I believe that Abramoff grew up in a secular household and became devout as a young adult.

Why is Patrick Smith left to wander as lone Cassandra on this subject? There are millions of us flyers subjected to the absurd indignities, grinding inconvenience and nonsensical, time-wasting check-in kabuki. So where's the mainstream press on this? Why ask? In its bubble, oblivious to the absurdities increasingly common in American life and unwilling to take on the bureaucratic and governmental juggernauts which produce them.

By coincidence or synchronicity on Salon.com today, Garrison Keillor's rumination "Miracle Drug of Anger", and Keith Knight's "K Chronicles" report from Germany, express (in their own very different styles and media) a virtually identical theme, namely that it's nice to get away to the mountainous bucolic countryside, but for them that only goes so far without the leavening stings of urban life.

Or better yet, airlines should simply do away with reclining seats altogether where the space between rows is so tiny that reclining the seat is sure to bloody the knees and the nose of the passenger in the next row.

I can hardly imagine why they haven't already done this - to create the illusion of a false amenity, I suppose - and on such flights I never recline my seat. And let me tell you that I deeply resent it if the inconsiderate or ignorant passenger seated in front of me reclines his or hers (usually his).

So until airlines either provide proper room between rows or just do away with reclining seats, Knee-Defenders sound like an eminently sensible defense. Where do I buy them?

As to TV-B-Gone, that too sounds like a great defender against another noxious intrusion into personal space.

Just a typo alert: Donald Rumsfeld, of course, was Secretary of Defense, not Secretary of State. (Please take down this posting when the copy is fixed.)

When Joe Conason writes "The easiest way to begin is for the press to examine a few of Robertson's more incendiary remarks..." he seems to slip into an alternate universe inhabited by an actual functioning press. But in this world we inhabit, that the quiescent, supine press of ours would actually pose such simple, obvious, mildly challenging questions — well, in our dreams.

It’s acts such as this unsentimental tearing away of Joe Klein’s fraudulent wizard’s curtain which the beltway guild finds so threatening — not some imputed corruption of journalistic purity which is what it piously claims as its casus belli against the likes of Glenn Greenwald. Indeed, as Greenwald shows time and again, it’s the vain, slothful establishment journalists who have abandoned the traditional standards, while the blogosphere has leapt into the breach and picked them up. When even Juan Williams goes on television to decry writers such as Greenwald, you know they’re circling the wagons. Give ‘em hell, Glenn!

Ms. Hepola describes absinthe as "most reminiscent of Pernod". What she presumably means is that it is most remiscent of pastis. Pernod is one commercial brand of pastis, which is a type of liqueur. Other well known pastis labels include Ricard and Sol-Anis. Saying that absinthe is reminiscent of Pernod is like saying Bourbon whiskey is reminiscent of Dewar's White Label.

Barack Obama is the "most progressive candidate"? Oh really?

Heads, Cheney wins. Tails, we lose.

- Number of times that U.S. media have called John McCain a "maverick" since 1995: 6,757

- Percentage change between 2001 and 2007 in the number of instances per year: +76

- Rank of John McCain among the most conservative-voting senators in 2001 and 2007 respectively: 45, 8

In an essay entitled "Democracy and Deference" in the June Harper's, Mark Slouka describes a profound institutional servility, deeply corrosive to American Democracy. Slouka begins by recalling the establishment tssking and twittering over the White House encounter between Jim Webb and George Bush in which Webb noted that he'd like to bring his son home from Iraq, to which Bush snapped, "I didn't ask you that." The establishment got very hot and bothered, but not over Bush's rudeness but instead over what they regarded as Webb's temerity. Slouka's piece goes on to recount countless other examples of servility of this stripe sadly familiar to Glenn Greenwald's readers, and then proceeds to contrast this peculiar institutionalized American deference to power with the democratic feistiness of the U.K. where the powerful are accountable to and regularly made to sweat by the press and the people.

"Tyrany isn't something up ahead," Slouka writes. "It's in the soil, in the very air we breathe. It's the other climate change, and no less real."

I'll say it again, Hear, Hear!!

Mr. McClelland never states his case for eliminating Genessee Cream Ale. I lived for decades in New York and Connecticut with relatives still in Delaware and Pennsylvania. When in New York or Connecticut, Genny Cream is what I buy and when in Delaware or Pennsylvania, it's Yuengling. They are both excellent, and I don't see why McClelland should prefer one over the other, especially if he's never even tasted his first choice. And I, alas, have moved west and can find nothing of remotely comparable quality to either Genessee or Yuengling out here.

Speaking of bold veep choices, Michael Moore is urging on Obama an even bolder choice than Hillary Clinton, he wants to see Caroline Kennedy as the running mate.

JOAN'S DESCRIPTION OF GOV. PALIN'S ATTACK AS "RUDY GIULIANI IN HEELS" IS DEAD-ON. BUT STILL, NOBODY DOES RUDY GIULIANI IN HEELS SO WELL AS THE MAN HIMSELF, RUDY GIULIANI, DOES RUDY GIULIANI IN HEELS.