Perhaps it is a coincidence, but it is funny that Holder decided to go ahead with the investigation at exactly the time Obama realized the Republicans would do everything in their power to defeat health care reform.

You have to wonder if White House officials didn't finally learn their lesson -- the GOP will stab you in the back every single time, no matter who it hurts. Since the GOP is nothing but the Party of No, there is no reason to court their support for anything. So the WH concluded that it could go ahead with this investigation without political cost.

Imagine if the GOP were willing participants in the health care debate. Perhaps Obama would have put a lid on the investigation just to keep them at the table.

So I'd like to personally thank the GOP leadership for being such assholes about health care reform. It it hadn't been for you, it wouldn't be so easy to go ahead with torture prosecutions.

So we would have had a male contraceptive 2000 years ago if men wanted one, huh? This article whines and whines about the difficulties of contraception, but there is not a single sentence discussing the scientific challenges of male birth control.

Let me point out just one. Women ovulate over a period of about 3 days in 28, producing a single egg, perhaps as many as 3 or 4. Men produce millions of sperm daily, and do it constantly, 24/7. Any one of the 60 million sperm in an ejaculate can result in pregnancy. The challenge is like the difference between catching a pop fly and catching hail.

If a male a contraceptive is so damn easy to make, why don't you go out and make one? It's like people who complain that their Kindle isn't in color, or that there are no solar powered cars. Not every technological problem is readily solvable. If you don't know anything about medical research, you shouldn't make assumptions about what it can or cannot do.

People today are so spoiled by technology that they think everything is possible, if only those evil conservatives would get out of the way. The only reason we don't have cars that fly is Big Oil, right? Uhh, no.

We have a drug now that makes eyelashes grow longer, for crying out loud. If it were possible to create a reliable male birth control pill, we would have it. The problem is that the science is hard.

And if you don't believe the science is hard, I'll say it again. Go out there and make one yourself. It's easy, right?

I don't understand the hate, but that's okay, because I don't understand 90% of the opinions expressed by Salon readers. If Jay is lame and unfunny, I'd like to know what you think hip is. There's nobody out there among the young comedians that I'd trade a box of used disco CDs for.

SNL is pathetic, a shadow of its former self. Chris Rock used to be funny, but he is faux-angry-young-man act has gotten old. I guess I'm showing my age, but I'm tired of comedians who make a living off obscene humor, and that's just about all of them. Lenny Bruce mostly exhausted the obscenity angle, and then George Carlin milked it for all that was left. Move on, folks. The reason your father has a "lame" sense of humor is because he heard all the jokes you are hearing now 30 years ago, and he has grown up.

There is Jon Stewart, who is funnier than Leno, but Stewart also shows his political colors, and thus is eternally doomed to a smaller audience. Leno's act is for the general public, and he tries to be neutral. In today's world, that is very, very hard to do. Perhaps that's why he appears "awkward." People have no tolerance for neutral voices today, even though they used to be everywhere. Walter Cronkite would be roundly ignored by today's TV audiences. Keith Olbermann would crush him.

The problem, I think, isn't that Leno isn't ironic. Its that he isn't cynical. People now days have no patience with comics who aren't anti-establishment, anti-everything. It's one thing to say Leno's humor is conventional and therefore not your taste, but to mistake a matter of taste for lack of talent is mentally lazy.

And by the way, I am old enough to remember Carson. Johnny was not better than Leno, at least not in the 80s when I saw him. I guess Carson had his day in the 60s, but at the end he was far worse than Leno. He resembled Letterman now -- respected, but long, long out of gas.

All I can say to Heather is that I am so glad you have to watch Leno over and over again as part of your job. That's the kind of irony that cracks me up every time.

Obama is trying hard to avoid discussion of race. Fine. In the arena of personal attacks, the person being attacked has a right to first dibs on interpretation.

But how can anyone say, as this article does, that we should focus on health care issues? What health care issues? Obama has been maddeningly vague since the onset. He has still, after 9 months in office, not taken a firm position on the public option. Public option or coops? Subsidies to private plans or no? Mandates or no mandates? Tort reform or no tort reform?

All of these questions are fundamental. And unanswered.

So, when you have a play on center stage and a sideshow in the front row, and nothing is going on in the play, why be surprised that sideshow has stolen the audience's attention?

People like Joe Wilson and Glenn Beck are leading the health care debate because the president refuses to commit to a plan. All Obama has to do to quell the sideshow is make two statements.

1. Public option or bust.

2. If the Republicans choose to oppose we will run them over.

Do that, and all this race talk will be quickly forgotten.