Being a vacuous airhead doesn't necessarily preclude one from being a cunning sleazeball who exploits our insane torte system to his advantage via blackmail and extortion. It falls far short of the intellect and character we expect from our Commander in Chief.

Hilarious! John Edwards doesn't meet the lofty intellect and character standards of George W. Alcoholic-Cokehead-"The Hungry Caterpillar" reading-AWOLing- Bush. Maybe if one of Edwards's kids was arrested for underage drinking, or if he launched a war in Iraq without knowing the difference between Sunnis and Shi'ites. . .

Glenn, you're a better man than I. I commend you for keeping your cool while these idiots attack you personally. Keep up the great work.

Glenn, you overreach when you claim that liberal bloggers cannot be hate-filled; try sadlyno.com for examples of posters justifying 9/11

Huh??? I read Sadly,No every day and they haven't had one post justifying 9/11. But maybe you have an example that I've missed, and I await your providing it to us.

And isn't it interesting how the right-wing holds up Iranian mistreatment of homosexuals as a reason why we need to invade, yet when someone questions their motives the first words out of their mouths are "faggot" and "sissy".

With few exceptions, conservatives are attacking Islamism, not Islam.

LOL!

We're not talking right and wrong here, we're talking political reality

Reality? What's that?

John Dean said it best: Modern conservatism stands for absolutely nothing, except maybe knee-jerk opposition to liberalism.

We just haven't had enough of those in our political culture. Our political system, more than anything, is missing the influence of people like that. That's why it's broken: not enough of those.

Great work, Glenn (as usual). I needed a laugh.

That Fox News viedo clip isn't working for me. Am I doing something wrong?

Aren't US government officials bound by law to obey the Geneva Conventions? If so, then Yoo was a party to a conspiracy to break the law. That merits firing him in my book.

1) Atheism is not "trendy". Atheism predates Christianity.

2) Religion is not "poetry". Religious authorities do not get into conflict with poets, they conflict with scientists, politicians, lawyers. In other words, people who attempt to describe and work with the world as it really is. Emily Dickinson was a poet. The apostle Paul was not. The Bible was written to get a group of people to conform to a certain belief, at which it has been wildly successful. The fact that people disagree over major tenets of religion does not mean it is a work of lofty, mysterious grace, but instead results from the fact that there is objectively no way to settle once and for all how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

3) "To be an atheist, you need to specify which god you are not believing in". With all do respect, it sould be obvious that the word "atheist" pretty clearly means "not a theist", in other words not a believer in any god, period. All gods are far more alike than they are different. Every religious person disbelieves in some gods; an atheist disbelieves in them all.

4) "To be an atheist means not having a sense of wonder." Hogwash. Pure bunk. Every atheist I know is amazed by the world we live in. I would even argue that the atheistic view of the world--our universe was created in a huge explosion, our planet formed over millions of years as tiny bits of dust gathered together, life on our planet arose over a billion-year struggle from the humblest of origins--is more (sorry) poetic than that of a bearded old man wishing everything into existence.

5) "Religion is art. It is stained glass. It is tales told by a hermit a thousand years ago. It isn't what the general public believes, or does, or worships" Get out of your ivory tower and look at the world the way it is.

6) When I decided I no longer believed in Santa Claus, I had no idea what the history of Santa was, what other conceptions of him existed (Kris Kringle, etc.), and no one suggested I needed to before I stopped believing in him--and rightly so.

As a Bible-believing, Calvinistic, Postmillennial Christian, I, too, have no use for "religion." I hate "religion" because "religion" won't save anybody. In fact, "religion" doesn't really exist. It's an abstract category. Nobody actually practices "religion" any more than they eat "food" or play "sports." There's only one Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. He's real. And we will all stand before Him to give an account of our lives.

No person eats "food". In fact, no "person" does anything. We don't live on a "planet". Why, nothing exists after all. Thanks for that.

I don't believe in a supreme being, I love (and teach) science, am totally awed by the biosphere and its innumerable interlinkages, yet at the back of my mind, I can't quite shake the idea that we are more than our physical selves.

Maybe you've heard the phrase "more than the sum of its parts". There is more to us than our physical parts. A brain combined with a pair of eyes are worth a lot more than the two separate values simply added together.

Semantic Games, part two:

Obviously, the 'atheists' who want to do away with God want to keep their 'Awe'. So the God they have abolished is more than just another name for the majesty of creation

Oh, come on now. "God" does not mean "majesty of creation", it means "supernatural being who watches us and wants us to live a certain way". No one prays to "majesty", because it lacks ears to hear.

In an interview of 30-odd questions, only 3 of which dealt at all with atheism

That's one way of looking at it. Another way is that he was asked three questions about atheists and botched them all. Not exactly batting .400, is he? No wonder atheists want to write in about this interview.