"I'd rather be right than President."

Actually it even more reminds me of an instance several decades later (I forget specific date or names of people involved.) when a Congressman quoted this line on the House floor, to which another member promptly retorted, "We need not be concerned - the distinguished gentleman will never be either of those!"

Of course I'm sure DeMint would rather be FAR right than President and in that regard I'm sure he'll get his wish.

Eat right, but eat enough. Balance the diet of what you prepare at home and keep things in moderation. Plenty of people have figured this out. If you're concerned about overweight kids be sure to focus on the health reasons rather than the vanity reasons for keeping fit.

An earlier commenter said Obama wanted to take over certain private industries and included the Census Bureau in the list. Hello! The Census Bureau IS a federal agency (Dept. of Commerce) and performs a function very specifically required by the Constitution. Even the most strict-constructionist libertarian should concede that much.

"I don't belong to an organized political party - I'm a Democrat!"

Neither is trying to sell you something, though they do sometimes request your financial contribution. In a democratic system politics by definition should involve everyone. During election season, suck up the political calls, unless of course you prefer to live in a dictatorship. Votes are collected one call or doorknock at a time, and if you get a live political call, please be polite. The caller is likely one of your neighbors volunteering for someone they believe in. Those of us who do it are not telemarketers and if you don't want to keep receiving calls just say so; campaigns have their own do-not-call lists.

I've always questioned the two-state solution for a couple of reasons:

1) the geographic separation between the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Israel would probably want to control travel between the two citing security, which the Palestinians would probably complain is an infringement on sovereignty.

2) the Jerusalem question. Israel wants it to be the "eternal and indivisible capital" and there's no good way to divide it anyway while allowing adherents of the three religions to get to their sacred sites.

I think there should be a single nation with West Bank and Gaza relating to Israel in the same way Scotland and Wales currently relate to the UK - devolved legislatures with representation in the Knesset, and of course no second-class citizenship. The national government would be responsible for external security, local police for domestic security, and a unified Jerusalem as the national capital.

Much shorter bill, much easier to explain.

Doublecheck your signature. You put in an extra http which is why the link doesn't work. Try my signature.

We've already seen too much of what you call his "best strategy"! Time to stare down the Blue Dogs who aren't falling in line and lose the bipartisanship fetish.

My reasons for contributing are usually to fill in a detail, especially if requested by the Wikipedia editors. I focus on things I have direct knowledge of. I've also corrected an occasional typo. It only takes a couple of minutes to fix these errors. I doublecheck what I think I know before adding and I don't use the discussion pages. I would encourage everyone to add what they know.

An annual movement meeting in DC to get everybody fired up and on the same page, similar to CPAC.

More willingness to challenge sitting Democrats in primaries.

I held my nose and checked out your link and the whole dual citizenship thing is nonsense. Different nations have different citizenship standards. Israel, for example, considers all Jews (at least the Orthodox variety) citizens regardless of other citizenships. The 14th amendment to our constitution says all persons born in the US are citizens. Even if that site were correct about also holding Kenyan citizenship if Obama were born in Hawaii he is OUR natural-born citizen. Since you also have to be a citizen to be a US Senator and Obama was never naturalized then it stands to reason he was natural-born. Case closed!

Take Wal-Mart for example. How rich do you think the executives would be if there were no minimum-wage associates to serve and sell to the customers. Top-down investment might get the ball rolling, but actually staying in business and accumulating wealth comes from the bottom up.

I thought single-payer was conspicuous by its absense too. When Harold Ford mentioned even the principle of universal coverage might have to go my thought was, what the heck is the point of this exercise then?

...that Obama WOULDN'T invoke Ted Kennedy. Such a reference would have struck me as conspicuous by its absense. Also, Kennedy's family was clearly on board with using him.

It's even-handed; link at sig.

Obviously not as directly since he himself is white, but Salon contributors Joe Conason and Gene Lyons make a convincing case in "The Hunting of the President" that Clinton's disposition toward seeing black people as his equals provoked many of his haters. I believe the title of the chapter mostly about this phenomenon was "Justice Jim Rides Again" or something like that. You may recall that Toni Morrison refered to him as our first black President and I think this is why.

(Sorry if these points have been made; I usually read the letters first so I don't duplicate, but with 44 pages already here I was too lazy.)

The headline refers to Bin Laden objecting to our support for Israel; the article is about how close al-Qaeda's ties are to Afghanistan. Sounds like a non sequiter.

He's an important voice for the religious left and we need his help breaking through the noise. He appears to be in the "safe, legal, and rare" camp on abortion. Link through my signature to the website for Sojourners, which is his organization.