Thanks.

"We do not torture" sounds a lot like "I am not a crook" to me.

When is this guy going to get impeached already?

If the long list of offenses to date isn't enough....

"We're glad you fellows are really fast. Please use that skill now as you go away."

I would like to echo that sentiment for the entire Winter Games.

Until reading Rebecca Traister's essay, my knowledge of Calvin Trillin's work was limited to his pointed and clever "deadline poems" in The Nation. I now look forward to discovering Bud and Alice -- thank you.

I had never heard of this guy before you devoted many, many words to him. He doesn't deserve that much attention.

I participated in fantasy baseball and football from about 1995 to 2005, sometimes in multiple leagues at one time. I follow both baseball and football anyway, fairly closely, focusing on one or maybe two teams in each league.

Here's the moment at which I decided to stop playing fantasy baseball.

I'm an A's fan. (The Brewers are my N.L. team and original true love -- I've been a fan since growing up in Milwaukee -- but now I live in Oakland.) Toward the end of the season in 2003, I was at an A's-Rangers game. Hank Blalock came to the plate against Keith Foulke in the ninth inning. Both were on my fantasy squad. Cognitive dissonance ensued. I found myself rooting for Blalock to get a single, in order to preserve Foulke's save and to increase Blalock's batting average. Turns out Blalock didn't get a hit and Foulke didn't get the save, though he did get the win on some extra-inning heroics, which salvaged an otherwise miserable fantasy day.

I realized right then that I hated being in that situation, rooting for some unlikely event to happen so that both my fantasy team and the A's could do well. I would much rather appreciate the subtleties and beauty of the game, and root for my team, as purely as I possibly can. (If the players can't be pure these days, at least the fans can strive to be.) Mixed loyalties ruined the fan experience for me. So no more. (Okay, I slipped and had teams in 2004 and 2005, but I didn't really like it.)

I don't play fantasy football anymore for slightly different reasons. Since I'm less interested in football than baseball, it's actually a burden to accumulate the knowledge I would need to have in order to have a winning fantasy team. And there's hardly any payoff -- only 16 games, only one set of games a week. Fantasy football, even more than fantasy baseball, is to me a waste of time.

It's not easy to avoid playing fantasy sports -- there's social pressure from friends and co-workers to play, and I enjoy the camaraderie and the trash talking. Since they ruin my enjoyment of actual sports, though, I'm done with fantasy sports.

King, you wrote "I have taken a vow this year not to repeat the embarrassing statistics about how seldom 1- and 2-seeds lose in the first round of the NBA playoffs."

But by linking to the article that details them, didn't you essentially repeat them?

([Shrug.] At least you're not talking about hockey.)

1. There is strong circumstansial evidence that Bonds has cheated for years. (No one's accused Jeff Kent, for example, of using steroids, as far as I know.)

2. He hasn't endeared anyone to him with his demeanor. (It's entirely possible that Sosa and McGwire may have been cheating in 1998; however, they were accessible and charming to the media and fans.)

3. He is approaching Hank Aaron's hallowed home run mark under a cloud of disgrace.

Three strikes, he's out.

The hype was so relentless that I don't think I'm going to see another movie for the rest of the year.

Both Tom Tomorrow and Lloyd Dangle (http://troubletown.com/cartoons/), in their political strips this week, intimated that George W. Bush lusts after the power to chop off heads.

Based on Bush's tone of voice and the sick faces he makes when he talks about killing people, I think just maybe they're right.

The result of these so-called errors is that people are being disenfranchised. Whether it's fraud or incompetence doesn't matter.

Electronic voting machines should go the way of the telegraph.

This could only be satire, because it's too disgusting to be real.

This one single article has made me consider ending my Salon subscription, because publishing an article by someone who advocates suicide -- no matter for whom -- is simply sick.

The article may have made some point at the end, but my opinion of the author was so low I didn't care at all.

So she has a terrible work ethic and wants someone to die.

It's as if you'd published something by George W. Bush.

Yuck, yuck, yuck.

Normally I think what Salon publishes has some intrinsic value, even if it's not always well-written (though it usually is) -- but this goes beyond bad taste.

You don't need to lose members. Issue an apology for publishing this piece.

Maybe Salon is telling us something by implicitly accusing its readers of being or using sock puppets.

Maybe Salon is telling us, "We're trying to kill ourselves." Makes sense given the context.

Hey, Salon Editors! How about a word of explanation? How about a note saying "we made a mistake publishing this piece and further insulting our readers"?

Michael Lind says: "The fact that Bush followed the invasion of Afghanistan, which had sheltered al-Qaeda, with the toppling of Saddam Hussein, will puzzle historians for centuries."

Not true. It's very easy to figure out. In centuries hence he'll be forgotten as just another imperialistic plutocrat.

I assume the "contest" was the Bears game, and he said, "Are you ready for some football?" Right?

Didn't see the game, but anyone who's watched Monday Night Football would be able to guess that....

It is like doubling down -- with a 12 showing.

You go from "probably going to lose" to "almost certainly going to lose."