I would like to see Ron Paul run as an independent - Libertarian, Conspiratarian, No-Taxagrarian whatever he wants to call himself. It seems likely that he won't be the Republican nominee, but it seems he's also touched a nerve among many voters.

If you're in favor of Paul being a candidate, why not start pressuring him to try an independent run? Call, write, email. Volunteer to help. Give money.

About that money - there's apparently been a huge rise in contributions to Ron Paul over the last month. Not enough to make him competitive among Republicans, obviously - but maybe enough for him to run on his own.

Frankly, he's a lot more popular than Nader ever was, and as far as we can tell, less whacko than his fellow Tejano, H. Ross Perot, who got - what? nearly 20% of the vote, in spite of dropping out of the race in July.

Paul might actually have a chance, given the general disappointment with all of the other Republican candidates, and the white-hot hatred of the Democratic front runner - by Democrats. Moreover, in spite of all of her reaching for the center-right, few Republicans would ever endanger their cojones by voting for a woman.

(And, if by chance Senator Obama gets the Democratic nomination, you'll see a "Southern Strategy" that would make Lee Atwater blush.)

If you like Ron Paul - get him to run as a third party candidate.

Is it not weird that Facebook executives would decide that publicizing every member's purchases and emailing everyone on their "friends" list would be a good thing to phase in just as the Xmas Shopping Season kicks off? ("Kicks off" indeed - apparently, it's died for many a Facebook member already.)

For the several respondents who assert "Who cares?" - you must be Hindus or Buddhists or Moslems, or not live in the US. In the United States, at this time every year, we celebrate a big commercial Buy-Fest in which every one must buy one or more SECRET gifts for pretty much every one they know. To help preserve the SECRET, said gifts are wrapped in brightly-decorated wrapping paper. They are not to be opened until Christmas Day (or Christmas Eve, for some.) It's important that the nature of each gift be kept SECRET from the giver's FRIENDS.

Thus, emailing all the online FRIENDS whenever the giver makes a purchase kind of kills off the spirit of the holiday, don'tcha think? Particularly when that nice doo-hickey was obtained from - gasp! Overstock.com!

It's not just the publicizing of your shopping/browsing habits - it's the fact that Facebook is tracking all of your web sessions. As far as you're concerned, you've left their site and are off looking at other stuff. But, as far as the greedful executives at Facebook are concerned, you are theirs.

Everywhere you go, they ride along. Are they intercepting your (hopefully encrypted) credit card or PayPal transactions? Are they storing them somewhere? Where's their security? Even if you can trust these guys, can you trust that they're protecting your financial private information?

Do you really want people like this hijacking all your web sessions?

Seriously - why would anyone tolerate it?

When will the talking heads start accusing Senator Clinton of staging this for the publicity?

Molly Ivins (and many others) have observed that the right wing is always accusing Democrats of doing things that they, the wingnuts, are doing. Whether it's sexual acts disapproved of by the Southern Baptist Convention, campaign finance violations, character assassination, treason, or whatever - if Republicans are doing it, they accuse Democrats.

Okay - so we've had "Tweety" Chris Matthews, "Tucker" Carlson and their ilk literally clutching their testicles at the mention of Senator Clinton getting the Democratic nomination. We've had the half-vast rightwing conspiracy putting out the meme throughout all the media that "Hillary" is "playing the gender card" and demanding special treatment because she's a woman.

In short, the right wing noise machine is doing everything it can think of to dissuade its manly men base that nobody should vote for Senator Clinton, because she's a woman.

Time for the projection phase - accuse women of wanting to vote for "Hillary" just because she's a woman.

It's business as usual for the right wing, and somehow the American public never tires of it, much less sees through it.

Nothing to see here - move along.

kickstarts asks "Why do people suddenly notice a woman is running for president only now that it's Hillary Clinton?"

Maybe because she's running as a candidate of one of the two "major parties." And I think you're wrong about "nobody" noticing. The (vast right wing) media "didn't notice", much as they don't notice Dennis Kucinich today (a white man; you'd think he'd be one of the favored ones, eh?) But Ms. Mosely-Braun was definitely noticed on the left.

Okay, let me digress - I don't respond to "Anonymous Cowards."

kickstarts states "Braun ran as a Democrat."

Okay - I've got to apologize for this one. I was just assuming (instead of actually looking it up) that Rep. Mosely-Braun was running on maybe the Naderite party or some other third party. This was an error on my part. Now, I could make some noises about Rep. Mosely-Braun not being a "major" (i.e. "well-funded") candidate, to try to explain my mistake and obscure the fact that I was wrong, but that would just be, well - wrong.

I'm sorry.

It's funny how most of the postings here that are rabidly pro-Likud and anti-reality come from Anonymous Coward(s). It's like you guys are self-hating Jews, or something.

You're certainly not helping Israel by reinforcing its ugliest stereotypes. Maybe you "Anonymous"(es) are actually anti-Semites.

Frankly, I'm not surprised that "The leading Republican candidates cited scheduling conflicts and multiple debate requests from news and political party organizations...", per the NPR news release.

I doubt that any of them are up to that level or quality of questioning. Fave Bible verse, anyone?