What did Jesus say when he was asked, "What is truth?"

Is it possible to be "all-knowing", to know everything at all times? If not then "agnosis" is an experience that we all share.

So apes turn to each other to mediate the uncertainties of their existence. Isn't that what we do when we talk? Even when we flame and hurl insults, aren't we seeking affirmation of our personal certainties when others do not share them?

The role of blogs and writers like Greenwald must continue to put journalists like Wolfe on notice that they cannot get away with being merely stenographers and lapdogs. But sites like Salon and TPM have to make the next step and give readers an alternative that goes beyond criticism, opinion and occasional in-depth reporting. We need to push journalism to a new interactive level with the goal of producing comprehensive evidenced-based reports that compete directly with the "MSM". Think of teams of editors and reporters who work with bloggers and commentaries in a collaborative effort. Think of a wiki-like model but with editorial standards and controls that maintain the primacy of evidence. There will still be editorial decisions about how and where to allocate resources but the last two years have proved that there is an audience for news that follows an adversarial model for those decisions.

I agree with your priorities here but I think there is another path that Congressional Democrats can also pursue which will eventually restore accountability to the executive branch.

Every committee needs to hold hearings that bring evidence of this administration’s malfeasance to light with testimony from scientists, policy experts, whistleblowers and retired civil servants. I know that this is being done now to a limited extent but obviously a full court press is called for when the administration will stall all other attempts to hold them accountable.

These kind of hearings won’t always get the media attention they deserve but that does not mean they won’t be effective. Remember that the public turned against the Iraq war despite the media, not because of its reporting. The Democratic congressional staff should encourage the left blogopshere to cover these kinds of hearings because that is where a growing percentage of the electorate knows they can find out what is actually going on. They can also pressure CSPAN to cover more hearings that they would normally pass over.

The results may not be immediate but at the very least it is a way to accumulate evidence of malfeasance that Democrats can take to the electorate in ’08.

The primary difference in the experience of men and women is the certainty of their reproductive success. Women experience that success when they hold their child in their arms. Men rarely experience that certainty. Reproductive success is the root of emotional security, adolescent male rage is the unconscious realization of the uncertainty that confronts them. This rationalizes nothing except self-knowledge. If men want to be emotionally secure they need to confront the reproductive realities and act accordingly. I am a 55 year old single man and childless. Perhaps I am rationalizing but when I look at the world that we live in I have no regrets.

Who has disposable income and can be persuaded to spend it for products that promise anonymous sex, anonymous violence and racist and misogynistic snark? Twenty, thirty and forty-something white American males who have learned that they cannot afford to be empathetic in a ruthless marketplace.

That is all you need to know to understand that mindless march to war as well as George Bush and Don Imus. In most mediums mass-market journalism cannot survive unless it caters to that audience because they have the most disposable income and they have predictable pavlovian responses to time-tested advertising tropes.

That seems obvious when it comes to cable news and talk radio but it is less obvious in the case of major national newspapers. But their target demographic is the stockholder of the companies that target the most lucrative demographic.

Most journalists don’t consciously cater to them, they either have jobs or they don’t and they learn how to keep those jobs that pay well when they get them. Sex sells. War sells when it is experienced vicariously as it is taught in video games. Racist and misogynistic snark sells when insecurity and resentment fuel it.

The last election proved once again that that demographic is a minority. Reasonable folks have other means of getting the news.

Virtually all of the major claims about global warming and its causes still remain to be proved? This is the same epistemological misdirection of “deniers” who somehow possess more certainty than evidence. There are no facts about the future. Causality is always hard to prove. Science is a process that deals in probabilities. Gore is typical of advocates of a cause who overstate their case in order to appeal to the public’s desire for certainty. That does not change the weight of evidence behind his case. At what level of probability would you act?

I would suggest that there is amother reason that republicans on the committee are hostile to Gonzales. They are protecting the President by making Gonzales the scapegoat. It is obvious the firings were political and were done at the direction of Bush and Rove. Gonzales is, and always has been, just a "loyal Bushie", simply following orders. Specter et al hope to solve the problem by having Gonzales resign, end of story. Meanwhile the Justice Department remains politicised and Rove continues.