It is amazing to see all the people in these comments go off topic.

I was at the gym this evening and they have Newsweek and Time to read.

I couldn't get through Joe Klein's article on Hillary. All I could think about was how uninformed the american public is and the responsibilty of the media.

I recalled Glenn's earlier take down of Klein and I just couldn't stand what the pundits are doing to our country and our electorate.

By the way. This is Glenn's site. He doesn't know what will strike him as worth writing about.

Compare the work on one person to the large empire of Time. How much of what is in Time this week will be worthwhile in a few months, much less in a few years. Glenn's observations will be interesting for years.

And I need to thank the thoughtful comments. I often read a ton of comments. These are also helpful to Glenn as he creates his approach to exposing what is going on.

The web is indespensible. Keep up the great work!!

Glenn,

I suggest that you print your response to JimPharo as an update to this blog on the main page. This shows your strategy of argumentation and why they get so upset when you use their own words against them. (this was/is the last letter on page 1 of the comments.)

Here is another strategy employed by a software engineer, an old timer, David Parnas. In a conference or a meeting, he would figure out the fundamental assumption of the speaker. Often this would not even be realized by the speaker. Then he would ask a question based on the negation of the fundamental assumption. It would blow the speaker out of the water. They wouldn't know where to start the answer.

In a way, that is what you did. You asked the question about whether or not the "journalist" was doing his job. You asked it by showing his fundamental assumptions by just displaying his "journalistic" product. He was unable to answer.

And other commenters on this blog that CNN is the one that edited the interview so they are in the game of entertainment, not thoughtful analysis needed for a democracy. Need it be said that CNN employs the King.

In the early 1960's I took a course on political philosophy in the philosophy department. The text was a series of readings, "Communism, Fashism and Democracy."

One of the short pieces I recall was an essay "The Minority of One." It made the point that the strength of a democracy was that if one person was right, he would not be supressed, and the truth could win out. This is an argument for free speech.

Glenn's piece reminds us that we have to know what it means to stand for freedom and be able to take a stand whenever it has been violated. Our culture, which is informed by a vapid media, has allowed us to slide far from our constutional heritage and that needs to be fought with battles such as blocking the telcom immunity law in the next few months.

Some of the characters along the way are not our favorite people, but we trust in adult dialogue, openness, analysis, and the other tools of reason to be able to work through these issues. For all too long we have not dealt with the hard problems of governance.

Good governance is about creating the framework to work out good solutions over time.

GG's post today is about worthless chatter.

GG has made it clear from earlier posts that he has not endorsed anyone, and hopes that the primary season will be over soon, i.e., it is mostly about worthless chatter.

Then you make a comment that GG was not able to influence the Iowa primary by his comments on Hillary? He doesn't even support a candidate.

So your comment falls into the category of worthless chatter.

John Edwards is the only chance we have to keep from falling further away from our constitution and heritage by fighting the vested interests. If another republican wins the presidency, the rule of law will be so far gone that we may never get it back.

I was talking with a friend from a fortune 100 company who left last year because he didn't want to go along with the program. It seems that the strategy of keeping the company agile was to fire 30% of the people every year. My friend was told that he was too nice a guy to fire the required people. Arguments like how long it took someone to learn the job, a couple of years at least, fell on deaf ears. Notice that the tactics of fear that the republicans have used to destroy our government are now being used in corporations to destroy the corporate culture. Shouldn't there be reason and freedom of speech in our corporations? Not if it is further eroded in our country which rewards those who already have too much.

Here is a fun article on how Polk County, near Tampa, FL, blocked the teaching of intelligent design.

This article and activism is similar to the approach of Glenn in making their position explicit by using their logic.

Go have some fun. Be sure and click on the Wired article link.

This is an antidote for the outcry about a recent article on Salon.com about science and religion that got hundreds of comments.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/12/26/72046/268/826/426324