Living in Redskin country, I had to break down and get Sunday Ticket three years ago ... it is steep but it's rationalized away by considering how much extra is spent going to a sports bar.

I despise how the NFL just dictates things at will these days. One of the worst is being stuck with one licensed video game. The Sega 2K series was at least on par with Madden, but why even bother anymore? And where is the incentive anymore for EA to really make Madden better?

This year the league also has imposed restrictions on sideline media -- photographers must wear official red vests with Canon/Reebok branding. The league refused to consider a compromise on this even after they were told how wearing plugola compromised integrity.

Add to that the much bigger issue that has nagged my conscience as a fan, the physical and mental toll on players after they retire, and the league's seeming lack of aggressiveness to deal with the issue (plus asshole Gene Upshaw, an ex-player who should know better), and I am not that far away from feeling like I should stop being a fan altogether.

As someone who was raised an atheist by my father (and generally remains so, with the one tiny crack of irrational hope that I'll somehow get to see or be with my departed father and other loved ones), I've had an unusual perspective on seeing the influence religion has had on the world -- largely negative, an agent that does more to divide people than unite them.

I understand the basic precepts that drive many to believe in an all-powerful supreme creator:

1. It gives hope that death isn't merely the end.

2. It fills in answers to questions we have yet to solve through science.

3. It provides a base of morality to people who might not learn any otherwise, even if many such people twist that morality to suit their immoral goals.

I don't take issue with people who feel a "faith," only when they use such faith to ignore or hide from painful realities in the belief that a "God" will take care of things someday, such as the alleged "rapture." In the coming years, I'm afraid more people will use "faith" to blind themselves willingly to the great challenges ahead, such as climate change, rather than tackle them.

In 100 years, how will humanity view religion when much of it is forced to migrate away from submerging shorelines and "God" hasn't done anything to intervene? By the way, this will be the same allegedly benevolent "God" who didn't do anything about the Holocaust.

P.S. My father was German and was forced to flee to France with his parents during the war, otherwise he and his family would have been captured and killed in the camps.

It's not women's fault, it's the fault of right-wingers and corporations that work standards have slid over the past 20-30 years. BernieO's and Jared2's comments above come close to reflecting my reaction.

Is it women's fault that as they became more empowered in the '70s and more entered the workplace, big businesses took advantage of women's lower salaries and lower assertiveness to boost their bottom lines? Is it really women's fault, or their greedy, selfish bosses?

Is it women's fault that salaries have lowered (relative to inflation) over the past 30 years so that women now have to work for families to make ends meet, instead of it being an option? Wouldn't it be nice to be able to have a spouse stay home to raise the kids, as many of our parents and grandparents did? Now where is the business-defending, right-wing "family values" crowd on that?

Not only have job demands become more onerous for women and men, but the pressures on extended families have grown enormously. It sucks to have families fractured by the long distances many of us live from each other, largely because we've been forced to become more migratory to find decent jobs. The support system of having relations living in the same town or adjacent isn't there like it was when we were kids. Where is the "family values" crowd on that???

The writer of the original op-ed was I think out to stir up debate, as I don't think she can really take seriously the crux of her argument.

I haven't gone through all the postings to see if this has been addressed ... but why hasn't our dogged, intrepid media asked McCain, Obama or Clinton (or the others earlier) how much of Bush-Cheney's egregious assertions of executive authority would they repudiate?

Mr. Greenwald, because you and I seem to have the same kind of right-wing bullshit detector in our heads, I just pre-ordered your book at Amazon. I have no illusions that my little one-purchase uptick will make the difference in building the buzz for your book and its arguments, but I hope it helps.