The common mindset of US officials who presume American empire is acceptable and citizens who presume that abortion of other living beings is their right, is imperial exceptionalism. In both cases the death of others for our continued comfort, whatever the kind of comfort, is justified as "our due."

If the CRD's (constitutional democratic republic) citizens feel this way about their "right" to destroy the defenseless and dependent to insure their access to society's highest rewards, how much more may its officials justify imperial domination of relatively defenseless and weak nation states to insure access to energy's greatest rewards?

This is a domestic and foreign problem I'll call ED for lack of a better term. It's Empire Dysfunction, in which an imperial mindset of exceptionalism and unquestionability has set in and hardened the arteries and ear drums of the ethical mind.

ED is exactly that which causes the CRD to become flaccid and the once independent, responsible and spirited people that worked for a CRD to become one wobbling mass of fearful, manipulable rubber-stampers of all powers that do wrong yet leave them free to consume. This is ED at its worst. And it is systemic, so Mr. Obama may just as easily find his political genetics virally coopted by it as Mr. McCain, Ms. Clinton or anyone else who depended on its Proponents to get into office.

And among the Proponents, those whose bottom line is not human life, but dollars, can fairly be assumed to have a motive to leave ED in place. For those whose greatest interests are backed into a perceived corner and who can't humble themselves, the justified killing of others isn't far behind. It's their "due." And using other people's money (taxpayers) and other peoples' lives (children) to kill and be killed is the SOP of these business interests.

Why is it their "due"? Well, haven't their appointed justices over the past several decades left abortion intact? The tacitly agreed recipe: falsely justified right to kill in exchange for the falsely justified right to kill, add lots of useless words of indignation as propaganda, and pretend to lose as a pretext for getting elected tomorrow so that one can "win" and finally "end those imperial wars," or "make abortion obsolete."

Hopefully Mr. Obama, promising to reach common ground and common sense solutions to formerly intractible problems among us, and with other nation states, will work with his team to make both forms imperial domination of the weak and defenseless an obsolete and unnecessary evil.

Isn't it long past time that our wars be only those necessary to defend our lives from foreign and domestic aggression, and abortions to save the lives of moms?

If the story had been how a disproportionate number of transgendered people were landing in New York's juvenile detention centers because they are transgendered; or that they were the only ones facing violent incidents, the AP piece I read today might have passed as journalism.

The AP's was a PR piece for GLBT advocacy groups which believe that transgendered young people are exercising free expression. We all have a right to free expression, however, we do not have a right to demand that the taxpayers pay for an infrastructure that favors our expression versus others'. Is that why NY Governor Paterson's comments contain a the phrase "gender expression issues"? To raise a sort of ADA aura about the policy?

Violent incidents happen in juvenile detention centers all the time, and to all kinds and categories of young detainees, yet the transgendered get special protection. This raises a question as to their capacity for adjudication in the first place, and makes me wonder of medical facilities might be a better fit.

Instead of equal protection, the State of NY gives transgendered people their own cells and private showers. It is done in the name of protecting the right to gender expression issues. However, it is really an expensive and unnecessary type of segregation, isn't it?

If "expression issues" warrant special perks in juvenile detention, then must they also be provided in jails and prisons? And if so, then what other individual "expression issues" will the taxpayers ultimately be expected to accomodate with individualized cells and extra guards and so on? This begs the question of why they have been institutionalized in the first place. How many crimes or delinquencies are related to their imposition of their "expression issues" on others?

Re: the warping of the laws and public obligations, this is on the level with California's Orwellian ban on student vocabulary that "might offend" alleged GLBT students in public schools. When an ideology so narrowly interested warps the First Amendment, it has been allowed to go too far. When it requires taxpayers to fund an unlimited criterion for subjectively determined special needs, such as "expression" issues, where does that end?

What's next, a third set of barracks for such folks in the Armed Forces? Majority norms, fairly applied and enforced are usually sufficient to protect everyone. It's when they go unenforced or disparately enforced that useless laws and policies are passed. It seems to be another species of the "hate crime" juris-imprudence suggesting that new laws ought to be passed to remedy existing laws' ill-enforcement.

I do not believe people with gender expression issues should be treated badly. But neither should anyone else. Given the nuances of human behavior in the public square, I suspect there is something much more complex at work here than a stereotypical society going out of its way to oppress people with "gender issues." Rights and responsibilities apply to all.