Mr. Kilgore is exactly right, and right also to affirm Howard Dean's 50-state stragegy, and the contrary view is just more of the program of political suicide that zealously partisan Democrats want to pursue.

I think the really liberal approach is to reach out do the work of gentle persuasion. This will be most effective with the ignorant or uncommitted who are just following the local majority, but you can actually change some hard-set minds along the way.

I lived in Arkansas for some 25 years. It's a place that can be as weirdly Snopesian as Mark Twain said it was, but is more often surprisingly liberal. Arkansas elected Winthrop Rockefeller governor twice because he was more liberal on race than the redneck Democrats like Orval Faubus who had been running things. They then elected Dale Bumpers as governor, a moderate liberal who then went to the Senate until he retired. David Pryor, another moderate liberal, followed Bumpers as governor and then went to the Senate also. And then there was Bill Clinton. Today both Senators, three-fourths of the Representatives, and the governor-elect are Democrats. There were dark days during the Reagan years, but they were overcome by the persistence of Democrats.

This history has been repeated, and can be again, in every "middle South" state, Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina, even Georgia, and if you consider Texas in that group, demographic changes there are going to be earth-shaking. As for the Deep South, Louisiana is Democratic as often as not, and even in Mississippi and Alabama people can be brought back to the party that nurtured them through times of deep poverty. The racial glue of Deep South politics is weakening, and pressing the interests of the middle class can be effective.

Southerners are fiscally conservative. Clinton scored big points with his budgetary record. If Democrats came down hard for the balanced-budget amendment (which allows for unbalancing in times of emergency), it would blow away their reputation as tax-and-spenders and gain great respect in the South, and for that matter, the rest of the nation.

There are many other issues we can find common ground on. This is not the time to concede the battle for Southern votes, it is the time to renew it.

One of the newsmagazines, I think it was Newsweek, reported some months ago that the notion that women past 40 almost never found a mate was both a myth and part of a more complex picture. It turns out that a great many such women don't WANT a single commitment, and have several relationships going. Sometimes they're platonic, more often they are robustly sexual, with plenty of caring and sharing as in conventional couple relationships.

But the more intense the emotional bonds, the more difficult such arrangements are to maintain. Human nature tends to prefer a deep emotional commitment between two people, because for the human species it has worked best for survival purposes. So when you get deeply involved with more than one person, it can be confusing, and for the multi-partners stressful and full of jealousy.

It appears that such arrangements work best for older people (past 40), and because studies say they can be alone more comfortably than men, they are better managed by women.

One poster says she feels selfish for having chosen one of two great loves, but she has sacrificed one of those loves at great cost in pain for herself and her lost lover, in order to give a fuller commitment to the other, not a selfish motivation. Arguably she who tries to keep both is more selfish. Or is she being more generous with herself? If you believe that giving as much love in the world as you can is a good thing, then the polyamory solution is worth all the trouble.

I tried it and can't handle it. But for those who can, I say you have the right not to choose.

I think the Hadley memo and its leak are a sham. This is a moment of almost pure speculation for me, but my anchor in reality is the cancellation two months ago by Maliki of the peace deal he had announced a few days before. It included a two-year U.S. withdrawal proposed by the Sunnis, clearly a reasonable period if they delivered on their promise of peace and security. But over a weekend, all of a sudden Maliki was saying that timetables were inappropriate, in almost identical language that Rumsfeld used a day or two before.

As usual, the press has failed to probe this huge disappointment, but I have no problem in concluding that the neocons are still running Iraq policy and that peace is not something they want, if it requires us to leave Iraq. Twenty thousand American casualties over three years is tolerable on their books if it means we get to dominate the region.

So it is but a short step to the conclusion that it serves the neocons to have a fake memo leaked as an excuse to save Maliki's face with the Sadr people who were threatening to withdraw from parliament if he met with Bush and to make it appear that Bush was going to lean on Maliki. But if Maliki is already our stooge, no leaning is necessary, and Bush can keep saying he is staying the course, which he intends to do, while raising the hopes of Americans that secretly he is planning to do something else.

But since he really does intend to stay the course, there is no change at all and Bush is continuing his faith-based war, praying for divine intercession on a daily basis. Alas, God often disappoints.

And now for a legal question: If the Congress passes a resolution directing the Commander in Chief to withdraw from Iraq, is that subject to a veto? If not, is he impeachable if he refuses the direction of Congress?