Wow, Cary, this is really interesting. I have been thinking a lot about why we get such amazing letters so often, and then such hateful ones occasionally, especially on personal advice/family/male/female issues. I hope we can all keep talking about it.

The only thing I wanted to clear up is that somebody -- who didn't want to sign his/her name, I'm not sure why -- said the editor's best friend works here. I have a lot of friends at Salon, but my best friend works someplace completely different. It's a wacky idea -- we enjoy one another in all different settings, and sometimes talk about things other than Salon! It really works. Don't know where that other notion got out there.

Also, Blackpaw, Cary didn't categorize anyone who criticized the column or the LWs as a hate-filled flake. And I would also note that the letter came from someone other than Cary. The vitriol of a limited, vocal minority of letter writers is well-known, and widely discussed. The wisdom and compassion of the majority is what I usually notice. While shaking my head at the sad cranks.

I thank people for grappling with the issue raised in this thread.

I will admit, Farhad didn't write the headline on his original piece and neither did I, and with hindsight I think it shouldn't have been so definitive. I think all we could have said with certainty is "Was the 2004 election stolen? No one has proven it yet, including RFK Jr." I do think the headline on Friday pushed Farhad's piece a bit beyond where it landed on its own. So thanks for pointing that out.

I respect you and I really want to understand, what evidence do you see that the election in Ohio was stolen, rather than the result of routine and familiar GOP efforts to suppress the votes of low-income and African American people -- efforts that are mostly legal, if despicable? Why do you think it's useful to talk about a "theft?" What is it that proves to you it was stolen?

We've changed the headline on the story. It wasn't fair to the sense of Stephen Hirsch's story, or to Sen. Lieberman, and we regret that it slipped through our editing process on a busy news day.

We are working hard to offer a more complete explanation of the story behind this story, and it's taking us a bit longer than we had hoped. We hope you'll bear with us. As to this letters thread falling off the cover -- it's a complicated, automated algorithm, and it happened automatically mid-day. The letters are still available under the Letter tab on the nav bar.

I knew it was Constantinople, and not Rome. Really. In some corner of my brain unharmed by adrenaline and cable news addiction. We'll correct it, and note that it was corrected.

Thanks to everyone who supplied names I should have rattled off. I was trying to stay away from Christian leaders, since I hadn't said "Christian" in the first place. Of course, I missed the obvious: Dick Cheney.

I should also say that Joe Scarborough called this afternoon and apologized to me for the Christian/conservative conflation, which I very much appreciated.

Thanks, JLS, I wanted to post a while ago but I was laughing too hard.

I bought Buster a burrito the last time he was in SF, but I should have our attorneys look at child-labor law on this one. At minimum he deserves another burrito.

I am not Sweet 16, alas, but my daugher is 16, and she's pretty resentful that Buster gets into Salon more than she does. So I'll check into that possibility.

I've actually given this issue a lot of thought. Calling her Clinton risks confusion with the more famous Clinton, her husband the former president. But even more interesting, on her campaign website (hillaryclinton.com) she's branded as Hillary pretty much every place -- Hillary on Iran, Team Hillary, Hillary's up and so on. She herself seems to be embracing the informality, so I'm a little less rigid about trying to get rid of the "Hillarys" in our copy than I once was. That said, I try to scrub the condescending "Condis" everywhere I find them. Thanks for writing!

Thanks everyone for the kind words about Salon's survival. I'd like to think it's no coincidence that we got the war right and were able to stay in business -- our readers kept us alive.

Bella, my friends who are supporting Hillary Clinton think we've been too hard on her. I've already said in an opinion piece that while I'm not currently supporting anyone, if I had to vote today I'd probably vote for Obama. We will be scrutinizing the whole field, and the Republicans as well.

Thanks, jebldmm -- I tweaked it slightly to make it clearer where Snow stopped and I picked up again, but I'm not sure this is the best format for this. I just couldn't resist putting the whole thing in because it was so interesting.

I responded to Bob Somerby in another post today. I admire Al Gore but I personally believe, from my own experience, that his lackluster campaign, and campaigning, played a role in his troubles in 2000. And I don't like being lumped with MSM hacks for saying so.