No need to name you, since it is clear who you are. All right, I'm willing to avoid making it "us versus them." I agree that it is pointless to demonize "the rich," as if they were all the same sorts of people.

Of course, such a stance would imply, to the fairminded, that it is pointless to demonize "libs" as well.

But there is no doubt whatsoever that the SYSTEM is crooked. What is wrong with the principle that, if we are going to have income taxes, those with a lot of money should pay as large a proportion as those with a little?

A lot of people have asked the question, but I haven't seen a good answer from you: How much money is enough? I would do quite well, thank you, on $100,000 a year. Just to be generous, let's multiply that by a factor of ten. How much sympathy do you expect us to feel for someone who can't live very well indeed on a million a year?

How many billionaires are there in the U.S.?

Oh, but they are billionaires because they worked so hard for the money, at least a thousand times harder than a millionaire. Right.

I appreciate it that you took my comment as the observation it was, not gotcha snottiness (an amazing number of people assume skill at spelling or grammar indicates a superiority complex). I make plenty of typos myself, catch most of them but not all.

Just that I love language, like I love justice. Way I see it, we can all catch and support each other, on both fronts.

Have been following your letters for some time, so have a pretty clear impression of your intelligence, clarity, and fluency.

Yeah, well, I thought your anger was both accurately directed and deserved. Know what you mean though. I get angry reading these bozos, too, and have responded angrily, and the only reason I don't do so more often is that, like you, I tend to regret my anger, and don't like the feeling.

What amazes me about these apologists for the dark side is that they seem incapable of perceiving that we see them mostly as comic relief. They make the same old specious arguments time and time again and do not appear to notice that no one believes a word of it, that we are all laughing at the spluttering fallacy.

They seldom respond to my comments, as it happens. I suppose it is either because I am too intellectually lightweight to merit their notice, or because they cannot comprehend.

The people who oppose abortion under any circumstance typically cite religious conviction. To such people I say: If you cite religious conviction but you did not immediately and loudly protest any of the scurrilous and threatening behavior that preceded Dr. Tiller's death, you are a liar and the truth is not in you.

As for you Elephantman: Regardless of your religious convictions or lack of them, you are a liar.

Understanding one's opponent is one thing, and highly recommended. Compromising with people of good intentions who happen to disagree with you, when there is no good solution available that is acceptable to all, is commendable.

Tolerating incessant bullshit as if it were honest dialogue is quite another matter. All you get for offering respect to those who have consistently proven they do not deserve it is a knife in the back. No, I don't trust the anti-abortionists. If there are honest and Christian opponents to abortion, let them immediately form a distinct group and repudiate all the slander, intimidation, and outright lies. Let them deal in reasoned and good-faith debate only.

One commenter claimed that there have been a lot of statements against the murder of Doctor Tiller by anti-abortionists, and that such statements were easy to find. This is not true. I have seen very few statements deploring his murder by anti-abortionists (and I read a lot of news). The ones I have seen were of the variety that went, "Of course murder is always a terrible thing, but . . ."

Perhaps true statements of outrage are all over the rightwing blogs, which it is true, I do not read, and that is why I have not seen them. Would the commenter who asserted they exist like to present a few?

Much as I would like to exclude all possibility of the formerly muscle-bound one as president, I can't think of that as a fair reason to retain the exclusion of those who were not born citizens. As the article pointed out, all of those born before the founding of the nation were not born as U.S. citizens, which would obviously include every signer of the declaration of independence and the constitution.

A better reason, I think, is that one should be especially hesitant to tamper with the constitution or its amendments, even though some of it clearly no longer works as it was originally intended. For that reason, I do not favor ending the bicameral nature of the congress, despite current abuses, including the disproportionate influence of Jim Crow states, nor doing away with the electoral college, nor modifying the second amendment.

As for my friends who say we do not have to worry about Arnold any more since he has been such a bad governor: I remember another California movie-actor governor who went on to become a disastrous president. I remember, before that, a man who couldn't even win the governorship, who swore that he would never give another press conference, and who as president began the destruction brought to fulfillment by W.

Never, NEVER count the booger-brains out.

Hell, dheitman, I'm willing to compare it to the Gettysburg address right now. Wait a sec. Okay, done.

You were uttering satire, right?