During its annual meeting at the end of the month, New York State Bar Association had planned a presentation, “Their Point of View: Tips From the Other Side,” which was described as a “distinguished panel of gentlemen from the legal field” who would “discuss the strengths and weaknesses of women in the areas of communication, negotiation, medication [sic], arbitration, organization and women’s overall management of their legal work.” State bar president Michael Getnick tells the New York Law Journal that the purpose of discussion was “to identify unique issues facing female lawyers and to suggest how attorneys and their firms can address them.”

It turned out that the unique issues facing female lawyers include male lawyers thinking they know the unique issues facing female lawyers, three male lawyers evaluating the competence of all female lawyers and three male lawyers representing the embodiment of normative performance standards for lawyers of both genders. A boycott by female attorneys was threatened, and the V 2.0 presentation, now called “Sharing Their Points of View: Tips From Both Sides,” is described as “a distinguished panel of attorneys, comprising women and men” discussing “the challenges faced by women in the workplace in the areas of communication, negotiation, mediation, arbritration, organization and management of work, as well as the role of mentoring.”

The Stiletto thinks the female members of the NY Bar did a great job communicating their displeasure, negotiating the terms of the state bar’s retreat and mediating a compromise that both sides could embrace. Oh, and they also seemed pretty organized and capable of managing the program change while keeping up with their legal work.

The Washington Post reports that “[h]undreds of prisoners held by the U.S. military in Afghanistan will for the first time have the right to challenge their indefinite detention and call witnesses in their defense under a new review system being put in place this week”:

The new system will be applied to the more than 600 Afghans held at the Bagram military base, and will mark the first substantive change in the overseas detention policies that President Obama inherited from the Bush administration. …

Under the new rules, each detainee will be assigned a U.S. military official, not a lawyer, to represent his interests and examine evidence against him. In proceedings before a board composed of military officers, detainees will have the right to call witnesses and present evidence when it is “reasonably available,” the official said. …

Most Bagram detainees are Afghans, considered battlefield prisoners taken in a war zone. An unspecified number, said to be fewer than 30, are non-Afghans, many of them captured in other countries.

Thanks to a law signed by President Hamid Karzai in the run-up to the tainted election, Afghan terrorists and enemy combatants now have more rights than Afghan women, who must remain in indefinite detention in their own homes until their husband or father gives them permission to leave (sixth item). Needless to say, these women are powerless under Sharia law to question their imprisonment, and cannot fight for their habeas corpus rights in any U.S. civilian or military court.

As Gov. Mark Sanford (R-SC) and his oft-modified unlimited hangout continue day-after-day, it’s now impossible to ignore his staggering marital and political indiscretions, nicely summed up by Washington Post media analyst-cum-political pundit Howard Kurtz:

a) His “Appalachian Trail” disappearance
b) His choice of an Argentine lover
c) His stream-of-consciousness press conference
d) His wife hanging him out to dry, especially after he asked permission to visit his gal pal
e) His endless apologizing
f) The e-mails

But wait – there’s more! Add Sanford’s admission to The Associated Press that he rounded a few bases with other women, though he went all the way home only with his “soul mate,” Maria Belen Chapur, in what ended up being “a whole lot more than a simple affair; this was a love story. A forbidden one, a tragic one, but a love story at the end of the day.”

And still more: Sanford has now reneged on his promise to AP to release personal financial records to prove his trips to see his paramour were not funded by SC taxpayers.

But is Sanford’s behavior contemptible enough to make him King Of The Heels, or does that (dis)honor belong to former Sen. John Edwards (D-NC)?

Let’s compare low-blow by low-blow:

† Edwards paying off happily married campaign flunky – a father of three – Andrew Young to pretend that he was the one who knocked up Rielle Hunter is a far more diabolical deceit than Sanford’s pretending to be on a hiking trip on the Appalachian Trail while he was engaged in physical activity of a very different sort in Argentina.

† As far as documentary evidence of marital misdeeds go, the sex tape Edwards and Hunter purportedly made together is an order of magnitude sleazier than the steamy E-mails Sanford and Chapur exchanged (“despite the best efforts of my head my heart cries out for you, your voice, your body, the touch of your lips, the touch of your finger tips and an even deeper connection to your soul”).

† And Sanford’s rubbing salt in his aggrieved wife’s wounds by describing his two-timing trollop as his soul mate doesn’t quite rise (fall?) to the vile callousness of Hunter and Edwards discussing what music to play at their wedding, once his cancer-stricken wife, Elizabeth, has shuffled off her mortal coil.

So toting up all the insults and injuries, John Edwards is King Of The Heels.

So “self-preservation” demands that the man anticipate when he’s most likely to encounter a hormone-related mood swing by tracking the monthly cycles of the woman in his life. And he can choose amongst several iPhone apps to do the job, including: PMS Buddy, PMSTracker and MyMate, CNET News reports.

The premise behind such calendars is that one can chart the monthly surge of female hormones that could make some – not all – women hyperirritable. Since men have a consistent level of male hormones in their systems, it’s impossible to figure out what sets them off, and when they’re likely to become petulant, sarcastic or nasty.

What T-shirts? McCain never says. And unless you watch FOX News or regularly read political Web sites, you would not know what the heck he’s taking about.

Unacceptable? The Stiletto is perplexed and dismayed that McCain has never defended the honor of his running mate, who has been called a whore, a c**t – and worse. He should have turned to Obama and said: “As a son, a brother, a husband, a father, an officer and a gentleman I demand, Senator, that you look straight into the camera and apologize directly to Sarah Palin for supporters of yours using the vile epithet ‘c**t’ to refer to her.”

McCain probably would have gotten bleeped by the censors, but Obama – who has accused Palin of being “racist” when she says he doesn’t pal around with people who hold America in the same regard as most of us do – would have been knocked back on his heels. And the press –  busy destroying the reputation of workaday citizen Joe the Plumber – would have been silenced. That could have been the game-changer McCain has been seeking all along.

Too bad McCain didn’t have the guts to do it.

Contrary to Cohen’s assertions, a new poll by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism finds that Americans think the MSM has been fair to Joe Biden, John McCain and Barack Obama but “too tough” on Sarah Palin. Overall, 38 percent of survey respondents didn’t think media coverage of Palin was fair – with 63 percent of Repubs, 41 percent of Dems and 41 percent of Indys agreeing that she got a raw deal from reporters. And voters are paying attention, according to poll results:

Public interest in news about the presidential campaign reached a new high last week, though the national news was dominated by coverage of the faltering economy. Fully 57% of the public followed news about the election very closely and another 31% followed developments fairly closely.

Perhaps Cohen should contemplate the staggering level of disrespect – for which an “ism” has yet to be coined, seeing as “sexism” and “lookism” aren’t even remotely adequate – to which Palin is being subjected because of her gender and comeliness. You may disagree with her positions and even look down on her lack of pedigree – as Cohen so obviously does – but she is her party’s nominee for vice president and that alone should guarantee a modicum of decorum in the media’s and public’s behavior toward her, even if deference seems a bridge too far.

Some examples (click on these links at your peril; The Stiletto assumes no responsibility for delicate sensibilities):

† Times Heir: ‘Sarah Palin Can Suck A D–k’, Gawker, October 6, 2008

† Sarah Palin will be “gang-raped by my big black brothers” if she enters Manhattan, Sandra Bernhard, Without You I’m Nothing (second item), c. September 17, 2008

† “Palin has a toned-down version of the porn actress look favoured by this decade’s woman, the overtreated hair, puffy lips and permanently alarmed expression. Heather Mallick, “A Mighty Wind Blows Through The Republican Convention,” Canadian Broadcasting Corporation,” September 5, 2008

† “She’s sexy. Men like sexy women … This is new feminist ideal. Women want to be her, men want to mate with her. It’s as simple as that,” Donny Deutsch, host of “The Big Idea” on CNBC (video), September 5, 2008

Then there are the “drill” T-shirts, the “action figures,” the inflatable doll, the porno flick featuring a Palin look-alike …

The Boston Globe’s Jeff Jacoby has collected several other (tamer) examples of “the left’s scorching assault, so ugly and unhinged.”

Sen. John McCain gave perhaps the best speech of his life. He was expressive, relaxed and very engaging, with much of his remarks devoted to a promise of a bi-partisan administration, and taking the Repub party back from Congressional legislators who had become corrupt, power-mad spendthrifts (you know who you are).

I cheered when he stuck it to those who questioned how Sarah Palin could raise a family of five children, including a baby who has Down syndrome, by acknowledging his gratitude to “my wife, Cindy, and my seven children.”

I laughed when McCain subtly skewered his narcissistic opponent by stating, “I’m not running for president because I think I’m blessed with such personal greatness that history has anointed me to save our country in its hour of need.”

I cried when McCain explained that when he became a POW in Vietnam he was selfish and cocky. After the Viet Cong tortured him until they broke him, he went back to his cell consumed with shame and one of his fellow POWs tapped out a message on the wall that “I had fought as hard as I could” and “to get back up and fight again for my country and for the men I had the honor to serve with, because every day they fought for me.” It was then, McCain said, “I fell in love with my country … I loved it for its decency, for its faith in the wisdom, justice, and goodness of its people. I loved it because it was not just a place, but an idea, a cause worth fighting for. I was never the same again; I wasn’t my own man anymore; I was my country’s.”

• During Sarah Palin’s speech accepting her party’s nomination for vice president, CNN and MSNBC kept cutting away to an over-the-shoulder shot that clearly showed the text scrolling on the TelePromTer? When Barack Obama gave his acceptance speech the week before, the cameras were trained on him and those Styrofoam Greek columns on the set.
• In their post-mortems of Palin’s performance, two of the Fox News panelists – Mort Kondracke and Nina Easton – both made it a point to state that Palin’s speech was written for her by veteran Republican speechwriter Matthew Scully? After Easton brought it up, Brit Hume jumped in to ask why the two panelists are making an issue of this when every candidate uses speechwriters.
• Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s press secretary, Jim Manley, called Palin “shrill and sarcastic”? No doubt his boss was provoked by this line:

Harry Reid, the Majority Leader of the current do-nothing Senate, not long ago summed up his feelings about our nominee. He said, quote, “I can’t stand John McCain.” Clearly what the Majority Leader was driving at is that he can’t stand up to John McCain.

Nonetheless, no one in the so-called “Bush-McCain” administration characterized Obama (or his running mate, Joe Biden) as shrill when he attacked George Bush and John McCain during his nomination speech.

Just asking.