The Dish

A reader writes:

Cao punted too. Please don't forget that his predecessor was Dollar Bill Jefferson. This is a safe Democratic seat unless the Democrat on the ticket is so pathetically corrupt it is over the top for even SE Louisiana residents. He was. Cao was the first Republican I had voted for in years. With his vote yesterday, he just radically improved his chances or re-election. 

Another writes:

What lovely sentiments expressed by Rep. Cao!  Only one problem: he voted against the bill before he voted for it. I followed the voting last night, and Rep. Cao changed his vote in the last seconds when the 218 majority had been reached and before the vote period was closed. But why quibble. The health care bill was passed; who cares about collapsing scruples.

A little clarification of why Cao changed his vote:

Rep. Joseph Cao (R-La), appearing on CNN, said that he cast his vote in favor of reform only after an amendment greatly restricting the coverage of abortions was allowed to come to a vote. Once that hurdle was clear, Cao said, "I called the White House and said I could possibly support the bill."

Another country prepares to legalize marriage equality, making the entire Iberian peninsula a vanguard for civil rights. It's especially encouraging to see another Catholic country bucking the reactionary Vatican.

Tom Ricks is getting antsy:

No matter what the president decides, I'll come away worried by his handling of the process. What can you do in 10 weeks than you can't do in four? I don't think he and the people around him understand the costs of the Big Dither of 2009 — in the trust of Afghans, in the support of Americans, in the confidence of other nations…I am still an Obama fan, though less than I was 90 days ago. I am still glad he is president, and I'll take him over Bush any day. Biden may be a wanker, but he isn't Cheney. I just hope Obama gives a great speech explaining his approach and brings along the American people with him. 

A reader writes:

In your post on Sarah Palin and amniocentesis, you wonder why she would risk having the results confirmed by amnio when she already had a diagnosis. The nuchal translucency test, where they measure neck thickness via ultrasound, is only a screening test. One cannot conclusively diagnose Down syndrome via ultrasound. So if one wants a diagnosis, one would follow up a suggestive ultrasound with an amnio or CVS (chorionic villius smpling).

The nuchal translucency test is given at 11-13 weeks. She said the diagnosis was confirmed a few days later. But amnios are given at 16 weeks – not a few days after the nuchal translucency test. Presumably she had a CVS, which can confirm the diagnosis, and can be done earlier than an amnio. However, it is much riskier to the fetus than an amnio (miscarriages occur in around 1 in 100 to 1 in 200 cases with CVS, versus around 1 in 1,600 with amniocentesis). Perhaps she did not want to admit that she had a CVS, since it is riskier.

Also, if she did wait until after an amnio to tell her husband, that means she must have been over 16 weeks pregnant. That's pretty far along in the pregnancy not to share with anyone.

She didn't tell her staff until she was seven months pregnant. The first reference to an amnio was in People magazine. Maybe it was shorthand for CVS.

A reader writes:

The university teacher writing about young couples getting married solely to have sex offers a perfect example of how, over time, a practical religious requirement can morph into fundamentalist law.  In societies without reliable birth control, for example, the religious requirement that sex should only take place within marriage helped ensure that children could be brought up within the security of a recognized social unit, the family.  People still had sex outside of marriage of course, and children have always been born out of wedlock, but the taboo at least helped to curb the practice.

But in an age where the danger of children born out of wedlock has been greatly diminished by advancements in birth control, the idea that marriage in and of itself is a vehicle for sex is outmoded.  To demand kids not to have sex before getting married, while refusing to educate them on birth control and safe sex, leads to the very problems the original religious tenet tried to prevent: unwanted pregnancies and parent-less children.

A reader writes:

If you think of Palin as a politician trying to build a movement, it's indeed peculiar that she wouldn't want any video or audio coverage of an address that was, reportedly, delivered well and warmly received. But if you think of that address as content she wishes to sell at paid appearances, the restrictions make perfect sense. She wants to be paid to deliver this speech again and again, just as a movie distributor wants to charge numerous audiences to watch its film. If people see it online, they're less likely to pay to see it in person, and there will be some who decide they don't like it enough to pay for it.

A reader writes:

One thing you've done recently on your blog that has irritated me is run letters from readers claiming that "the GOP has been crazy all along" and alleging that the Gingrich Revolution of 1994 had the same incoherent rage as the present GOP, even going so far as to slander the Contract with America.

This is absurd. The Republican revolution in 1994 was far more positive, far more focused and far more reasonable.  The contract focused them around spending reduction, welfare reform and ethics reform.  There was no mention of affirmative action, immigration, abortion, gays or any of the other dog whistle issues currently driving the GOP.  Even Rush Limbaugh — trust me on this — was smart and focused in his criticism of Clinton.  He was a joy to hear then; he's

unbearable now. 

The buildup to the 1994 mid-terms was, for me and many Republicans, a time of optimism and excitement; the buildup now is one of fear and loathing.  There is simply no comparison between 1993 and 2009.

The shame of the current state of the GOP is that they are the festering ruin of the good ideas that prevailed in the mid-90's — ideas reduced to ideology; thought reduced to dogma.

And dogma now reduced to paranoid and hateful bile. My reader is right about the Contract With America. It was specific; it was constructive; and it was not a Christianist screed. What my other readers were referring to, I suspect, is the fringe attack on the Clintons, the Vince Foster, drug-running in Arkansas, and on an on – the kind of stuff David Brock was hired to disseminate.

Now, it seems, that's all that Republicanism is. Which is why, mercifully, there are fewer and fewer people in the party.

Details:

Al-Attiya said Sunday the parliament reached a formula for the election law that was accepted by all the blocs. Hill told CNN a vote will be held in Kirkuk, but that the election law will not solve the issue. "Kirkuk will be solved by a political process which involves the good offices of the U.N.," Hill said. Another key dispute holding up the law has involved lists to be used on election day. Politicians disagree over whether to use open lists that name candidates or closed lists that name just their parties. The law used in the 2005 election calls for a closed list. The law that passed Sunday calls for open lists. Al-Maliki called the use of open lists part of the "historic victory."

A reader writes:

The reason elite opinion makers are reticent to too strongly overplay the religion card with Nidal Hasan, in a way they maybe weren't as reticent to do with George Tiller, is because Islam is a minority faith and many of its practitioners might well be subject to retaliatory violence in the wake of Fort Hood.  To "apply the same standard of inquiry and criticism to all religions" omits the important fact that there are a great many people in this country who would NOT apply the same standard to Hasan as they applied to George Tiller.  They might say that Tiller was a bad apple in an otherwise good faith, while simultaneously saying Hasan is the apple that proves the badness of the whole batch.  To pretend otherwise is obvious and repugnant sophistry.