ECHIDNE OF THE SNAKES

It's an odd cultural inversion.

The French first lady, the one in a role where wives traditionally ignored and overlooked their husbands' peccadilloes for the greater gain of keeping their marriages intact and running the Élysée Palace, has fled her gilded perch, acting all-American and brimming over with feelings and feminist impulses.

The former American first lady, the one who's supposed to be brimming over with feminist impulses, has ignored and overlooked her husband's peccadilloes for the greater gain of keeping her marriage intact, as she tries to return to the gilded perch and run the White House.

Cécilia Sarkozy acts so American, while Hillary Clinton acts so French.

Hillary recently told an interviewer that they should talk like "two girlfriends," and last week her campaign theme was: "Women Changing America." She returns to Wellesley tomorrow to launch Hillblazers, a bid to attract young Hillarys to the campaign. She will be back in the setting of her 1969 feminist triumph as the commencement speaker who described her class's desire for a "more immediate, ecstatic and penetrating mode of living" and who spoke truth to power, chastising Edward Brooke for being out of touch.

Hillary doesn't speak truth to power any more. Now that Mark Penn believes women can carry her to victory, Hillary speaks girlfriend to girlfriend.

That tack, Caitlin Flanagan writes in The Atlantic, would only work if she were "willing to let us women in on the big, underlying struggle of her life that is front and center in our understanding of who she is as a woman. Her husband's sexual behavior, quite apart from the private pain that it has caused her, has also sullied her deepest — and most womanly — ideals and convictions, for the Clintons' political partnership has demanded that she defend actions she knows to be indefensible. To call her husband a philanderer is almost to whitewash him, for he's used women far less sophisticated, educated and powerful than he — women particularly susceptible to the rake's characteristic blend of cajolery and deceit — for his sexual gratification.

"In glossing over her husband's actions and abetting his efforts to squirm away from the scrutiny and judgment they provoke, Hillary has too often lapsed into her customary hauteur and self-righteousness and added to the pain delivered upon these women."

But maybe the qualities that many find off-putting in Hillary — her opportunism, her triangulation, her ethical corner-cutting, her shifting convictions from pro-war to anti-war, her secrecy, her ruthlessness — are the same ones that make people willing to vote for a woman.

Of course, exposing one's genitalia unbidden is not just a crime only when done to children; it's a criminal act to expose oneself to adults, too. I'm reminded of Eugene Volokh's ridiculous argument that the reason we criminalize touching a woman's breast or genitals against her will, as opposed to her shoulder, is because it might sexually arouse her. I noted in my response:

I suspect nearly everyone is familiar with the method of conveying to children what is appropriate and inappropriate touching by using the example of a bathing suit. No one should ever touch you on the places covered by your bathing suit. For boys, that's a signal that a stranger who tries to touch their genitals or buttocks is doing something wrong. For girls, it's the genitals, buttocks, and breasts. Is Volokh seriously arguing that the reason we impart this information to children is because we're worried about the children becoming sexually aroused? Or even just because we're worried about the pedophile becoming sexually aroused? I suspect not. I suspect he would recognize that there are other issues at play here aside from just sexual arousal—issues about bodily autonomy, trust, safety, emotional health, appropriateness. Which means, then, he's attempting to make the argument that sometime after puberty, women lose their right to not have the same body parts invaded on those principles.

First lady Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner will become Argentina's first elected female president after taking victory in Sunday's election.

A center-leftist senator, she is expected to continue the policies of her husband, President Nestor Kirchner, who has overseen an economic boom following a deep crisis in 2001-02.

Just this past week, Ohio Congressman David Hobson became the latest Republican to announce his exit from the House of Representatives, telling constituents he would step down in 2008 after nine terms.

Two weeks ago, New Mexico Sen. Pete Domenici announced he will give up his seat and will not seek a seventh term.Domenici is one of five Republicans retiring from the Senate in 2008 rather than seeking a new term.Wayne Allard of Colorado, Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, John W. Warner of Virginia and Larry E.Craig of Idaho already have announced their retirements.

Hobson is the 12th GOP House member to announce retirement plans ahead of the 2008 elections, when the Republican Party will be seeking to reclaim the congressional majorities it lost to Democrats in 2006.

"It's the fact that I really believe I have done all I can do in the House, especially about the issue about which I care greatly (immigration)," Tancredo, 61, told the newspaper Sunday night.

Americans also back Democrats when presented with specific plans to deal with these issues: Just over half those surveyed say they favor requiring everyone to buy insurance; barring insurers from turning people down or charging extra for medical reasons; and subsidizing those who can't afford coverage. Those proposals have been offered by Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton and former North Carolina Senator John Edwards.

Almost half of Republicans surveyed say they like the idea of requiring large businesses to either offer insurance to their workers or pay a tax to help cover the costs of those who can't afford it on their own, a plan put forth by Clinton, 59, Edwards, 54, and Illinois Senator Barack Obama, 46. More than seven out of 10 Democrats and more than six out of 10 independents support that approach.

Americans back Democrats' ideas partly because the Republicans haven't been as detailed in their proposals, said Jason Furman, director of the Hamilton Project policy initiative at Brookings Institution, a Washington research group.

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Now he is 76 and I am 51, and writing this piece has brought us closer still. A few weeks ago I sat with my father in the basement of our old house in east Amman and read it aloud to him. I choked and stumbled over many words. He also filled up twice. He said he did not know that the veil had caused me so much suffering. "Perhaps because you have nine children you did not notice," I said. He also said that the piece was accurate. When I finished reading we dried our tears, laughed, and walked out together into the autumn sunshine. The veil is still covering my computer but I feel we are father and daughter at last.

As my friend and colleague John Nichols wrote last week, "Bush's chairman of the Federal Communications Commission has initiated a scheme to radically rewrite media ownership rules so that one corporation can own the daily newspapers, the weekly 'alternative' newspaper, the city magazine, suburban publications, the eight largest radio stations, the dominant broadcast and cable television stations, popular internet news and calendar sites, billboards and concert halls in even the largest American city."

"The FCC should not rush forward and repeat mistakes of the past. We applaud this Commission for its efforts to include the public through a series of hearings around the country," wrote Sens. Lott and Dorgan. "However, we understand there have been a series of problems with the process, including the selection of study authors, the peer review and the brief length of the studies comment period, which give us additional cause for concern."

A number of the Congress members who responded to Chairman Martin's proposed December 18th vote on media ownership rules referred to the crisis of credibility at the FCC. With recent reports of flawed research, agency leaks, and a track record of ignoring public input, policy makers agree that the FCC has a long way to go before they can make reasonable and responsible changes to media ownership rules.

Seriously. What am I missing here? Why are people defending fatness?

"Susan Sontag's Illness as Metaphor was the first to point out the accusatory side of the metaphors of empowerment that seek to enlist the patient's will to resist disease. It is largely as a result of her work that the how-to health books avoid the blame-ridden term 'cancer personality' and speak more soothingly of 'disease-producing lifestyles.' . . . Sontag's new book AIDS and Its Metaphors extends her critique of cancer metaphors to the metaphors of dread surrounding the AIDS virus. Taken together, the two essays are an exemplary demonstration of the power of the intellect in the face of the lethal metaphors of fear." --Michael Ignatieff, The New Republic

Speaking before a gathering of Christian conservative voters, GOP presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee said legalized abortion in the United States was a holocaust.

"Sometimes we talk about why we're importing so many people in our workforce," the former Arkansas governor said. "It might be for the last 35 years, we have aborted more than a million people who would have been in our workforce had we not had the holocaust of liberalized abortion under a flawed Supreme Court ruling in 1973."

Millions of college students are suddenly facing sharply higher prices for birth control, prompting concerns among health officials that some will shift to less preferred contraceptives or stop using them altogether.

Prices for oral contraceptives, or birth control pills, are doubling and tripling at student health centers, the result of a complex change in the Medicaid rebate law that essentially ends an incentive for drug companies to provide deep discounts to colleges.

"It's a tremendous problem for our students because not every student has a platinum card," said Hugh Jessop, executive director of the health center at Indiana University.

There, he said, women are paying about $22 per month for prescriptions that cost $10 a few months ago. "Some of our students have two jobs, have children," Jessop said. "To increase this by 100 percent or more overnight, which is what happened, is a huge shock to them and to their system."

This is a terrible situation. My boyfriend and I are madly in love and hope to spend our lives together, it's affecting us both. He said he will help me pay but he already pays for so much and we're both poor students. Birth control pills are so ridiculously cheap to make, it's almost criminal what they're doing. Meanwhile Viagra is still covered by insurance. What sort of message are they sending? This makes women more powerless over their lives, I wouldn't be surprised if there will be a huge spike in STDs and a decrease in women graduating college due to pregnancy.

A House Democrat accused Republicans Thursday of sending troops to Iraq to "get their heads blown off for the president's amusement."

The outburst from Rep. Pete Stark as the House debated a children's health bill drew immediate condemnation from Republicans who demanded he retract it.

Instead Stark, known for his liberal views and volatile temperament, issued a statement saying Republicans should apologize for voting against an expansion of children's health care.

Rep. Steve King (R-IA) put a sign on the floor of the House chamber today: "SCHIP: Socialized Clinton-style Hillarycare for Illegals and their Parents." [Non-citizens are not eligible for SCHIP.] (source)

Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA) said, from the floor, "You (Republicans) don't have money to fund the war or children. But you're going to spend it to blow up innocent people if we can get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the president's amusement." [Since 2001, Congress has had to borrow money to fund its programs.]

I understand Mukasey is supposed to be a reasonably good guy, by comparison with the run of Bush appointees. But if Mukasey won't say that waterboarding is torture and claims that the President has some undefined power to violate statute law — even criminal laws, such as the ban on torture and other war crimes — under his "Article II powers," then why should the Senate Judiciary Committee even bring his nomination to a vote? If he says he hasn't read the latest torture memos or decided whether waterboarding is torture, Sen. Leahy ought to tell him to read the memos and observe a waterboarding session and come back when he's done his homework.

Don't people see that this is what Cheney is doing? He is setting precedent after precedent for totalist, secret executive power. And with each precedent for unchecked, uncontrollable executive power - including the power to detain and torture within the United States - the America we have known is being surrendered. This is the other war - a constitutional war at home against American liberty and the Constitution - as dangerous in a different way as Islamism. One attacks our freedom from the outside; the other hollows out our freedom from within. The fight against both is the calling of the time.

Giving birth can be fatal for women in many countries of the world.

Around half a million women die annually before, during or shortly after giving birth - and almost all of these deaths occur in developing countries.

Campaigners argue that these deaths are both preventable and have repercussions that echo far beyond the woman's immediate family and community.

"We know exactly what needs to be done to save women's lives," the chief of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) Thoraya Obaid told the BBC News website.

And yet, since 1990, the level of maternal mortality has decreased by less than 1% per year, far from enough to reach an internationally agreed goal of a 75% reduction by 2015.

The leading killers during pregnancy or childbirth include massive blood loss, high blood pressure, an unsafe abortion, an untreated infection and obstructed labour - where the woman's body is too small for the baby to pass through the birth canal.

But the reasons why these issues have not been tackled are political, rather than medical.

If a mother is ill or dies, the baby is less likely to survive and her other children less likely to be healthy and educated.

Supporters of a bill to provide health insurance for 10 million children failed this afternoon, as expected, to muster enough support in the House to override President Bush's veto.

The vote to override the veto was 273 to 156, or 13 votes short of the necessary two-thirds majority of those present and voting; the bill was originally approved by a 265 to 159 vote on Sept. 25.

The main suspense before today's vote was over how many Republicans would side against President Bush. Forty-four House Republicans voted for the bill today, compared with 45 on Sept. 25.

The White House said President Bush was pleased with today's result. "As it is clear that this legislation lacks sufficient support to become law, now is the time for Congress to stop playing politics and to join the president in finding common ground to reauthorize this vital program," said Dana Perino, Mr. Bush's spokeswoman.

Democrats had anticipated defeat, and Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Senate majority leader, and Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, immediately offered angry comments.

SCHIP is described as serving "poor children" or children of "the working poor." Everyone agrees that it is for "low-income" people. Under the bill that Democrats hope to pass over the president's veto tomorrow, states could extend eligibility to households earning $61,950. But America's median household income is $48,201. How can people above the median income be eligible for a program serving lower-income people?

A Planned Parenthood clinic was charged Wednesday with providing unlawful abortions and other crimes by a county prosecutor who had engaged in a high-profile battle with the clinic when he was Kansas attorney general.

Johnson County District Attorney Phill Kline charged the Overland Park, Kan., clinic with 107 counts, 23 of them felonies. Besides 29 misdemeanor counts of providing unlawful late-term abortions, the clinic is charged with multiple counts of making a false writing, failure to maintain records and failure to determine viability.

Case documents have been sealed, according to a court order. The first hearing is set for Nov. 16.

Kline's office did not immediately comment on the charges.

"My Sweet Lord," an anatomically correct milk chocolate sculpture of Jesus Christ that infuriated Catholics before its April unveiling was canceled, returns Oct. 27 to a Chelsea art gallery, its creator said Tuesday.

This time, artist Cosimo Cavallaro said he expects the public exhibit to proceed without a problem.

"There is nothing offensive about this," Cavallaro said of his controversial confectionary work. "If my intentions were to offend, if I did do something wrong, I wouldn't be doing this. But I didn't do anything wrong."

Cavallaro, who received death threats before the April show was canceled, said the vast majority of his mail was in support of his six-foot piece.

"I got a lot of positive mail from people in the Catholic Church, people studying theology, people in monasteries — all kinds of letters and e-mails of support," he said.

The sculpture is actually a new version of "My Sweet Lord," created with 200 pounds of chocolate over three days. The original was stored in a Brooklyn facility where mice nibbled away at its hands, ears, nose and feet, forcing Cavallaro to toss the original and recast the sculpture.

While USAction and a labyrinthine maze of leftist activist groups prepare to rally around images of Tampa Bay's Most Photogenic Baby holding up a crayon sign that says "Don't Veto Me," Dara and Brian Wilkerson are real poster children — for irresponsible decisions.

On the conference call, Dara admitted to me that she and Brian had been talking about having children since before they were married. She further admitted that after they were married she voluntarily left a job at a country club that had good health insurance, because the situation was "unmanageable." From there she took a job at a restaurant with no health insurance, and the couple went on to have a baby anyway, presuming that others would pay for it and certainly long before they knew their daughter would have a heart defect that probably cost the gross national product of Burkina Faso to fix. But not knowing about future health problems is the reason we have insurance in the first place.

All across the industrialized world, birthrates are falling - in Western Europe, in Canada and in many regions of the United States. People are marrying later and having fewer kids. But spread around this country, and concentrated in certain areas, the natalists defy these trends.

They are having three, four or more kids. Their personal identity is defined by parenthood. They are more spiritually, emotionally and physically invested in their homes than in any other sphere of life, having concluded that parenthood is the most enriching and elevating thing they can do. Very often they have sacrificed pleasures like sophisticated movies, restaurant dining and foreign travel, let alone competitive careers and disposable income, for the sake of their parental calling

Retired school teacher Kathleen Casey-Kirschling on Monday became the first ripple in a "silver tsunami" of retiring baby boomers applying for pension benefits that threatens to overwhelm U.S. government finances.

The stake-out was almost comical in its absurdity: On April 4, 2007, undercover police counted how many times Eric Montanez, a 22-year-old volunteer with Food Not Bombs, dipped a serving ladle into a pot and handed stew to hungry people.

Once Montanez had dished up 30 bowls, the police moved in, collecting a vial of the stew for evidence as they arrested him for violating an Orlando, Fla., city ordinance: feeding a large group. Two days into his trial yesterday, Montanez was acquitted by a jury of the misdemeanor charge, but was cautioned to obey the law.

As activists celebrate the verdict, the Orlando Police Department has said it will continue to ordinance, making the fight for the free flow of food in the city far from over.

“It’s essentially saying that homeless people are not worthy of attention or respect and they’re nothing more than pigeons who should be fed some place else so they’re not a bother to mainstream society,” says FNB Co-founder Keith McHenry.

McHenry says feeding the homeless is part of a larger social justice agenda.

“There’s a broader principle in America that we’re trying to address, and that is, food is a human right, not to be relegated to being a commodity,” McHenry says. “People who are hungry in this country deserve good, nutritious food without having to go through a lot of bureaucratic hurdles to get that food, and without having to be demeaned.”

In America, the political left and political right have conspired to create a culture and politics of victimization, and all the benefits of resentment and cynicism have accrued to the right. That's because resentment and apocalypse are weapons that can be used only to advance a politics of resentment and apocalypse. They are the weapons of the reactionary and the conservative — of people who fear and resist the future. Just as environmentalists believe they can create a great ecological politics out of apocalypse, liberals believe they can create a great progressive politics out of resentment; they cannot. Grievance and victimization make us smaller and less generous and can thus serve only reactionaries and conservatives.

Kellie Joseph and her 6 children lost their home to Katrina. They had nearly completed rebuilding when someone abandoned a stolen car in their backyard and lit it aflame to destroy evidence. The flames engulfed the home.

A group of Tulane University medical students who heard of this devastating news decided to help the family rebuild again and started a website named Hope in Grace for what is called *Project: Bring Miracle*.

Recently the students contacted me. The online donation effort has reached a standstill after some initial local media attention. It is their hope to reach a wider audience through the Internet. They are asking for online donations to a rebuilding fund specifically restricted for use only in reconstruction.

Summary: On his radio show, while discussing an incident in which a student shot four people at his Cleveland high school before killing himself, John Gibson asserted that "I know the shooter was white. I knew it as soon as he shot himself. Hip-hoppers don't do that. They shoot and move on to shoot again."

OMG the Heidi Montag issue of Cosmo Girl! keeps giving, like a full heaving bosom full of saline and strawberry Quik. And like, where would a Heidi Montag-lionizing issue be without a story on breast implants? Specifically, how boys your age really feel about them. The magazine finds seven guys to dish. "I consider myself a boob guy over a butt guy, so obviously I'd prefer bigger boobs," says 22-year-old Jay of Syracuse. But Brad, 19, of Philadelphia, feels differently! "I'd definitely date a girl with fake breasts," he says, "as long as they weren't too big." Elaborates Joe, 20, of Hawthorne, N.J.: silicone knockers that are "proportional" are okay, but only if they "help her" to "hold herself with just the right amount of self-confidence." Which is to say, not too much. Because there are all sorts of little reasons he might dump you anyway: among them, "Period Talk."

Last month on Craigslist.com, someone who described herself as a "spectacularly beautiful" 25-year-old placed a personal ad seeking a husband who made at least $500,000 a year, because "$250,000 won't get me to Central Park West."

As her post hit the blogs, it received a scathing response from a man who said he fit her description and told her that her proposition was a bad business deal. "In economic terms, you are a depreciating asset and I am an earning asset," he wrote, because "your looks will fade and my money will likely continue into perpetuity."

Last week, this exchange spilled over into the e-mail world, where the it turned into a popular item to send to friends as a joke. The difference between this and other outrageous share-mail messages, however, was that instead of remaining anonymous, its ostensible author signed his name and the company where he worked, which happened to be the investment banking division of JPMorgan Chase.

This detail, which may have provoked nearly as much mirth as the contents of the exchange, made the correspondence either more or less credible. Would someone with a big job at a prestigious company really have linked his name to a message that read in part: "You're 25 now and will likely stay pretty hot for the next 5 years, but less so each year. Then the fade begins in earnest. By 35 stick a fork in you!"

There have been moments when the fight between Congressional Democrats and President Bush over the State Children's Health Insurance Program seemed to devolve into a shouting match about who loves children more.

So when Democrats enlisted 12-year-old Graeme Frost, who along with a younger sister relied on the program for treatment of severe brain injuries suffered in a car crash, to give the response to Mr. Bush's weekly radio address on Sept. 29, Republican opponents quickly accused them of exploiting the boy to score political points.

Then, they wasted little time in going after him to score their own.

In recent days, Graeme and his family have been attacked by conservative bloggers and other critics of the Democrats' plan to expand the insurance program, known as S-chip. They scrutinized the family's income and assets — even alleged the counters in their kitchen to be granite — and declared that the Frosts did not seem needy enough for government benefits.

But what on the surface appears to be yet another partisan feud, all the nastier because a child is at the center of it, actually cuts to the most substantive debate around S-chip. Democrats say it is crucially needed to help the working poor — Medicaid already helps the impoverished — but many Republicans say it now helps too many people with the means to help themselves.

The feud also illustrates what can happen when politicians showcase real people to make a point, a popular but often perilous technique. And in this case, the discourse has been anything but polite.

The critics accused Graeme's father, Halsey, a self-employed woodworker, of choosing not to provide insurance for his family of six, even though he owned his own business. They pointed out that Graeme attends an expensive private school. And they asserted that the family's home had undergone extensive remodeling, and that its market value could exceed $400,000.

One critic, in an e-mail message to Graeme's mother, Bonnie, warned: "Lie down with dogs, and expect to get fleas." As it turns out, the Frosts say, Graeme attends the private school on scholarship. The business that the critics said Mr. Frost owned was dissolved in 1999. The family's home, in the modest Butchers Hill neighborhood of Baltimore, was bought for $55,000 in 1990 and is now worth about $260,000, according to public records. And, for the record, the Frosts say, their kitchen counters are concrete.

"Full recognition of the first great challenge of the twenty-first century came with the attacks of September 11, 2001, even though Islamist terrorists had begun their assault on world order decades before. Confronted with an act of war on American soil, our old assumptions about conflict between nation-states fell away. Civilization itself, and the international system, had come under attack by a ruthless and radical Islamist enemy."

"They do not seem to get the fact that there are people, terrorists in this world, really dangerous people that want to come here and kill us. That in fact they did come here and kill us twice and they got away with it because we were on defense because we weren't alert enough to the dangers and the risks."

"The new generation of challenges we face today includes challenges to our national security as well. Violent Jihadists are intent on replacing moderate Muslim governments with a Caliphate or Imam. And they seek the collapse of our economy, our government, and our military.... Theirs is a face of evil not seen in the civilized world since the gas chambers of Hitler's horror."

We're not having the kind of conversations we need to have on a range of issues, particularly the kind of threat we're facing, on a global scale from radical Muslim fundamentalists who want to bring our nation to its knees and destroy our way of life.

The Washington Post reported yesterday that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told private equity funds that they need not worry about Congress taking away their special tax breaks this year.

Just to remind folks, the equity and hedge funds benefit from two special tax breaks. Some funds operate as partnerships that have all the privileges of corporate status, including being publicly traded on stock exchanges, but don't pay any corporate income tax. In addition, fund managers, some of whom are paid hundreds of millions of dollars a year, only pay taxes at the low 15 percent capital gains rate, instead of the 35 percent rate that other high income workers pay. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that these two tax breaks together may cost the government as much as $6 billion a year in lost revenue, almost enough to pay for the S-CHIP expansion now being pushed by Congress.

When I opened The New York Times today, I felt like someone had punched me in the stomach. The headline of the lead story announced that "The Democrats Seem Ready to Extend Wiretap Powers."

What, I asked myself, won't they deny the Bush administration?

I'm hardly naive. I realize that most of them are worried about being viewed as soft on terror and getting re-elected. But they are complicit in creating an authoritarian infrastructure that could one day be used against any and all of us. That, of course,is the long view, which is not the way they think. For them, it's the short-term goal of getting re-elected and damn our democratic traditions.

In 1967, the Wall Street megafirm Cravath, Swaine and Moore pushed its starting salary up to then unheard of sum of $15,000 a year. Many top firms matched it. Soon the large firms had opened up a modest salary gap with the public and nonprofit sectors: by 1972, starting salaries at Manhattan firms were up to $16,000 while the federal government offered its newly minted lawyers $13,300 and Legal Aid of New York paid $12,500. Since then, the salary gap has widened, accelerating more rapidly in the 1980s and '90s. Today, it is not uncommon for top law firms to pay recent grads $100,000 more than public interest employers pay theirs.

María de Jesús González was a practical woman. A very poor single mother, the 28-year-old's home was a shack on a mountain near the town of Ocotal in Nicaragua. She made the best of it. The shack was spotless, the children scrubbed. She earned money by washing clothes in the river and making and selling tortillas.

That was not quite enough to feed her four young children and her elderly mother, so every few months González caught a bus to Managua, the capital, and slaved for a week washing and ironing clothes. The pay was three times better, about £2.60 a day, and by staying with two aunts she cut her costs. She would return to her hamlet with a little nest-egg in her purse. She bought herself one treat - a pair of red shoes - but she would leave them with her family in Managua, as they were no good on the mountain trails she had to go up to get home.

During a visit to Managua in February she felt unwell and visited a hospital. The news was devastating. She was pregnant - and it was ectopic, meaning the foetus was growing outside the womb and not viable. The longer González remained pregnant, the greater the risk of rupture, haemorrhaging and death.

What González did next was - when you understand what life in Nicaragua is like these days - utterly rational. She walked out of the hospital, past the obstetrics and gynaecological ward, past the clinics and pharmacies lining the avenues, packed her bag, kissed her aunts goodbye, and caught a bus back to her village. She summoned two neighbouring women - traditional healers - and requested that they terminate the pregnancy in her shack. Without anaesthetic or proper instruments it was more akin to mutilation than surgery, but González insisted. The haemhorraging was intense, and the agony can only be imagined. It was in vain. Maria died. "We heard there was a lot of blood, a lot of pain," says Esperanza Zeledon, 52, one of the Managua aunts.

González was not stupid and did not want to die. She knew her chance of surviving the butchery was small. But being a practical woman, she recognised it was her only chance, and took it. The story of why it was her only chance is an unfolding drama of religion, politics and power that has made Nicaragua a crucible in the global battle over abortion rights. This central American country has become the third country in the world, after Chile and El Salvador, to criminalise all abortions. It is a blanket ban. There are no exceptions for rape, incest, or life- or health-threatening pregnancies.

González was told at the hospital that any doctor who terminated her pregnancy would face two to three years in jail and she, for consenting, would face one to two years. "Nicaraguan doctors are now afraid of going to trial or jail and losing their licence," says Leonel Arguello, president of the Nicaraguan Society of General Medicine. "Many are thinking that instead of taking the risk, it is better to let a woman die."

When they came home from Iraq, 2,600 members of the Minnesota National Guard had been deployed longer than any other ground combat unit. The tour lasted 22 months and had been extended as part of President Bush's surge.

1st Lt. Jon Anderson said he never expected to come home to this: A government refusing to pay education benefits he says he should have earned under the GI bill.

"It's pretty much a slap in the face," Anderson said. "I think it was a scheme to save money, personally. I think it was a leadership failure by the senior Washington leadership... once again failing the soldiers."

Anderson's orders, and the orders of 1,161 other Minnesota guard members, were written for 729 days.

Had they been written for 730 days, just one day more, the soldiers would receive those benefits to pay for school.

"Which would be allowing the soldiers an extra $500 to $800 a month," Anderson said.

That money would help him pay for his master's degree in public administration. It would help Anderson's fellow platoon leader, John Hobot, pay for a degree in law enforcement.

"I would assume, and I would hope, that when I get back from a deployment of 22 months, my senior leadership in Washington, the leadership that extended us in the first place, would take care of us once we got home," Hobot said.

Both Hobot and Anderson believe the Pentagon deliberately wrote orders for 729 days instead of 730. Now, six of Minnesota's members of the House of Representatives have asked the Secretary of the Army to look into it -- So have Senators Amy Klobuchar and Norm Coleman.

This comes to me from three different producers, so I know it's real: Warner Bros president of production Jeff Robinov has made a new decree that "We are no longer doing movies with women in the lead". This Neanderthal thinking comes after both Jodie Foster's The Brave One (even though she's had big recent hits with Flightplan and Panic Room) and Nicole Kidman's The Invasion (as if three different directors didn't have something to do with the awfulness of the gross receipts) under-performed at the box office recently. "Can you imagine when Gloria Allred gets hold of this? It's going to be like World War III," one producer just told me. (I put in a call to Glo, who comments below.) Of course, Warner Bros has always been male-centric in its movies. But now the official policy as expressly articulated by Robinov is that a male has to be the lead of every pic made. I'm told he doesn't even want to see a script with a woman in the primary position (which now is apparently missionary at WB).

WORKING MOTHERS: WHO'S OPTING OUT?
Tuesday, October 16, 7 p.m., $8 admission
The New School, New York City
Wollman Hall, 65 West 11th Street, 5th floor (enter at 66 West 12th Street)

You've read the articles--and gotten angry at the debate. Are vast numbers of working mothers bolting the career track--or dreaming of doing so? Are elite women betraying feminism by staying home with their children? Or do the Opt-Out stories rely too heavily on anecdotal evidence--while shoving aside actual labor statistics and working families' needs?

JOIN US as some of the KEY THINKERS and CRITICS of the "opt-out" storyline DISCUSS & DEBATE the real state of working motherhood in America today.

Moderated by E.J. Graff, senior researcher, Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism, Brandeis University, collaborator on Getting Even: Why Women Don't Get Paid Like Men and What to Do About It. The panel includes Joan Williams, Distinguished Professor of Law, University of California, Hastings College of the Law, and author of Unbending Gender: Why Family and Work Conflict and What to Do About It; Linda Hirshman, lawyer, professor emeritus Brandeis University and author of Get to Work; Heather Boushey, senior economist, Center for Economic and Policy Research, and co-author of Hardships in America and The Real Story of Working Families; and Ellen Bravo, author of Taking On the Big Boys: Why Feminism Is Good for Families and Business and the Nation.

Today's leading conservatives are Reagan's heirs. If you're poor, if you don't have health insurance, if you're sick — well, they don't think it's a serious issue. In fact, they think it's funny.

On Wednesday, President Bush vetoed legislation that would have expanded S-chip, the State Children's Health Insurance Program, providing health insurance to an estimated 3.8 million children who would otherwise lack coverage.

In anticipation of the veto, William Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard, had this to say: "First of all, whenever I hear anything described as a heartless assault on our children, I tend to think it's a good idea. I'm happy that the president's willing to do something bad for the kids." Heh-heh-heh.

Most conservatives are more careful than Mr. Kristol. They try to preserve the appearance that they really do care about those less fortunate than themselves. But the truth is that they aren't bothered by the fact that almost nine million children in America lack health insurance. They don't think it's a problem.

"I mean, people have access to health care in America," said Mr. Bush in July. "After all, you just go to an emergency room."

"I think [men] should be armed but should not [be allowed to] vote. No, they all have to give up their vote, not just, you know, the man clapping and my trophy husbands. The problem with men voting -- and your Fascists will back me up on this -- is that, you know, men have no capacity to understand how children are birthed and raised. They have a lot of ideas on how to kill them. And when they take these polls, it's always more money on the military, more money on nuclear bombs, more money on guns."

Webb began his rebuttal by complaining that we are running a pointless occupation of Iraq, killing people and spending billions on fraudulent "reconstruction projects" over there. In other words, he talked about national issues that only are national issues because of this country's rash experiment with men's suffrage.

Former President Carter got in a shouting match Wednesday with Sudanese security officials who blocked him from a town in Darfur where he was trying to meet representatives of ethnic African refugees from the ongoing conflict.

The 83-year-old Carter walked into this highly volatile pro-Sudanese government town to meet refugees too frightened to attend a scheduled meeting at a nearby compound.

Carter was able to make it to a school where he met with one tribal representative and was preparing to go further into the town when Sudanese security services interrupted.

"You can't go. It's not on the program!" the local security chief, who only gave his first name as Omar, yelled at Carter, who is in Darfur as part of a delegation of respected international figures known as "The Elders."

"We're going to anyway!" an angry Carter retorted, telling security officers they didn't have the authority to stop him.

As a growing crowd gathered around the former president, Carter's U.S. security detail and his African Union escort tried to ease tensions. Carter later agreed to a compromise in which tribal representatives would be brought to him at another location later in the day.

"I'll tell President Bashir about this," Carter said, referring to Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir

With medical costs skyrocketing, the middle class struggling, and heartless Republicans running the government, what has happened to the percentage of children without health insurance over the past seven years?

Due in large part to the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), the percentage of low-income children in the United States without health coverage has fallen by one-third since SCHIP was created in 1997, despite the erosion of private health coverage over this period. More than 4 million low-income children, most of whom would otherwise be uninsured, are enrolled in SCHIP.

Last week, Rush Limbaugh labeled American service members who support an end to the war in Iraq "phony soldiers."

We're going directly to Congress to take him off the Armed Forces Radio airwaves. Elected officials in Congress have the power to prevent Limbaugh from using taxpayers' money to disrespect and censure the voices of our soldiers.

Join us and hold Rush Limbaugh accountable for his offensive and outrageous comments -- tell your member of Congress to Dump Rush From Armed Forces Radio today!

I asked our readers if they thought more men were engaged online in politics than women, and if so, why.

Many said yes, guessing that perhaps twice as many men as women, maybe even three times as many men are involved, at least on the traditional politics-oriented sites.

As for why, readers offered lots of reasons, including this newsflash: women are just too busy, often with the household chores that men choose to ignore in favor of going on the computer.

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Other thoughts from readers:

* For men, elections are like sports and they love the horse race. C Ray (gender unknown) put it this way: "I think men are more interested in the competitive nature of the election. It's like a sport — who will win or lose, who has the best strategy, who is on offense, who is on defense? Men are interested more in the minutiae of the game." He/she added: "I think women could care less and are more focused on the big picture."

* Men "like to show off more, like to force quasi-muscular opinions more on the unseen multitudes that they think are eager to hear them, want recognition more," wrote another reader.

* Many readers note, sadly, that if a woman makes her opinion known, she opens herself up to abuse, thanks to the anonymity and rancor of the blogosphere. One poster who said she is a woman said she posts under fake male names because women "are routinely attacked." (Along these lines, Jay Rosen, a journalism professor at New York University and a blogger, reminded us about the recent coming out of Digby, a highly respected progressive political blogger whom many had assumed was a man but turned out to be a woman.)

* Abe asked this: "Is it women who aren't interested in politics or politics that isn't interested in women?"

* Men and women communicate differently. Sarah writes: "This is a generalization, of course, but much has been written about how men tend toward more problem-solving and direct point-to-point repartee whereas women like to sit down and discuss more details and come to consensus."

October 1, 2007. Jill Zuckman wants to know about the "age old question", which candidate do you want to have a beer with.

It must be my problem. Watching a feminist I've admired my entire life dissolve into a whingeing puddle in her late 50s is painful. Katha Pollitt's fourth collection of essays is self-indulgent at best: She writes about losing her boyfriend; Web-stalking her ex-boyfriend (a phrase used so often it causes a kind of vertigo as a reader learns to anticipate the free fall of self-hatred and victim mania); yuppies on Manhattan's Upper West Side (apparently sacred ground for poverty-stricken intellectuals); real-estate developers in Connecticut (No! Yes!); and the popularity of plastic surgery. These are just a few of the topics that get Pollitt going. "It's not as if I like being like this," she admits. "People who despair after a certain age are just depressing. We don't have the looks for it, and besides, we make others uncomfortable: what if we're on to something?"

Groaning and moaning from clever, sassy women has become a genre unto itself, the righteous revenge of the liberal, pre-, during- or postmenopausal woman (anyone missing?) in the post-chick-lit age (it is over, isn't it?). Perhaps this heralds the birth of fourth-wave feminism? (Or is it the fifth?) Or maybe it's not something political, but just plain old biblical revenge: God knows women have centuries of wrongs to catch up on. An enraged, educated woman (Vagina dentata intellectualis) with her arsenal of experience, observation, self-deprecation and indignation is a force to be reckoned with, a kind of intellectual Mike Tyson — though, apparently, she is still not as likely to be seduced into bed as the bombshell bimbo, one reason she's so irate. Not only is she entitled to be angry, but it is virtually the bedrock of her independence, and pugnacious prose is her lethal weapon.

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Ultimately, a sharp tongue, a quick wit and ample intellect provide a powerful defense but little consolation for women in search of that phantom that is freedom from men and the vulnerability of love. They can trap the rats — with the impunity feminism ordains — but jailers are in prison too.

Sometimes I think I would like to be word - not a big important word, like "love" or "truth," just a small ordinary word, like "orange" or "inkstain" or "so", a word that people use so often and so unthinkingly that its specialness has all been worn away, like the roughness on a pebble in a creek bed, but that has a solid heft when you pick it up, and if you hold it to the light at just the right angle you can glimpse the spark at its core."

In the months to come, I would look back on this time in my life almost as a kind of out-of-body travel, from which I had returned with nothing but a sense of memory of having been somewhere inexpressibly exciting and far away. It wasn't like a dream, exactly; although it had a dream's strange internal logic. It was like looking through the window of an airplane at night, the way the city below appears so near, yet untouchable behind the glass -- a network of lights, flames, stars.

Besides, I tell myself, there may be a picture buried in there of the view from Beach Park Road - there were quite a few minor painters in this part of Connecticut at one time; it's quite likely that pictures of those very fields exist. Or, if not of that exact view, there may be a picture of another view very much like it, perhaps in Denmark.

Picking up these pieces again in book form, accompanied by other essays about Pollitt's daughter, the Marxist reading group she joined in part to impress her scoundrel boyfriend, and friendships with the women with whom her ex cheated on her, I have a much more intricate reaction than when I first read them. Instead of simply rearing back from them, I wonder: Is there ever a point at which it is a good idea for women, especially intellectual, politically engaged women, to strip off their clothes and caper naked as jaybirds in front of a line of would-be assassins?