"In every place, at any time of day, I found a spot, usually several, often within five minutes. The spaces were certainly odd -- little scraps of pavement between garages, in otherwise unparkable corners jammed up against hydrants -- but they were all legal. And I had one of the only cars in the city that could fit in these out-of-the-way areas."

Riiiight. And the reason these tiny spaces were available?

Cause you had an unusually tiny car.

Once Smart cars become more common, even just a little more common, those scraps of parking will disappear forever. Goodbye advantage.

And 33 MPG is not going to cut it. I got 28 MPG in my Suburu Legacy station wagon, with all wheel drive and the ability to tow a thousand pound trailor. 'Course, I drive a 5-speed manual. Automatics, to put it kindly, suck eggs. I assume the Smart is also available with a manual?

A rollerskate like the Smart Car is going to have a hard time competing with regular small cars that get similar mileage. One problem with being nice and high up in the Smart Car is that you are pushing the same wind profile as a regular car, just with 3 feet cut off the end.

I'd rather spend my money on a plug-in electric with a 50 mile range as a second family car. A temporary parking advantage isn't good enough for me.

"Grave of the Fireflies (Hotaru no Haka), I think, would be the appropriate recipient of that distinction. But then again, to call it a cartoon might be to belittle a wonderful film."

Grave of the Fireflies is a wonderful film. It also just about tore my heart in half. It probably doesn't help that I have a son and daughter who were about the same age as the children in the film at the time that I watched.

Grave of the Fireflies is a very true film. The victims of war are children, and Grave of the Fireflies will not spare you a bit of that truth. What makes it worse is that there are no evil villains or wicked monsters to blame. The evil that is done happens naturally, a consequence of normal people in situations where the weak are left for the wolves.

You will hate war after you watch this film. But make sure you are ready to digest the mundane horror of war (not big explosions and piles of mangled bodies--but rejected children, slowly dying). Have someone around to talk to after you watch it, and don't watch it if you're easily depressed.

It is that brilliant and powerful, and it shows you the abyss without ever turning away to let you catch your breath. Tie yourself to something solid before you go take a look.

Here we go some more. This comment caught my eye (it was a recent response).

"It was applicable only to those who seek to justify everything Obama does - even when they don't understand it -- by assuming that he's so wise and Good that he must have hidden, unknown justifications for doing it."

Any theories why Obama hasn't opposed this more? It doesn't seem like much of a risk to me. I fail to see what he has to gain from taking a bad position on this.

Corporate donations to the DNC? Democratic Senate and House leaders off the hook 'cause they signed off on the program originally? Favorable Mediacracy coverage if he lets their corporate overlords off the hook?

None of the above really make sense to me. And nobody has as yet given me a compelling reason why Obama and so many other Democrats are willing to go along with what seems on the surface to be a bad bill.

Any ideas?

"but go read it and see if it changes a single point."

Does it affect the specifics of the argument? Probably not.

Does it make it seem like Olbermann is taking a gratuitous personal cheap shot against you? Certainly. And that is a distortion of his position and his approach. It certainly constitutes an attack on his character.

And, like many people, including Olbermann, I find my head spinning trying to get a total handle on what the bill actually means in practice. It is easy to agree that civil amnesty, if it results in a quashing of all investigation and responsibility, is a Very Bad Thing.

However, if we can as a result move forward to investigate the actual circumstances and effects of the surveillance, I would gladly make that exchange.

However, I fall more to your side of reasoning when I estimate the chances that justice will proceed after civil amnesty is delivered.

But I still find this a complex and subtle situation, and I have to rely on my estimation of various commentators' character as I try to work it out. I suspect I have company in that regard.

In such a situation, personal attacks do bear on the strength of an argument. I therefore consider the omission of Olbermann's (And 26 Keith Olbermanns) statement to be significant.

[After checking] I applaud you for putting it back in.

"John Dean is worth 25 Glenn Greenwalds"

The actual quote is "I think John Dean is worth 25 Glenn Greenwalds (maybe 26 Keith Olbermanns)."

The parenthetical statement completely changes the statement from a diss on you to praise of John Dean. Omitting it without even the grammatically require ellipses ... is, frankly, dishonest.

If you are confident of your point, you shouldn't need to stoop to such tricks. I can hardly believe you omitted four words in the cause of brevity.

Please conduct this debate in an aboveboard fashion.

If this has been reported before or corrected, please disregard, I didn't read through all the pages of comments.