Every question was a snarky semi-attack or some bizarre hypothetical. Which would only be irritating rather than infuriating if he went after Republicans and conservatives with anywhere near as much aggressiveness, or any at all, for that matter. (Witness his nearly-weekly frat-boy bull sessions with John McCain, Joe Lieberman, Dick Cheney, etc. Or his sit-down with Bush, where he let Bush ramble on with his talking points while never interjecting or asking follow-ups. He could've gone out of the room for a smoke between questions, for all the good he did as a journalist.)

Other questions demanded yes or no answers that were impossible to give. (Will you have all our troops out of Iraq by the end of your first term? Why, sure I would, Tim!! Regardless of what the f@$#%@% is going on in the Middle East or Iraq specifically at the time!!)

And a question about MoveOn.com? Come on, for God's sake. Can we expect him to put Republicans on the spot about the truly bizarre fringe groups (unlike MoveOn.com) that they snuggle up to on a regular basis? I'm guessing not.

Some of the questions, even the ones that weren't hypotheticals, had completely flawed or fake premises, ie the Fed chairman and GAO say we have to cut Social Security benefits in half or dramatically raise the payroll tax to save the program. I have no doubt that the Fed chairman feels that way, as many Republicans are allergic to the program and would love to see it slashed or lose popularity. But I could find no evidence that the GAO has EVER said anything that extreme. Here are their white papers on it, going back several years (if the url below gets dinged, go to www.gao.gov/docdblite and then look up Social Security):

http://www.gao.gov/docdblite/openrecs.php?fy=&recflag=2&query=1&subhead=Income+Security

Some Democrat could have had a real "Bill Clinton takedown of Chris Wallace" moment by calling BS on the moderator at some point during the evening. And I don't mean just politely taking exception to him. I mean really shooting him down.

Hillary came closest to doing so at the end of the night, after Russert's torture hypothetical -- and here is where your article missed a bit of the exchange. After she condemned torture, Russert intoned, in his typical smug, pompous, gotcha voice, that the person who first brought it up was "William. Jefferson. Clinton." And Hillary said, "Well, he's not standing up here right now." BAM. When Tim then bloviated, as if he'd just uncovered a great crime, that she and her husband obviously disagree on this, THAT's when she said, Well, I'll have to have a talk with him about that.

Democrats need to stop reflexively answering questions from clowns like this, and challenge the premise of the question first. And then directly take on the questioner if necessary. They are finally learning how to do this on Fox News, but they need to do it with "mainstream journalists" also.

...it gave this guy a chance to feign sensitivity and profundity about something he STOLE. Another reader let him off the hook, saying he was possibly the only one who could appreciate this artifact. Which, I get the impression, is exactly what Smith wanted us to think. As for the skull theft, don't even get me started. Except to echo other readers' sentiments that I sincerely doubt he would have copped to stealing a skull from Birkenau.

A mercifully ex-boyfriend of my closest friend volunteered at Ground Zero, and confided to her that he had scooped up what he believed were human remains there, and brought them home and put them in a jar. He keeps them on a shelf right next to his chunk from the Berlin Wall. He honestly does not see the difference between the two, and I'm sure that he, like Smith and his author friend, would have no trouble referring to these remains as a "souvenir."

Dictionaries define a souvenir as "a usually small and relatively inexpensive article given, kept, or purchased as a reminder of a place visited, an occasion, etc.; memento; a memory." I'm confident that's not supposed to mean co-opting other people's memories, or tragedies, or bones and remains, for God's sake.

Sometimes when people "confess" to doing something, it sounds suspiciously like bragging.

...and now he swerves to run over the birds every morning on his way to work.

And unlike the false white accuser in that novel, Thomas' main accuser at the Senate hearings was another African-American, whose account of Thomas's behavior was backed up copiously. What about the way she was villified and smeared?

What a contemptible little turd this guy is. There's no law that says we all have to reflexively sympathize with our ethnic groups/sexual orientations/genders in every instance, but for someone to bewail his impoverished, oppressed upbringing and then completely betray the poor and disadvantaged of every race at pretty much every turn is nothing short of psychopathic.

He didn't seem much interested, for instance, in the ongoing disenfranchisement of blacks that was evident in Florida in 2000, when he stuck his head up Scalia's butt just about as far as it would go (and he's had years of practice at it) and rubber-stamped the Bush versus Gore decision. And I'm guessing he'll also vote to uphold Indiana's disgraceful Voter Identification Card law when it comes before him this fall.

Maybe he needs to go back and read his scripture again. Because I'm pretty sure it says Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, not Do unto others as they've done unto you.