"Christopher and Tony have a very long history together, but this murder seems totally outside of any reasonable context. It is not foreshadowed, it does not play into any story line, and because it is so decontextualized, it fails to arouse any emotion except for utter contempt for Tony, which should not be new to any regular viewer."

You're kidding, right? The possibility that Tony might kill Chris has been a major element of the story since about halfway through the first season. He's come close on at least three occasions; and this season, it's been telegraphed so heavily that if nothing had come of it, every herring in the sea would have turned a deep, rich crimson. They even staged a Godfather-style christening scene, with Tony as Michael Corleone and Chris as Carlo. How much foreshadowing do you feel would have been necessary to turn the trick?

You're obviously a moderately intelligent woman. However, when you write things like this --

The fact is that Paris has been a reasonably successful professional model since she was 19, seven years ago. Her collective body of work belongs to the chronicle of our time.

-- it leads your readers to suspect that you've suffered some sort of brain damage. Is there any chance you might read this stuff over once or twice before you send it in, with an eye to deleting the bits that read as sudden bursts of inexplicable stupidity?

Um.. 'scuse me, Mr. Guiliani sir; are you saying that you used to waterboard suspected mobsters?

Great article; but I'm a little confused about this statement:

It is not true, as the movie depicts, that CIA officers stand by in some Egyptian or Syrian torture room while a prisoner is electrocuted. Most CIA officers would find that abhorrent...

Is this intended to imply that CIA officers find torture abhorent only if they're forced to watch it?

By all means oppose Romney, but oppose him because he's an empty suit, not because you want to impose an unAmerican and unconstitutional religious test for public office.

Religious tests for public office are indeed un-American and unconstitutional -- but that only means that the government cannot pass a law preventing members of any religion from holding office. It emphatically does not mean that I'm not allowed to consider a candidate's most deeply held beliefs when deciding whether to vote for him or not. If a candidate belongs, let's say, to the Cult of Cthulu, then I think I'm justified in assuming he's not going to be very vigilant in protecting my right not to be eaten by monsters. If he belongs to a religion that claims the world was created just as it is now, less than ten thousand years ago, I'm justified in thinking he doesn't have a very good grasp of science. If he belongs to a religion which tell him that the world is possessed by the spirts of billions of people who were murdered seventy-five million years ago by a galactic dictator named Xenu, then I'm justified in thinking he's batshit crazy. Am I supposed to ignore these things?

"What happened to 'Give me liberty or give me death!'?"

Precisely. It's possible that we could guarantee our national security by turning America into a police state -- but in that case, why would we care? We could probably all live to be 180 years old, too, if we were willing to lock ourselves in a plastic bubble and eat nothing but kelp.

As far as I can tell, these "droughts" have absolutely no connection to the murder of any attractive white woman. How, then, can they be considered newsworthy?

Clinton did such a great job vis-a-vis the Middle East that the first and second intifadas occurred on his watch.

You should at least try to get your facts right, groenie. The first intifada started in 1987 -- while the sainted Ronald Reagan was president -- and ended in 1993, a few months after Clinton took office. The second intifada began a few months before Clinton left office, and has continued though the Bush years.

But the matter of incurring extra expense because he visited her (rather than went to a ballgame or bowling) seems pretty negligible to me.

I see your point about the extra expenses, and I agree that public officials have a right to a private life. I'd argue, though, that they don't have the right to falsify public records in order to keep that life private. If that means that it's more difficult for politicians to conceal adultery, then my heart bleeds for them -- but this is the business they have chosen.

I'm really confused by the idea that the Constitution requires us, somehow or other, to dismiss the religious ideas of candidates from our minds. The religious test clause means that the government can't forbid members of certain religions from running for office. It does NOT mean that the voters have to pretend the candidates don't mean it when they espouse certain beliefs.

What if Romney were a member of an ancient religion which required mass sacrifices to a volcano god every year? Would we be constitutionally required to ignore that?

i'm as left-leaning as one can get but i find ms. paglia's ranting to be quite amusing and thought provoking.

Really? What kind of thoughts does she provoke in you? 'Cause in me, she provokes thoughts of chattering zombie clown skulls, flying relentlessly at my head and spitting streams of hot pepsi into my eyes while the hungry ghosts of Ike Turner's backup singers stand behind me and chant "What's so bad about bone cancer? At least it ends in death."

I'm just saying...

"Woot", without the l33t-ization, has been around at least since the early 90s, when there was a minor dance his that included the line "Woot! There it is." This was picked up and chanted at baseball games as I recall. Not sure how it made it into leet-speak.