So, Ms. Dunn has trouble, prays to Allah, the trouble abates, and she takes this as a confirmation of her faith. Her mother is right: she has a naive understanding of religion.

It is not when you call on God, and your prayer is answered, that faith is established. It is when you call on God, and only silence ensues, that faith (or struggle, or jihad, or whatever you want to call it) can be truly tested. Will Ms. Dunn update us, when her God fails her?

Unfortunately, we have not gotten past the insidious convention that any woman with balls got them by cutting them off of a man or two. The emasculating female is a potent archetype in Western (Eastern, Southern, Northern) culture, which cannot be overturned in a few decades of progress toward gender equality.

Webb reminded me of nothing so much as my high school principal, a man who thought academic classes were fine, so long as they didn't get in the way of football season. It's fine that he communicates Democratic values well to Americans with similarly simian instincts -- we can't be too choosey about how we succeed, these days. But it is not a noble commentary, when people compare the Democratic spokesperson with Eisenhower.

Poor Nancy Pelosi must now struggle to walk the balance beam with feminine grace and strength, without seeming too lithe or too muscular, just to win over the stunted imagination of Chris Matthews. Heaven forbid that Democrats show any real strength of character by standing firmly for something so feminine as equal rights or social justice.

We are trapped in an adolescent conception of power, strength and character. I am beginning to believe that it will not be shifted much in the remainder of my years.

I'm proud to have shared the heritage that she so well embodied. She was one of those writers that, once you heard her speak, you could imagine her reciting her essays in the silence of your own mind. Her voice -- either literary or physical -- was genuine and fascinating. Her wit was as quick and sharp as her intellect, and her grasp of the telling detail will be studied for years to come by talented essayists.

I'll miss her. I can't imagine another person alive who can take her place, but I sure know she'd want someone to try. The world is now officially out of balance: we're left with Shrub and no Molly.

Thanks, Joe Conason, for a wonderful encomium.

Most of the applications that I have been involved in had to be put to use before there was much hope of formal testing, so it was much more like trying to drive a car while you were building it. All you could hope for was that nothing really awful would happen as the application got patched and re-engineered and reviewed.

The business reasons for software are often defined as the development cycle is progressing, and the programmer is not the one to tell the suits that they should have thought of a must-have feature six-months ago. It is very, very rare that planning for software development occurs distinctly from the actual process of development.

If it can be shown that A.G. Gonzales conspired with the Senate Judiciary Counsel to thwart the Senate's review of federal prosecutor appointments, then the A.G. should be impeached and removed from his office. The Attorney General is sworn to uphold the Constitution, not to conspire to undermine it. He has shown little respect for the Constitution or the legislative branch of government. It is time to show him the limits of his authority.

There's nothing particularly wrong with this excerpt. It is earnest and colorful, and it seems to have a distinct story and voice. But it lacks context.

In the past, Salon has paired brief excerpts with reviews of the full text or of an author's work, in general. Such a pairing offers the reader a chance to consider a critic's views as well as react to an author's voice. To those of us who read as much for the tone, spirit and language of a text as for its topic, the excerpt is very useful. The critical essay is also useful, however.

A bit of writing cannot provide enough insight for us to know whether the tantalizing personal voice descends into mawkish sentimentality or the clever twist is wrung dry in only a couple of chapters. We need a critical appraisal to weigh the promise of the excerpt against the effort and expense of the book.

Please, put this and other excerpts in a meaningful context.

Increasingly, I find myself challenged to listen to even the blandishments of the regular Sunday morning shows, and somehow you find the grit to listen to Hewitt and the like. Of course, you're entirely correct, the spineless Democratic message merchants need to memorize this dialog. Odom says what many of us believe, but he has the experience behind him to give weight to his ideas. If I'd said any of the stuff he's said, I'd just be baited as a loony lefty and ridiculed until I shut up.

Thanks for lending us your ears and your intelligence. You're daily presence is the best thing that's happened to Salon in a long time.

Damn! I mean, DAMN! Greenwald nails another "journalist" with such precision and dexterity that I am left stunned and breathless. Truly amazing work.

Fitzgerald could have used such talent in the Plame disaster -- then there might have actually been an indictment on the principal crime.

Keep up the utterly astonishing work!