To win in overtime a team either must score a minimum of six points or score twice. (Score a touchdown, your team wins.)

But kick a field goal and your team then must score after the ensuing kickoff, onsides kickoffs permitted. This at least will give the opposing team a chance to win with a touchdown or kick a field goal to "tie."

The "score twice" provision prevents overtime from becoming a field-goal marathon. And the one-in-a-whatever chance that a field goal and a saftey (or two safeties in-the-once-in-an apocalypse scenario) would end the game too.

Don't give a damn 'bout my reputation. Great song over the credits of "Freaks and Geeks." And if it's just about the music, how about "House"? And the best credits of all time? C'mon, that's easy: "The Andy Griffith Show."

Ah, the fresh breath of Opus, cool before penguins weren't cool. From Bloom County to this incarnation, still the best damn comic strip. Ever.

McNulty's rant at the statue is not pretty, not poetic. But it's at the foot of Lord Baltimore himself. A kind of prayer.

To celebrate a person's death, except perhaps the most evil among us, and who are they? ...is wrong somehow. But bye, Jessie Helms, you son of a bitch.

I should have spelled it correctly. J-e-s-s-e. So bye, Jesse, you son of a bitch.

As a (proud to be) Kansan and one who has voted twice for Gov. Sebelius and would do so again, I must say no to her selection as Barack Obama's running mate.

In Eastern Kansas, where most of the population of this state live, Sebelius is popular, but not to a fault. She is far better at governing than she is at speaking, far better at compromise than she is at mandates. In Kansas, that works.

In Western Kansas, whose divide begins well short of halfway across the state geographically, she is near anathema. Good people reside there, but not ones likely to vote for her under any circumstances. See: "What's the Matter with Kansas?"

both the William Allen White and Thomas Frank versions.

Which is to say, Kansas and its neighbors in "red state America" aren't going to be persuaded by anything she will represent on an Obama ticket. And I'm pretty sure that's fine by her. What voters would choose Obama over McCain because of her? Not many in Kansas, not enough elsewhere.

As for a place in the Obama administration as a Cabinet member or something equally worthy? That'll work. And, I think, make a lot of Kansans proud.

If Opus,(that's the penguin's name ya'all) isn't the greatest comic character since Snoopy, I haven't seen another worthy one.

Okay, really, Salon. Paglia pounds two or three notes over and over on the piano and a few people hear it and think it's music. It's time, it really is, for her to go,

My thanks. Our thanks. You have rescued and revisted ideas about baseball and television sports and other things, that no one else...and I mean no one else...had the guts to.

I am offended on several levels by most, but not all, of these letters to Salon by what I term loosely my fellow progressives. Is that what I am to be called now? Because, you know, I want to know who I am.

I get the whole secession part. Civil War. 1861-65. A settled matter. Except where it's not. Want to play the game of "What State Should Leave the Country?" I pick South Carolina, but they're not the state du jour of the posters right now.

And I get the Rick Perry part. The part about him running for reelection in a state that might just think it's okay to vote against Kay Bailey Hutchinson because she's a (uh, okay), an Obama liberal.

And, though I have no relatives at all in Texas, I understand what it's like to have one offend you with the worst sort of talk that isn't in agreement with your own perfect view of the world,

But damn, people:

You, honest to God, want Texas to secede? If you do, you should reconsider, You want to fight another Civil War? Because that's what would happen.

You want to bury the Rick Perry side of the Republican party? Individually? Really? He's not running scared of a Democrat: it's Kay Bailey Hutchinson.

You want to rescue your relatives, the good ones from Texas?

The ones from Austin? Or maybe the one you saw at a convenience store one trip through Texas and had a pretty nice conversation with?

Damn, people.

And I'm from Kansas. Just another state some Salon reader-writer wanted off the USA map because...

No.

A loyal and true man, Always. The time will come to judge his legacy, such as it was. Even the most jaded Salon reader-writer has to know something: there are some times when the other side has something worthwhile to say.

And would you have wanted to be Dole's running mate in 1996? And there again, someone who (Dole) was all of what I've said above and more. Still is.

I read of Jack Kemp's death and I say I will not say any one bad thing about him.

(I did not say the same about Jesse Helms.)

So, rest in peace. Jack Kemp.

There was once upon a time that the Republicans had something to say.

Please. I count 138 days since Obama has been president. Even if my simple arithmetic, done in a few seconds, is off by a day or two, David Sirota thinks every promise is somehow not just off, but broken? Patience, people. Go away, Mr. Sirota, please. Say for 138 days or so.