As noted above, the front runner stands to lose a lot more in a debate. There's always a bit of a roll of the dice in a debate. Your adversary can make a point you weren't prepared for, the moderater can throw a zinger your way, you might sneeze and look awkward on TV...

But in this case, I sincerely doubt McCain could come close to even holding Barack's notes in an actual debate. The disparity in this regard is as wide as the Grand Canyon.

So I wonder exactly what the whole "Town Hall" concept would entail.

Given Barack's lead, as demonstrated in recent polls, I think it's safe to say more voters identify and trust him at this juncture. To hold some cushy "Town Hall" meeting where both candidates can agree on some issues and "put bi-partisanship behind them" would only benefit McCain: by moving closer to Obama, he could be seen as a more moderate, reasonable leader, rather than the War-Mongering Dinosaur from Arizona that he is.

Didn't know the "Town Halls" were going to be on Fox News, before a crowd vetted by the McCain camp.

Turning down something like that isn't cowardly; it's akin to declining to fight a gang member, on his turf, unarmed, and showing up by yourself... not cowardly: PRUDENT.

... (With the kind assistance of Tim Russert, whose demise is bound to generate at least a couple of days of sloppy, saccharine, thoroughly disgusting media coverage -- see the NYT front page already.)

Yeah, I was just going to say the same thing.

So, even if one believes that the Administration didn't knowingly or intentionally LIE to justify the invasion, I think their reckless disregard for any sober analysis should still be infuriating to any reasonable American citizen.

I think we can safely consider anyone who has no problem with the Bush Administration's "recklessly low" standard for justifying an invasion to be inherently UNREASONABLE.

And yes, the whole Valerie Plame scandal should dispel any notion that the Administration honestly believed that the Iraqi's had weapons of mass destruction. You don't pillory any counter-opinions when you're involved in a thorough policy analysis...

I have to wonder exactly why torture (and humiliation) had to be implemented as official US policy after being disavowed for the first 200+ years of our nationhood.

I see a more insidious goal: treat people like dirt to create a continuous stream of "terrorist" enemies... which guarantees a continuous stream of potential America-hating (withc good reason) attackers... which guarantees a never-ending need for increasing defense appropriations for the military to "protect" us from said attacks.

A perfect vicious circle of evil.

How the kids at the school will treat him for being different, i.e. refusing to drink the Kool-Aid. Then again, maybe in Berkeley public schools, kids aren't as close-mindedly consumerist as they were growing up in my area...

But I remember the peer pressure against the kid who didn't get new Air-Jordans every fall being pretty nasty. We're talking "Shunned by the Herd" type stuff.

I think there's a fine line between raising your kids to be high-minded, progressive, rational thinkers, and making them hate you because they grew up the odd-man-out in the harsh realities of the American Playground.

WASHINGTON, D.C.—House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel issued the following statement after negotiators reached an agreement on FISA legislation. The House is scheduled to take up this legislation on Friday. Emanuel’s statement is below:

“The FISA legislation we will consider gives our intelligence community the tools it needs and the public the civil liberty protections it deserves. In addition, it rejects calls for automatic immunity for private sector companies. While this bill isn’t perfect, the perfect should never be the enemy of the good. I applaud the Democrats and Republicans who reached this compromise and produced legislation that deserves support from both sides of the aisle.”

Looks like my congressman is going to be getting a nasty letter from one of his constituents...

By four p.m. today it will be time to look back and say, "Today's the day that fascist America truly started." It's our Reichstag fire.

Whether you think it was an inside job or not is irrelevent; the events most resembling the Reichstag Fire in consequence were the Sept. 11th Attacks. It all goes back to that day... the terror, the fear, the never-ending threat to our "freedoms." We mistakenly figured that the threat came from the terrorists themselves. Nope.

Can't we just establish that catcalling - regardless of the gender of the person doing it - is crude behavior that is unacceptable in polite society?

The corollary being, if you're a woman who wishes it was acceptable to make lewd comments aloud to men, you're just as sleazy as the guys that actually do it?

After all, it's just a measure of one side asserting power over another; exploitation is exploitation. It doesn't matter who does it.

It's only being "debated" among lobbyists in "special advertising sections" of magazines. Among actual scientists, it clearly falls in the "net energy loss" category.

The study I remember reading showed that ethanol use was feasible... but only after excluding from the equation all the fuel and energy that went into producing the corn in the first place.

... will it just become the truth? The main stream media are certainly being as accomodating as possible to Pelosi / Hoyer.

Nice to know that asinine comedy is gender neutral, folks.

WRONG.

I can guarantee you getting kicked in the nuts is much, much more painful than a boob slap. None of the women in that video keeled over in pain... a pain that slowly spreads to the rest of your torso before dissipating several minutes later...