Not to nitpick, but I'm pretty sure Galvin's a Colorado boy. He gets his mail and buys his groceries across the line in WY, but I think his ranch is on the Colorado side. At any rate, most of the places he writes about, including The Meadow, are in CO.

I find it interesting that Mr. Kamiya never mentions Native Americans in his discussion of racial minorities. Perhaps the "Blacks, who were enslaved, treated as inferiors and discriminated against in every aspect of life" got dealt a "worse racial hand," but not by far, as he asserts.

Native Americans were massacred, intentionally and unintentionally infected with disease, routinely lied to, robbed of their homeland and essentially impounded on the least desirable tracts of available land were treated poor treatment. At times they were also enslaved. Yet so often they are forgotten in discussions of race. Perhaps this is a testament to the "success" of the reservation system. Out of sight, out of mind.

I think it is notable that blacks and Native Americans (and native Hispanics in the Southwest) are the only racial minorities who did not choose to move to a white-dominated nation - the blacks were brought by force, the Native Americans were already here. I wonder how much the agency of the other minorities changed the bigotry to which they were subjected, or at least their responses to it.

Did unnamed Obama supporters attack Al Sharpton? I read the NY Post article, and I read this article. Tell me again about these alleged Obama supporters? Was there any investigative journalism here or is Debra just leaping to conclusions and then presenting them as fact?

This reads like she had a deadline and almost nothing to say. Salon, let this poor excuse for a columnist float away on her own drivel. Lots of bright, intelligent black writers out there. Find one.

The way to get the young, minorities and women to the polls is to have legitimate young, vibrant minority and women candidates, not just old, tired white male cardboard cut-outs. Or maybe that's too obvious.

I know it's not nice to pile on, but I always thought this guy was an empty shirt. Turns out he was more like an empty bag of air.

I also have been fantasizing about a Michelle Obama/Bill Clinton debate - I think she'd easily expose him as the morally empty windbag that he really is. Perhaps, as you say, "reporters are far tougher on Clinton than voters are," but here's one voter at least that is sick and tired of seeing and hearing from Bill Clinton. I'm a diehard Democrat, and I couldn't bring myself to vote for any of the losers the Republicans have going, but at this point I'm so disgusted with Billary they do win the nomination, I may just not vote in November. Let's just hope that doesn't happen, and we can at last say good-bye to the Clinton Establishment.

For at least the last year, I've relied on you for your political insight delivered with wit and candor. I've never even bothered with RSS - I just visit your blog hourly. I'll miss you. Best of luck.

This gave me chills. In a bad way.

They have clearly lost their minds.

Joan, this is yet another sign of Salon's precipitous slide away from quality reporting. What a desperate attempt to wrap a non-story inside of old stories and pretend there's a there there.

How about reporting, and not consructing, the news, if only out of self-preservation - you don't want to look too silly when Obama is sitting in the White House.

Now that Tim Grieve has left, I find there's not much worth reading around here anymore. If it weren't for Andrew Leonard I might have no reason at all to renew my subscription. In the end, that may not be enough.

I enjoy your columns very much, and I always find them to bring a refreshing point of view. But I have to call you task on your throwaway line "so-called peak oil". What, exactly, do you not believe about peak oil? That it's not going to occur? That it's not a legitimate factor in environmental debate? Peak oil will occur. I'm not going to argue whether or not we've already reached it, as some contend, or that it's in our near future, but either way, it will have a significant impact on every facet of our lives. If you look around your recycled house, I'm sure you will encounter numerous items (telephones), fabrics (polyester), and essentials (toaster, anyone?) that either are powered by fossil fuel, are made of fossil fuel (plastics), or both. Our entire economy and lifestyle is fueled, made of, and indebted to the existence of cheap fossil fuel. The way we eat, the way we do business, the airplanes you fly, the groceries we buy, the plastic bags we carry them home in - all of it is thanks to fossil fuel.

We've had a great 300 years, and who knows, we may have a couple hundred more, but it's unlikely. Because though we may only just now be approaching peak oil, our use of oil is skyrocketing so dramatically that we'll burn through the equivalent amount of fossil fuel in roughly one third the time. Down and out in a hundred years? Quite possible. But whatever the time frame, we will certainly begin to feel the pinch soon. We've cashed our one-time check of cheap fossil fuel, and there's no replacement fuel, no alternative fuel that is so easily accessible, so quickly turned into energy or product to allow us to sustain our current levels of energy consumption. And our current levels keep rising. We will all feel the pinch. Especially airlines.

Steve Benen's contributions to the War Room are a welcome addition. He provides the instant coverage and insightful thought that has been sorely missing since the departure of Tim Grieve. I hope that he will continue to augment Mr. Koppleman's work.