I was outraged when Dharun Ravi was convicted in bullying Tyler Clementi, who committed suicide. Yes, it was invasion of privacy, a very stupid thing that Ravi did. But to be treated as a criminal? After watching his interview on 20/20, I am more convinced that he did not intend maliciousness toward Clementi. He never broadcast any sex tape on the internet as was alleged in the media when the case first came out. He sent an e-mail apologizing to Clementi and wanted to stay as his roommate. This does not seem like an action of an anti-gay person.

Unfortunately, Clementi probably never read the e-mail. This is an example of how new technology allowing people to communicate without talking to each other actually hurt. Both Ravi and Clementi read each other's tweets. But they hardly talked to each other, even after the incidence had occurred. If they had just talk instead of looking at tweets and sending e-mail, maybe this tragedy would have been avoided.

What Ravi did what stupid. But what 18 year old does not do stupid things? I doubt it that Clementi killed himself over this. It was reported in 20/20 that he was depressed before this. There was also a note that was found. Was it a suicide note? Would it help to understand his state of mind? That was not possible because the prosecution did not give it to the defense. That was one possible area of appeal.

What about the 30 year old that was Clementi's partner. He was shielded by the prosecution for his identity. I don't think that a 30 year old who had sex with an 18 year old should be excluded in the discussion of the suicide. Was Clementi more depressed because this older man had used him and then dumped him? I don't know but if a 30 year man had sex with an 18 year old woman and then the woman committed suicide shortly after, I am sure everybody, including the woman's parents, would find him very creepy.

I had wondered why Ravi did not take the plead deal where he would get probation and community service but no jail time. Turns out he would have to admit that he did all these because he was anti-gay. Ravi would rather take the chance with jail time than admit something that is not true. I don't know if that was a smart thing to do, but now I certainly respect his decision.

Couple of comments on the NFL. I don't understand why Denver needs to trade Tebow. Sure Manning is the starter but he is old and just came off an almost career ending injury. How can they be sure that he can even finish the next season? Sure, Tebow is not a good starting qb yet but he is young and can learn under Manning and get better. Denver got a 4th and a 6th round draft choice for Tebow. But they drafted Tebow in the FIRST round! So after starting for most of the season plus winning one playoff game, Tebow's value is much lower than 2 years ago? Plus God is not going to forgive them for this. This may be the curse of the Broncos!

The big suspension of the Saints head coach and former assistant is just one publicity stunt for the NFL. This is a league that glorifies violence. If not for that violence there would be a lot less fans who would watch the games. I think there must be some understanding among the players, coaches and league that this type of bounty hunting is tolerated to a certain degree. I mean there are a lot of switching teams among players in this league. Wouldn't something like that be common knowledge? I think once it was exposed, the league had to clear its image of caring for the safety of the players and so it had to come down hard on the Saints. My question is: Are there other teams with the same policies? And did the league knew about these type of things before this revelation? Also for the fans who criticize the Saints, are you not a little hypocritical?

I read in the LA Times that Mary Brown, who is one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit against Obamacare that has reached the Supreme Court, has just filed for bankruptcy. Among the debts that she and her husband owe are thousands of dollars in medical bills. She is one of three individuals that conservatives put out as Americans who belief that the health care law is unconstitutional. Whether the law is unconstitutional or not will be ruled by the Supreme Court soon. Meanwhile ironically, she is an example of why a mandate is necessary.

There are many flaws in the new law but it was the only law that could have passed two years ago. The law does not offer much control regarding skyrocketing cost of health care. The insurance companies still do not have much competition, can continue to raise prices and rake in huge profits. Sure, they are being forced to take in people with preexisting conditions, cover young adults up to 26 years old under the parents' plan and may have to pay for contraceptives. But the insurance companies will get lot more clients under the law and let face it, contraceptives will decrease pregnancies and pregnancies would cost insurance companies a lot more money than contraceptives.

The polls show that most people don't think the law is a good idea. One reason for that is that the majority of people HAVE insurance. Many of them get the insurance from their job and so they are afraid of any change. But anyone can lose their job or get a catastrophic illness and then suddenly they will feel different about the law. If you lose your job and have a preexisting condition, insurance companies will not take you. Many people can't leave jobs they hate because they or their spouses are sick and can't afford to lose the insurance. But of course in order for people with preexisting conditions be guaranteed coverage, everybody has to be in the risk pool. Otherwise, nobody would buy insurance until he is sick!

Mary Brown believes it is her right to decide whether she buys a product. But this is not a product of choice. We all are or will be consumer of health care unless we die suddenly without going to the hospital! Sixty billion dollars in health care cost were not paid by patients last year. Hospitals and doctors raise prices, when they can, on people who can paid. Thus the $10 aspirin the hospital charges. The government pays a big portion of the 60 billion now. So it is not a free lunch for taxpayers. Mary Brown will probably add to that uncompensated care amount with her bankruptcy.

One more thought on this case before the Supreme Court. I am sure the outcome will ride on Anthony Kennedy's decision. So there is a good chance the law will be overturned regardless of its merit. The other 8 judges will be split 4-4, I am sure. This is all so partisan as are so many things in our country today. The take I have is this: Whatever side wins in the Supreme Court may well lose in the presidential election. Which ever side loses will be so angry that they will come out in force to try to elect their candidate in November because they believe the Court is stacked against them and they want their presidential candidate be able to nominate the next justice.

Last week envoys from the U.S. and UK went to Israel to try to convince the Israelis not to attack Iranian nuclear facilities. I have a bad feeling that Israel will bomb Iran this year, probably in the next few months before the U.S. election. The Obama administration has said that all options are on the table, including military action. But, unlike his Republican opponents, Obama will not attack. I think bombing Iran to try to stop its nuclear weapons program will not be good in both the short and long term. But Israel does not see this and it will try to drag Obama into it during this election year, knowing that to not stick with Israel will cost him politically.

Most experts believe that even a successful bombing will only delay Iran from getting the bomb for a couple of years. The thing is you can't bomb away all the centrifuges. As long as the knowledge of how to do it is in the brain of scientists, Iran will eventually build a weapon. That is why there maybe more assassination attempts on Iranian scientists and then retaliations to Israelis by Iran. I can understand the Israelis want to delay Iran as long as possible since they are Iran's most likely target. But I don't see why Israel's worry should dictate our policy which in the long term will certainly failed. If we help Israel or even approve its action, our position of being an honest broker in the Middle East will deteriorate tremendously. Also an attack will raise nationalism in Iran and I think will allow the unpopular regime to stay in power much longer in the future. It will only serve to make Iran much more determined to get the bomb.

What about the short term? Israel will face artillery strikes from Hamas and Hezbollah for sure. Iran can't really shut down the oil lanes but will be forced to try and thus cause energy prices to skyrocket. This in turn will stop our economic recovery and perhaps lead to world economic collapse. More terrorists attacks against U.S. and Israel will certainly occur. Certainly Israel will be more isolated than ever after such an attack. I think Obama should, in no uncertain term, tell Israel that we would not support such an attack. Unfortunately, I don't think Israel will listen because it knows that once Obama is reelected, he certainly will not back an attack. So Israel will likely force his hand, probably as soon as the Republican nominee is known.

It is Feb. 16, 2041, and new President Jeremy Lin had just took office last month. He became the first Asian American president by putting an unusual coalition of minorities, Christian conservatives, college graduates of high academic standings, and independents who are tired of the partisanship that was affecting both Democratic and Republican rule since the beginning of the century. By forming the Lindenpendent Party, Lin was able to defeat the two established parties with his coalition. Now of course comes the hard part, governing. He is hoping that his expertise in economics will help him improve the pocketbooks of Americans. But he also realizes it is a smaller world now and that he must have good team work with the leaders of other countries. Thus, he has called for a summit and invited most of the major leaders of the world to attend.

First there is Yao Ming, the first freely elected leader of China. Lin realizes that achieving world peace is a tall order. So who better to consult first but Yao who has made peace with Taiwan to unify China with the help of the president of Taiwan, Yani Tseng. Lin also will depend on Gary Kasparov, the first democratically elected Russian leader, to come up with an end game to checkmate terrorist organizations who are trying to get nuclear weapons. While Lin is trying to help other countries, he will need to get assists from Steve Nash, the premier of Canada. Also expected to attend the summit are Yu Darvish, the first Japanese president of mix races, Manu Ginobili, president of Argentina, Pau Gasol, president of Spain, David Beckham, prime minister of Britain, Dikembe Mutombo, head of African Union, and of course Manny Pacquiao of the Philippines who has been the leader of that country for 30 years.

Yes, world peace was all but a dream 30 years ago. But then 30 years ago nobody would dream that an Asian American from Harvard who was not drafted would become a star in the NBA either. Ever since that became a reality, people all over the world have dared to dream bigger, until what is achieved today, Feb,. 16, 2041.

A few things I like to comment on quickly. First, I underestimated Rick Santorum. Romney is still going to win the nomination but I have to apologize to Santorum for calling him Michelle Bachmann light. Bachmann in turn was called Sarah Palin light by me. So that made Santorum really light. Instead with his 3 victories on Tuesday, I am going to call him Gingrich heavy, if it is possible to be heavier than Gingrich. But whatever, all I know is Obama is thanking Santorum secretly.

Speaking of Obama, I don't agree with his mandate on birth control coverage. Since Obamacare is not a single government payer plan, I don't see how he can tell insurance company and employer exactly what medicines to cover. I don't agree with the Catholic church's stand on contraceptives but they have their right to religious freedom. Healthcare is part of the employee's health benefit. If any part of the benefit is not acceptable, the employee can not accept the job. I know that is a difficult thing in a tight job market, but you can't always have everything. If it is up to the insurance company, I would think that they would want to cover contraceptives since pregnancy would cost them a lot more.

I don't see why Karl Rove and other Republicans are all upset about the Clint Eastwood commercial. Eastwood is a Republican, he is not trying to help Obama. Most people who watched the commercial are not going to think about the auto bailout. By bringing it up, Rove is helping Obama because now more attention is paid to the bailout. And since GM and Chrysler are doing a lot better than before, the more people paid attention to this, the more Obama likes it.

I read about some broadcasters such as Bob Costas and Cris Collinsworth who think that the new OT rule for the NFL playoff is worse than the old one. With the Super bowl being tomorrow, this is an interesting topic which I had thought about before. The old system gave the team that won the toss an enormous advantage. Three or four first downs, kick a field goal and win. Too easy, so the new system allows the other team to have a possession if the first team do not score a touchdown. Costas etc. feel that it is unfair now for the first team because the team that loses the toss can see what the first team does and basically have four downs each time to get the tying field goal or winning touchdown.

My take on this is that this new system gives more strategic thought to the game and thus I think is better than the old system. First of all, you don't have to elect to receive if you win the toss. More on that later. Sure, the second team have the advantage if the first team does not score a touchdown. But if the first team does score a touchdown, they win! Also knowing a field goal may not win it, the first team may also go for it on fourth down in the red zone. If they failed, the other team will have a long way to go to get a field goal. So there is a lot more thinking needed as opposed to the win the toss and try to get into field goal range mentality.

So what to do if you win the toss. If I am the Patriots, Packers or Saints, in other words high power offense with not so good defense, I take the ball. I am going to go for it on fourth down if I pass midfield, TD or bust. If I am a defense team, e.g., Ravens, Steelers, 49ers e.g., I play defense with the hope of stopping them and get a field goal to win. I would have done that If I coach the Bronchos, reasoning that I can't drive 80 yards, but if I am behind by a field goal, Tebow can march down the field with 4 downs at a time. It is like he had been doing most of the season in the 2 minutes offense, except now he does not have to do it in 2 minutes. Of course, you can also take the ball, throw a 80 yard TD and finish the game!

Romney wins big tonight and as I predicted from the beginning, he is going to win the nomination. But even though his speech tonight points toward the general election by calling for unity against Obama, he still has a fight on his hand. Gingrich is not going to quit. He has risen from the dead before and he is so arrogant that he thinks he can do it again. Plus he really dislikes Romney. He does not care if it causes the Republican the election, he is going to fight to the end. He has no chance to win but will force Romney to stay on the right of center.

Paul is not going to quit either. He never had a chance to win but he is not running for reelection to Congress and he wants to have a say in the Republican convention. If he is totally ignored, I think he may run as a third party. If he does and Romney is nominated, he will pull votes from the Republicans and help Obama. Maybe not as much as Ross Perot helped Clinton, but it would be important in this close race. Ironically, I think if Gingrich somehow wins the nomination, Paul would actually take votes from Obama. Of course, Gingrich cannot be Obama so in this case Paul would not make any difference. So if I was advising the Republicans, they should let Romney win now and give Paul token recognition at the convention and adopt some of his ideas. For example, they can advocte gold standard, which will never pass, and hope Paul does not go to a third party.

Well, now we have a race in the Republican nomination process! Just a week ago Romney was on the verge of winning the first 3 states, unprecedented for someone who is not a sitting president. Now in one week he loses Iowa where he was declared the winner couple of weeks ago, and he gets stomped by Gingrich in South Carolina. I am thinking that the evangelicals who voted for Gingrich must think that he is Jesus. After all he has risen from the dead! How else can you explain that people who claim that they see moral values as very important can support a man who was accused by his ex-wife for immoral behavior. Even if you think that the ex-wife is unreliable, since she did cheat with him when he was married to someone else, the fact remains that he cheated at least twice. His supporters will say that Clinton cheated. Yes, and as I said before; if you disqualified everyone who cheated, you have eliminated half of the population. But to cheat when your wife is dying, like Gingrich and John Edwards, that would be a much lower low. Now by blaming the media, Gingrich gets more support? I think I have said this before: Whenever someone claims moral value or moral authority, you have to take their words with a grain of salt.

In fact I think I might have said that above when the PSU scandal came out. I did agree with the firing of Paterno because I think as the idol of the university he should have done more when he found out about the abuse. To those who said he got the raw deal, I say that they would feel differently if their brother or son were to be abused by Sandusky after Paterno had found out. Having said this, I felt very sad to hear of Paterno's passing this morning. I think it is extremely unfortunate that his legacy will be tainted by this episode. I also think the burden of this made his illness much worse and led to a much faster death. I think for most of his life, he lived it with integrity and did a lot to help many young men. I think the situation with Sandusky was something that people of "old school" really never had to deal with. If Paterno had retired when he was 70 years old like most coaches, he would never had to deal with this scandal. Unfortunately he stayed too long and being a basically good person, this had to have tormented him to the end. May he rest in peace and hopefully history will be kind to him.

I read an article today that said that George Romney, father of Mitt, was born in Mexico. I am positive that when George ran for president in 1968, nobody made a big deal out of this. Obviously if he was elected, he could not serve since he was not born in the U.S. So why was he running and why it was not all over the news then? I would have thought that his opponents like Nixon would have pointed that out. I understand that George's maternal grandfather was a Mexican citizen. Would Mitt then be our first Hispanic president if he is elected?

Romney has been attacked by Gingrich and Perry over his previous work at Bain capital. I have mix feeling about this attack. The complaints in these ads is that Bain had to fire a lot of employees in trying to restructure companies. Well, obviously these companies were not run efficiently in the first place otherwise they would not be in such deep trouble. Any attempt to make them more efficient would require cutting employees. So in that sense the attacks are unfair. But of course Romney campaigns on the notion that his work at Bain CREATED many jobs. That is not true either. Sure some companies made it back and thus eventually hired people again. But those are not jobs created but were brought back. Also some companies eventually failed and the jobs never came back. The point is the companies that made it back had good products or business to begin with. It was just poorly managed. By involving a venture capitalist, some of the debts were forgiven and some of the pension obligations went away, allowing the company to start over. It was not Bain or Romney who created a new product or business that led to hiring of people. Overall, the jobs total at the end of the day with these type of buyouts or whatever you want to call it, is about even.