How long have drilling companies known this practice might be contaminating drinking water? From he article it looks like it's been undeniable since 2001, yet their efforts have gone not into addressing the problem, but lobbying against regulation.

Not to question Boren's veracity...OK, I guess I'm questioning it, but regarding his statement that Clinton won the district in 1996: how much did the district change with redistricting in 2000? Is it really reasonably the same area?

Franken broke a major campaign promise already? Where did that come from? What, did I miss the TV ad where he promised never to tell a joke again? Was it the debate where he said, "With God as my witness, I'll never be funny again!"? It seems to me that he showed his ability beyond most senators to explain things so they actually make sense, and a sympathy for the little guy that comes from the core, not the talking points.

And as long as we're being factually inaccurate, he wasn't picked by a majority of voters. He won a plurality. That's how the election came out a 42%-42% tie. A majority would have been nice, but Minnesota has a strong third party, so we have many plurality winners.

Diversity isn't just a Democratic value. It actually grants an advantage in appealing to groups who feel excluded from the political process. As an active grassroots Democrat, the process I see is we try to figure out the agenda of the excluded group, and ask how to incorporate it into ours. That's how the agendas of racial minorities, organized labor, religious minorities etc. came to be so ingrained in Democratic thinking.

Republicans, by contrast, with the admission this is just how it looks from outside, don't ask how to incorporate someone else's agenda in theirs, or ask how they can help an excluded group. Instead, Republicans pick some part of the Republican agenda think think will have some appeal and push that, like promoting school vouchers to inner city blacks, or opposition to gay marriage to socially conservative Hispanics.

I'm amazed anyone expected multiple crises to be resolved already, but that seems to be the case. It's like a lot of people wanted things fixed, provided it didn't involve doing anything. Obama said over and over these changes would take a long time, but it looks like a big chunk of Americans thoguht he was kidding. Did anyone expect FDR to have the Depression resolved by mid-1933? They did even expect everything to be fixed by election day 1934, at at least some Republicans actually wanted to fix things then. Now they're dedicated purely to blocking everything, regardless of whether they could improve a bill or offer functional ideas. If Obama and congressional leadership has finally figured out that there's no hope of bipartisanship, all we really need is remedial policymaking for blue dogs.

Teddy Roosevelt had national health insurance in the Progressive Party platform when he ran in 1912, and I doubt it was first dreamt up during platform committee meetings. It's been a century already, and some people call this hurrying? As thousands lose access to health care every day? This is a crisis and deserves a crisis response.

For all the criticism, some even justified, that gets launched Obama's way, can we at least point out that he Stephen Chu was a great choice. I don't know how anyone but a confirmed denier can watch that clip and think otherwise.

Of course, the deniers are probably upset Stewart didn't ask for Chu's birth certificate.

If you want to make healthcare Obama's Waterloo, make sure he isn't Wellington.

So which do we want, a linkage of teacher pay to student performance, or more teachers for the students with the greatest needs? Taking on the toughest students means that teacher's test scores are doomed to be lower. Taking on the best students guarantees decent scores. Linking tests and pay builds in a huge incentive to cherrypick the best students and dodge the worst. It would make more sense to raise pay where pay is the lowest, and offer bonuses where teacher retention is toughest.

They're not spineless. There's plenty of spine. They also unfortunately have a surplus of ingrained free market nonsense. If either the progressives or blue dogs lacked spine, one would have walked over the other a long time ago.

It's not just you, but all of us on the left side of the political spectrum, we need to drop this "spineless" meme. The problem is the blue dogs really don't get it about either what's wrong with health insurance, or how not getting reform done is going to hand the midterm election to the Republicans. The money influences them, but it also rewards those already inclined to vote the special interests' way.

Also remember that if there were just a few reasonable Republicans, the blue dogs would lose their clout. What we have to is somehow get through to the blue dogs, or elect better representatives.

Looking at your quote of Gates --- YOUR quote --- what did he say that was unreasonable? Sure, with the 911 tape released, we know the caller didn't say there were black men breaking into a house, but that's what the report said was in the 911 call, so he had every reason to believe it. Other than that, what did Gates get wrong? He matched the facts as so far known.

Joan, I get what you mean by "rising", I think, but maybe a better way to put it is that it's becoming more open. It looks like racists were more quiet until they got some events they thought they could use, and certainly they get approval from each other. To say it's the "southern strategy" suggests there's something strategic about it when I think it's almost entirely visceral. I will meld the two, and suggest the "southern strategy" has become instinctive and reflexive.

I'd rather it be out in the open anyway, so as to make remaining moderate Republicans rethink they're ideological and party loyalties.