For Salon to publish an article granting even a hint of credibility to the "intelligent design" ploy is unconscionable for a progressive publication. Those who cannot or will not accept the empirical consensus of science as the foundation of history and reality must be refused a seat at the table of public discourse.

Just as many scholars of the Holocaust will not actively debate Holocaust-deniers lest such a position be given an air of legitimacy, so too should we treat deniers of evolution by natural selection -- their position is no less intellectually and morally outrageous.

But my God . . . a front-page article on mediums follows a front-page article on "intelligent" design?

As others have said, Salon needs to hire a science editor. Or at least someone who knows the difference between a quark and a quack.

"Jarhead" may or may not be a good film -- as others have pointed out, its cinematic merits are only briefly considered by Ms. Zacharek. What is clear is that Ms. Zacharek fetishizes the "grunt" to such a degree that it's not possible to ask legitimate questions about the soldier's culpability for the war they fight.

Ms. Zacharek presents them almost as victims of their own patriotic urges to serve their country, or, just as likely according to her, victims of dire social and economic situations. In both sets of circumstances, the effect she achieves is to absolve the soldier of all responsibility for ethical decision-making. Is that what it means to "support the troops"? To portray them as dutiful automatons?

Doesn't the "grunt" retain his or her moral agency even in a time of war? Contrary to what letter-writer Jeffrey maintains, a solider is still a human being who is required to assess the consequences of the actions he or she is asked to undertake. In the case of the current Iraq conflict, a mere cursory consideration of the evidence back in 2003 should have led a soldier of even average intellect to conclude that their participation in an unjust war was itself unjust. They might have ended up in the stockade for refusing orders, but as Kant reminds us, morality isn't easy.

At least in the stockade, their integrity -- and their souls -- would have been remained intact.

Seriously, didn't we settle this eighty years ago? Egad. Just goes to show that stupidity, like herpes, will always be with us.

What we are witnessing is nothing less than the tipping point of the republic. There's no reasonable doubt, no allowance for partisan interpretation. George W. Bush broke the law. Either Congress reacts to Bush's blatant admission of lawlessness by impeaching him, or they do nothing and signal to the world that the American experiment has failed.

It's that clear-cut.

I must also take Mr. Taylor to task for casting the current national situation as somehow being the equal responsibility of both right and left. It is not the left or center that have abandoned the very notions of what counts as legitimate government, but rather a theocratic, amoral right-wing that seeks unitary executive power, unilateral and eternal pre-emptive war, and American empire as a desirable outcome.

The problem in America is not too little civility but too much; historically speaking, secession or civil war are the only proportional responses to the right's march towards native fascism. Until the so-called "opposition" Democrats realize this, they are nothing more than enabling collaborators.

What disappoints me throughout this entire debate is how many of my fellow liberals refuse to call out radical Islam simply because in doing so they believe they're supporting the Bush administration's agenda. Hogwash. If anything, condemning the barbaric and intolerant excesses of Islam will mean proudly proclaiming and exalting the West's secular ideals of critical thought, gender equality, and freedom of expression. At a time when our leaders seem ever more inclined to dispense with these values, a strong and unequivocal affirmation can only be a good thing.

Dennett speaks of the "inversion of reasoning" required for the faithful to see that God is a construct of human biology, not the other way around. If we examine the history of science, we see that this "inversion of reasoning" (or, as I like to call it, "the inversion of the obvious") resides at the heart of scientific discovery: before Copernicus, it was "obvious" that the Earth was the center of the universe; before modern atomic theory, it was "obvious" that solid matter couldn't be largely empty space; before Einstein, it was "obvious" that space and time were constants throughout the universe regardless of perspective; before Darwin, it was "obvious" that all life was just plopped down on the planet in a singular act of creation.

Today, it's "obvious" that religious faith *must* be based on something greater than and external to ourselves. It's exciting to think that Dennett's efforts will bring about another major inversion.

Journalists have only one obligation: to truth, no matter what form it may take. Truth trumps all other loyalties, be they personal, familial, social, or national. It is not up to the journalists to try to ascertain ahead of time how a story might "play" out; when it comes to one's duty to the truth, consequences are irrelevant.

One need only look to a publication like the New York Times to see what happens when truth is subverted by lesser loyalties and passions.

I've been telling my progressive friends for years that the reason the "law & order" pitch works so well for the GOP is precisely because our justice system lacks a proper form of accounting. Punishments are abstract and incoherent, e.g., spammers can get more prison time than rapists. People sense this at a very instinctual level.

Professor Miller intuits that reciprocity and proportionality are biologically based concepts that stem from our evolutionary history as primates -- they're not going to be eradicated from our nature overnight and civilization needs to recognize that. Better to accept the need for revenge and integrate it into society rather than endlessly attempt to transcend it.