"Way back in 1993, they came to this city and killed people."

Yes, Rudy, they did. And then you decided -- against the advice of seasoned security personnel -- to put the city's emergency nerve center in the World Trade Center, the only building that had been bombed in New York in that century.

You knew better than the experts. You ignored the facts. Well, guess what? We've had a President like that for quite a while now, and we don't want another.

If you want to continue to capitalize on 9/11 -- before which you were an unpopular despot that the city couldn't wait to get rid of -- then do it the way you've been doing it, on your own time -- as a multimillion-dollar consulant and speechmaker. Don't drag the country into it.

I managed to survive both your terms as mayor. That was quite enough. Seeing you move on to the Presidency would be like watching the hideous, incompetent, egomaniacal boss you worked for, and whom you've since escaped, buy the whole company.

On her site, before it was allegedly spammed, Marcotte was claiming she was forced out because she's a woman. Oh, puh-freaking-leeze!! She's a rage-filled, hate-spewing bigot, who never should have been hired in the first place.

I'm a liberal Catholic who probably agrees with Donohue on exactly nothing, but the fact is, if Amanda was notoriously racist, for instance, she never would have been hired by a national campaign, nor would she have any credibility generally. She would simply be another hatemonger in cyberspace. But she's "only" an anti-Catholic bigot -- so it's not only okay, it's downright trendy.

Any number of religions have the same view as Catholicism on birth control, abortion, etc. But she limits her rants to Catholicism.

And even if you take out the anti-Catholic bigotry, she's essentially just a self-promoting, talentless shrew who can't even take responsibility for her own role in this whole ugly affair. Please, Amanda, go back to your basement and let the grownups talk.

Sorry, I should have said her rants are restricted ALMOST exclusively to Catholics. Which they are. Period. Read her site. Check out how many times she goes off on Catholics versus other religions.

And spare me the stuff about how she is merely attacking misogyny (I simply will not countenance it, to use a pompous phrase I read recently somewhere); her rants are not some glorified defense of women. Marcotte is not a feminist; she gives feminists a bad name. Her first reaction upon resigning was to claim she was being persecuted because she was a woman. Every time a woman pulls that stunt when it's wholly unjustified, it reflects badly on our whole gender.

When someone repeatedly bashes a single religion, race, sexual orientation, etc., to the GENERAL exclusion of all others, it's pretty obviously not intellectually driven; it's simply too narrow to qualify as that. It would be a bit like constantly criticizing one race, and then, when called on it, claiming you're just a misanthrope.

You can split hairs all you like, but aggressively and nastily attacking one religion ALMOST to the exclusion of all others, with not even the vaguest attempt at an intellectual underpinning, is bigotry. Period. And all the sophistry and pompous language in the world can't cover the stench.

Locian, show me ANY religion she attacks with anywhere near the ferocity or frequency of the Catholic Church and its aderents. And I don't mean an odd comment about another religion here or there, I mean a running stream of invective on a regular basis. You can't. And because you can't back up your case with facts, then you resort to name-calling. No wonder you're a fan of Marcotte's.

The only thugs here are Marcotte herself -- who uses vile hate language as a substitute for actual discourse -- and the people who support her brand of hate speech. She is free to spew whatever bile she wants to -- but the Edwards campaign is equally free to cut her loose, or at the very least, gleefully accept her resignation, which she now wields as a symbol of her martyrdom. And honest people are free to call bigotry what it is, while others choose to use a series of ever-more-tortured arguments and justifications to defend it.

Imagine if she had made comments about minorities "breeding," as she did about Catholics, or issued a regular series of anti-Semitic or homophobic slurs. No campaign would, or should, have touched her. But apparently to some people, Catholic-bashing is still a fun all-American sport.

I disagree profoundly with my Church on many issues, and have said so in published essays. But there is a difference between reasoned criticism that has logical, ethical, and intellectual foundations, and ignorant hate speech that fails to even grasp the most basic facts correctly. Those who can't tell the difference -- and apparently there are a few of them -- have only my pity.

McEwan is complaining about " frightening ugliness, the likes of which anyone with a modicum of respect for responsible discourse would denounce without hesitation"? Has she ever read her own -- or Marcotte's -- blog? The kind of discourse she describes is indefensible from anyone. Too bad she had to be on the receiving end of it, after years of dishing it out, before she discovered that.