I read some other letter writers pissing all over her prose and her points, but (speaking as someone who actually pays to be a member of this site) I'd like to see Salon give Bauer more assignments and publish more of her work.

I was informed and entertained about a topic I wasn't even interested in. I say this at great risk of being flamed with zippy one-liners.

In response to Guy’s previous point, maybe the Times reported an inaccuracy when the reporter’s described this program as a “closely held secret.” If that is true, then the Times ought to do journalistic due diligence and print a correction, or at least a clarification as to why their sources were calling this story a closely held secret.

to the efforts of Horowitz and others to incite popular violence against individual working journalists (who tell the truth), and to increase the efficacy and likelihood of any such violence by publishing home addresses of putative victims.

Let’s call these people simply and accurately what they are: fascists. Fascism lifts up authoritarian leaders who are carried along on a movement of popular violence against journalists, the legitimate opposition, protesters, pacifists, outsiders and minority groups. And let’s not forget that fascism has always, always been against the left.

This surging new strain of American fascism is so obvious, so clear and easily identified by its classic behavior, that it frightens me that so many people don’t see it for what it is,..that there isn’t a groundswell of revulsion against behavior that is so alien and un-American, that we fought WWII to defeat.

I'd feel better if the news organizations got their backs up, if editors and publishers expressed outrage at this treatment and declared that they weren't going to back away from doing their jobs. But I haven't heard such a loud clarion call of commitment from the journalistic community, and it worries me that the journalists will again capitulate to fascist bullying.

Nerdnam articulates a hugely significant observation about Lieberman’s performance vs. Lamont when compared to his previous debate vs. Cheney. Walter described Lieberman as a hard-fighting seasoned political veteran pulling out all the stops to win. I'd like to have a guy like that on my side. Where the hell was this guy in 2000?

I didn’t see the Lamont debate but if Shapiro's and Nerdnam's descriptions are accurate, my sense of betrayal, outrage, frustration and disappointment toward Lieberman—and toward Al Gore the enabler and the DLC cabal that “stovepiped” him into the VP spot in 2000—only grows. And I will open my wallet again for Ned Lamont.

Sorry Kickstarts, but that kind of neo-Che Guevara thinking that if we allow (or encourage) the government to become more alien and repressive the people will finally wake up doesn’t work. It’s going to take a half-century to get back what we lost in the 2000 election.

You used to to hear it a lot from progressive Nader supporters in 2000 trying to dismiss warnings about the worse-case scenario if George Bush won. ‘Once the people finally see what right-wing government looks like, they’ll throw it over in a massive show of outrage’—not. In fact, in 2004 it was a usually progressive constituency—married women—that swung in favor of GW's reelection.

Progressives should count truth in journalism as one of their values. However, the incredible success of Fox news and the conservative media “echo chamber” in fronting lies to the public and turning them into “common knowledge” (with attendant political success) does put my interests as a Progressive in conflict with my values. Would (n’t) it be great to create our own reality distorting echo chamber with which to win?

What if Salon and everybody else picked up Truthout’s story and magnified it to the point where it cast a further bitter pall in the public mind over the White House?

Some might say (as they say on Fox News) that the White House has enough misfortune that we don’t need to pile on, but from having watched what was done to Clinton, Gore, Kerry, Cleland, et al., our opponents have never given an inch, have never let up.

Many years ago I read a book by Arnold Smookler called “The Parable of the Tribes: The Problem of Power in Social Evolution,” the central thesis of which was that once one of the tribes chooses the way of power, the choices of all the other tribes are constrained by that choice. The Conservative movement has reached for and taken a new kind of power to destroy their political opponents and control the debate. Are our choices constrained to either becoming permanent losers or becoming more like our opponents?

You blog like an angry drunk. How's the hangover this morning? Joe Lieberman represents Conn, not just the Jewish community. And the Jews I know are aghast at his conduct. The Jewish community is not monolithic, ya know.