About Sidney Blumenthal ‘md’ said: “Can you not make your point without the offensive Catholic-bashing strewn throughout your piece? ("Holy Office of the Inquisition," "Ave Maria")? What does the Catholic Church have to do with the U.S. Attorney scandal? You, sir, truly make no attempt to hide your vile bigotry.”

Get over yourself md! Both of the examples you state are common literary metaphors and do not betray any bigotry (Unless, of course, it just bothers you that they were uttered by a Jewish writer; in which case you need not look further than the mirror to find your so called “vile bigotry”). I don’t think you’re a bigot md— I just wanted to make the point that it sucks to be labeled one on such flimsy evidence.

I feel for your friend. Last year I lost two dogs that I really loved. I have their tags on my key chain and I look at pictures of them occasionaly.

But you know what— I did the normal human grieving thing for a short time and then just dealt with it. I didn’t let the death of my beloved dogs mar or affect any of my human relationships.

I know this is going to sound insensitive but my advice is to first try to buy your friend a puppy. If that doesn’t work tell her to get a fucking life or she’s going to end up like one of those stupid lonely, shut-in hags whose house nobody wants to enter because of the stench of dog shit or cat urine. You know the ones I'm talking about; there's one in every building!

And by the way, I’m sick of hearing Pitbulls take such a bad rap. For a great article on this subject read Malcolm Gladwell’s essay ‘What Pitbulls Can Teach Us About Profiling” at : http://www.gladwell.com/2006/2006_02_06_a_pitbull.html

Kudos to Bill McKibben and his new book. I just put it on order (see, I’m one of ‘those’ consumers).

The problem of course is that the whole world economy is based on the idea of consumption and growing markets. Until we educate the majority of the U.S—me included— (the U.S. consumes 25% of all the ‘stuff’ in the word, uses 25% of all the energy and makes—logical conclusion—25% of all the garbage) that we need to stop buying so much crap and create, not a more sustainable economy, but a real sustainable economy; we are screwed!

The word sustainability itself has officially been appropriated by the swanky MBA set which means it’s been reframed, neutered and relegated to that lexical rubbish bin along with ‘green’ and ‘organic’. This means we need not only sustainability but also a new way of even talking about it (at least until the panjandrums of the biz world appropriate that as will and we have to start all over).

As others have pointed out, Europe is way ahead of us on this. But with American’s typical hubris and 30% of the population believing that the ‘rapture’ will solve the problem—it’s a pretty damn hard sell!

I know it’s the popular rage now to blame the growing economies of China and India for all those nasty carbon emissions but they are still minority contributors (and hell, they had a good teacher!). In fact, living in China I can tell you that the dialog on the environment on both a government and citizen level is much more vibrant than anything you hear coming out of Washington or from the American public.

Those that are as concerned as I am I hope you will get a copy of the book and do what I’m going to do—pass it on to a friend to save on consumption (sorry Bill, it’ll hurt your royalties but hey, it was your idea).

Let's just get rid of oaths altogether. After all they’re just annoying little reminders of responsibility and when you take the stand they suggest you do unsavory things like tell the truth.

From now on during the presidential inauguration, I think the President should put his hand on a copy of ‘The Cat In The Hat’ and say something to the effect of: “I’ll make a concerted effort to uphold and sustain the Constitution of the United States as long as it is politically convenient and doesn’t indict any of my friends."

The aggregate result wouldn’t be any different from what we’re seeing now and it would certainly be more honest.

Back in the good ale’ days when I was a young Republican, I often suffered from a bizarre form of amnesia reminiscent of the recent memory loss coming out of the testimonies in Washington over the attorney scandal. Back then, it seems that whenever I did or said something offensive, disingenuous or downright dishonest, I would forget about it completely. Or worse yet, remember it as somehow being virtuous, pragmatic or noble. And yet ironically, I could remember whole episodes of Hee-Haw verbatim.

Now that I am firmly a progressive democrat my memory has improved considerably. I seem to have a much greater awareness of the effects of my words and actions— whether they are good or bad.

This phenomenon should be studied further. I’m sure that some ambitious young neuroscientist could make tenure from figuring out the origins of this unique political pathology.

In the event of a stigmata, will it be strawberry or raspberry flavored?

What is *with* all the *asterisks*? Just *curious*.