I stopped reading Ms. Dowd years ago (in the '90s) when it became apparent she was much more interested in applying half-baked pop psychology theories to explain political behavior than any real analysis of the power relationships of the players and what the real facts are.

She occasionally has moments of lucidity, but most of the time she provides precious little insight into the hows and whys of our political landscape. She's one of the reasons I spend less time reading the Times than I used to.

For those of you wondering exactly which congresspersons signed the letter, try this link: http://www.actblue.com/page/theytookthepledge. You can also contribute to them if you wish. My man, Doggett was one of the signatories. A Dem with a spine. Yes!

Today was the first day of my course on evolution for biology majors. Naturally, the first lecture is devoted in part to an overview of the evidence for evolution (which from a scientific perspective is overwhelmingly in its favor).

In light of the copious evidence for evolution, folks like the judge and Mr. Norris are some combination of the following:

1. Liars

2. Ignorant

3. Willfully ignorant (I use this category for those who use faith as a reason for not accepting evolution)

4. Incapable of understanding the evidence

There really aren't any other options. That there are so many others that agree with them simply means there are an awful lot of individuals that also are some combination of those categories.

Precisely. Maybe the evidence wasn't sufficiently compelling to justify the case against Richardson. Like you, I don't know the details (and to keep the trolls and conspiracy theorists from wasting our time, I'd like those details to be made public), but it certainly is possible there's no there there and hence the lack of any charges being filed.

Assuming PeterB's letter is correct, this article should be updated to reflect that information. Otherwise, it makes an unnecessarily inflammatory claim about Obama's actions and the raise that Federal Employees would have gotten.

It makes a great headline, but like so many of such headlines, a little digging shows the truth is far less sexy. I don't approve of that sort of twisting of the facts on the right or the left.

(BTW, if an 18.9% increase would only increase the budget by $20 billion and that is what would be required to bring Federal employees into something like parity with the private sector, the wage increase actually looks like a relative bargain to me. Recall that the budget is well over a trillion, making this increase only about 1% of the total budget.)

Turns out the current fiscal year's budget is estimated at about $3.1 trillion, so the $20 billion would be <1%.

It was only a partial apology at best. Sure, he apologized for calling the President a liar, but note that he says that he still disagrees with Obama's claim that illegal aliens will not be covered.

It makes no sense. The bill either includes health care coverage for illegal immigrants or it doesn't. If Obama was telling the truth (and so far as I know, he was), what is there to disagree with? And if Obama wasn't telling the truth, is Wilson just sorry that he called Obama a liar publicly? If Wilson were really sorry, he would have checked the facts and then issued a real apology saying he not only let his emotions get the better of him, but also that he was mistaken.

How about you make at least a modest effort to inform yourself before posting? The information you seek is in earlier War Room posts and all over the internet.

So my original point stands about Wilson's apology falling short of a true apology.

I do think that getting back in power is the primary motivating force for Republicans. And as far as I can tell that means doing whatever they think it will take. They seem to believe that stirring up racist feelings against Obama and attempting to thwart the Democrats at all junctures (no matter what consequences it may have for us as a nation) are the best paths to that return. I sincerely hope that most Americans are smarter than that. Or failing that hope, then that the Dems are smart enough to counter them effectively.

I think Obama is intelligent enough and a good enough tactician to outmaneuver the Republicans, but probably only if he gives up the pipe dream of bipartisanship with them. They've already made it clear that they're not interested.

This didn't seem over the top at all to me. I think that for all but the most rabid right winger this should be effective.

It's so fucking depressing how easily the Right pushes these baseless memes into mainstream discourse. WTF is wrong with our modern media? With our educational system(s)? No sane society would fall for this crap or put up with it, and yet it is a common as the cold virus.

I'm so sick of having to counter bullshit all the time. I fear we have fallen so far as a society that reasoned discourse is nearly a forgotten memory even among those who once practiced it.

400 pages? Really? There is simply no way Ms. Palin can have 400 pages of narrative that is worth reading, even with the help of a "co-author."

Simply revisit the Couric interviews or the vice-presidential debates and ask yourself if she has anything approaching 400 pages of thoughts on our politics that are worth recording and dispensing to the masses. Even if her co-author made a heroic effort to give some level of coherence to Palin's incoherent ramblings, I'm sure they could be boiled down to at most 20-40 pages of large type.

As I worked my way through this week's strip, questions kept popping into my head. What was the inspiration for this strip? Is the third panel a bizzare parody of kosher law? Who eats Captain Crunch even when it's not stale?

Bob's one neurotic, OCD dude, Ruben.