You Call This a Civilization?

It's depressing to see how American civilization is becoming more of a contradiction in terms by the day. On Chris Matthews's show this past Sunday, the panelists all agreed that gun control would not be an issue in the 2008 presidential election despite the Virginia Tech shootings. The reason? The NRA is just too powerful. I don't get it. The NRA is an overwhelmingly white organization dominated by men, yet white males are about 30 percent of the U.S. population and dropping at a good clip. Imagine how toothless the NRA would be if more women and minorities actually exercised their right to vote - like NRA members do.

And as if she didn't have enough reason to be appalled by her temporarily adopted home, the BBC's Katty Kay, a panelist on Matthews's show, found Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy's justification for upholding the federal partial-birth abortion ban - the undue psychological trauma it would cause pregnant women who underwent such a procedure and the need to protect them from harm - paternalistic at best, misogynistic at worst. How long will be before Katty Kay asks her bosses at the Beeb for a transfer to a more advanced country - like, say, Saudi Arabia? :-O