What a despicable, hypocritical prick McCain is to expect sympathy for the sacrifices he made during his service when he doesn't extend that to other servicemen (and women) who paid with their lives. McCain's callous, insensitive 2000 claim that 52,000 American casualties through '68 in Vietnam was not "exorbitant" shows once and for all that he is not even worthy of respect for his time as a POW. Not if he himself hasn't learned any lessons from that time.

When McCain himself could have been one of those casualties, yet regards them only in some tactical, impersonal, cavalier way as to believe the number is not exorbitant, he has no longer earned my regard for even that part of his past that seemed like a great sacrifice. It's shocking that his experience in captivity would not permanently brand empathy for fellow troops into his brain. This attitude even extends itself to today, even in the midst of the campaign, with his opposition to a new G.I. Bill. It even makes me start to wonder whether the farthest fringe of McCain's critics, who allege that he became a turncoat in captivity to save his ass, may actually be on to something.

For McCain, POW apparently now stands for Passionate, Obsessive Warmonger.

Maybe a commenter has mentioned this already, so sorry if this is redundant, but you seem more intent on defending the validity of creationism, rather than the actual question about the appropriateness of teaching creationism to unsophisticated *children.* A child cannot understand the nuance of your response, which might have merit only if creationism were being taught to adults who can make the distinction between religious belief and scientific method. When done to kids, especially without their parents' consent, I find that a form of brainwashing. It's the same perniciousness as promoting the propaganda term "intelligent design."

One last thought: tell me how teaching children that creationism has as much merit as science helps get across the threat that is climate change? If creationism is on the same plane, then genuflecting to some supreme creator and hoping it will intervene before the sea levels rise 20 feet should be just as helpful as anything else we can do.

It's a shame that the NYT obviously hasn't upped its fact-checking on Kristol when he's burned them already, and when they should have known that when Kristol preaches to the converted in other media, he doesn't worry about whether his facts are right, it's more important that the spin is right.

The NYT is slipping. The standards for appearing on the Op-Ed page -- at the very least, demanding that claims be substantiated -- should still be higher than those for Fox News or the Weekly Standard or for the Project for a New American Century.

I'm sick of rich, pontificating assholes who are so wealthy that issues can be regarded as some kind of parlor game. Especially legacy-rich assholes like Kristol who from birth have not and cannot relate to regular struggling working folks.

Recently I pulled a book off my mom's shelf of a 1967 collection of James Reston's NYT op-eds. To read those is to read op-eds from an era in which they really carried intellectual heft. Bullshitter Kristol couldn't even qualify to be a waterboy for that era's op-ed page.

.. next year we will see assemblages of academics and journalists looking back on campaign '08 (including many of these offending "reporters") and they will engage in the same post-mortem hand-wringing that has happened every four years for the past 20-24 years -- declaring that campaign coverage was too shallow and promising to do better next time.

It's rare that we get such an admission as John Harris' during the campaign -- but in the thick of the competitive season, it would be even more rare if such an admission led to a real shift to substantive coverage. Don't hold your breath.

All Glenn Greenwald and others like Media Matters are doing is trying to show journalists *in the middle of the cycle* that they are doing it again so they can course-correct now instead of promising to do so later, when it's too late. So what is their general response? Taking offense and getting defensive, of course. And we can be sure that those same offended types like Joe Klein will be among those on those panels next year posing as high-minded journalists decrying such coverage. They'll make it seem bold and daring by "admitting" that their own coverage was guilty of "some" of those shallow excesses, but that won't prove that they're really learned anything.

Last Friday Bill Moyers had an excellent segment interviewing Jeffrey Toobin on one of my favorite neglected presidential campaign angles -- reminding voters of what's at stake with potential Supreme Court appointments. Outside of Moyers (and his unfortunately limited reach), who else has tried to stress this? Excuse me, sorry, we don't have time -- this just in: Hillary Clinton has just told the editorial board of the East Gebipp News-Intelligencer that Obama is full of hot air, when she meant to say he had persistent halitosis. Cue Keith Olbermann to get into a lather, making another slip of the tongue seem as if the apocalypse would strike if Clinton were elected.