Can't believe I'm defending Terrell Owens, but I think its fair to point out that he was made a qualified statement about McNabb (that it was because McNabb was injured that the team was not as good as it could be), and that he was specifically asked "If you had Favre as your starting QB would you be undefeated?" Its not like he was just pontificating on the state of the Eagles and said "We can't ever win with a sucker like McNabb. We should go out and get Brett Favre."

And, to his credit, he also didn't say they should go out and get Gus Frerotte.

I have to say, I am beginning to sour on Salon's War Room coverage of this. I think it shows a lack journalistic creativity, given how many entries War Room has filed on this, to repeat "The Vice President shot a fellow hunter," (or a phrase not too far from that) in the first paragraph of every entry. Frankly, I can't say that I feel bad for Cheney, but the War Room coverage is starting to feel like gloating. Case in point:

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2006/02/13/violation/index.html

The first sentence makes it sound like the law that was broken was the shooting of a fellow hunter, when in fact it was hunting without a license. (I see absurdity that anyone can ever shoot someone and it might not be a crime, but you're obfuscating, something which I expect to see from Coulter, not on Salon.)

Grammatically it should have been: Texas wildlife officials say that Vice President Dick Cheney, while on the Saturday hunting trip where he shot a 78-year-old attorney, was violating state law.

A big difference. Just because the right-wing press would stoop to this level when a scandal breaks, doesn't mean Salon has to.

On another note, why haven't the Dems come forward to talk about gun control? Its a very simple speech I think:

"In electing a president, one of the basic and essential qualities a person must project is that of simple, personal responsibility. Though he may be human, though he may, from time to time, exhibit the flaws common to any human, the voting public must be able to say, 'I believe this is one of the most responsible men or women in the United States, and when the moments come, he will exhibit personal responsibility that far outshines the average man.' By one way of thinking, the general public has bestowed on the Vice President the un-official title of second most responsible man in the United States. And In the hands of one of the most responsible gun-owners in the United States, an unthinkable accident has occured. A man has, with no malice or aforethought, shot his own friend. If ever there were a moment where America can see, in the sharpest relief, that there is no such thing as a safe gun, it is now."

Ms. Zacharek or whomever patrols these letters, please feel free to edit this letter in you feel it gives anything away of the content of the movie, but I did feel the need to add to your advice regarding the child appropriateness of this movie. It is beautiful and fanciful, and the heroine is indeed a young girl. That said, while the marketing of this movie has made it out to be Au Revoir Les Enfants meets Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, the character of the Captain is one of the most gruesomely evil characters in movie history. He ranks right up there with Ralph Fiennes in Schindlers List. Very early in the movie, his henchmen bring him two peasants suspected of being spies, one of whom he dispatches in a very personal, brutal, bloody fashion, and Del Toro spares us no visceral detail in the resulting blood covered disfigurement of the peasant in question. That scene is a harbinger of others to come.

I loved the movie, and Zacharek is right to point out that this is closer to a genuine Brothers Grimm fairy tale than any of the modern Disney retellings, but to say that this film is violent is not doing it service... It is at many times gruesome.