Sure, the "independent" films don't rake in huge amounts of cash, but they are relatively inexpensive to make, and the prestige factor often leads actors to accept lower salaries to appear in them. These films certainly aren't made for charitable purposes; the risk isn't huge, but if a studio spends $200M on a "blockbuster" and it fails at the box office, that's some massive damage to the bottom line.

This school belongs to the same breakaway dissident Catholic faction as Mel Gibson belongs to. They reject papal authority (at least that of all popes from John the 23rd on), they condemn Vatican II, they think that they are the only true Catholics. But they aren't, any more than the dissident polygamists of Utah are the only true Mormons.

It is bad journalism to refer to this school as Catholic. It is not.

As for myself, I'm an atheist who was raised Catholic. And certainly the church has many, many problems. But even in pre-Vatican-II days, Catholics had no problem with requiring boys to submit to the authority of nuns, and those nuns were tough.

... because if Obama continues to win (he looks poised to take Texas handily, and the Clinton campaign has already started to make "Texas doesn't really count" excuses), the superdelegates, being politicians, aren't going to dare to try to impose a different result.

The only justification I can think of for superdelegates overriding the popular vote would be if something new came up, for example, some kind of scandal or health problem affecting the leading candidate. But we have two strong candidates, so the Democratic voters should decide.

... then Sen. Obama is far behind. But this argument is ludicrous:

"If one counts the delegate from only the Blue states and Swing state, Obama is way behind in delegate count. Isn't the democrat winning strategy is to win the Blue states and Swing states?"

The blue states will vote for either Clinton or Obama over McCain. As for the swing states, Obama does better than Clinton against McCain in head-to-head polling. Since there's nothing left of your argument, I suggest that we allow the voters to choose the candidate. I'm unimpressed with claims that some states don't count; the organizing efforts Obama created in small states and red states that the Clintons couldn't be bothered with will help us hugely in the fall. Sure, those states will still go Republican for president, but you'll see Republican congressmen bumped off by the huge new wave of organized and motivated volunteers.

On the other hand, since you write "democrat winning strategy", I wonder whether you are a Democrat; this bad grammar is promoted by Republicans and Fox News. The correct adjective is "Democratic", as in "Democratic winning strategy".

I suggest that the option to post anonymously be preserved, but with moderation. A letter-writer could request that a letter be posted anonymously, and would be asked to give a reason why. The letter would be held until a Salon editor has the time to review it.

One reason for anonymity might be that a user's pseudonym has already become known, and he/she wishes to post on a personally sensitive matter.

In my case, my screen name is my actual given name, because that's how I would sign a traditional letter to the editor. I have, on rare occasions, posted anonymously on personally sensitive matters.

Two decades ago, I moved to the West Coast, so I could work as an EE/CS type without helping the Reagan war machine any more. Since I was no longer working for a defense contractor, I lost my Internet fix, but got my startup company hooked up to Usenet, which in those days sent all our long-winded messages through 1200 baud modems. There was no web yet, just e-mail and distributed discussion groups.

The admins carefully saved all of the technical newsgroups, but no one bothered with the social stuff, the nerdy discussions, the flame wars. But that "irrelevant" material basically contains the origins of net culture as it exists today, Godwin's Law and things like that. I sometimes regret that no one saved it.

And then I remember some of the things my early-20s self used to write, particularly on soc.singles (cringe) and I'm happy that it can't be dredged up, especially since in those days we used our real names.

NAFTA is not a negotiation between three people named the United States, Mexico, and Canada. The agreement was written by corporate lawyers and elites in all three countries, and privileges those elites and their investments at the expense of workers in all three countries. It puts the interests of international business over all other concerns. If, for example, a Canadian company wants to sell MTBE to the United States, and a state wants to ban it because of massive ground water pollution, NAFTA says that the company can sue for massive amounts of money, even though there's nothing discriminatory about the law in question. Likewise, unlike the EU, if a company moves an operation over a national border, workers cannot follow.

And these trade agreements are being extended to include countries where labor organizers are killed.

There are plenty of people in Canada and Mexico who would be willing to make common cause with reformers in the United States.

Clearly "Spitzer resigns" is a top story. But the rest? You say I need to know about a picture of a woman that might be his hooker? Or that I need to know about the Vatican's "seven more sins" thing?

Joan, stop hanging around with cable news people. It's rubbing off on you and harming your judgment.

How about cluing people in to things that they ought to know about, but aren't being informed about if they watch cable news? Sounds like you want to blurb the same five things that CNN/MSNBC/Fox/Drudge are blaring about.

$3 trillion is Joseph Stiglitz's estimate for the total cost of the Iraq war. But don't worry, we put it on the credit card.