First, I'm not sure how "special" my wife would think a night at the corner bar doing boilermakers would be. Maybe Santorum's old lady's a bit more down with that, but I doubt it.

Second, to the idiots who have hijacked this article to rant about the "muslim terrorist" that shot up a US recruiting office, killing a soldier: please note that this "muslim terrorist" seems to be a deluded young man from Memphis, TN and that he was not, apparently, inspired by anything near the Who's Who of the American Conservative Movement that informed the equally deluded seperatist that killed Tiller.

They can't live without Limbaugh because he is the glue that holds the base together and focuses the hate, fear and anger.

Without Rush to hold up specific bogey-men, the far right would simply stumble about like Frankenstein's Monster: angry and fearful, but unable to articulate just what it is they hate and fear (besides, of course Fire, but that gets me started down a whole new path of analysis). Merely being angry isn't enough to sustain a political movement -- even one as small as the GOP threatens to become. You have to get your group angry at some specific person or thing. Alas, Rush does that better than anyone else out there.

Actually, what Gibbs and Obama mean is that, if she knew she would one day be nomintated to the SC, and that the sentence would come under such fire from whack-jobs incapable of understanding nuance and context, she might not have said it.

First, there's a difference between blogging and posting comments to an existing blog.

Blogging is analogous to having a newspaper column. Over time, you establish a voice and an identity, and your blog acquires (or doesn't) a readership and acquires (or doesn't) a certain level of reliability. In certain limited cases, I can understand the need for a pseudonym. I do believe, however, that way too many bloggers take on a pseudonym for no reason other than because they think they're being cute. That is not one of the "limited cases" that justifies a pseudonym, in my view.

Posting comments, on the other hand, is - or should be - akin to writing a letter to the editor. Of course, as we've all seen, it's usually more like throwing spitballs from the back of the class or heckling the refs. At best. One can certainly understand why many comment posters WANT to remain anonymous. Nobody wants to be known as an immature little pissant, or bully or moron. But if you believe you have some valid point to make, as opposed to just wanting to leave a steamer in the middle of the dining room table, you ought to sign your name -- or at the very least explain why you need to be anonymous. If in fact your point is valid (which is not to say universally accepted) and not merely insulting, I doubt many will quibble.

I'm not sure why Publius felt he needed that pseudonym for his blog. I suspect it's vanity, but if he's a non-tenured professor, maybe a valid reason does exist.

At any rate, I thought it important to point out the differences between blogging and commenting, for what it's worth.

I can understand why Boner doesn't want the US "importing" terrorists. He's probably afraid they'll compete with the homegrown variety he and his right-wing buddies are cultivating. Example A, of course, is Scott Roeder, who was all but handed a gun and a map by O'Reilly and a host of other conservative stooges in order to effect the assassination of Dr. Tiller.

The problem is that many conservatives believe that liberals are -- at the very best -- criminally stupid, and that our naive/stupid/liberal views will ultimately spell doom for our country (or at least, their perception of what our country is supposed to be).

This opinion is gleaned, not from some ivory tower academic analysis, but from actual emails I regularly receive from very good friends who happen to be conservatives. They love me, man, and all, but regularly insult and ridicule me for my liberal beliefs. (And can't understand why I can't "lighten up" and take a joke when they send the latest batch of insults disguised as sophmoric attempts at humor.)

They're also offended when I mention that they should think for themselves instead of parroting Rush or Fox News: "I'm not anybody's stooge! I can think for myself!" Yet several friends will engage me simultaneously with nearly identical language -- and all of it matching the latest right-wing talking points.

I don't know whether right-wing media is echoing it's audience or vice versa, really. But I do know there's a unity of message. And I also know it's framed by disgust and barely veiled hate and fear. (And I should note that these are not unemployed mullet-wearing rednecks in wife-beater t-shirts, but well educated folks with good jobs living in and around Chicago.)

The point, though, is that there is a small but significant group out there that really sees Obama as an embodiment of a real threat to what they perceive to be the American way of life. And that there is a subset within that small group that is armed. And a further subset of that group that is unstable. And that's a recipe for trouble.