Carter's sin was not to apologize but to exaggerate in the first place. He is famous for speaking in superlatives. And so his retraction was not at all a capitulation, rather an appropriately limited correction:

"What I was actually doing was responding to a question about foreign policy between Richard Nixon and this administration. I think this administration's foreign policy compared to President Nixon's was much worse."

"But not the worst in U.S. history?" [Accuracy in Media] interjected.

"That's not what I wanted to say," Carter said.

So we're at "much worse" not "worst", and not "personal". Those changes are very far from a retraction, much as one might wish he had stood on a soapbox and said Hell, YES, the worst. So everyone should stop with the pissing and moaning. Bill Maher is right about his general point about Democrats wimping out, but this is not the example he should have chosen. The Iraq budget vote was a much bigger target.

Greater attention should be given to the slimy, smeary attacks the right-wing press always visits upon this great, good man, deriding him for an inflation rate commenced under his two Republican predecessors (doesn't anyone remember Nixon's price controls and Ford's silly WIN [whip inflation now] buttons?), an unemployment rate of 10% which was another function of the stagflation he inherited and which carried over well into Reagan's first term but for which Reagan gets no blame -- and the hostage crisis in Iran, a result of Eisenhower's sabotage of Iranian democracy in 1953 to control Iranian oil through the Shah and his hated secret police, which dark arrangement every president since Ike left in place. Carter gets no credit for having attempted a rescue of the hostages because it failed, while no criticism falls to Reagan and his gang for having needled Carter all during the 1980 campaign about the hostages, and (many people think) encouraged the Iranians to wait until one minute after Reagan was sworn in to release them.

Carter is still my hero, the closest to pure decency of any occupant of the White House in living memory. Ford was pretty decent. But Ford retired and played golf, while Carter, in his ninth decade, every day pledges his life, his fortune, and his sacred honor to make the world better.

It is "FlugabwehrKannone"!!! So there!

I want to give Obama and Clinton props for their votes against funding the war, but I know that in both cases there was considerable political calculation and not the kind of principled decision which Feingold arrived at with ease. Neither Obama nor Clinton announced their vote beforehand, let alone turn to their caucus and try to lead them to the same decision (so far as I am aware).

However, I think Clinton is on the right track with a Congressional declaration to end the war. To me that is an excellent legalistic strategy. The president can veto such a declaration -- in which case he clearly sets himself at odds with the very body which gave him the authority to begin with. If he does that, I think politically he is inviting defunding.

. . .as demonstrated by the postings today. It's really quite simple. Men like boners because it gives them pleasure and gives their women pleasure. Women can be pleasured orally, to be sure, but that is because their pleasure nerves are more diversely dispersed than men's, centering in the clitoris but rediating around the entrance to the vagina and down the thighs and up toward the belly. The latter fact is useful as part foreplay, which most men just don't grasp the importance of and necessity for ("men are microwaves, women are ovens"). But the main course still is, and always will be, boning. And to that end, pills are good, but implants are the total solution, and they are covered by Medicare. The latter may seem pathetic and gruesome to a young man, but wait till you come up limp, dude, and then turn around and ask your honey what she thinks. You will have a Eureka moment, and if you act on it, your life will be full of dependable joy until the day you die.

The Hollywood suits can ruin everything and often do. And critics sometimes need to just lean back and enjoy the story. You have to remember that as long as the story seems real at the time, you just have to go with it -- you know, as in the basic concept of theater, suspension of disbelief. Veronica is still real. Sure, the dual love paths are invented conflict and suspense, but that stuff happens in real life. It's happened to me. I feel it. And is her Dad going to win the election, or is the former insubordinate going to steal it from him? Is there no justice in the world? Take Veronica away from me and the answer is No.

Veronica is a bunch of pretty good little detective stories which tickle the mind, and a glimpse at young people struggling with life as budding adults, in their 21st century style and language and humor. It's fun and charming and it's on my Record All list. Don't take it away from me.

And if the suits demand that the show leap forward five years, I will feel robbed. It will be Veronica on the Shark. Let that story line happen in its own time, and the shark will just keep circling as it always does.