MySpace's lack of commitment to age verification technology remained a point of contention for the only attorney general who refused to participate: Texas's Greg Abbott. "We do not believe that MySpace.com--or any other social networking site--can adequately protect minors until an age verification system is effectively developed and implemented," Abbott wrote in a letter to MySpace's chief executive, Chris DeWolfe. "Although we believe that MySpace.com, along with these attorney generals, is working to protect social network users, we cannot endorse any initiative that fails to implement a reliable age verification system."

You’re probably the problem when it comes to traffic safety; as you read your newspaper, brush your teeth, fail to turn your headlights on, tailgate and speed when you drive. The only one who is responsible for your safety on the road is you, not the cops, not the legislators, not the courts. You should be an active, defensive driver who takes responsibility for the circumstances around them and not be a victim.

What makes you fat? Eating cheesy-poofs while watching Sex in the City reruns? Wolfing down a Wendy's "Baconator," comprising a double cheeseburger with six strips of bacon that could feed everyone in Darfur for a week? How about when you get the urge to exercise you lie down until it goes away, as one CEO famously put it? Yes, to all of the above. But these are all specific contributors to obesity driven by larger forces that are making us, well, larger.

Turns out, obesity is contagious.

Homeschooling is not at fault for the deaths of these little girls. A lack of supervision is not to blame for their deaths. The freedom and ease with which families in ten states and Washington, D.C., can elect to homeschool their children are not to blame for these deaths. Banita Jacks is to blame, as are all of the officials and agencies which did have contact with her but did nothing. They had evidence that she was mentally ill and failing to provide for her children, and they failed to follow up on that evidence. What they have no evidence of is their claim that Banita Jacks was ever truly a homeschooling mom.

It may or may not be Hillary's intent to deprecate in stereotype fashion the role of black rhetoric in galvanizing change by pointing out that LBJ, not Martin Luther King Jr., is to be given the greater credit for enacting civil-rights legislation. But it is a losing argument for her against Obama, and she makes things much worse every time she or Bill dredge it up for at least several reasons.

Organ donations save lives, of course. But transplant organizations also troll hospitals like "vultures," as one bio-ethicist told the Washington Post. The story centered around a doctor accused of hastening a patient's death so that his organs would still be useful by the time he died — the first time a surgeon has been thus charged in a transplant case. The widespread fear is that this kind of thing is happening all the time — the doctor in question may have been caught only because he made the mistake of joking about it.

How's this for a bad idea: What if we took an activity at which the U.S. private sector leads the world and we see if the government can do half as well at higher cost? Welcome to the proposed U.S. Public Service Academy. Bipartisan luminaries have repeatedly introduced legislation calling for the creation of a new academy, modeled on the existing military academies. But did the dozens of distinguished co-sponsors notice that we already have a highly successful higher education system in this country?

I've got a suggestion for the editors of the Times: next time, why don't they undertake a research project to identify all murders and other forms of homicide committed (or allegedly committed -- no finding of guilt necessary!) by people who are, or recently have been, employed by newspaper companies? They could write a long article in which selected crimes allegedly committed by reporters, editors and typesetters are recounted in detail, accompanied by speculation about whether newspaper employment was a contributing factor in each case. No need to wonder whether reporters, editors and typesetters commit homicide at a rate any different from the rest of the population -- a single murder is too many!