If you're going to pick a well meaning fool to contradict, I'd like to point out that Daily Kos' fools are far more well meaning than the local tight fisted jerks like myself. ;-)

Romney has made only one promise regarding veep picks: not a pro choicer. Not going to be Condi. The opportunity to pick a magnificent woman of color passed when Martinez irrevocably refused the position. Ayotte is probably the only woman short listed in good faith now; maybe Blackburn, Bachmann, or Palin, but probably not.

Ben does not say it's nearly impossible in the next Congress. He says it can't be done before the first May of the next Congress, and will be hard work. I think he's wrong about May (if Romney is true to form, the budget should be passed more quickly than usual, having been written up and whipped even before the new Congress sits), but right about it requiring a good deal of effort. Thankfully, I think most people agree that it's worth some effort.

My wife was the first woman I fell for as an adult. I didn't make my interest clear (and would not have been successful had I done so), and we lost contact when she graduated and we no longer had Patristics to bond over. We both made some efforts to keep in touch (well, her to keep in touch, me to find her again), but weren't terribly successful. She lived in a variety of hard to get to parts of the British Isles and didn't travel abroad, I lived abroad and didn't leave London when I was in the UK.

Eventually, Facebook reunited us, and things worked out pretty well. Without Facebook, I would still be unaware of where she was (her google footprint is intentionally kept small). Call me narcissistic if you want, but I am very grateful for Facebook, despite my limited use of it.

Incidentally, Ben, do you believe that Romney has not said, loudly and repeatedly, that he's in favor of a clean sweep reform of Obamacare?  Do you think it's accurate, then, to describe those House Republicans who disagree with him as "join[ing]" him?

Republicans have passed pre-existing condition coverage before (HIPAA). Fortunately, most of them, including Romney, are against it now. It's important to note for this that pre-existing condition coverage was not introduced by Romneycare, which did little to alter the state's pre-existing laws on the subject; Romney would be distinct from the other Republicans in not flip flopping on this. There are individuals who will fight on the other side of this, more in the House than in the Senate, but not, I believe, enough to get an amendment passed. Having the leadership on our side is helpful for this.

MSF, I meant minarchists. Even a minarchist state satisfies the Hobbesian minimum. Arguing against the virtue of government qua government is to imply that minarchist goes too far toward big government.

Percival, Blue, so long as it taxes only the future profits of expats, it's not ex post facto in letter. So long as it clearly targets a broad category of people, it's not a bill of attainder. Politicians can use lynchmob rhetoric without their bills falling prey to the anti-lynching protections of the Constitution. If it was constitutionally suspect, the rhetoric wouldn't hurt, but this should be easy to craft compliantly. Not that it matters, being drafted for politics, rather than being likely to pass.

Fortunately, the process of reconciliation favors cutting the expensive stuff, and fortunately Mitt's greatest political achievements have been in forcing unhappy legislatures to cut government and cut spending. Of course he'll have some problems with the House, but we should have a margin there. In the Senate, I don't believe there's a Republican who would vote down a straight repeal by reconciliation. It'd be the end of their careers. With Maine on our side, who could be against us?

Robert, Bush 41 repealed CatCare, Reagan's massive medicare expansion, and his welfare reforms allowed Wisconsin and other states to experiment, ultimately cutting welfare for us all. His cuts and his tax cut, combined with his tax hike, produced smaller government as a portion of GDP and balanced budgets. I agree that Reagan and Bush 43 both failed on these grounds, but not every Republican President fails the fiscal conservative test.

The reason it's not intrinsically dumb to believe a king might guide people's choices better than they do can be found in Ecclesiastes 5:9. The incentives for a ruler are different from those of the ruled. That doesn't mean that we should have a government, but it does suggest that minarchists aren't absurdly big government types.

I'd advise pessimists regarding currency union breakup to listen to  Vaclav Klaus speaking on his management of the breakup of the Czechoslovakian currency union. It was achieved, you may be surprised to hear, without violence. Greece leaving the euro seems likely to be achieved without serious euro-related violence. There will be serious violence in Greece, that is, but that will be because Greeks respond that way to political stimuli of any kind, and there'll be a recession, not because they'll be moving to the drachma.

Yeah. Likewise the State Department and Microsoft. MS gives to Obama because.... well, who would you expect a bunch of rich young single dudes in Seattle to donate to?

There are plenty of folks who oppose Alien Tort Claims Act abuse, and that opposition makes it more difficult for child slavery activists. Likewise, there's a bunch of people who support the right of clothing manufacturers to outsource labor, which means opposing the activities of media outlets like the BBC which fabricate child slavery slurs to attack them. (And, because the BBC dominates entertainment as well as news, and unlike Murdoch doesn't speak with different voices through different media, they backed up the documentary with dramas that referenced it, even after they'd admitted wrongdoing with the documentary). I can't think of a non-ATCA child slavery protection cause in the US, but I'd certainly adopt a rebuttable presumption that any child slavery opponent I was introduced to as such was involved in reprehensible activity.

One obvious word to use would be "jobs". The claim that he didn't create thousands upon thousands of the things is just absurd. There were jobs lost, too, but a couple of orders of magnitude fewer. Arguing that creating wealth is good concedes the point to the hard left/ Newt.

Obviously, the aim was to produce wealth, but it turns out that in a capitalist system, most of the ways to produce wealth for John Doe also produce wealth for people who are not John.

It seems appropriate to note that St. Paul treats marriage as the lesser of two evils; it is better to marry than to burn, but celibacy is better than either of those two things. I'm super grateful for marriage, but I think the precedent makes it hard to object to the logical structure.