I have never read Camille Paglia before, and now I am glad. Perhaps her style is an acquired taste, but to me she seems an inveterate name-dropper and solipsist. From this one article I have learned the title of most of the books she has written, most of the jobs she has held, and how a single article about Hillary Clinton produced the downfall of an editor at a major magazine.

And we were treated to the dismissal of thoughtful magazines as "pretentiously big-think glossy magazines."

I couldn't imagine a more thinkless big thinker than Paglia.

I do have to confess a degree of jealosy, though. If a person can earn a living and hold a position at a university writing such self-centered material there must be hope for me after all.

My Salon subscription is not in jeopardy, but at least I now know which essays I can safely skip over.

I agree with the majority that certain conservative groups, the White House included, have been near-criminal in their neglect of this issue. On the other hand, it is remarkable how rapidly this issue has come up.

According to the article, nothing meaningful was known about global warming before 1988 and real scientific consensus did not develop until 1995. Stepping back and looking at history, the kind of sea change environmentalists are calling for has rarely occurred in the short time frame we need now.

Slavery was only banned worldwide over a 100-200 year period. It took decades for school to become compulsory for all children. Cigarettes were known to cause cancer in the 1950s, but only now are widespread smoking bans coming into effect. It took centuries for society to clean up its water supply and install munincipal sewerage and water treatment, even in the face of the disease epidemics cities faced.

Given all this, it is hard to expect a dramatic social turnaround on global warming in little more than a decade. We can hope, but slow acceptance is the rule in history, not the exception.

I remember the days of the Clinton impeachment. All we heard then was rule-of-law this, rule-of-law that. In lying President Clinton was breaking the law. He had to go.

I thought "innocent until proven guilty" had a flip side. "Guilty when proven guilty," I would call it. Libby is now a convicted felon. So what happened to the rule of law? A jury's verdict only counts when it is a Democrat standing accused.

Scooter Libby was convicted on three felony counts, which means he is a felon until the day he is buried in the ground. That is the law, and I can't see how conservatives think they can talk their way out of a legal verdict.

What we have here is a microcosm of American medicine. The colleges recognize a certain moral responsibility to help depressed students, but all change is driven by fear of lawsuits. This is how things work in this country. It is sad, but I have practiced medicine long enough to know that real policy change only happens when wallets are on the line.

It would be easy for universities to cover their legal liabilities and nothing more, but this would be a mistake. It is true that college kids are legally adults, but this ignores the increased risk such people face for mental health problems.

Many serious mental health problems, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and many personality disorders first surface in young adulthood. This fact is compounded because many young adults in college are away from home for the first time. The shock of leaving home sometimes triggers mental health disorders.

Another problem is that a young adult who moves to a different environment may have a sudden personality change that goes unnoticed. Other students in a dormatory, for example, have no way of knowing if a student who is acting strangely is deteriorating or if he has always been a little strange. Subtle changes that family members would notice instantly my go undetected by new aquaintances.

For these reasons, universities should be on the lookout for mental health problems in their students. The first year or two of college can be a high risk time. I would hate to see universities hide behind legal responsibilities and ignore the real needs of vulnerable young people.

Blumnthal did an excellent job of pointing out the true horror of this mass firing. However, I am concerned that the press in general is missing the other side of this scandal.

The reason Bush was able to fire 8 U.S. Attorneys en masse was because the Patriot Act has a provision in its fine print that allows the President to appoint new U.S. Attorneys without Congressional approval. Prior to the re-passage of the Patriot Act in 2006, federal law dictated that the President could not appoint a U.S. Attorney without the approval of the two senators from the state the Attorney was supposed to serve. This was a little check-and-balance that prevented excessive politicization of the U.S. Attorney positions.

The story we are getting is that a staffer from Arlen Specter's office slipped the language into the Patriot act stripping senators of this veto power. Specter says he knew nothing about it. In other words, a staffer from a congressional office used his boss's name to alter federal regulations that resulted in a significant shift of power in Washington, and no one seems to know anything about it.

To me, this is much more frightening than the abuse of power attributed to Gonzalez or Rove. I thought Congressmen wrote laws, not their lackies. That this could happen, and that Specter is not livid about it makes me think the staffer really was acting under orders, probably from the White House with Specter's approval.

If U.S. senators will not defend Congress against assaults from the executive branch on the separation of powers, then our democracy is dead.