I'm so accustomed to being cynical under the rule of King W. and rightfully so, and so I too have felt pangs of skepticism towards Edwards' sincerity. After all, wasn't the base of the right-wing seduced by the aww-shucks facade of W.? And we all now know his good-ol'-boy charm was just a mask for the insecure, cruel, frat-boy asshole that we all know he really is. Could John Edwards be the same? Could it be an act?

But that all disappears when I think about how passionately and unequivocably he is giving voice to so many issues that I care about and desperately want to see become a part of our national dialogue. His background does matter, we know what someone's upbringing does to shape or, as in the case of W., mis-shape their character. The man seems to get it on a personal level, and thank god for all of us that he also happens to be an extremely gifted orator. It is a welcomed change and a necessity frankly that all of America hear John Edwards articulate the need for universal health care, worker's rights, fair trade and an environmentally sustainable economy.

These are populist issues. They can only propel a candidate to the Whitehouse if there is a massive wave of support for them that can overwhelm the politics-as-usual elites that survive on their corporate donors and meandering pandering centrist ways. So if you're gonna stir up the people by talking about big issues like these, you'd best deliver or you'll be ten times as unpopular twice as fast if you turn your back on the people who put you there. It'll work much the same way as things did under Bush and Cheney, but instead of the president guiding policy towards the whims of neoconservative thinktanks and Halliburton, he'll be guided by the needs of the people of the United States of America.

So I'm not as much supporting a candidate, as I am supporting all of the issues that I care most deeply about by hiring the most passionate and effective advocate for them that I can find. Right now that's looking like Edwards to me and a lot of other folks.

While I believe that requiring user registration will elevate the quality of comments and provide the Salon user community with some measure of accountability in tracking opinions, I certainly hope that there are many more changes to come in the letters system. Here's what I'd like to see:

• Ability to use anchor tags
• Kill the pagination
• Threaded replies

Oh, and ignore the comments about the font, it's fine.

So they're mostly mad that Gonzales is a bad liar?

Nowhere do I see any condemnation of the fact that Gonzales has repeatedly lied to Congress. Of course that would force them to recognize that what is at the root of the US Attorney scandal is misuse of executive power. NRO is just mad because Gonzales "fumbled" the coverup and the only reason I suspect they are throwing him under a bus now is in an attempt to diffuse this scandal from rightfully tainting the GOP for a generation. I for one want to make sure that when Bush's wrongdoings are fully exposed to the public, that we hold all of his enablers like NRO and most of the conservative establishment accountable for ignoring these abuses time and time again.