Dear Joan:

Am I demeaning you by addressing you by your first name? It's not my intention, because I think of Salon as a very valuable source of news and thought provoking opinion and I want to call something important to your attention:

You are lost in the same field of weeds Maureen Dowd and a whole host of popular "op-ed" personalities from the so-called mainstream media finds themselves flailing about in when you waste yours and everyone else's valuable time writing about John Edwards' hair, Barack Obama's "beefcake" quotient, and Hillary Clinton's metaphorical connection to a meditation on YouTube.

Please. People are dying every day for a mis-guided and mismanaged policy of our nation's highest leaders. People are being tortured in the name of your "right" to a certain "way of life." The very Constitution at the foundation of theat "way of life" is being dismantled before our very eyes.

It is not even the least bit interesting or relevant to consider a connection between The Sopranos and The Clintons.

Maureen Dowd is an increasingly uninteresting red herring, unfit as a thinker or a journalist for the platform she is given; dissecting her opinions is a less valuable exercise than dissecting even those of David Brooks.

So, please, Joan, for the sake of your own increasingly valuable and relevant masthead, keep your eye on the ball.

Regards,

Lonbud

There is nothing either neo or conservative about the Podhoretz family's psychopathic view of the United States and its place in the world.

Nor is what we've done in Iraq and, by all indications, are planning to do in Iran anything new. The United States slaughtered unseen, uncounted hundreds of thousands of innocent Cambodian and Laotian civilians - not to mention the millions of Vietnamese against whom we were formally at war -- a mere 40 years ago.

Carpet bombing and other weapons of mass destruction are the tools by which we have fashioned the altar of our global supremacy.

America: Securing the Gifts of Freedom through Oppression and Intimadation since 1776.

Yes, it's very high-minded, and lucid, and practical to point out how looney Cindy Sheehan is, to distance oneself from that portion of the so-called "fringe" element on the Left who seems only to want to posture, never to want to do "the hard work," always calling for the circular firing squad.

It's very strategic, and pragmatic, and frankly - boring.

Cindy Sheehan may well only be a viable candidate for Mayor of Looneytown, but I defy you to show me a more important thing for the citizens of this nation to do than demand impeachment of what even you in your sober estimation are willing to deride in print as a "lawless cabal."

Unless these guys, beginning with Cheney, are impeached, future generations of citizens will be saddled with the precedent of all that's been done in secrecy, all that's been done in brazen defiance of the laws, the Constitution, and the will of the people by these heinous profiteers.

There will be nothing high-minded, or lucid, or practical left in the civic life of our once-proud nation on which to stand when a more ruthless and bloodthirsty ruling cabal finds itself in the seat of power.

See then where your strategy and your pragmatism will take you.

There are very serious, and obvious questions it appears no one in this discussion is willing to ask.

Who is holding a gun to anyone's head in the choice to a) purchase an iPhone, or b) enter into a contract for cellular service?

Why do the principles of Free Market economics go out the window when people talk about this issue?

Lively discussion is fun, eh wot?

RealName, I'm impressed by the fervor with which you hold your opinions, but the tenacity with which you maintian your beliefs has no bearing on their underlying truth.

I'm no big lover of phone companies, insurance companies, credit card companies, oil companies or any other of the corporate-megaliths whose greed defines the particular abuses under which the average citizen labors in our culture, HOWEVER, no one is forcing anyone to buy a cell phone, accept the terms and conditions of service demanded by cellular companies, or otherwise bend to the will of these so-called corporate overlords.

Is walking around with a device enabling you to be contacted from anywhere on the planet in every waking moment some kind of inalienable right?

I mean, if you hate the phone company, stop giving them your money. It's pretty simple.

tomreedtoon actually hit the nail on the head. We are not slaves to the rapacity of ATT, Verizon, T-moblie, we are slaves to Fashion. Buy the ticket, take the ride kids...

These guys haven't been able to make a real go of the Ooma-type business model after nearly three years. They started out selling a box for $139 and I watched the price drop all the way to $49 before they abandoned the box entirely.

I predict Ooma will join SunRocket in the VoIP graveyard in quite short order.

Should have been http://phonegnome.com/