Greenwald is not being pious. Look at the video of Obama addressing the question. He isn't merely dryly dismissing the idea of marijuana legalization as an economic stimulus. He is clearly making fun of the supporters of this idea. "I don't know what this says about the online audience," he said, to the laughter of the assembled audience.

I think it should be clear by now that one of Obama's top priorities is to avoid any controversial positions. He's not going to take on Wall Street, or the anti-drug legalization crowd, or the defense contracting industry, or the pharmaceutical industry, or in any way will he try to solve the fundamental problems of the nation, except if and when any of the positions that would be helpful (like Federal funding for embryonic stem cell research) have already become wildly popular.

I would personally prefer it if Obama were on board with all the reform ideas that I think the nation needs to adopt, but he's the politician and I'm not. I do agree with Glenn that the notion of "incrementalism", or its ally "centrism", to be a goal in itself is kind of pathetic. The good thing about Obama is that if activists manage to convince the wider body politic of the rightness of their position, I think he would go along with it, as opposed to his predecessor who would cling to destructive policies even after they had become wildly unpopular.

People have seen evolution in action with various viruses and bacterial strains.

We also see the evidence of evolution in the DNA sequences that we have sequenced from various species. Or is it an accident that similarity of DNA sequences correlates exactly with the proposed phylogenetic trees?

Creationism is a religiously driven anti-intellectual PR campaign. It has no scientific merit whatsoever.

Evolution and creationism already had a fair fight - in the 18th and 19th century. It is a historical fact that evolution won. There is simply far too much evidence in favor of evidence. Creationism, on the other hand, fails miserably as a scientific hypothesis. Why would it be true, if "special creation" was the explanation for the origin of species, that DNA similarity scores correlate so neatly with phylogenetic trees proposed from other data sources (such as large-scale morphology)?

At the end of the day, this is a debate between the people who have done the actual research, and a bunch of deluded fools who feel that their religion is threatened by scientific conclusions. And, in a sense, they are right. The more they insist that their dogma must be adhered to, regardless of any new observations, the more their dogma becomes irrelevant to thinking people. The question for you is: which side do you want to be on?

That the media covered this story at all is proof positive that it doesn't skew left.

There was absolutely nothing to the Ayers story at all except guilt by association, and the association was slight. Barack Obama is not, nor has he ever been, a member of the Weather Underground, nor has he ever been even slightly tolerant of the methods they used.

Wingnuts who bitch and moan about how the story would have been covered if hypothetically it had been a Republican in this story are just balmy. George W. Bush walked out on his military service and the media were quite content for eight years to treat him as if he were a military hero.

So said Vice President Cheney.

Kinda screws up the whole thesis here, doesn't it?

Last week, we were told that Michelle Obama broke protocol by daring to touch the Queen of England. This week, when President Obama obeys protocol, he gets razzed for behaving properly.

Anybody who complains about either thing should be fired from whatever writing job he or she has and be sent to Siberia. This stuff is truly idiotic.

Last week, we were told that Michelle Obama broke protocol by daring to touch the Queen of England. This week, when President Obama obeys protocol, he gets razzed for behaving properly.

Anybody who complains about either thing should be fired from whatever writing job he or she has and be sent to Siberia. This stuff is truly idiotic.

Oh, and it really is precious to read Paglia's defense of "Barack the Magic Negro". Um, Camille? We didn't need you to explain that it was a riff off "Puff the Magic Dragon". But it's probably a service to Salon readers that you expose your latent racism so nakedly.

'Tis a shame, seeing as Paglia is correct both about Kate Winslet and about atheism.

enough with the "signaling he's a Saudi subject" nonsense.

Obama won the election. Deal with it. Try supporting him when he focuses on the actual problems that the country is facing.

Let's go over this again, one more time:

Obama is not a Saudi subject.

He's not Sunni.

He's not a Muslim.

He really was born in Hawaii.

He's not a closet terrorist.

He's not going to try to impose a fictional world currency in place of the dollar.

Oh, what else is there?