Diagramming the inner loop of immovable commenters

I attended Catholic grade school, so I was highly trained to diagram sentences. Truly, at least six years of spending an hour each day to diagram sentences. A very sophisticated method of warehousing students, I now realize. The silver lining is that this ground-in urge to create diagrams has spilled over into many other areas of my life. For instance, I was thinking about those un-curious website commenters who so often frustrate me with their entirely predictable thought processes. How would that thought process look on a diagram? Would it look as simple as it so often sounds?

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How shall we punish women who commit murder by having abortions?

Those who vehemently oppose abortion steadfastly claim that abortion is "murder." They want to make it illegal for any woman to have an abortion. Therefore, it seems fair to ask anti-abortionists a simple hypothetical question. Assume that we changed the law and that all abortions were illegal. Under that scenario, how would you punish women who committed "murder" by having abortions?" What do you get when you combine a camcorder, a simple question and a group of fervent anti-abortionists? You get a fascinating set of answers. Where are all of the unflinching statements that the women who have abortions have thus committed murder and that they should all be punished as murderers? There were no such answers. Why all the hedging and squirming? Is it possible that abortion is not really the equivalent of murder? Even in the hearts and minds of those who claim to know for certain that it is "murder"? Assuming that abortion were made illegal, why are so many anti-abortionists so willing to allow a bunch of female murderers walk free without without being penalized under the law? Especially when those who committed the "murder" killed "babies," allegedly with deliberation and premeditation? This January 2008 video was produced by At Center Network, "a project of the Northbrook Peace Committee, Inc., a group that works for justice and nonviolent resolution of conflicts."

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My relationship with Bush.

Instead of taking this day to reflect on the Inauguration and the eminent change facing us,  how oh-so different everything is going to be, and every other overstated bit of hopeful drivel with which the internet is still a-buzzing, I'd like to muse on my relationship with the outgoing president.…

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… and Non-Believers

Yes, our new Potus has, for the first time in an address by a President, explicitly included in his description of America that faction among us who don't have imaginary friends. Hemant Mehta commented on this, but I saw it live via satellite and felt included. My fellow curly-headed 47 year old with a foreigner for a father took the oath of office, and included me. Not by name, but by my most often ignored demographic categories. In the name of Fair and Balanced, the name of Jesus was also uttered for the first time during an inaugural ceremony during a painfully theistic invocation. Many in the VIP section crowd appeared uncomfortable with it. Ted Kennedy, brother of the first Irish-American and/or Catholic president, was there to see it. Then he was taken to the hospital. Four former presidents dating back to the election of 1976 were there. And I forego naming the other 2,000,000 or so present at the moment. The scene was so overwhelming that the President Elect (a seasoned and elegant public speaker) briefly fumbled during the oath. Quite a day!

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