And excuse me if somebody in the earlier 200 plus comments made it, but there was NO WAY in the world these memos were going to be released while Obama was traveling abroad. And even if you want them released--as I surely do--you must understand that as matter of sheer common sense.

If this had been a bank heist where guns had gone off and people had been maimed and the gang had been caught, Jane and Nancy would come out as the lookout and the getaway driver. As such, they would have had an opportunity to give evidence against the ringleaders in exchange for reduced sentences. Every night it seems we get the American version of Upstairs/Downstairs on our televisions. The low-lifes get (ho-ho) justice; the elite get to take Peggy Noonan's milky-white, soft, powdered hand and walk on.

I've never understood why critics feel compelled to cause collateral damage even in positive reviews like this one. Hoffman in Rain Man? A style stunt? Really? One of the most indelible performances in film history a mere stunt? And just what are these stunts anyway? DeNiro in Raging Bull? Charlize in Monster? Meryl Streep in anything with an accent? (Hoffman--again--in Tootsie?)

Stephanie, you seem like a good, thoughtful writer. Perhaps between Fridays you might offer us some more developed thoughts on "style stunt" acting. What is it exactly? Is it always a bad acting choice? And should we as an audience be as diligent as critics in resisting it?

Maybe I should put you on my Netflix friends list so I know which movies to watch and how I should feel about them. Until then, I'll stick with Roger Ebert:

If fiction is about change, then how can you make a movie about a man who cannot change, whose whole life is anchored and defended by routine? Few actors could get anywhere with this challenge, and fewer still could absorb and even entertain us with their performance, but Hoffman proves again that he almost seems to thrive on impossible acting challenges. "You want taller?" he asks in the audition scene in "Tootsie." "I can play taller. You want shorter? I can play shorter. You want a tomato?" And he can play autistic.

At the end of Rain Man, I felt a certain love for Raymond, the Hoffman character. I don't know quite how Hoffman got me to do it.

He does not play cute, or lovable, or pathetic. He is matter-of-fact, straight down the middle, uninflected, unmoved, uncomprehending in all of his scenes - except when his routine is disrupted, when he grows disturbed until it is restored. And yet I could believe that the Cruise character was beginning to love him, because that was how I felt, too."

Like that pitch Mariano Rivera threw to Jason Bay last weekend, I'm guessing this is one that Garrison would like to have back. It's as muddled as the he thinks the case against Ted Stevens was. The whole Orwell/Bush/Cheney connection (Garrrison Keillor channeling Hitchens...who ever would have thought?) is easily the most woebegone thing I ever read from this good and gentle man. However, we can't lose sight of the fact that somewhere in this mess he does say this:

"What's needed is a fair and thorough congressional investigation. Subpoena witnesses and lay the whole wretched business out on the public record. Look into the heart of darkness and meditate on it. But don't round up a few symbolic suspects and throw the book at them and let all the others go free."

Through the muddle, that's not really a bad position.

Please, dear merciful God, let there be someone in the White House whose job it is to read Greenwald each day.

Mr. Smith, I suspect you're piloting with rose colored glasses on if you really believe as you say: "...that if the carriers were more forthcoming, a lot of this weirdness would go away."

The day I get a viral email with a link to one of your columns will be the day I believe it. That will be the day that even some of my more educated acquaintances decide to start trafficking in reason and expertise rather than hysteria and bullshit. Your calm, rationale voice coming from the cockpit as the great airship American Culture spirals down is a small comfort to those of us in coach willing to listen. Unfortunately most of our fellow passengers are too busy ripping their seats out madly in search of SNAKES ON A PLANE!

First off, I'm retching every morning over this very discouraging direction in the Hopey Changey administration. But I think there is something we all need to keep in mind if we want to maintain our savviness about this: There's considerable difference between what a candidate for office and his staffers know about a situation during a campaign and what an elected official knows once he sits down in a room with people and documentation that detail exactly what's going on at the highest levels. This does not open the door to the if you knew what we know you'd let us do whatever we want argument, but it should help us put whatever a candidate says or does on the campaign trail in perspective.

Of course it also increases the burden on the elected official to clearly explain to his voters what's happened to alter his view without putting the burden on his voters to accept his changes on blind faith.

I'm guessing someone sat down with Barack and said. "This is your choice, boy. You can risk a major fissure with the state national security apparatus or with your lefty followers."

And Barack blinked.