MM&N Commentary The hypocrisy of the Republican Party continues to astonish me. The Grand Old Party fancies itself as the Party of Life and the Party of Family Values. As to the first point, the Republican administration has been depriving humans of their life at a pretty good clip to render that self-characterization laughable. By the president's own guess, 30,000 Iraqis have lost their lives in this misbegotten war. The uncritical exercise of the death penalty, the slashing of funding for health care, and the inept response to the Katrina disaster seems to suggest to me that the Republicans are to the contrary the Party of Death. The resignation of Republican Congressman Mark "Do I make you a little horny" Foley, co-chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, is an opportune reminder of how hollow the Republican's claim to family values are, as links on this page make clear. In my state on the ballot is Proposition 107, the Protect Marriage Amendment defining marriage as "the union between one man and one woman." It seems to me what really is going on here besides trying to write discrimination into the constitution is a Rovian plan to arouse the conservative base by invoking straw men. I'm all for protecting marriage, but let's really protect marriage by enforcing sanctions against parents who fail in their responsibilities to each other and their children. This includes parents who are absentee, boozed-up, indifferent, abusive, or are divorced. Should we really regard it as moral net gain if a fetus is preserved in the second trimester only to be delivered up to be killed on a foreign battlefield and the age of twenty because of a twisted Republican foreign policy? The irony only thickens when you look at popular culture. Why is it that Fox, the most conservative television network, is also the most vulgar? Why is that many of the owners of abortion clinics, porn and cigarette producers, and casinos are Republican? Why is it the many of the people that get abortions, buy cigarettes and porn, go to casinos, and end up in jail are-- you guessed it-- Republicans? Family values indeed.