I will miss Phil, which I'm surprised to hear myself say. I, too, had warmed to him over the past few weeks, even though he had a tendency to get a little gratuitous with reminding people he had a wife and children whom he loved. Like, practically every available opportunity gratuitous. Still, a nice enough guy, and I hope he gets steady work out of the Idol Summer Tour.

On the flip side, my wife has taken to calling Chris Richardson TimberFake, which nicely sums up our collective feelings about him. I could not be happier to see that guy go.

I can not possibly thank you enough for mentioning this pervasive, facile idea. Granted, as a husband who does nearly all of the grocery shopping, puts our son to bed at night, and can operate an oven without burning the house down, and occasionally remembers to unload the dishwasher, I'm biased.

My wife and I talk about this all the time, though: If these (apparently ubiquitous, judging by the constant presence of this facile stereotype) guys are such useless shits, why marry them in the first place? Is the market for free semen and bale-toting really that hot? Did these guys pull a bait-and-switch, or were they always stumbling oafs? And most importantly, are these guys even real? Or do the women who keep this stereotype simply have the archetypical dunderhead husband in mind, then mentally cram their guys into that mold?

And lest too much blame for this idea get heaped on wives, let's also acknowledge the fact that the husbands in these situations (should they actually exist as portrayed by, say, "Yes, Dear") are very likely complicit in keeping the stereotype alive and well -- after all, they get a pretty good deal by doing so, what with the glorious obliviousness and the complete lack of engagement with their environs.

Tony Rezko did not raise funds for Obama. While he is indeed a crooked political fund-raiser, the most he ever did for Obama was sell him some real estate. Rezko was too busy padding Rod Blagojevich's wallet to bother too much with Obama. Check your facts, it's an election year.

People who lived in unincorporated territory in Montana are not the only people who benefit from SUVs. I recently moved to Chicago, and shortly after we had to ditch our '93 Accord for a '99 CRV. I was reasonably pleased until the first heavy snow, whereupon I was overjoyed, and have been every winter thereafter. 4-wheel drive is officially the greatest thing that ever happened to me in terms of driving on snow. More specifically, for parallel parking in heavy snow, wherein one must drive over drifted/plowed/packed snow to get from the curb to the street and back again. Anybody who disputes the magic of this has never experienced it or is lying or is a sourpuss or possibly some combination of the three. That is all.

Price point, price point, price point, is why this will never happen. The 17'' MBPs approach $3000; anything bigger would be around $3500, for which you could buy two iMacs and set them next to each other.

Apple's upgrades to the new MacBooks' and MBPs' display connections are worth paying attention to, as are those of the 24'' LED display it unveiled alongside the new laptops: The display has one cable that plugs into the USB, power supply, and display ports on the attached laptop (any Mac, but clearly it's meant mostly for the laptop).

http://store.apple.com/us/product/MB382LL/A?fnode=MTY1NDA5OQ&mco=Mjc5MTYwMQ

It's pretty much a docking station unto itself -- you keep an external keyboard and mouse plugged into the display (which becomes a USB hub), which is plugged into the outlet, obviously. Open up your MacBook, plug in the multi-cable, and you're docked to whatever you need (including external hard drives and other peripherals, since there are 3 USB ports).

It seems like Apple's been inching away from user-upgradable portables for a long time now; the RAM in my old G3 Pismo was ridiculously easy to upgrade, and the hard drive in my Aluminum MBP really wasn't that hard to switch out. But the fixed batteries in the new 17'' MBP are a little unsettling to me.

Nice of you to mention it, and not leave well enough alone.

Learn how to spell "wuss" before you use it in a sentence fragment. You get that under your belt, maybe we can deal with the broader idiocy of what you just typed.

Softdog is exactly right about a few things, not least of which is that the bloggers -- and the American people -- lost. Yes, Greenwald et al. got the nation (or at least another 70 or 80 people, myself included) to pay attention and care about FISA, and I could not possibly be more grateful for it. But calling this a triumph is ridiculous.

Frankly, the tone of this entire article is ridiculous -- whichever commenter termed it as an extensive self-fellating on Salon's part was also right on the money. It starts out rightly giving credit to Greenwald and others, and then, when we get to the part of the story where we lose another measure of our constitutional rights, it quietly and utterly changes focus, turning into a complete puff piece that -- and this is mostly speculation -- it seems like Greenwald would be a little uncomfortable with, especially considering his lack of disclosure about his personal life. Even though I was fascinated to learn more of Greenwald's back story, and that he lives in Rio (had no idea!), what's the fucking point?

All that said, I can not gush enough about how much I respect Glenn Greenwald. He epitomizes what journalism should be, and, sadly, what it utterly is not. He does this having not attended journalism school. These things are the opposite of unrelated.