Interesting observation. However, just to be clear, in the Olympics marathon events, you can get several less than stellar entrants toward the bottom (think Jamaican Bobsled team ). In other words, the 100-or-so men in the event are not close to being the 100 best-in-the-world. But even with this diminished field, the best woman would have only finished in 64th place if competing against the men.

From the Twitter archives:

POTUS nails Mitt for saying Russia our #1 geostrategic threat. "The 1980's called. They want their foreign policy back." Bam!
-- Paul Begala (@PaulBegala) October 23, 2012

You can be sure that it wasn't Democrat-sponsored and opposed by (at least a few) Republicans. Otherwise that would be in the summary.

From the article: "The House, in a voice vote Tuesday, passed the Permanent Internet Tax Freedom Act, over the objections of some Democrats."

Hyperbole, much? I don't think that I've had to change any of my thousands and thousands of lines of code to accommodate the move from 2.6 to 2.7 (if I did, it was so minor that I can't remember doing it). Adding features does not make them different languages.

Really? Robert Byrd had been an "Exalted Cyclops" in the Ku Klux Klan, yet still he was a Democrat Senator until his death in 2010. Byrd was a liberal and a great favorite of the Democrats.

Apparently, in 1944, Byrd wrote a letter to Sen. Theodore Bilbo refusing to join the military because he might have to serve alongside “race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wild.”

Not to argue any of your other points, but there are atheists (and atheist societies) that would gladly kill Christians for there belief, and we have their actions and regulations to prove it.

I do know that U.S. Christians, as a group, are among the most charitable and selfless people in the world. [deflectors up]

Completely untrue. Hobby Lobby provides 16 different types of contraception to its employees.

Here's their statement:
"The Green family has no moral objection to the use of 16 of 20 preventive contraceptives required in the mandate, and Hobby Lobby will continue its longstanding practice of covering these preventive contraceptives for its employees. However, the Green family cannot provide or pay for four potentially life-threatening drugs and devices. These drugs include Plan B and Ella, the so-called morning-after pill and the week-after pill. Covering these drugs and devices would violate their deeply held religious belief that life begins at the moment of conception, when an egg is fertilized.

How outrageous!

Sorry to repeat myself, but this was a late post to the first incarnation of this story.

Sharyl Attkisson (investigative reporter formerly with CBS) has posted some questions that should be asked:

• Please provide a timeline of the crash and documentation covering when it was first discovered and by whom; when, how and by whom it was learned that materials were lost; the official documentation reporting the crash and federal data loss; documentation reflecting all attempts to recover the materials; and the remediation records documenting the fix. This material should include the names of all officials and technicians involved, as well as all internal communications about the matter.
• Please provide all documents and emails that refer to the crash from the time that it happened through the IRS’ disclosure to Congress Friday that it had occurred.
• Please provide the documents that show the computer crash and lost data were appropriately reported to the required entities including any contractor servicing the IRS. If the incident was not reported, please explain why.
• Please provide a list summarizing what other data was irretrievably lost in the computer crash. If the loss involved any personal data, was the loss disclosed to those impacted? If not, why?
• Please provide documentation reflecting any security analyses done to assess the impact of the crash and lost materials. If such analyses were not performed, why not?
• Please provide documentation showing the steps taken to recover the material, and the names of all technicians who attempted the recovery.
• Please explain why redundancies required for federal systems were either not used or were not effective in restoring the lost materials, and provide documentation showing how this shortfall has been remediated.
• Please provide any documents reflecting an investigation into how the crash resulted in the irretrievable loss of federal data and what factors were found to be responsible for the existence of this situation.
• I would also ask for those who discovered and reported the crash to testify under oath, as well as any officials who reported the materials as having been irretrievably lost.

• Please provide a timeline of the crash and documentation covering when it was first discovered and by whom; when, how and by whom it was learned that materials were lost; the official documentation reporting the crash and federal data loss; documentation reflecting all attempts to recover the materials; and the remediation records documenting the fix. This material should include the names of all officials and technicians involved, as well as all internal communications about the matter.
• Please provide all documents and emails that refer to the crash from the time that it happened through the IRS’ disclosure to Congress Friday that it had occurred.
• Please provide the documents that show the computer crash and lost data were appropriately reported to the required entities including any contractor servicing the IRS. If the incident was not reported, please explain why.
• Please provide a list summarizing what other data was irretrievably lost in the computer crash. If the loss involved any personal data, was the loss disclosed to those impacted? If not, why?
• Please provide documentation reflecting any security analyses done to assess the impact of the crash and lost materials. If such analyses were not performed, why not?
• Please provide documentation showing the steps taken to recover the material, and the names of all technicians who attempted the recovery.
• Please explain why redundancies required for federal systems were either not used or were not effective in restoring the lost materials, and provide documentation showing how this shortfall has been remediated.
• Please provide any documents reflecting an investigation into how the crash resulted in the irretrievable loss of federal data and what factors were found to be responsible for the existence of this situation.
• I would also ask for those who discovered and reported the crash to testify under oath, as well as any officials who reported the materials as having been irretrievably lost.