans. Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

Paul is my preference, but he doesn't seem to have a shot, so I'm rooting for Santorum, just because the laughter hasn't made my belly hurt yet. If Gingrich drops after today, Santorum can still entertain us. If not, I doubt we'll see another "anyone but Romney" type surge. Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

As a member of LSRJ, isn't Georgetown exactly the kind of school she'd want to go to? I mean, if she's looking to fight something she perceives as injustice, it's only logical that she place herself somewhere near the battle. If she went to Berkely while fighting for the rights of students at Georgetown, well then you'd all accuse her of being related to Al Gore. Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

That's not surprising. However I think the following is more descriptive. Blues, Dave Edit to add a more polished chart in which the scale is fixed. "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

I hope her successor is similarly inclined to vote on individual issues rather than their party line, no matter which party they belong to. Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

Agreed. I'm no particular fan of crap like the Drudge report, but still, my first thought on seeing the headline was "Wow, *I'm* 43....sucks for his family!" Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

I agree with this. That said, if I were caught forwarding such a joke about my CEO, on my company email account, well, I would probably be dusting off my resume. Blues, Dave Your CEO? Ok, I can agree with that Obama however, is a politcal figure and is no ones CEO The only thing close to this is Commander and Chief You don't think the guy at the top of the executive branch is anything remotely like a chief executive officer? It was just such an executive (Bush) who gave this guy his job in the first place. Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

I agree with this. That said, if I were caught forwarding such a joke about my CEO, on my company email account, well, I would probably be dusting off my resume. Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

I'm glad my employer-provided health plan includes coverage for contraceptives, as these helped my daughter experience tolerable periods years before she became sexually active (they were so bad I once had to take her to the ER). Denying such care would be the moral equivalent of denying treatment for sickle cell anemia. Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

I, for one, would not mind this being changed IF, and only IF, the unions are restricted in the same manner I agree with this. People are people. Grouping up with a union or corporation doesn't make someone into two people deserving of two voices. We should let our numbers be our volume control, and that's it. There's no justification for allowing an organization to artificially amplify the voices of its members. Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

Note that's true on both sides of the loan. The Wall Streeters and banks who made these loans had no problem blaming it all on the government and taking bailout money. The individual homeowner blaming it on the banks is no different. If buyers had only taken loans they could afford, we wouldnt be in this mess. Similarly, if banks stood behind the loans they wrote (and only issued loans they'd stand behind), we wouldn't be in this mess. The difference here is one actually gets paid for their expertise on mortgages, and deals with thousands of them per year, while the other will go through it a handful of times in their life. But money buys influence, so the side with the money got bailed out years before the side without. Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

Do you think laws against polygamy are also crossing the church and state line? Or laws prohibiting sex with minor children? Or laws probiting the beating of a wife? Laws set *minimum* standards for society. Religions are free to impose more restrictive requirements on their adherents if they choose, but they don't have the authority to buck any law otherwise deemed good for society. In this case, the government threw churches a bone by exempting them from the requirement, they just didn't extend that exemption to anyone and everyone. Personally, I feel the correct choice would be to withdraw the exemption from the churces. If they don't like it, they can cancel their insurance plans. Come to think of it, why do they need health insurance anyhow, when they have prayer? Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

Truly depressing. How so? As much as I hate American Idol, I do have to admit it's more entertaining than Bill O'Reilly or Sean Hannity. I've never heard of Bret Baier, so I'll just assume (according to the numbers) that he's worse than the other two. Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

It seems to me that concerned mature people in the U.S. want straight news or they want news satire. The pseudo-intellectuals want news pablum. Of course, that is my humble unbiased right wing conservative Christian opinion. It looks to me like 100% of the people being accounted for wanted to be entertained. Claiming foxnews is "straight" doesn't make it so, and the fact that John Stewart was right in the middle of the fox news listings supports this. All I get from your list is people seem to find foxnews more entertaining than msnbc. Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

Given the video in which this was described, where do you suppose she learned such behavior? That's all I really got out of besides a few laughs...daughter and father both like publicly complain about the other. Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

Any time you can get the cry baby Republicans bitching it's too much, and the cry baby Democrats bitching it's not enough, you've probably got a good piece of legislation. http://money.cnn.com/2012/02/09/news/economy/mortgage_settlement_critics/index.htm?hpt=hp_c1 Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

I've long maintained the exact same opinion as you. First and foremost, partnership just shouldn't matter. Some here (including lawrocket if I remember correctly) have pointed out that governmental recognition of marriage dramatically simplifies the legal process associated with a wide variety of matters, including paternity, post-death division of assets, dissolution of said partnerships, etc. The example lawrocket has used is the relative ease of 'lawyering' a divorce vs the dissolution of a civil partnership. OK, I seem some merit in government involvement here. One of the fundamental responsibilities of government is to care for those who can't care for themselves. If a partnership between a gainfully employed person and a stay-at-home parent dissolves, I think having some standard practices on the books is better than letting the person with money steamroll the person with none. That said, I'd be ok with government involvement being limited to these sorts of scenarios. I still think taxation and benefits should be blind to partnering status. If only churches did marriages (which the government didn't even care about), and the government only recognized "civil unions" and was blind to this status except for streamlining how each should care for/be protected from the other, that's be an acceptable substitute. However even that isn't what's being proposed, and the argument has been made that achieving this would be a VERY lengthy process. OK, uncle...if we can't get the government out of the business, let's at least make them treat everyone equally. Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

My favorite part of this discussion is the fact that we (you, me, rehmwa, billvon, and wolfriverjoe) pretty much agree on the important part, it's the details we're discussing. Well, that, and the compulsory name-calling for disagreement in speaker's corner has been oddly absent. I mean who are we to point out that rehmwa is a doodie-head. In any case, I do think I see where you are going, I'm just arguing semantics. Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)