We vaccinated slowly as well (and we aren't medical luddites--my wife is a registered nurse).

Guess what? There are no good studies on the effects of combined vaccinations. Vaccines are tested separately, then the medical establishment gives them to tiny children with developing immune systems in a big bunch. Anybody who tells you they know this or that about the effects of combined vaccinations over a short period of time is full of crap.

And we do have unexplained spikes in autism and auto-immune diseases. Contrary to what some folks say, those spikes have not had vaccinations eliminated as a cause. Specific things, like Thimersol preservative in the case of autism have pretty strong statistical evidence against causality, but there are still gray areas.

BTW, it was the practice of bunching vaccinations that resulted in giving officially toxic doses of mercury-based Thimersol to infants. Nobody in our hallowed medical establishment bothered to add up all the mercury (admittedly, organic mercury) in all those newborn injections. Nice.

And vaccines aren't harmless. For every horror story of a child who gets polio or pertussis, there is a corrosponding story of a child who suffers an intense and permanent disability from reactions to vaccines. There is even a fund set up specifically to deal with vaccine reactions. Fortunately, such reaction are rare, as are cases of infant polio.

Our kids, now 9 and 10, are fully vaccinated. But we waited to start until they were old enough to be told what was going on, and we spaced each shot at least a month apart. The clinics still gave them free, BTW.

We have two very healthy, intelligent children. Neither of them have had problems with earaches or anything else that required antibiotics or other immune system boosters. They're almost comically healthy, in fact. They do well in school, too. Might be a coincidence. Might not.

But we had to claim to be religious nuts when we signed them up for school because we still had a few more series to go, and didn't want them delivered in a bunch to a four-year-old. Very annoying.

On the other hand, there is no Big Pharma pushing these vaccinations. Vaccines are cheap, and not at all profitable. The companies who make them are pretty small, actually. Big Pharma would rather sell you expensive pills you have to take every day for the rest of your life.

Vaccines are pushed by doctors, who recognize their effectiveness and enormous public health value. Doctors just tend to be a little self-righteous and pushy sometimes.

Stick to your guns, Keef. I think you're doing exactly the right thing.

She lost.

It's boring.

She needs to get busy raising money to pay her campaign debts, and proving she is a loyal Democrat.

Cause she lost already!

Get over it, Joan.

And quit making Rebecca carry your water. She still has a career to develop.

She's not bitter and washed up like you are.

The Democratic Primary is over, Joan.

Time to move on. Maybe you need a little time off to decompress?

Quit making Walter write more stuff about Hillary--she's yesterday's news.

The only question now is: Obama or McSame?

Let's let poor Mr. Shapiro write about something that matters, OK?

"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.

"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.