I found the story of Edwards campaign aids preparing to sabotage him completely unbelievable from day one. Let's go over it: 1) you're an Edwards staffer who comes to believe he's had an affair. 2) said affair would be devastating to his chances of winning in the general. 3) your response is to keep working for the guy until it looks like he might win, then somehow publicly trash him? Because somehow that would be a great outcome for the Democratic party? I don't think so. The sensible thing to do would be to resign as soon as you came to the conclusion - continuing to work for the team only makes the situation worse.

And say that for whatever reason you are unable to resign - you really need the job (seems pretty unlikely, as almost any other job would pay more and make you work less), it would destroy your ability to do campaign work in the future... whatever. So then, a year after the fact, you decide to leak the story to the press? That only makes you look like the world's biggest douchebag. Whatever you accomplished by continuing to work on the campaign would have been destroyed, as you would have established a reputation as someone who has no principles and can't be trusted.

Stephanopolous' story was never the least bit plausible - I find Trippi's denial totally believable.

Wha???

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell

Please don't scare us like that! Last time I checked, Mitch was the MINORITY leader.

Well, yeah, if you decide to buy gold-plated ingredients, you won't save any money on canning. I doubt anyone is surprised by this. The key, as pointed out, is to get the ingredients cheaply. For three dollars worth of seed and another few dollars worth of organic fertilizer, I grow and can enough tomatoes to last all year. You don't have to do that very long before you pay off even new canning jars, and it's pretty easy to get them used. For another buck or so worth of seed (plus some more money in olive oil, cheese, pine nuts, etc... which I can't produce myself) I make enough pesto to last all year.

Some folks have said that canning is pointless because you can just freeze stuff. I guess they have bigger freezers than I do - I can't freeze 30+ pints of tomato products and still have room for anything else. Plus frozen stuff won't last as long as canned - you end up throwing stuff out that's freezer-burnt.

I agree that jam is never going to be a big money saver, because you just can't use that much of it. Still, it can be worthwhile because you can make preserves that are higher quality than the store... if you can find them at all. Strawberry rhubarb? Can't be found at our local store. Apple butter? You can sometimes get it, but it's generally not all that good.

I don't think there's anything wrong with making fancy, expensive canned goods because you want to. But knocking canning as a money-waster is kind of silly - you certainly can save money if you do it right.

There’s no way of really telling if Sestak is telling the truth here

Umm, what? Why on earth would there be a reason to doubt it? There's not even a plausible motive for him to lie about this. As a retired officer, I can state from personal experience that the idea that one should not become entangled in partisan politics was pretty widespread.

I'm not a Pennsylvania resident and don't particularly have a dog in this fight, but I think that this suggestion that Sestak's registration as an independent was somehow inappropriate is absolutely bizarre. It's fine for Specter to say this kind of thing - that's politics - but Salon shouldn't pile on.

Nelson allegedly snuck up to the White House roof and smoked a joint.

Riiiight. Because the Secret Service probably doesn't pay too much attention to people sneaking around the White House, especially on the roof. I like Willie, but I find this one extremely difficult to believe.

Step 1: change your ship's registry/homeport to Panama.

Step 2: tell Dutch government where they can put it

Step 3: resume business as usual

This is the beauty of operating in international waters - the laws of your nation of registry apply (unless they conflict w/ international law, which is obviously not the case here). And Panama, Liberia, etc, have virtually no laws whatsoever governing what their ships can do... which is why practically every merchant vessel flies one of these two flags. So... don't like Dutch laws? Shift your flag to some more friendly jurisdiction.

It's always fascinating to read about science before the big three discoveries: evolution by natural selection, the theory of general relativity and the DNA molecule.

I can think of several discoveries in physics alone that are as important as these: Newtonian mechanics, Maxwell's laws (which unified the theories of electricity and magnetism), and quantum theory, for starters. Einstein actually won the Nobel not for his theory of general relativity, but for his explanation of the photoelectric effect, which is a quantum process. It's sort of hard to understand why general relativity is a bigger deal than this.

Sure, this is sort of a throwaway, intro line to the piece, but still... what were the selection criteria for "the big three"?

... and already there were several who vilified the woman in question for the heinous crime of having a sex life. Here's a news flash: sex is a good thing. Way to go, Salon readers - you're doing a great job of keeping women in their place. I would have expected better from this crowd.

The very next letter after mine:

Dear Daughter

I'm a slut. Sorry.

I rest my case. This is far from the only example in this thread. Sure, not everyone is condemning her because of her sex life... but a lot are.