Have we collectively lost our minds? This is not some "free speech" issue! This shit happens all the time. People get fired from their jobs for saying stupid things. It is all a matter of bad timing. He has gotten away with talking trash for a long time and it has helped rather than hindered the bottom line. But this time the sponsors started walking away and he was no longer a useful employee. It happens in offices all over the world on a daily basis. People talk a lot of inappropriate trash at the water cooler, but it is that one, day that Mr. Bossman/Bosswoman happens to be walking by and you let loose with that stupid Andrew Dice Clay imitation - and you get fired. It is just how it goes.

Imus is not a martyr. Just a cash cow that had to eventually be put down due to sudden and unfortunate profitability issues.

I am also sadly/excitedly anticipating the end of my affair with the bespectacled wizard. A few years ago, I was having a really hard time. I had a whole lot of super-stressful stuff going on and could not stop obsessing about how I was going to deal with everything. My sister sent me "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" and said it might cheer me up a little bit. It didn't make my problems go away, but for a couple of hours a day, I got to sit on the commuter train and become a kid and battle trolls, evil wizards, and dragons. I ended up buying all of the books up to Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and being completely smitten. I don't know what it is about Harry Potter. I mean, I love reading great authors like Cormac McCarthy and Philip Roth. But there is something about reading Harry Potter that recalls the same feelings I felt the first time I visited Disneyland or saw Star Wars as a kid. There is something really special about reading those books.

Thanks for the great article.

You keep hanging out here posting increasingly shrill comments about how we need to get a life. How about you stop reading the comments and go on with yours?

Ha! That is too funny! That takes me back to the (now this really is embarrassing) Melrose Place parties we used to have when I was going to college in Southern California. Obviously, Melrose Place was no Sopranos, but we had a damned good time getting together and drunkenly watching it every week.

My friends and I are planning some kind of nerdilicious Harry Potter Book Release Party this summer. Maybe we will think of some recipes for Cauldron Cakes or something. This is the end, we might as well dork-out in style.

I have not been able to figure out why I have been so bored with this season. After the first four hours (which rocked my world), I just lost interest. They have gone from being entertainingly, implausible and silly to snoringly implausible and silly.

"What we want is the component from the triggering mechanism. It contains a prototype algorithm old enough to be free of any modern encryption safeguards. With it, we'll have access to virtually all Russian defense technology!"

If the writers would have have added "muhaahahahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!" to that line, I would have forgiven them.

I gained a new and deep appreciation of the 2nd Amendment. I realized how easy it is for us to end up with a very repellent and incredibly dangerous authoritarian regime. I am not sure that ceding the right of a citizen to arm his or herself is such a great idea when we are a hairs breadth away from a dictatorship. I wonder if other progressives had a similar change of heart?

I think my previous views of gun control hinged on the idea that we would always have mostly trustworthy public servants adhering the constitution.

I happen to agree with that poster, big time. But, I am interested in what other progressives who are more passionate about gun control are thinking now that we have this seriously frightening authoritarian regime in office. Discussing the merits of gun control while your elected (I use the term 'elected' very loosely) officials are systematically eroding your rights and gutting the constitution seems a bit naive.

I think it is a really important discussion that we need to have as progressives. How do we feel about giving the government even more power to say who gets to buy a gun or not? Who is to say someone won't decide that since we are liberal and "hate freedom and love the terrorists" we are not qualified to buy a gun? I think we need to drop the old Sara Brady arguments about who needs what gun because those arguments operate out of the assumption that our government is trustworthy and would NEVER illegally detain citizens, ignore the constitution, decide that presidential power is imperial power, and institute something as egregious as the Patriot Act.

Thanks for your reply. That was beautifully said. I could not have put it any better.

I AM paranoid about the direction of our government. And I always think of Hitler's gun control laws that preceded his suspension of the German constitution (I know,I know. Hitler references kill conversations).

I also agree with what another poster stated: That we as a nation DO need to reach the tipping point where mass shootings and gun foolishness in general become unacceptable for everyone on all sides of the issue. Until then there is never going to be a rational and serious national discussion about gun control.

Anyway, I do think it is a smart thing for the Democrats to just table the gun issue for now. Until we reach the aforementioned "tipping point", it is a loser of an issue.

That seriously annoying question is the last refuge of the authoritarian scoundrel.