X. Benedict

Just for the record, if my lesbian dinner guests ever make out in front of my kids, I'll handle that as a teachable moment.

Because you never know when your lesbian dinner guests might start making out in front of the kids.

At least it wasn't Joe Dufek's #19.

I don't know....I thought the fact they were hosted by game show hosts was always a clue.

Is there any reason why people should pay more attention to Miss USA (which Trump owns) than Donald Trump's other reality shows like The Apprentice or shows like Who Wants to Boff The Old Dude from Poison?

mostly just a whore of credit card companies....so you can forgive him for stumbling on "airborne" illness.

Reduces carbon emissions, prevents piggy flu, bankrupts fragile airlines...... truth is I was hoping he would recommend everyone wash their hands while singing Mary Had a Little Lamb.

That's a really good point. But he's been a Republican longer than the litmus. Curious what Olympia Snowe wrote yesterday about the party losing moderates.... "There is no plausible scenario under which Republicans can grow into a majority while shrinking our ideological confines and continuing to retract into a regional party." If you lose people like Specter, and maybe someday Snowe (it's not that far out) who is left in the party to talk to the majority? http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/29/opinion/29snowe.html

I think the Republicans were ready to kill him when he took his own dear time with the Alito nomination about 5 years ago. I don't think he forgot it. He was publicly skewered for deliberating on a vote he actually approved. Obviously he wasn't "pure" enough at the time. A senator nobody likes might be worth having around.

Buchanan and Keyes, and you can even throw Bill Bennet in there if you want, are weirdly consistent and hardly arbitrary. I just don't think they are dangerous. Probably about a third of the Congress claims to be a practicing Catholics...I'm really more interested in how they vote. Keyes and Buchanan can be far right of center (even in their church) because they don't really stand much of a chance of ever serving in a representative government except by appointment.

Keyes is a far different fish....... against abortion and homosexual rights for sure...but also a just war theorist who was against the Iraq war, WTO, GATT, NAFTA, Patriot Act.....no different from Pat Buchanan really. (who is also a Catholic...but so what?...both are moralists and not preachers with any ecclesiastic authority) So, as dangerous as Pat Buchanan? eeeewwww spooky....and constitutional constructionists which it is hard for me to see how their Catholicism informs that more than a classical liberal education. Rev. Robertson has an eschatology that changes week to week.....signs of the end times..... edit: okay...he favored a first strike in Iraq...but he can't claim that as a religious program...

Hardly the case for Keyes. I think he would be the opposite. He does not root arguments in scriptural hermeneutics as much as he is likely to argue natural law in which he probably sees Locke, Hobbes, and to a much lesser extent Hamilton as heirs to the Western scholastic tradition. Actually, I think that Alan Keyes is good for democracy as long as he is never elected. The guy is a demon debater and a strict constructionist, and they can be bloody fun to have around.

Wasn't this a Star Trek episode?

A curious use of Aristotle. Now my Aristotle may be rusty, but I think if he uses it at all it is probably in On Politics where he uses it as an argument that civic life and political life are commingled with religion and important for a well-run tyranny. Beyond that, Aristotle believed in teleology or final causes....which could be thought of as inherently religious I suppose if you believe in a world in which everything is cause and effect.

That sounds like a standing committee.

That would have to be a Joint Committee.

As long as Joe Lieberman has to caucus with the rest of the Connecticut for Lieberman Party, I'm with you.

Damn you Strom Thurmond. Since your switch in 1964 you've thrown this nation into chaos.

If gay people marry, Jesus will come back pissed. Or, he'll change water to wine for the party. One or the other.

I think if I were to play the foil, I would start with widow and widower survior benefits for Social Security as well regulations with state pensions and whatnot. Expanding marriage rights will have financial implications in many states.....that is without saying these would be "better" or "worse" for society in the aggregate. Expanding rights may strain these systems.

It's scary that they would pay to have a poll done without defining terms. Classical capitalism? Regulated? Market-led? State led? Socialism? What the hell does that mean? A kibbutz model? National Workers? I think doppelgangers are scarier than hobgoblins.

Seriously, do you know heterosexual men that watch pageants?

Shouldn't gay people be able to decide the winner of the pageants they watch.

Yep.

This really sounds like some sage advice.