What's the NFL doing in this situation? They're leaving it alone. Baseball could learn a lot from football. If anything, Fantasy Football is more popular than baseball because it is easier. You don't need to follow 164 games, you need to follow 16. You don't need to know all the pitching rotations and relievers, you just need the QB and a backup.

I was a far more casual fan until I started playing Fantasy Football, now I know the teams better and the players better. It has added to my enjoyment of the game and has made me more likely to go to a game or buy merchandise. That's the way you get your revenue, not by bleeding the fans wherever you can.

And if MLB were to eventually force fans to pay more or to switch to approved sites? I bet many rotiserrie fans would go back to doing it the way they did before the Internet. Pick up the daily paper and compile your own stats, run the league based on that. They'll likely think twice before buying anything "official" as fans too. MLB will just have succeeded in driving away some fans for a few $.

"For those boys who actually enjoy reading -- 'anomalous males,' he calls them -- Sax suggests that they be disciplined, pushed into becoming athletes, and encouraged to spend time with 'normal males.'"

And this is supposed to keep the US competitive how? Illiterate adult males wandering the streets, unemployable because all they can do is play sports. They won't be in the computer industry or the sciences despite any supposed interest, because they're illiterate.

Of course the flip side is that the women would all be highly literate, but frustrated because they'd be kept away from the sciences or higher education and pushed towards "taking care of babies".

Evidently this is an example of the educational system at work. The people that think this is a good idea are unable to follow cause and effect chains to their logical conclusions. The supposed Dr. who's book this was all based on is a "Dr." because he got a PhD through the mail? Or one of those useless bible "colleges"?

"A terrorist attack kills 1,000 of our people - we respond with a bombing barrage in a Muslim country that kills 20,000. They escalate - we escalate."

OK, we tried your way, evidently it didn't work. They killed 3,000 in the Trade Center Attack. We killed 100,000+ in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now we have another attempt by them to commit another large scale attack. Or is the final solution in your mind a Final Solution? It ends when everyone on both sides is dead?

Please note, no attacking the messenger at all and yet your argument is refuted.

"By the way, Joe Conason, you never served in the military, so you have no standing to comment on military affairs. YOu basically have no idea what you're talking about--kind of a reverse "chicken hawk" thing."

So you're saying he's got standing equal to the entire Bush administration?

I'm sure that would be true if the assertion made any sense at all. You don't have to have served in the military to have standing to comment on military affairs any more than you have to have been a baker to comment on a pastry. It would lend credibility, however, if one had not actively dodged the draft in time of war before supporting starting another war. That's where the administration loses credibility. Conason thus has better standing than the administration or the chicken hawks.

This is a result of using the wrong words to describe terrorism. September 11th wasn't an act of war, it was a massive crime. Poice work is the best and only way to really stop terrorism. It is much like the supposed "war on drugs" or when some idiot declares a "war on crime". What are you going to invade?

I can picture it now, Bush decides to take the "war on poverty" seriously so he sends the army into poor neighborhoods in order to root out people who insist on staying poor. He begins to take the "war on illiteracy" seriously so the National Guard is sent into emelentary schools everywhere, shooting children who refuse to read "the pet goat" or whatever Bush's favorite book is that week.

Sept 11th was this administration's fault. That they can continue to make this country less safe with idiocy in Iraq, with forcing the hand of the British police, with peddling fear whenever they can in a desperate attepmt to retain power is a disgrace.

Has he missed the recent airline bombing plot?

Isn't the guy that ended up directing the movie someone that was brought in after the original director was fired? If there are any problems with the movie, they likely stem from the producers and company not understanding the premise. Remember, at one point they were going to change the name of the movie to something like Flight 135. They thought they were making a thriller, Jackson and the original director knew what they were really going for, but somewhere along the way it got diluted.

This is easily my favorite quote

"They're much better off than they would be if the economy were growing slower or weren't growing"

In other words The American people are doing better than they would be if they weren't doing as well.

Or The American people are lucky we haven't screwed up this economy more than we have, and believe me we can make it a LOT worse. Almost a veiled threat, really.