A couple days ago, Philip Weiss posted this on his blog: Baseball Honors 'Innocent Till Proven Guilty.' NFL Trashes It:

When Bonds caught Aaron, Commissioner Bud Selig said he or another baseball official would attend the Giants' next few games "out of respect for the tradition of the game, the magnitude of the record and the fact that all citizens in this country are innocent until proven guilty." Innocent until proven guilty. Nice words. A principle the NFL has trashed by cashiering Michael Vick before he has been tried on dog-fighting charges. Yes, dogfighting is terrible, and, unlike Bonds's supposed infraction, not everybody does it. But doesn't everybody deserve a hearing?

wants to make abortions illegal, and the problem is to figure out the most applicable punishment for women who abort their pregnancy, Jill Filipovic asks:

If the anti-choice's argument is that a fetus is a person with full DNA etc., then abortion is technically murder, and isn't the punishment for murder often life in prison, sometimes even execution? Should we execute women who have abortions?

Dan Freeman commented above on the possible persecution of doctors who perform abortions. Filipovic addresses this issue:

Some anti-choicers argue that doctors should be punished, not women. So I'll ask this:

How much time should doctors do?

Do you support executing doctors who perform abortions?

Do you support jailing them for life? For a few decades?

Where does it end? 

If a fertilized egg is a full-fledged person under the law, what other legal activities -- other than abortion -- would have to go? We know that most "pro-life" groups already oppose fertility treatments and the use of contraception. Would we make those things illegal? What would the punishment be?
 

This morning, The Jerusalem Post posted an excellent Jewlicious blog on the Feldman debate, taking the angle that although Feldman was born into the Orthodoxy and had no choice regarding his religious practice, the moral of the story is you get what you pay for:

Feldman’s complaint that the Orthodox establishment hasn’t welcomed his fiancée, petty matter of religion aside, is akin to someone choosing to attend a school with a core curriculum, then decrying the injustice of being forced to take certain classes.

Gary Rosenblatt of The New York Jewish Week chimes in from the JTA:

For all of Feldman’s candor in the essay, he has nothing to say about where he fits into the community, if at all; whether he wanted his wife to convert; whether they are raising their children as Jews or not; or his feelings about all this. He only owes us such information if he wants our understanding and empathy, which clearly he does.

He does owe Modern Orthodoxy an apology for pinning it with his anger over rejection, knowing full well the rules of engagement. But we in turn owe him a sense of gratitude for a wake-up call, however unpleasant, about the need to struggle more deeply and honestly with the moral and religious tensions and contradictions in Modern Orthodoxy that can never be reconciled, and about learning how to deal more sensitively with those on the outside who may be calling out -- in anger and loneliness -- for a way back in.

Also from The Impulsive Buy: "I thought my addiction to clown porn was pretty bad, but my dependency on Glacéau XXX Vitamin Water is worse." 

I, on the other hand, believe 100% that Vitamin Water is evil and human kind should 1. drink water, and 2. eat food and not buy $2.89 bottles of flavored water when you'd get the same nutrients from 1/10 of a carrot.

Plus, if it weren't for Rushdie then what material would Seinfeld have used when Kramer confuses his name (Salman) for the fish (salmon)? You know, he thinks he spots Rushdie at the gym and asks the man's name. "Salbass," the man says. Kramer thinks the Rushmeister swapped one fish for another!

Further, any writer who has such facility with the word "organ" deserves knighthood, hands down. From his 1981 novel, "Midnight's Children" (pre-"The Satanic Verses"):

"... An easy nose to hit a tussock with. I wish to place on record my gratitude to this mighty organ-if not for it, who would ever have believed me to be truly my mother's son, my grandfather's grandson? ..."

"... the organ of an unsuccessful genius; my uncle Mustapha made it a second-rater's sniffer; the Brass Monkey escaped it completely..."

"So let me obfuscate no further: I, Saleem Sinai, possessor of the most delicately-gifted olfactory organ in history, have dedicated my latter days to the large-scale preparation of condiments."

"After my circumcision, they bathed me together; and giggled together as my mutilated organ waggled angrily in the bathwater. 'We better watch this boy, Madam,' Mary said naughtily, 'His thing has a life ...' "

And speaking of creamed his jeans (PG-style): "I'm proud to say I kept my head; but Zafar lost control of a more embarrassing organ. Moisture stained his trouser-fronts; the yellow ..."

Let's keep the fatwas for execution to less accomplished novelists.