Major League Baseball lost me a long time ago. It's the big v. small market thing, and the lack of any meaningful revenue sharing. But I grew up with baseball, and on some level will always love the game. (I REALLY enjoyed that international competition last spring; has there ever BEEN finer defensive baseball than was played by the Koreans?) I (still) don't understand all the hand-wringing and gnashing of teeth concerning Barry Bonds.

Has he been caught doing something prohibited by MLB, according to the procedures established by MLB for detecting such prohibited acts? Has he been convicted in court of a crime? Yes? Then he should receive the appropriate punishment(s). No? Then what's the big deal? Has the presumption of innocence, too, been whisked away to Gitmo in the middle of the night? Jeez, I'm starting to understand how Lance Armstrong must feel.

MLB could learn a lot from the NFL in this regard. In the meantime, enjoy your Gints, Gary. By the way, I hear Babe Ruth wasn't much of a role model, either. But he was fun to watch.

Idaho had (just under) 1.3 million people in 2000. Idaho is represented by two Senators and two House members, and thus has four electoral votes, which works out to one vote per 325,000 Idahoans. California, meanwhile, has one electoral vote for every 628,000 Californians. Thus the good people of Idaho command nearly twice the voting power of their more tolerant and enlightened fellow citizens in California.

THIS is why the U.S. Congress spends most of its time coming up with new ways to restrict women's reproductive rights, rather than, say, hold Bush-Cheney accountable for the total absence of WMD and any connection to 9/11 in Iraq, despite half a million deaths (so far).

Democracy doesn't work in America, because democracy doesn't exist in America.

If I tell you my car has (only) 2000 miles on it, and you buy it on that basis, and after you take possession you discover it actually has 222,000 miles, I've defrauded you. It's not a defense for me to admit that I really didn't know what the mileage was, and that I believed it COULD have been 2000 miles; nor is it any excuse for me to say that my friends agreed that my car looked like it might have as few as 2000 miles on it. And it would be absurd for me to claim innocence on the grounds that my car DID have 2000 miles on it at one time.

Bush-Cheney didn't merely say they had "reason to believe" there were WMD, or that the "evidence suggested" there were WMD. They and their minions stated repeatedly that as a matter of fact there were weapons. They knew the types of weapons (e.g., Cheney on 'Meet the Press' on 03/16/03 claimed Saddam had a "reconstituted nuclear weapon"). They knew where in Iraq the weapons were ("in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad").

In truth, there were no weapons. All the statements of fact made by Bush-Cheney were untrue. Every single one. They lied, and we were defrauded. And half a million people, most of them innocent civilians, are now dead because of those lies.

To claim that the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003 in response to crimes committed by Saddam Hussein (and ignored by Reagan and Bush Sr.) in 1988 or 1992 is just silly. The French, Germans, and Russians certainly did buy it; nor did they believe that Iraq was a threat to anyone in 2003, and they strongly opposed the U.S. invasion, together with the people of the world. So spare us any more "Republican Truth", Mr. Mehlman or whoever you are.

Johnalive, Uberboy, FooBar, Barry, et al. -- very strong letters, all.

When future civilizations list the reasons for the downfall of the American Republic, they will certainly include the ending of the U.S. military's long tradition of nonpartisanship and its unofficial but firm alignment with the "Republican" party. That's in addition to the flawed electoral system that allowed Bush-Cheney to seize power against the wishes of We The People; the five Republican supreme court justices who ended their own long tradition of nonpartisanship in Bush v. Gore; and the consolidation of the mass media in the hands of a few friendly corporate overlords who noticed nothing unusual about any of the above.

I'm not sure when the U.S. military remade itself into the militant wing of the Republican party. Clearly after Vietnam but before the evangelical hazing at the Air Force Academy. Certainly in time to be noticed by the writer who tried to warn us via Kiefer Sutherland's character in "A Few Good Men". In any event, I'm far less inclined to view these folks as victims than I was when the GOP campaign to attack Brazil in response to Pearl Harbor was originally unveiled.