Yes, people are "afraid of your comments".

News today reveals that the Republican party has now shrunk to only 21% of voters because it's largely captive to extreme right wingers, and a staunch Republican just abandoned the party calling it "too far to the right", and everyone is afraid of the comments of a right wing extremist because that kind of comment is you know, so persuasive right now and not at all what's handing everything to the Democrats.

Keeping your voice as loud and front and center as possible is the best thing that can happen to Democrats at this point.

No one is afraid. I promise you.

Bill, you ignorant liberal. The reason Spector became a democrat was because pollsters informed him of three choices: Lose the primary to a conservative opponent, retire, or become a democrat and hope to win in the general election-- choices he has never faced before. You do the math.

Oh I entirely agree. I didn't say anything about his true motives, you might have noticed if you'd actually read my comment, only that this is what he said as he stood up in public, and said it loudly, to a lot of cameras and microphones.

The two aren't mutually exclusive actually, that he's an utterly spineless opportunist and that he geuinely thinks that the GOP has gone too far to the right, if in no others sense that it's gone too far to the right for him to get elected while still in it.

The message today was loud and clear to most of the population who doesn't follow these things at a micro level, they just heard more of "the Republcians are right wing nut cases" which is exactly what's causing them to lose people to Democrats.

I realize that to somoene whose idea of debate is slinging juvenile insults this is all a bit hard to grasp, oh and "dejur", was hilarious. Yes, very sophisticated.

Has it alway been like this?

I'm rather young so I don't know, but has it always been so hard to figure out whether someone is being satirical or not?

I don't know, I've never been able to get through one of this writer's columns without wanting to nod off about halfway through.

I think Keillor echoed the "prosecution regarding torture would be un-centrist and not nice to Republicans" crowd here, but I stopped reading before I was really sure.

and implying that George Orwell approved of torture was very Orwellian of you.

As others have pointed out, calling for full exposure of the "truth" with some agreement beforehand that no legal action whatsoever be taken regarding what that truth may be, is incoherent, not to mention immoral. How any non-prosecution pre-agreement would even work is baffling, If we discovered that the truth involved things even worse than we now think, say full-scale extermination camps, then we'd be bound to our vow of non-prosecution?

At least the Republicans saying "just leave it alone and walk on" have some logical, if not moral, consistency. They're aware that the only way to insist on no legal consequences is to just turn our heads and not expose what happened, otherwise we'd be bound, by the constitution, by international treaties, by lots of things, to act on what we expose to the light of day. If what we expose is not illegal, then we wouldn't be obligated to prosecute anything, but that seems very much not the case at this point plus coming to that agreement before looking is immoral, illegal, and unprecedented. It's also not Barack Obama's position, contrary to what some here imply, it's far less coherent than his.

But on her version, she should have made waves -- did she? Nancy Pelosi must stand trial with the others.

I have no problem whatsoever with anyone standing trial who has done anything illegal, if any investigation reveals that they did.

I suspect that people like Pelosi did nothing that falls into the realm of illegality whatsoever, but that's what an investigation would clear up.

Those like you and Keillor and Friedman and Broder who assume that any call for investigation, followed by prosecution if warranted, is solely aimed at George Bush or entirely pre-determined as a political calculation are woefully wrong, certainly in my case and in the case of most people I know.

If your comment was meant mostly in the expectation that people would respond "Oh then we better not" rather than a sincere call for prosecution -- which obviously is the case since you commented just before it that you think prosecution is unwarranted-- then it's a massive fail.