Oh come on guys. As someone said above, when you read the context it's not that bad. And yeah, the father isn't always present for the birth. My project manager at work was out of the room when his wife gave birth two years ago. If this is the worst thing that can be dug up about McAuliffe then he's a swell guy.

Rather incredible that I'm tied with the vile Thatcher!  On style alone, leaving aside any merits or ideology, she's revolting.

Oh come on, look at that smashing hairdo.

As for me, Thatcher. (Sorry opebo, but you're too much of a troll.)

Totally ridiculous as usual. Video monitoring will never stop a single terrorist. It might result in faster apprehension, but few terrorists are much concerned with being caught. Plus, death and damages from terrorism are miniscule per annum--not at all worth the cost of surveillance cameras on their own.

Of course, surveillance cameras are good for stopping ordinary crime and apprehending ordinary criminals, as well as creating a record to use to prevent police abuses. So they're a good thing, but people are supporting them for totally moronic reasons, as usual.

Precisely.

The red line for me is a distinction between public and private spaces, as well as who and for what reason is getting access to 'surveillance'. For instance, we obviously can't prevent companies like Facebook from accessing their own members' account data and selling that to marketing companies. And I'm betting the government intelligence agencies have some way to get to that data, regardless of what they might say. But if a prospective employer was given access to a person's Facebook account as part of a background check, that would be stepping over the line.

Has Patrick indicated he's interested in running? I assume all the others were included in the poll (except Clinton and Warner, who did show interest previously) because they've been at it pretty hard over the past several months.

Pro-Choice/Anti-SSM.

Assuming we're talking about the presidency, being pro-choice is a lot more important to me because the president appoints the Supreme Court, which could overturn Roe v. Wade. Gay marriage is mostly fought at the state level so who the president is only matters based on whether or not he or she defends DOMA. When Obama came out for gay marriage, literally nothing changed. It was primarily a campaign ploy on his part.

This may be controversial, but I'd also say abortion rights is a more important issue than SSM. Substantively, legal recognition about SSM is about getting partner benefits, whereas legal recognition of abortion is about bodily autonomy and could potentially have life or death implications. We've seen what happens when abortion is pushed underground with the Kermit Gosnell case. Nothing that results from SSM has similar stakes that I'v seen.

This is pretty disturbing. Also interesting to note is that one of the most common procedures is shaping the eyes to make them look "less Asian/more Western".

Advocates would say it's not about being less Asian/more Western, it's simply about having larger eyes, which some Asians naturally have anyway. The doe-eyed look on these Korean women is kind of freaky, though (I don't know if it's the eyes or just the uniform expressions). It's not good if it *always* looks like they're posing or staring straight at you.

Plastic surgery is the wave of the future (along with designer babies, etc), but I'm not a fan of the particular look. They all look like they have an overbite and a Michael Jackson nose.

Ugh. Immigration Reform is the most likely to pass, and even that hasn't passed yet. So how about they wait at least until Immigration Reform is passed and signed?

And what can Obama do, besides a constitutional amendment, to reverse Citizens United?

Well he could nominate some FEC commissioners.

Some people have one thing about them that marks them as being decisively on the 'Other' side. For Obama, it's Michelle. She makes him unequivocally black. For Rubio, it's his name. It identifies him immediately as something other than Anglo.

I'm surprised Rand is doing that well among the olds, though. I would have expected a bigger age gap for him.

"Saudi foreign minister, national security chief both met with Obama in the Oval Office in early 2013."

Ouch.

That doesn't necessarily mean anything without knowing if this subject was brought up at the meeting. But yeah, somewhere a screw-up clearly occurred.

Anyway, the reality is that technological progress is not the solution to anything because it cannot make people happy.

That's an absurd statement.

One is banned, the other is flourishing, but option 2 is more disturbing. Case in point.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/police-ky-girl-accidentally-shot-killed-19079010#.UYEkhrWcd8E

He's on the Financial Services committee, the Charlotte HQ of Bank of America is in his district, and he's a defender of the Federal Reserve... so I suppose that makes sense. I expect however we elect next will see which side their bread is buttered on no less than Mr. Watt.

Well, I suppose we'll have enough women in politics when a decent looking female pol is no longer remarkable.

For some reason, this thread reminded me of a real DKos dinosaur: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/06/02/31720/-Meet-Congresswoman-Stephanie-Herseth-D-SD

If, for some reason, Biden assumes the presidency between now and 2016, then he would be the favorite for the nomination, and the circumstance of his ascension could also help him in the general.

So in the past three years Massachusetts has gone from having #2 and #7 on the Senate seniority list (including a former presidential candidate and a party legend) to two brand smacking new Senators born in the 1940s (assming Markey wins). Wooo.

I have a problem with what Clinton did too, but as stated above, Sanford really went off the deep end which Clinton never did. Also, the Republicans really stepped in it trying to impeach Clinton. I wish they had convicted him and removed him from office, because then incumbent president Gore would have won in a landslide in 2000.

Obviously she's uncontroversial for the sake of not having had the power to do controversial things.

She lived in the shadow of her husband her whole life and faced his infidelities and abuse, but got hers in the end by outliving him by over a third of a century.

Virginia should annex Jefferson, Berkeley, Morgan, Hampshire, Mineral, Hardy, Grant, and Pendleton counties of West Virginia, giving it control of the entire eastern panhandle of West Virginia; plus Garrett and Allegany the two westernmost counties of Maryland. A line from the southernmost tip of West Virginia straight down to the Tennessee border should be chopped off and given to Kentucky. Finally, draw a line from Roanoke to Danville, and everything west of that line and east of the West Virginia-Tennessee line should be given to North Carolina.

Sure it should be legal, but I don't think you can really "buy" sex.

And this is where I agree with you most. I think there need to be massive wage increases here. Raising our wages to an appropriate level would be the best thing that could be done for everyone - both for the German worker and for the competitiveness of the workers in other countries.

Precisely.

The only sense I could see that Germany and Greece' interests would be the same are that they are both affected by the same business cycle. That is, a slowdown in Germany would negatively impact Greece's ability to increase its exports, whereas the crisis in Greece contributes to the general crisis which is having negative business cycle implications in Germany as well. I think we're beginning to see evidence that stagnation and disinflation are becoming region-wide.

President Barack Obama has failed to follow through on campaign finance reform promises, allies say, despite pledges he made during his reelection campaign to stop the influence of money in politics.

In a joint letter to Obama Monday, seven reform groups said they have a “deep concern about the nation’s corrupt campaign finance system and about your failure, to date, as president to provide meaningful leadership or take effective action to solve this fundamental problem facing our democracy,” The Washington Post reported.

For one, all five members of the Federal Election Commission, the agency responsible for enforcing the country’s campaign finance laws, are currently serving past the formal expiration of their terms. A sixth seat is vacant and the president hasn’t made a nomination to the FEC in more than three years.

http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/obama-campaign-finance-reform/2013/04/30/id/502010

I watched a small portion of the debate and agree with the analyses above.

I'm probably in the minority as a Democrat that doesn't give Clinton a pass for his sex scandal. I think it was a mistake and a pretty serious one at that (exhibit A: the impact on the Al Gore 2000 campaign). Not because I care what Bill does in his personal life, that's between him and his family and shouldn't be a public matter.

Rather, it's because as a public official people's opinions of you are shaped by their perceptions of your character, and part of your job is to maintain that character. It's similar to how some celebrities carefully manage their public personas. Their career is built on the basis of their fame and how people perceive them, so what would be a purely personal matter for most people becomes a professional matter for them. For politicians, it's very similar. How people perceive you is part of the job.

I make this argument carefully because even acknowledging this, I think that if a politician does something in their personal life that isn't really blameworthy, it's still not their fault even if a segment of the population chooses to blame them negatively for it. For instance, let's say a politician was caught admitting to being an atheist, or smoking marijuana. In that case, I'd still defend the politician, because I think society should change to become more accepting of these things.

However, when it comes to cheating, I think people rightly see this as a negative. When people saying Democrats aren't the party of family values, it doesn't mean that Democrats think there's nothing wrong with infidelity. It means Democrats are more accepting of non-traditional family structures, like same-sex couples, divorcees, and single parents. We still think that if you make a vow, it's bad on a personal level to go against it. It's legitimately bad personal flaws like this that I think become part of a politician's job description as a public vote-getter whose effectiveness is dependent in part on his or her popularity.

I'd love to see him, Hillary, and Kirsten Gillibrand all make a go for it.

It's April 29, 2013.