Mr Shapiro,

you write:

"Despite the weirdness of Texas holding a disorganized caucus on the night of its March 4 primary, and thereby giving a much-needed delegate boost to Obama, the Clinton public-relations team also failed to get anywhere with the fairness issue."

While I agree with you that the Texas Democratic Primary is something of a clusterf***, I've been voting in Texas primaries since '88, and to give Obama's campaign their due, they made a concerted overture to voters to participate in the caucuses in a way that I haven't seen any other campaign do, either this year or in 2004.

The dynamic was admittedly slightly different in March of '04 with Kerry way out ahead, but Clark and Edwards still had slim but mathematical chances to overcome their deficits vis-a-viz Kerry when the Texas primary rolled around- in other words, they were in a position similar to Hillary's after Super Tuesday of 2008. I was on the email list for all three in 2004 and none of them mentioned caucusing later that evening.

But I saw targeted ads on several lefty blogs from the Obama camp urging supporters to vote in the primary AND come back for the caucus. If there were any for Hillary's campaign I didn't see them.

I imagine the state democratic party has been lackadaisical about getting the word out to primary voters in the past because through 2004 we held our primary in March, at a point when, traditionally, the race was sewn up or very close to it.

First of all, thanks for this very informative article.

The Monterrey Aquarium has a useful link, "seafood watch"

http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/cr/seafoodwatch.asp

the wife is drinking and the boy is acting up because they're acting out in response to the letter writer's emotionally distant, self-contained, "self-actualized" act.

And it sure looks like an act to me.

If you keep pretending to not have emotions and being superior to everyone, people close to you will act to compel a reaction from you.

I don't presume to know if your problem is simple narcissism or an extreme preoccupation with how you appear in the eyes of others, but your distancing yourself from your family notwithstanding, you are part of your family-- and their problems.

Filthy:"I don't believe the Clintons are racists. However I and I bet a whole lotta people do believe that the Clintons were willing to be dismissive and disrespectful to black people if they thought it would help win primaries."

Kate:"How in the hell would this have helped Hillary Clinton win black votes in the primaries? Do you really believe the Clintons, long known for progressive views on race, hatched a plan to conquer Obama by writing off 13 percent of the American population? Not even Dan Quayle could be that stupid."

If the Clinton camp is in fact deliberately writing off the African-American vote at this late stage in the campaign, it makes sense if you believe that she doesn't believe she can win the nomination, but wants to hobble Obama so that she has a shot at facing incumbent McCain in 2012.

If it's so, it's a reprehensible calculus and may seriously damage the democratic party beyond 2008-- but it strikes me as a plausible explanation of what the Clintons are doing.

I don't care who wins between Clinton and Obama, as I think they both leave a lot to be desired. Nevertheless, this is one of your more ridiculous articles-- wouldn't an economist's take on the gas tax proposal have made more sense than a lawyer's?

Oh, that's right-- economists are virtually universal in regarding the gas tax holiday as a horrible idea!

One additional thing Frost doesn't address is the opening the barn door effect-- will Republicans start demanding that all sorts of necessary taxes be suspended as a consequence of Hillary's legitimizing of McCain's position, accelerating our government's spiraling descent towards insolvency?

It sounds like Conley is saying that Hillary has a right to keep lending her campaign money in bad faith, knowing she won't win the nomination, and knowing she should be able to shake down the Obama camp to pay it off.

I don't know if the election laws say she has a legal right to make deliberate, bad-faith loans to her campaign with the intention of coercing Obama into paying her off-- maybe they do.

But either way, that's exactly what it looks like, even if Conley avoids using the word blackmail.

Maybe Obama should actually call her out publicly on this, and ask her what she wants to accomplish by staying in the race, and if she means to write off the money she's loaning to her campaign.

for this interesting book review- I'm beginning to think I should stay away from the political jabbering in Salon and stick with these articles.

Obviously, we need to fence off all that vulnerable beachfront, thousands of miles of it, where alien sea turtles and the occasional mutated oxygen-breathing shark are brazenly breaching our oceanic borders.

The fence will have to be invisible around beach-houses of rich folks, so as to not hurt property values. It will cost a lot more, but it's totally worth it.

First let me say thanks for reprinting this article. I'd never heard of Grunberg before.

I was surprised to hear Van Creveld say the 2006 war was a success-- even if it may have purchased Israel some short-term quiet on the Lebanon border, it may cost them more longer term, given how it helped spark the current violence in Lebanon itself.

Naturally I was also surprised to hear him say he thought that if Syria had nukes it would increase the peace, although I've often thought something similar-- that if Iran actually had nuclear warheads, BushCo wouldn't jack with them and beat the war drums, much as they never overtly threatened North Korea.