I might be the guy behind you in the grocery line, or the one who tossed your kid's stray ball back to him in the park, or the one helping the next door neighbor move, or the one sitting next to you on the bus. My genitalia, my sex life, and the issues I talk about with my therapist are none of your business, just as yours are none of mine.

You are entirely correct in everything you said above. But what if you are the guy that a straight woman has started dating? Do you tell her right away? Before you sleep with her? Not tell her at all? I'm not asking you to answer on a personal level - I'm just pointing out that at some point (a very important point, in fact) the difference is there and does become an issue.

"Compromise, hell! ... If freedom is right and tyranny is wrong, why should those who believe in freedom treat it as if it were a roll of bologna to be bartered a slice at a time?"

-Wonder what he would've thought about the FISA bill?

"I will never be silent about the death of those who cannot speak for themselves"

-Like the thousands who died under the right-wing dictatorships he supported?

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As for the person who said people like him are a part of this country, "like it or not," I'm afraid I don't like it one bit, and I'm sure they don't like sharing a country with us either. The whole point of a constitutional democracy is that you're all supposed to at least agree on some basic fundamental principles upon which the country is founded. But 200+ years later, we're still fighting the battle of the Enlightenment while the rest of the Western world has moved on.

It's a shame how so many well-funded, well-educated "white" people can't manage to major in science, medicine or engineering, something that might actually be useful. I guess they're not so smart after all. Although maybe their parents or grandparents were. Which is how they got to be "white" in the first place.

Yea, seriously, I mean like arts and literature and philosophy are just completely pointless. Because we all know the only important things in life are those that extends its length and convenience.

The reason that so many well-funded, well-educated white people major in the arts is because, unfortunately, they are the ones who can afford to do so. This is nothing new - throughout history, philosophy and art have been accessible only to the upper classes. If that leads you to conclude that they are useless, that's sloppy logic based on resentment, to say the least. What we should strive for is to break down the barriers and make this 'privileged' realm of study open to as many people as possible.

Perhaps if you had taken some liberal arts courses you would have learned to construct a better argument and avoid calling people stupid while making yourself look more so in the process.

What comes through in the tone of the editorial is the idea that we should have sympathy for the telecoms because it's not their fault, they were just following orders. This was also the basis for the quote that went "when the government tells you to do something, you do it." Clearly, this kind of argument is trying to get us to envision a scenario where the FBI knocks on your door and asks for your cooperation in some sort of investigation, which involves you doing something that seems like it might be illegal.

Now, I'll readily admit that aside from a few staunch civil libertarians, I think most average citizens including myself would comply in such a situation and expect not to be prosecuted for it, since it is, after all, the government telling you to do it. But I'm not a lawyer, I don't have millions of dollars in resources, and most importantly, I'm not legally responsible for the privacy of millions of customers.

That's the whole point. These aren't unsuspecting private citizens we're talking about - they're huge corporations with (as Glenn has pointed out before) their own lawyers whose entire job was to know the laws applicable here and who must have known that the law was being broken.

Two Buck Chuck is actually quite good. Unfortunately, I rarely get to buy it, because it's about the only thing at Trader Joe's that I can afford.

Great article as always, though I'm sure you'll get the usual humorless pedants wailing "why do you hate America?" and "why don't you write about any of the good shows?" This misses the point that Heather's articles are more social satire than actual TV reviews, and that's perfectly fine, because if you're actually wondering whether to watch the latest reality show and need an honest review to tell you if you should, you are beyond help.

I consider Heather something of an American hero: she watches these awful shows and skewers them so that the rest of us can be just informed enough to join in the smug disdain without actually having to subject ourselves to such dangerous levels of idiocy. Come on, people, do you think it's easy doing what she does?

Also, props on the spot-on Drawn Together reference. I wonder how many other Salon readers are fans?