Mr. Kamiya,

Thank you again for a thoughtful, well-written article.

As for what can be done in the face of your dead-on analysis? I urge all your readers to start funding good media any way you can - at least start reading more of it. I know I can do better. Then make sure you turn everything else off. Don't give it life and it will adapt or die; either is better than the alternative.

The Constitution says the right of habeas corpus shall not be denied but for limited cases and that doesn't mean jack squat.

I am impressed by the other letter writers who point out that it is a little premature to blame the campus for not locking down the campus. In today's gotcha media, it's easy to brand anyone connected with a tragedy legally negligent - it sells ad space. But what a waste of time! If every campus - or other organization - spent the requisite planning to prevent all freak accidents, they would never carry out their mission, whatever that may be.

Thanks Mr. Kamiya for another bit of reason.

One point made by Kamiya in this piece that could be broken out into a broader article on how the media works:

Forget the fact that Perle and Bush's lovely little war has turned out to be an unmitigated disaster, or that Fisk, who actually knows something about the Middle East, has been proven right time and again. The media bureaucracy plods dutifully on, playing by the same old rules.

This phenomenon – media's failure to reassess "expert opinion" in light of the facts – is found on issues across the spectrum. Again and again, experts whose opinions on the economy, trade, war, healthcare and other issues are widely reported, are turn out to be wrong, are not dropped, let alone replaced by alternative voices who called it right all along.

The Iraq war is probably the best example: any number of thinkers and journalists called it right long before the war started (even on the WMD question), yet such people are still "crazies" (whether Chomsky, Moore or Kucinich). Not least among these is the current president's father, who said he didn't oust Hussein in '91 because he feared what has now happened would happen. Meanwhile, Senators can still claim they "acted on the information at the time," as though alternative points of view didn't exists, because those points of view weren't even on NPR or PBS.

"We thought deregulation would increase competition – indeed, we thought it strange that the companies who would experience increased competition would lobby for deregulation – we thought they were just good hearted."

"We thought breaking down trade barriers with regard to labor and capital would create demand for American made...uh...burgers?...uh...GO TOM FRIEDMAN!"

In fact, even Democrats will create bizarre arguments to "do the right thing" in order to preserve a faulty narrative; witness Harry Reid, whose fiery rhetoric against the war includes this sentiment: "we've already spent enough money in blood trying to help the lazy Iraqis -- it's time for them to take responsibility." In other words, we started a bogus war that never should have been waged, thereby shattering a nation, but we're still the good guys in Iraq.

..."vote for us or you'll lose the S. Court and your right to choose," ask them where the fuck their filibuster was when Alito and Roberts were up for confirmation.

And then get them to put their bullshit promises for a progressive future in legally-binding writing.

Sounds like you bought into the right-wing spin about this. A) this procedure, even as described by the Right, is in some cases the safest thing for a mother's health (rare, everyone agrees). B) this LAW, as written, is so vague and potentially far reaching, that courts could conclude that it bans more than “dilation and extraction” -- what you don't like.

But the bottom line is that it shouldn't be up to Congress to dictate how a citizen uses their bodily functions to support another (whether that other is, in your eyes, a fetus, a baby, a person, a zygote, or whatever).

...if the students of VT had the same access to guns as Iraqis, just think how much better things would have been.

Why do you blame the 93K people in FL who voted for the candidate that best represented their views, and not the FIVE MILLION PEOPLE in Florida who voted for the asshole in the White House? Or for that matter the FIFTY MILLION who voted for him nationwide?

Just like a Democrat, kick the ugly kid in the corner because straw man because you're too gutless to take on the big, tough, serioius, grownup Republicans.

So you believe that in America, it is your duty not only to ignore your own principles in the voting booth, if your principles can't win the day -- but also to excoriate others who do vote their principles (at least if they are liberal; right-wingers and idiots who think George Bush is okay are excused). Real gutsy there.

Full disclosure: I voted for Gore, though Nader better represented my views at the time (I was a pragmatist). But I loathe hearing self-righteous folks attack others for deciding to vote their principles -- especially when they give the fifty million who voted for Bush a pass.

To think that everyone who isn't a GOP racist must work for the Democrats isn't really a whole lot different than Bush's outlook -- you're either with us or against us. Way to make the tent bigger.

The Bush regime uses Christian conservatives to get into office, but they probably respect this constituency less than liberals. While I might argue that Roberts and Alito actually care about abortion (they aren't throwing a bone, they have dual roles, one as the bone), I do agree with ondelette that this is not why they were appointed. They were appointed to support business, an unchecked military and a right-wing Executive Branch eager to shred the Constitution.