First political donation I've ever made. Hope to see you with the new book on Colbert or the Daily Show. Your writings, more than anything else right now, deserve a much wider audience.

When there's a Democrat in the White House.

Which of our non-allies in the mid east, west Asia are in fact more liberal and democratic open societies than the ones we support?

Iran. Yes, Iran. It is far more democratic, far more open to Western travelers, etc, than Saudi Arabia.

I think your last sentence sums up the views of the vast majority of the pro-choice crowd, LWM.

I can't see how any self-proclaimed libertarian would abide government intrusion in this case. As the LP says:

Recognizing that abortion is a sensitive issue and that people can hold good-faith views on both sides, we believe that government should be kept out of the matter, leaving the question to each person for their conscientious consideration.

http://www.lp.org/issues/platform_all.shtml

But perhaps the capital-L, the government exists to enforce "no force or fraud" and that's it, Libertarians are a special case.

I have a lot of problems with libertarianism of all stripes, but keeping government out of personal decisions seems a necessary part of it, and one I would strongly agree with.

I actually had the opposite reaction to this article, JackHughes. Glenn Reynolds and David Broder are really so deluded that they truly believe their own bullshit. They just cannot comprehend that the world works differently than the one in their heads.

That, to me, is far more frightening than the notion that they are cynically exploiting their positions out of self-interest.

Glenn is taking the available scientific data (which is ample), and drawing simple logical conclusions. I don't understand how that's provoked so much controversy.

Look at the polling data and do the math:

http://www.pollster.com/08presidentialprimary.php

McCain and Giuliani have been bleeding support directly to Fred Thompson. Republican voters are looking for a more conservative candidate. Nothing of significance has changed with respect to the war or McCain since January, when his downturn began.

From what logic does that "should" come from?

Are you serious? The word you're looking for is hypocrisy. The fact that Glenn is pointing out hypocrisy does not magically make him guilty of the same.

Ah well. Have fun, Glenn.

I haven't even seen any comments like that on Daily Kos, which has a large centrist, Dem apologist contingent that can usually be counted on to quickly disgust me.

This time, it's schadenfreude all around.

"By the way look at how legitimizing unwed motherhood worked out."

We all know they should still be shunned, and forced to wear scarlet A's.

What is Sowell referring to when he says "Some on the left believe that they are innocent even after being proven guilty." The quote seems apropos of nothing.

I certainly hope he's not referring to organizations like The Innocence Project.

Shooter doesn't even bother with the semblance of an argument or a point anymore. It's pure name-calling with the intent to provoke a response, and really should be ignored.

You know, I kind of expected people here to be slightly more intelligent than Slashdotters. Apparently nobody actually knows what "censorship" means anymore. I'll let Merriam-Webster help:

censor (verb): to examine in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable ; also : to suppress or delete as objectionable

Note carefully how it says absolutely nothing about the government.

It's just fascinating to see such denial of basic facts in action. No matter how far Stephen Colbert pushes his satire, there will always be someone nodding vigorously in agreement...reference books: all fact, no heart. Wow.

If you really need a modern cultural example of common usage of the term "censor", go look up Standards & Practices. Unless you just *know*, in the gut, that books and words and modern usage are all irrelevant.

As others have indicated, unless the military has made some colossal blunders in setting up its email system, the message was sent from his account, and probably from his computer.

I can't really think of any plausible scenario that involves someone other than him or a close coworker sending such an email to you.

It's easy to "spoof" an email address, sure.

It is extremely difficult to fake the path that an email has taken. Note that the email goes directly from CENTCOM's servers to Salon's. Unless one of those servers was compromised, the path is legitimate, and it was sent from Boylan's computer, or at least a computer on the same local network.

So either it's an extremely elaborate and difficult hoax job, or Boylan or one of his coworkers sent it. Apply Occam's razor.

Again, no, it's really not remotely plausible that CENTCOM has open relays ("public machines").

Your scenario requires that someone hacked into one of these servers, and faked the headers perfectly, apparently just to send Glenn a nasty message, emulating Boylan's style fairly accurately. It's an outlandishly unlikely scenario.

The casual association of Harry Reid with Osama bin Laden and Vladimir Putin, the elevation of the Noble Businessman to sainthood...it's really too much. Hinderaker really believes he's living in Rush Limbaugh's Right-Wing Fantasy World.

Bill Donohue may be an obnoxious clown, but I can find little evidence of bigotry. Compared to people like Robertson and Falwell, he's positively reasonable.

Cindy McCain and Michelle Obama should be subjected to a certain degree of scrutiny. If they've said crazy things on the campaign trail, that would be noteworthy.

But when is rummaging around in their personal lives appropriate? Cindy McCain was an addict, and she unsurprisingly did some stupid things to support that addiction. That information has been public for a long time. Does this have the slightest bearing on how John McCain would govern? No. Beyond

puerile tabloid titillation, that information is irrelevant.