He is married to the former Erma Ora James, his high school sweetheart and a coal miner's daughter. They are the parents of two daughters, Mrs. Mohammad (Mona Byrd) Fatemi and Mrs. Jon (Marjorie Byrd) Moore. Senator and Mrs. Byrd have been blessed with six grandchildren -- Erik, Darius, and Fredrik Fatemi; Michael (deceased), Mona, and Mary Anne Moore -- and four great-granddaughters: Caroline Byrd Fatemi and Kathryn James Fatemi; Emma James Clarkson and Hannah Byrd Clarkson. In February 2004, Senator and Mrs. Byrd welcomed their first great-grandson, Michael Yoo Fatemi.

I am gay and conservative. I am disinterested in the gay marriage cause, both in the sense of bored and distanced. I am not opposed but I agree with my Senator, the earnest Santorum, marriage is for the protection of children.
In fact, consistent with his and Dr. Dobson's position, I would wish to see its state mandated protections denied to all childless couples and reserved only for those who do breed or rear whether they are heterosexual or gay. I understand the desirability of queer ratification and I think state recognized contracts which enumerate a couple's privileges and benefits could be the acceptable alternative for same sex pairings. However I do not think that the state should be obliged to afford life sustaining support benefits to such childless couples as are automatically granted to married couples (health insurance and social security for example) in the interest of preserving the viability of surviving family if the breadwinner dies.

Put another way, the administration has two Iran policies, and the result has been a mix of good and bad. Kerry, by contrast, boasts a single, coherent, and--to judge by the description of Teheran's activities in yesterday's report--utterly delusional Iran policy. Now, if only the Bush team could sort out its own, it might have an opportunity to draw a meaningful distinction.

RS: I'm interested that you expressed a cautious admiration for [the Bush administration's] political skill. Any other places where you looked and said, "Boy, that's good"?

Clinton: Well, no. I would say, though -- you know, one of the great things in politics that you have to know is when not to play a card -- because you might win a hand and lose the match. And that's the mistake, I think, they made in 2002. President Bush would have been far better off in his reelection if he'd let the natural rhythm of 2002 unfold and let the Democrats pick up a few seats. We would have held the Senate and maybe increased our margin by one or two; the House would be very close. But it would have compelled him to take a more moderate position.

[W]hat alienated Republicans from federalism? It's not simple hypocrisy. True, their sympathy for states' rights was partly the product of a historical accident. From the New Deal onward, state governments were generally less activist than the federal government, where the legislature was under almost unbroken Democratic control for half a century. So, conservatives preferred to keep decision-making in places where they could prevail. But their fondness for states' rights also stemmed from conservatives' sincere distrust of government power and their belief that one crucial way to constrain it was to diffuse it among 50 capitals instead of channeling it all into one.
That perspective lost much of its appeal once the GOP found it could not only elect presidents with reasonable consistency but also dominate Congress as well. Virtue is harder to practice once temptation is beckoning.

The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service said it could find no precedent for Congress passing a law to limit federal courts from ruling on the constitutionality of another law, although Democrats said opponents of civil rights legislation tried to do the same thing.

The group said its investigator also obtained eyewitness testimony about employees "ripping birds' beaks off, spray-painting their faces, twisting their heads off, spitting tobacco into their mouths and eyes, and breaking them in half -- all while the birds are still alive."

Thirty years ago in the small West Virginia town where my father grew up, I participated in what was billed as a "cakewalk." The contestants simply walked around in a circle. One person standing just outside this circle was blindfolded and held a broom. At his whim he let the broom fall across the path of the circling contestants. If the broom fell behind you, you won the cake. Thus I have always assumed that a "cakewalk" referred to something accomplished by blind luck, without any element of skill. Perhaps this Appalachian contest, helps explain the etymology of the first definition of "cakewalk" provided by your reader.

The government source said the Archives employees were deferential toward Berger, given his prominence, but were worried when he returned to view more documents on Oct. 2. They devised a coding system and marked the documents they knew Berger was interested in canvassing, and watched him carefully. They knew he was interested in all the versions of the millennium review, some of which bore handwritten notes from Clinton-era officials who had reviewed them. At one point an Archives employee even handed Berger a coded draft and asked whether he was sure he had seen it.
At the end of the day, Archives employees determined that that draft and all four or five other versions of the millennium memo had disappeared from the files, this source said.

He has reinvigorated centrism in Britain, as the DLC and similar organisations did for the United States. Again like his transatlantic partner [Clinton], Blair's mark was to make many of the economic reforms of Thatcherism palatable to the left. As a result, the British economy has in our lives never been stronger. Whereas a quarter-century ago it had fallen past the Federal Republic of Germany and France, and was about to fall past Italy as well, it is now closing in on Germany for the European crown, and its per capita GDP mark it as the second richest country in Europe past Luxembourg.

In a study of 33 HIV+ couples who engaged in frequent, unprotected sex, researchers at the Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology in San Francisco found no evidence of superinfection, the sequential acquisition of multiple HIV variants.
HIV is a highly mutable virus encompassing two quite different types around the world, HIV-1 and HIV-2. Within those types there are variations known as "subclades" that are typically subdivided further into genetically differentiated strains.
The epidemic in the U.S. consists almost entirely of a single subclade, HIV-1B, while HIV epidemics in other parts of the world involve a mix of subclades. In the study, researchers investigated potential superinfection involving variations within HIV-1B.
In 28 of the 33 couples, each participant was infected with a strain of HIV-1B that was genetically different than that of the person's partner, and the 28 couples were particularly relevant for these preliminary results.

Gay marriage is not the only cause of rising out-of-wedlock birthrates. I never said it was and it doesn't take a demographer to realize that lots of factors contribute to husbandless women having babies.

a group of five scholars in the Netherlands issued a letter addressed to "parliaments of the world debating the issue of same-sex marriage." The Netherlands was the first country to adopt full-fledged same-sex marriage, and this letter is the first serious indication of Dutch concern about the consequences of that decision.

The Reformatorisch Dagblad is of course a small partisan conservative Christian newspaper, there are just 5 university professors who state their opinion (now what would you say if 5 Berkeley scholars would issue a letter "proving" gay marriage is healthy?) and the facts they try to connect are actually uncorrelated. Yes marriage is in decline in the Netherlands as it has been for decades and the bigger part of that happened long before gay marriage was legalized. In fact, there has been some increase in (straight) marriages lately.
The reason why out of wedlock births are on the increase is because it is simply possible to arrange proper contracts for joint parenthood quite easily without marriage in the Netherlands now and quite a few people like it that way. The insinuation that this results in unstable parenting is preposterous.

[T]he meaning of traditional marriage was transformed every bit as much by the decade-long national movement for gay marriage in Holland as by eventual legal success. That's why the impact of gay marriage on declining Dutch marriage rates and rising out-of-wedlock birthrates begins well before the actual legal changes were instituted.

All this fumbling has left Mr. Obama, the smooth-talking, Harvard-educated law professor from Chicago, looking like the only candidate in a race that may make him the only African-American in the Senate. Voters who don't know him yet surely will after the Democratic National Convention, where he will be keynote speaker. But it would be too bad if Mr. Obama cakewalked into Washington. Not just for Mr. Obama, who would take office with an asterisk ("*ran against incompetents"). Illinois voters deserve to see a capable opponent force him to answer tough questions and defend his positions. In other words, they deserve a nonludicrous race.

1. Something easily accomplished: Winning the race was a cakewalk for her. 2. A 19th-century public entertainment among African Americans in which walkers performing the most accomplished or amusing steps won cakes as prizes. 1. A strutting dance, often performed in minstrel shows. 2. The music for this dance.

Mr. Bush noted: "The enemy declared war on us. Nobody wants to be the war president. I want to be the peace president. The next four years will be peaceful years." He repeated the words "peace" or "peaceful" many times, as he has done increasingly in his recent appearances.

Republicans accused him on Tuesday of stashing the material in his clothing, but Mr. Breuer called that accusation "ridiculous" and politically inspired. He said the documents' removal was accidental.

Mr. Breuer, the lawyer, said Mr. Berger inadvertently put three or four versions of the report on the plots in a leather portfolio he had with him. "He had lots of papers, and the memos got caught up in the portfolio," he said. "It was an accident."
Mr. Berger also put in his jacket and pants pockets handwritten notes that he had made during his review of the documents, Mr. Breuer said.

A government official with knowledge of the probe said Berger removed from archives files all five or six drafts of a critique of the government's response to the millennium terrorism threat, which he said was classified "codeword," the government's highest level of document security.

Texas law allows for the sale of sexual toys as long as they are billed as novelties. But when a person markets the items in a direct manner that shows how they are used in sex, it is considered criminal obscenity.

Let's compare two important statements—Bush’s famous 16 words, and Wilson’s amazing new admission:

BUSH: The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.

WILSON: I never claimed to have "debunked" the allegation that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa.

Finally! This is what we've always told you — Wilson had no way of knowing if the 16-word statement was right or wrong. He had no way to debunk it! But throughout his thrilling and best-selling book, he calls this statement a "lie-lie-lie-lie," over and over and over again. But then, grinding overstatement like that has been the problem with Wilson all along (as the three senators correctly note). And now, alas, Dems will start to pay a price for investing so much in his presentations.

I will have to soldier on, and draw what comfort I can from a recent exchange with an ex-boyfriend who, as we reminisced about our relationship said wistfully, "You were the best girlfriend in the world. You let me bring curry home from the pub every night and I could fart as much as I liked." I'm putting it in my next personal ad.

The blog seems to have it partially wrong while the reader letter is partially right. Bush is trying to cut in Kerry's Catholic base around Cleveland. The problem is that he risks further alienating liberal and moderate Republicans as well as Independents in the Cleveland suburbs. Running an abortion ad is high stakes poker because most campaigns view the risk as greater than the reward. Also the conventional wisdom says that the loser tends to be the one who brings it up. Bush is obviously convinced that his economic message isn't viable in the area and has therefore resorted to his nuclear daisy-cutter. This is about fear not opportunity. Bush has plenty of wedge issues working against Kerry among traditional Catholics without dropping the a-word.
Another thing to consider is the choice of the medium. 60 Minutes? Why would you broadcast this message to such a wide audience? Granted the audience does tend to skew older, but why run the risk when you can target the message more precisely to a more narror audience and cheaper as well?
Finally the blog does contain one piece of wisdom explaining why. "Because according to Voinovich, the Bush administration has not been doing enough to stop Ohio from "bleeding jobs." That's a fairly damning source. Even if the recovery numbers are there, Voinovich clearly doesn't want to be on the wrong side of the perception.