Let's talk about replacing GWBush in 2004.

PD - Don't blame me if you can't read. The law reads explicitly of PRECINCTS, not counties. Your bias and willful ignorance is staggering! I expected more of you, but I suppose that was my error. In the end, you're just Tartarin with different plumbing.

Are you arguing that the initial recount of Gore's cherry-picked three PRECINCTS revealed an "error likely to effect the outcome"? If you are, then show me the numbers. If not, then suck it up and admit you were wrong, because THAT IS THE STANDARD THE LAW SETS FOR ALLOWING A FULL STATE-WIDE MANUAL RECOUNT.

perhaps he was referring to the fact that marriages (= lasting monogamous relationships between a man and a woman) appear to be the best systematic approach we have come up with for the protection and rearing of children. The tribe or society has a legitimate interest in the rearing of its next generation. There are many who are concerned abut the declining effectiveness of the traditional protections society offered for those who undertook to raise children, and who are reluctant to see them trivialized or reduced to something quite different.

Young women today are confronted with difficult choices between career and motherhood. The protections and support we offered them too often came packaged with restrictions on their freedom and individuality. Now, instead of removing only the undesirable parts we appear to be throwing out the whole package. When the day care generation reaches maturity we may find we have made a bad trade.

Those who advocate alternate forms of 'marriage' are generally quick to claim spousal benefits from their employers and the few remaining government sponsored benefits as well.

george, Some gay women couples have children through artificial insemination.

Brand X, I think your estimate is too low. I think "billions" is more realistic. People should have the 'freedom' to spend their money any way they please - including going to Vegas or Atlantic City. Many have big dreams and play the lotto.

Firstly, I have nothing against some form of social or even civil/legal formalization of relationships beyond the traditional marriages between a man and a woman. I just do not wish to see it done in a way that further dilutes or reduces the protections society has developed for unions of men and women likely to produce offspring.

I am not particularly interested in the question of whether gay couples can or should do a good job in raising children. Such unions don't produce children, and the main problem, in my view, is in sustaining a structure that will foster the healthy development of mind, body and spirit in the relationships that do produce them. As far as I am concerned that is the only aspect of such relationships in which tribe or society has a legitimate interest. Nothing "soviet-think" in this at all. I am talking about relationships that have evolved in nearly every society of humans known.

We have been here before. Laurence Meyer, a former U.S. Federal Reserve governor and a Democrat, quips that Republicans create deficits then turn the White House over to Democrats to raise taxes, then retake the White House and start all over. "This process does involve an equilibrating mechanism," he says, "but it's more fun to be a Republican."

It's a good line, though not precisely true. President Reagan undid some of his own tax cuts; President George H.W. Bush raised taxes. The second President Bush is different. He has yet to veto a single bill no matter how costly. His Treasury secretary already is talking up next year's tax breaks, these aimed at rewarding Americans who save. This is symptomatic: Lots of economists argue for taxing Americans' savings less and Americans' spending more. But the Bush plan does the first, and ignores the second.

One thing is different now. The chart accompanying this column shows what Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist calls "the mountain moving toward us," the retirement of the baby-boom generation. Today, the cost of Social Security and federal health-insurance programs is about 8% of all the economy produces. Forty years from now, they will take nearly twice that, the CBO guesses. The flat line shows that revenues during the past decade averaged 19% of gross domestic product. Unless politicians find the guts to change benefits, taxes will go up or the rest of the government evaporates. You guess.

There are two competing visions of government. The tax-more and spend-more approach sees bigger government as popular and prudent. The cut-taxes and cut-spending approach sees smaller government as popular and prudent.

Either adds up. A third doesn't: The current approach of cutting taxes and increasing commitments to spend into the future.