While I agree that the obesity and smoking....... sm

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That was settled some time ago by the scientists. NO GAY GENE. Cannot be replicated in the laboratory anymore than replicating a monkey turning into a human and proving a basis for evolution.

President Obama knows all too well how difficult it is to quit smoking, and today he addressed his struggle to kick the habit just before signing a law he hopes will help other people put out their cigarettes too.

"Each day, 1,000 young people under the age of 18 become new, regular, daily smokers, and almost 90 percent of all smokers began at or before their 18th birthday," Obama said today. "I know. I was one of these teenagers. And so I know how difficult it can be to break this habit when it's been with you for a long time."

The new tobacco law gives the Food and Drug Administration authority to regulate tobacco in the same way the government regulates breakfast cereals and pharmaceuticals.

"This legislation is a victory for bipartisanship, and it was passed overwhelmingly in both houses of Congress," Obama said today. "It's a victory for health care reform, as it will reduce some of the billions we spend on tobacco-related health care costs in this country."

Public health organizations and many lawmakers, several of whom joined Obama today for the signing, have been fighting for regulation for nearly a decade in hopes of helping an estimated 45 million adult smokers in the United States to kick their habit.

The law means the government will have the power to decide how cigarettes are advertised and monitor how they're promoted to young people. It means cigarette makers will be required to include new, larger warning graphics with more health information on their products and will be prohibited from using words like "light" and "low tar" in their marketing.

While the law does not have the power to ban cigarettes and nicotine outright, it does allow the FDA to reduce nicotine levels and harmful chemicals in tobacco products.

"Forty-five years after the first U.S. surgeon general's report linking cigarette smoking to lung cancer, the most deadly product sold in America will no longer be the least-regulated product sold in America," said Matthew Myers, president of Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, in a statement earlier this month when Congress passed the bill.

Within the year, a rule will also be reinstated that prohibits outdoor tobacco ads within 1,000 feet of schools and playgrounds, and bans tobacco brands from sponsoring sports and entertainment events, according to the law.

At the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, CEO John R. Seffrin said the changes "will finally put an end to Big Tobacco's despicable marketing practices that are designed to addict children to its deadly products."

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius also pinned high hopes on the effort.

"This legislation is a key part of our plans to cut health care costs and reduce the number of Americans who smoke," Sebelius said in a June 11 statement.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 440,000 people die prematurely from smoking each year, with an estimated 49,000 of those deaths due to secondhand smoke exposure.

"This legislation provides a tremendous opportunity to finally hold tobacco companies accountable and restrict efforts to addict more children and adults," American Heart Association CEO Nancy Brown said in a June 11 statement. "It has been a long and challenging process to move the bill through Congress but the determination of many concerned parents and supporters has never wavered."

Correction to This Article
A Sept. 17 article incorrectly said that one person who helped manage Iraq's budget had no background in accounting. The woman, described as the daughter of a prominent neoconservative commentator, has a background in accounting but lacked experience managing the finances of a large organization.

By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 17, 2006; A01

Adapted from "Imperial Life in the Emerald City," by Rajiv Chandrasekaran, copyright Knopf 2006

After the fall of Saddam Hussein's government in April 2003, the opportunity to participate in the U.S.-led effort to reconstruct Iraq attracted all manner of Americans -- restless professionals, Arabic-speaking academics, development specialists and war-zone adventurers. But before they could go to Baghdad, they had to get past Jim O'Beirne's office in the Pentagon.

To pass muster with O'Beirne, a political appointee who screens prospective political appointees for Defense Department posts, applicants didn't need to be experts in the Middle East or in post-conflict reconstruction. What seemed most important was loyalty to the Bush administration.

O'Beirne's staff posed blunt questions to some candidates about domestic politics: Did you vote for George W. Bush in 2000? Do you support the way the president is fighting the war on terror? Two people who sought jobs with the U.S. occupation authority said they were even asked their views on Roe v. Wade .

Many of those chosen by O'Beirne's office to work for the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ran Iraq's government from April 2003 to June 2004, lacked vital skills and experience. A 24-year-old who had never worked in finance -- but had applied for a White House job -- was sent to reopen Baghdad's stock exchange. The daughter of a prominent neoconservative commentator and a recent graduate from an evangelical university for home-schooled children were tapped to manage Iraq's $13 billion budget, even though they didn't have a background in accounting.

The decision to send the loyal and the willing instead of the best and the brightest is now regarded by many people involved in the 3 1/2 -year effort to stabilize and rebuild Iraq as one of the Bush administration's gravest errors. Many of those selected because of their political fidelity spent their time trying to impose a conservative agenda on the postwar occupation, which sidetracked more important reconstruction efforts and squandered goodwill among the Iraqi people, according to many people who participated in the reconstruction effort.

The CPA had the power to enact laws, print currency, collect taxes, deploy police and spend Iraq's oil revenue. It had more than 1,500 employees in Baghdad at its height, working under America's viceroy in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, but never released a public roster of its entire staff.

Interviews with scores of former CPA personnel over the past two years depict an organization that was dominated -- and ultimately hobbled -- by administration ideologues.

"We didn't tap -- and it should have started from the White House on down -- just didn't tap the right people to do this job," said Frederick Smith, who served as the deputy director of the CPA's Washington office. "It was a tough, tough job. Instead we got people who went out there because of their political leanings."

Endowed with $18 billion in U.S. reconstruction funds and a comparatively quiescent environment in the immediate aftermath of the U.S. invasion, the CPA was the U.S. government's first and best hope to resuscitate Iraq -- to establish order, promote rebuilding and assemble a viable government, all of which, experts believe, would have constricted the insurgency and mitigated the chances of civil war. Many of the basic tasks Americans struggle to accomplish today in Iraq -- training the army, vetting the police, increasing electricity generation -- could have been performed far more effectively in 2003 by the CPA.

But many CPA staff members were more interested in other things: in instituting a flat tax, in selling off government assets, in ending food rations and otherwise fashioning a new nation that looked a lot like the United States. Many of them spent their days cloistered in the Green Zone, a walled-off enclave in central Baghdad with towering palms, posh villas, well-stocked bars and resort-size swimming pools.

By the time Bremer departed in June 2004, Iraq was in a precarious state. The Iraqi army, which had been dissolved and refashioned by the CPA, was one-third the size he had pledged it would be. Seventy percent of police officers had not been screened or trained. Electricity generation was far below what Bremer had promised to achieve. And Iraq's interim government had been selected not by elections but by Americans. Divisive issues were to be resolved later on, increasing the chances that tension over those matters would fuel civil strife.

To recruit the people he wanted, O'Beirne sought r�sum�s from the offices of Republican congressmen, conservative think tanks and GOP activists. He discarded applications from those his staff deemed ideologically suspect, even if the applicants possessed Arabic language skills or postwar rebuilding experience.

Smith said O'Beirne once pointed to a young man's r�sum� and pronounced him "an ideal candidate." His chief qualification was that he had worked for the Republican Party in Florida during the presidential election recount in 2000.

O'Beirne, a former Army officer who is married to prominent conservative commentator Kate O'Beirne, did not respond to requests for comment.

He and his staff used an obscure provision in federal law to hire many CPA staffers as temporary political appointees, which exempted the interviewers from employment regulations that prohibit questions about personal political beliefs.

There were a few Democrats who wound up getting jobs with the CPA, but almost all of them were active-duty soldiers or State Department Foreign Service officers. Because they were career government employees, not temporary hires, O'Beirne's office could not query them directly about their political leanings.

One former CPA employee who had an office near O'Beirne's wrote an e-mail to a friend describing the recruitment process: "I watched r�sum�s of immensely talented individuals who had sought out CPA to help the country thrown in the trash because their adherence to 'the President's vision for Iraq' (a frequently heard phrase at CPA) was 'uncertain.' I saw senior civil servants from agencies like Treasury, Energy . . . and Commerce denied advisory positions in Baghdad that were instead handed to prominent RNC (Republican National Committee) contributors."

As more and more of O'Beirne's hires arrived in the Green Zone, the CPA's headquarters in Hussein's marble-walled former Republican Palace felt like a campaign war room. Bumper stickers and mouse pads praising President Bush were standard desk decorations. In addition to military uniforms and "Operation Iraqi Freedom" garb, "Bush-Cheney 2004" T-shirts were among the most common pieces of clothing.

"I'm not here for the Iraqis," one staffer noted to a reporter over lunch. "I'm here for George Bush."

When Gordon Robison, who worked in the Strategic Communications office, opened a care package from his mother to find a book by Paul Krugman, a liberal New York Times columnist, people around him stared. "It was like I had just unwrapped a radioactive brick," he recalled.

Twenty-four-year-old Jay Hallen was restless. He had graduated from Yale two years earlier, and he didn't much like his job at a commercial real-estate firm. His passion was the Middle East, and although he had never been there, he was intrigued enough to take Arabic classes and read histories of the region in his spare time.

He had mixed feelings about the war in Iraq, but he viewed the American occupation as a ripe opportunity. In the summer of 2003, he sent an e-mail to Reuben Jeffrey III, whom he had met when applying for a White House job a year earlier. Hallen had a simple query for Jeffrey, who was working as an adviser to Bremer: Might there be any job openings in Baghdad?

"Be careful what you wish for," Jeffrey wrote in response. Then he forwarded Hallen's resume to O'Beirne's office.

Three weeks later, Hallen got a call from the Pentagon. The CPA wanted him in Baghdad. Pronto. Could he be ready in three to four weeks?

The day he arrived in Baghdad, he met with Thomas C. Foley, the CPA official in charge of privatizing state-owned enterprises. (Foley, a major Republican Party donor, went to Harvard Business School with President Bush.) Hallen was shocked to learn that Foley wanted him to take charge of reopening the stock exchange.

It's fine, Foley replied. He told Hallen that he was to be the project manager. He would rely on other people to get things done. He would be "the main point of contact."

Before the war, Baghdad's stock exchange looked nothing like its counterparts elsewhere in the world. There were no computers, electronic displays or men in colorful coats scurrying around on the trading floor. Trades were scrawled on pieces of paper and noted on large blackboards. If you wanted to buy or sell, you came to the exchange yourself and shouted your order to one of the traders. There was no air-conditioning. It was loud and boisterous. But it worked. Private firms raised hundreds of thousands of dollars by selling stock, and ordinary people learned about free enterprise.

The exchange was gutted by looters after the war. The first wave of American economic reconstruction specialists from the Treasury Department ignored it. They had bigger issues to worry about: paying salaries, reopening the banks, stabilizing the currency. But the brokers wanted to get back to work and investors wanted their money, so the CPA made the reopening a priority.

Quickly absorbing the CPA's ambition during the optimistic days before the insurgency flared, Hallen decided that he didn't just want to reopen the exchange, he wanted to make it the best, most modern stock market in the Arab world. He wanted to promulgate a new securities law that would make the exchange independent of the Finance Ministry, with its own bylaws and board of directors. He wanted to set up a securities and exchange commission to oversee the market. He wanted brokers to be licensed and listed companies to provide financial disclosures. He wanted to install a computerized trading and settlement system.

Iraqis cringed at Hallen's plan. Their top priority was reopening the exchange, not setting up computers or enacting a new securities law. "People are broke and bewildered," broker Talib Tabatabai told Hallen. "Why do you want to create enemies? Let us open the way we were."

Tabatabai, who held a doctorate in political science from Florida State University, believed Hallen's plan was unrealistic. "It was something so fancy, so great, that it couldn't be accomplished," he said.

But Hallen was convinced that major changes had to be enacted. "Their laws and regulations were completely out of step with the modern world," he said. "There was just no transparency in anything. It was more of a place for Saddam and his friends to buy up private companies that they otherwise didn't have a stake in."

Opening the stock exchange without legal and structural changes, Hallen maintained, "would have been irresponsible and short-sighted."

To help rewrite the securities law, train brokers and purchase the necessary computers, Hallen recruited a team of American volunteers. In the spring of 2004, Bremer approved the new law and simultaneously appointed the nine Iraqis selected by Hallen to become the exchange's board of governors.

The exchange's board selected Tabatabai as its chairman. The new securities law that Hallen had nursed into life gave the board control over the exchange's operations, but it didn't say a thing about the role of the CPA adviser. Hallen assumed that he'd have a part in decision-making until the handover of sovereignty. Tabatabai and the board, however, saw themselves in charge.

Tabatabai and the other governors decided to open the market as soon as possible. They didn't want to wait several more months for the computerized trading system to be up and running. They ordered dozens of dry-erase boards to be installed on the trading floor. They used such boards to keep track of buying and selling prices before the war, and that's how they'd do it again.

The exchange opened two days after Hallen's tour in Iraq ended. Brokers barked orders to floor traders, who used their trusty white boards. Transactions were recorded not with computers but with small chits written in ink. CPA staffers stayed away, afraid that their presence would make the stock market a target for insurgents.

When Tabatabai was asked what would have happened if Hallen hadn't been assigned to reopen the exchange, he smiled. "We would have opened months earlier. He had grand ideas, but those ideas did not materialize," Tabatabai said of Hallen. "Those CPA people reminded me of Lawrence of Arabia."

The hiring of Bremer's most senior advisers was settled upon at the highest levels of the White House and the Pentagon. Some, like Foley, were personally recruited by Bush. Others got their jobs because an influential Republican made a call on behalf of a friend or trusted colleague.

That's what happened with James K. Haveman Jr., who was selected to oversee the rehabilitation of Iraq's health care system.

Haveman, a 60-year-old social worker, was largely unknown among international health experts, but he had connections. He had been the community health director for the former Republican governor of Michigan, John Engler, who recommended him to Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense.

Haveman was well-traveled, but most of his overseas trips were in his capacity as a director of International Aid, a faith-based relief organization that provided health care while promoting Christianity in the developing world. Before his stint in government, Haveman ran a large Christian adoption agency in Michigan that urged pregnant women not to have abortions.

Haveman replaced Frederick M. Burkle Jr., a physician with a master's degree in public health and postgraduate degrees from Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth and the University of California at Berkeley. Burkle taught at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, where he specialized in disaster-response issues, and he was a deputy assistant administrator at the U.S. Agency for International Development, which sent him to Baghdad immediately after the war.

He had worked in Kosovo and Somalia and in northern Iraq after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. A USAID colleague called him the "single most talented and experienced post-conflict health specialist working for the United States government."

But a week after Baghdad's liberation, Burkle was informed he was being replaced. A senior official at USAID sent Burkle an e-mail saying the White House wanted a "loyalist" in the job. Burkle had a wall of degrees, but he didn't have a picture with the president.

Haveman arrived in Iraq with his own priorities. He liked to talk about the number of hospitals that had reopened since the war and the pay raises that had been given to doctors instead of the still-decrepit conditions inside the hospitals or the fact that many physicians were leaving for safer, better paying jobs outside Iraq. He approached problems the way a health care administrator in America would: He focused on preventive measures to reduce the need for hospital treatment.

He urged the Health Ministry to mount an anti-smoking campaign, and he assigned an American from the CPA team -- who turned out to be a closet smoker himself -- to lead the public education effort. Several members of Haveman's staff noted wryly that Iraqis faced far greater dangers in their daily lives than tobacco. The CPA's limited resources, they argued, would be better used raising awareness about how to prevent childhood diarrhea and other fatal maladies.

Haveman didn't like the idea that medical care in Iraq was free. He figured Iraqis should pay a small fee every time they saw a doctor. He also decided to allocate almost all of the Health Ministry's $793 million share of U.S. reconstruction funds to renovating maternity hospitals and building new community medical clinics. His intention, he said, was "to shift the mind-set of the Iraqis that you don't get health care unless you go to a hospital."

But his decision meant there were no reconstruction funds set aside to rehabilitate the emergency rooms and operating theaters at Iraqi hospitals, even though injuries from insurgent attacks were the country's single largest public health challenge.

Haveman also wanted to apply American medicine to other parts of the Health Ministry. Instead of trying to restructure the dysfunctional state-owned firm that imported and distributed drugs and medical supplies to hospitals, he decided to try to sell it to a private company.

To prepare it for a sale, he wanted to attempt something he had done in Michigan. When he was the state's director of community health, he sought to slash the huge amount of money Michigan spent on prescription drugs for the poor by limiting the medications doctors could prescribe for Medicaid patients. Unless they received an exemption, physicians could only prescribe drugs that were on an approved list, known as a formulary.

Haveman figured the same strategy could bring down the cost of medicine in Iraq. The country had 4,500 items on its drug formulary. Haveman deemed it too large. If private firms were going to bid for the job of supplying drugs to government hospitals, they needed a smaller, more manageable list. A new formulary would also outline new requirements about where approved drugs could be manufactured, forcing Iraq to stop buying medicines from Syria, Iran and Russia, and start buying from the United States.

He asked the people who had drawn up the formulary in Michigan whether they wanted to come to Baghdad. They declined. So he beseeched the Pentagon for help. His request made its way to the Defense Department's Pharmacoeconomic Center in San Antonio.

The group was led by Theodore Briski, a balding, middle-aged pharmacist who held the rank of lieutenant commander in the U.S. Navy. Haveman's order, as Briski remembered it, was: "Build us a formulary in two weeks and then go home." By his second day in Iraq, Briski came to three conclusions. First, the existing formulary "really wasn't that bad." Second, his mission was really about "redesigning the entire Iraqi pharmaceutical procurement and delivery system, and that was a complete change of scope -- on a grand scale." Third, Haveman and his advisers "really didn't know what they were doing."

Haveman "viewed Iraq as Michigan after a huge attack," said George Guszcza, an Army captain who worked on the CPA's health team. "Somehow if you went into the ghettos and projects of Michigan and just extended it out for the entire state -- that's what he was coming to save."

Haveman's critics, including more than a dozen people who worked for him in Baghdad, contend that rewriting the formulary was a distraction. Instead, they said, the CPA should have focused on restructuring, but not privatizing, the drug-delivery system and on ordering more emergency shipments of medicine to address shortages of essential medicines. The first emergency procurement did not occur until early 2004, after the Americans had been in Iraq for more than eight months.

Haveman insisted that revising the formulary was a crucial first step in improving the distribution of medicines. "It was unwieldy to order 4,500 different drugs, and to test and distribute them," he said.

When Haveman left Iraq, Baghdad's hospitals were as decrepit as the day the Americans arrived. At Yarmouk Hospital, the city's largest, rooms lacked the most basic equipment to monitor a patient's blood pressure and heart rate, operating theaters were without modern surgical tools and sterile implements, and the pharmacy's shelves were bare.

Nationwide, the Health Ministry reported that 40 percent of the 900 drugs it deemed essential were out of stock in hospitals. Of the 32 medicines used in public clinics for the management of chronic diseases, 26 were unavailable.

The new health minister, Aladin Alwan, beseeched the United Nations for help, and he asked neighboring nations to share what they could. He sought to increase production at a state-run manufacturing plant in the city of Samarra. And he put the creation of a new formulary on hold. To him, it was a fool's errand.

"We didn't need a new formulary. We needed drugs," he said. "But the Americans did not understand that."

In May 2003, a team of law enforcement experts from the Justice Department concluded that more than 6,600 foreign advisers were needed to help rehabilitate Iraq's police forces.

Bernard Kerik had more star power than Bremer and everyone else in the CPA combined. Soldiers stopped him in the halls of the Republican Palace to ask for his autograph or, if they had a camera, a picture. Reporters were more interested in interviewing him than they were the viceroy.

Kerik had been New York City's police commissioner when terrorists attacked the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. His courage (he shouted evacuation orders from a block away as the south tower collapsed), his stamina (he worked around the clock and catnapped in his office for weeks), and his charisma (he was a master of the television interview) turned him into a national hero. When White House officials were casting about for a prominent individual to take charge of Iraq's Interior Ministry and assume the challenge of rebuilding the Iraqi police, Kerik's name came up. Bush pronounced it an excellent idea.

Kerik had worked in the Middle East before, as the security director for a government hospital in Saudi Arabia, but he was expelled from the country amid a government investigation into his surveillance of the medical staff. He lacked postwar policing experience, but the White House viewed that as an asset.

Veteran Middle East hands were regarded as insufficiently committed to the goal of democratizing the region. Post-conflict experts, many of whom worked for the State Department, the United Nations or nongovernmental organizations, were deemed too liberal. Men such as Kerik -- committed Republicans with an accomplished career in business or government -- were ideal. They were loyal, and they shared the Bush administration's goal of rebuilding Iraq in an American image. With Kerik, there were bonuses: The media loved him, and the American public trusted him.

Robert Gifford, a State Department expert in international law enforcement, was one of the first CPA staff members to meet Kerik when he arrived in Baghdad. Gifford was the senior adviser to the Interior Ministry, which oversaw the police. Kerik was to take over Gifford's job.

"I understand you are going to be the man, and we are here to support you," Gifford told Kerik.

"I'm here to bring more media attention to the good work on police because the situation is probably not as bad as people think it is," Kerik replied.

As they entered the Interior Ministry office in the palace, Gifford offered to brief Kerik. "It was during that period I realized he wasn't with me," Gifford recalled. "He didn't listen to anything. He hadn't read anything except his e-mails. I don't think he read a single one of our proposals."

Kerik wasn't a details guy. He was content to let Gifford figure out how to train Iraqi officers to work in a democratic society. Kerik would take care of briefing the viceroy and the media. And he'd be going out for a few missions himself.

Kerik's first order of business, less than a week after he arrived, was to give a slew of interviews saying the situation was improving. He told the Associated Press that security in Baghdad "is not as bad as I thought. Are bad things going on? Yes. But is it out of control? No. Is it getting better? Yes." He went on NBC's "Today" show to pronounce the situation "better than I expected." To Time magazine, he said that "people are starting to feel more confident. They're coming back out. Markets and shops that I saw closed one week ago have opened."

When it came to his own safety, Kerik took no chances. He hired a team of South African bodyguards, and he packed a 9mm handgun under his safari vest.

The first months after liberation were a critical period for Iraq's police. Officers needed to be called back to work and screened for Baath Party connections. They'd have to learn about due process, how to interrogate without torture, how to walk the beat. They required new weapons. New chiefs had to be selected. Tens of thousands more officers would have to be hired to put the genie of anarchy back in the bottle.

Kerik held only two staff meetings while in Iraq, one when he arrived and the other when he was being shadowed by a New York Times reporter, according to Gerald Burke, a former Massachusetts State Police commander who participated in the initial Justice Department assessment mission. Despite his White House connections, Kerik did not secure funding for the desperately needed police advisers. With no help on the way, the task of organizing and training Iraqi officers fell to U.S. military police soldiers, many of whom had no experience in civilian law enforcement.

"He was the wrong guy at the wrong time," Burke said later. "Bernie didn't have the skills. What we needed was a chief executive-level person. . . . Bernie came in with a street-cop mentality."

Kerik authorized the formation of a hundred-man Iraqi police paramilitary unit to pursue criminal syndicates that had formed since the war, and he often joined the group on nighttime raids, departing the Green Zone at midnight and returning at dawn, in time to attend Bremer's senior staff meeting, where he would crack a few jokes, describe the night's adventures and read off the latest crime statistics prepared by an aide. The unit did bust a few kidnapping gangs and car-theft rings, generating a stream of positive news stories that Kerik basked in and Bremer applauded. But the all-nighters meant Kerik wasn't around to supervise the Interior Ministry during the day. He was sleeping.

Several members of the CPA's Interior Ministry team wanted to blow the whistle on Kerik, but they concluded any complaints would be brushed off. "Bremer's staff thought he was the silver bullet," a member of the Justice Department assessment mission said. "Nobody wanted to question the [man who was] police chief during 9/11."

Kerik contended that he did his best in what was, ultimately, an untenable situation. He said he wasn't given sufficient funding to hire foreign police advisers or establish large-scale training programs.

Three months after he arrived, Kerik attended a meeting of local police chiefs in Baghdad's Convention Center. When it was his turn to address the group, he stood and bid everyone farewell. Although he had informed Bremer of his decision a few days earlier, Kerik hadn't told most of the people who worked for him. He flew out of Iraq a few hours later.

the Supreme Court's decision on eminent domain, either, and I also hope that guy buys Souter's property and turns it into a hotel. I love the name of the restaurant he wants to build in the hotel: Just Desserts. (I can't remember which TV show I saw that on because, contrary to those on these boards who already have me figured out, I DON'T only watch MSNBC. I actually flip back and forth between MSNBC and Fox. I'm sure it was one one of those stations, though.)

I do have a problem with partial birth abortions, based on my limited understanding of it, which is what I've heard the conservatives say about a full or nearly full-term baby being basically born and then "beaten to death" by the doctor. (From what I've discovered from some conservatives on these boards in the past few days, I take everything they say with a grain of salt and accept the possibility up front that it's an exaggerated statement devoid of critical facts.)

But if this is indeed true, then I don't know how it could be considered anything BUT murder. And I don't understand the issue regarding the health of the mother because if the mother can survive the delivery of a baby that can survive outside the womb, then the issue would seem nonexistent. (Again, I don't know that much about it.)

I also have mixed feelings about children and abortion. One the one hand, it is a surgical procedure, and if my child can't even have her ears pierced without my consent, then certainly she shouldn't be allowed to have a surgical procedure without my consent.

But what about if she's been impregnated as the result of a rape by her father or other family member? That sick stuff DOES happen in this country. What if she knows she wants an abortion? Should she be forced to have the baby? I can think of situations where she might be safer if the parents didn't know, but yet I still feel the parents have a right to know. I'm very conflicted about this particular issue and can't say I have a definite opinion. That's why I'd like to hear more on the subject from some intelligent, thoughtful, nonjudgmental people.

As far as gay marriages, I admit I get a little "twinge" at the use of the word "marriage." It might be that something deep in my gut is telling me that marriage SHOULD be between a man and a woman. After all, WE invented it and WE wrecked it. I think they should invent a new name for their unions because from what I've personally seen, gay couples seem to last for a very long time, much longer than some marriages I know. As far as whether or not they should have rights, why SHOULDN'T they? I don't recall a day during puberty when I woke up and made the decision that I was going to be straight. Likewise, I'm willing to bet that no gay person woke up and decided to be gay. I just don't understand why people are so threatened by the thought that a group might actually have RIGHTS in this country. As with abortion or stem cell research, etc., if they don't believe in it, they shouldn't PARTICIPATE IN IT. I'm neither pro-gay or anti-gay. (A quick look in the mirror, though, reminds me that I'm definitely pro-gray.

)

With all of these social issues, as you said, we will "stand in judgment with our maker." That's between us and our own personal God, and those with different religious/spiritual beliefs have no right to shove their beliefs down our throat.

I saw a post on the other board referring to when the U.S. was founded, saying that the vast majority was Christian but that others were given "the freedom to others not to believe..."

NOBODY can "give" anyone "freedom" to either believe or not to believe, and the fact that this poster thinks they can is either very stupid or very scary, and I'm not exactly sure which it is. I think this is relevant because I believe there are some conservatives out there who don't only want the law to reflect their specific narrow brand of religion, but they would LOVE to be able to control what people think and believe.

Knowing that Bush is going to appoint one (maybe two before the end of the year) new Supreme Court Justice(s) scares me because, as you said, our rights are being slowly taken away, and this man has proven by his own actions that the personal freedoms of others aren't things that he cares for much, especially freedom of speech and ideas. That's why he banned anyone who didn't agree 100% with his views from all of his "open town hall" meetings.

We also have an evangelical Senator who holds a public meeting in a search and says that liberals aren't people of faith.

First, it's freedom of speech. Next, it will be freedom of religion. What about freedom of "thought."

I wonder what their views on stem cell research would be if it was discovered that stem cell research held the key to developing a new technique to control thought processes of those who disagree with them.

However, I don't think it's because of President Bush AND his DADDY. I think George W. came into office hell bent on finishing what his daddy DIDN'T finish and only needed a reason, real or invented, to "finish" it. And I totally agree with you when you say that this was his personal agenda. I think the disconnect is that many people want him to focus on terror, but his personal agenda has always caused his focus instead to be on Iraq, and I personally am very fearful for the future of this country as a result of that.

I believe they will definitely find a way to twist it if some are found guilty. Under no circumstances will they admit that this administration could possibly do anything wrong.

It should be criminal to expose children to such hostility and insanity. It sounds like real violence could have ensued if these whackos would have been crossed in any way.

I almost feel for some of these people. A brief visit to the Conservative board left me thinking I should have worn a helmet and worn body armor. Although it's a scary place over there, it must be terrible to exist inside a body that harbors such rage and hatred every day, 24/7. I don't understand what has happened to their religion, but my Christian religion still promotes love, tolerance, respect and the principles of the Golden Rule, all attributes that seem completely foreign to them. All they do is trash others and haven't contributed one positive thing to that board.

Sometimes I think there isn't much difference between these people and the terrorists who attacked us and other countries. They both exhibit signs of mental illness, a maniacal obsession with controlling what everyone believes, and they both promote hatred, violence and intolerance in the name of their respective gods. About the only main difference I can see is that the terrorists, unfortunately, seem to be much more intelligent in their pursuit of their goals.

I had the same feeling about Roberts and I was glad to hear he had done this pro bono work.

With every day that passes, I feel less and less hope. I've never been this frightened of a politician in my entire life.

And I wonder if we had stepped it up a while back, how much of this would be going on today. The more we delay, the better they get at their "craft."

I wish we had never gone in there to begin with and think it's one of the biggest mistakes a president could have ever made. But we're there, and we can't just go in there, turn their country upside down and leave without leaving them with some semblance of normalcy. Those who said this is a quagmire were right on the money.

Anyone who has anything less than a hate Bush agenda should burn in hell as far as GT is concerned. I too don't agree with Bush 100% on everything, but that does not matter to GT. If you agree with Bush on anything you should not pass GO and go straight to hell along with Bush's Stepford wife and alcoholic daughters. Am I painting that picture correctly GT?

I am a moderate conservative, and a Republican, although I'd consider a moderate Democrat like Joe Lieberman or somebody reasonable, however, the Democrats won't nomiate anybody like that, so my vote stays Republican.

As for hand outs and hand ups... There's a big difference between somebody who is unable to work and somebody who is unwilling to work. The individual who is physically or mentally unable to work, or the hard working family who falls on hard times for whatever reason that is out of their control, those people deserve some help. Hands outs/hands up, whatever you want to call it should be viewed as a stepping stone to self sufficiency.

I feel for the innocent victims (children) of those who embrace a lifestyle of just taking free money from those of us in society who work hard, but I havn't much compassion for able bodied young people who refuse to work. If an uneducated person is working hard but not making enough to sustain themselves they can avail themselves of food stamps, WIC, free school lunches, and I don't a problem with that. But, drive through a poor neighborhood and watch the young healthy people sitting on stoops and standing on corners doing nothing all day instead of working. Whether it be pursuing their GED, or taking vocational classes, they should be at least thinking of bettering themselves instead of just resigning to a life of free hand outs.

I hear ya and yes I agree we should stay away..There are a lof of other political boards through the net, where we can discourse/debate with conservatives over ideas and America without being attacked like mad dogs (I hate to use the analogy as mad dogs as my dogs are much kinder than the conservatives who post here..smile)..

I think O'Reilly got a taste of his own medicine and was about to lose it. I roared when Phil called him Billy, and Phil in no way denigrated Bill's nephew, but Phil had asked if any of O'Reilly's kids are serving in Iraq. O'Reilly tried to use his nephew's service to detract from the fact that NONE of his own children are there. I think that's what made O'Reilly the angriest: The fact that Phil zapped him on that point.

And now that Libby (yuck! I should change my moniker) and Rove are both implicated in the Plame scandal, it will be interesting to see what Fitzgerald's findings are, and they should be coming soon.

I also agree about Cheney. He's very scary. There is definitely a very shrewd, conniving network at work in this administration, and Bush simply isn't bright enough to do this on his own. And there are no standards of decency left on any level in this administration, which is incredible for the CONs, considering all they ever babble about is their superior *decency*. For example, they blatantly lie without blinking an eye, as do some of their more dedicated followers. If anyone dares to disagree with this president, the response it to DESTROY the opponent (not unlike what happens on these boards, only to a more dangerous degree, such as exposing Valerie Plame, for example). Nothing is out of bounds any more.

Bush and his military brass treated this family horribly. They did nothing but lie about everything. (Big surprise, huh?)

They tried to use Pat Tillman as their poster child for recruiting purposes, but Tillman wouldn't agree to be used that way.

When I think if the incredible courage and integrity Pat Tillman had and I look at what a coward Bush was when it came to fighting in a war and what a lying sack of crap he is today, it's easy to see who the REAL man is, and it just makes me want to spit on Bush.

While I agree that the obesity and smoking....... sm

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