he's even more of a Democratic hack than Greenwald.

Somehow, trying to make a point while insulting your host in your first paragraph doesn't seem like the best strategy. Or perhaps the insult was more to the point that your point?

Glenn, re the George/NATO positions of various pols, from Josh Marshall today:

There's a bit more on Georgia and Ukraine and NATO. What Obama and Biden favor is for NATO to offer these two countries accession to the "Membership Action Plan" (or MAP), a process set up in the late 1990s to help aspirant countries prepare for possible membership in the Alliance. MAP isn't a promise of membership, and the last members to join NATO were in MAP for nearly a decade. It would take at least as long for Ukraine and Georgia to become members of NATO, not least since one of the criterion for membership is that there are no territorial disputes involving the country that is requesting membership... A lot of mumbo jumbo on NATO accession procedures, this. But here's the kicker: What Palin said is that Ukraine and Georgia should become NATO members now. Not even Bush is arguing that. (He, too, favors MAP.) McCain was with Bush on this until recently and, I assume, if asked still is. Palin didn't know the distinction, and is suggesting that these countries get into NATO tomorrow. She may not realize that this is a decision that NATO members need to make collectively, all 27 of them, which won't happen, given that MAP was denied the countries just a few months ago...

Leahy's vehemence probably comes from the fact that his life was actually threatened. So he, and other Senators, may consider this issue more important than so many others they have let slide.

Thanks, Glenn. Nail. Head. Excellent.

Or do the people who just loved Dubya these last 8 years have serious reading comprehension difficulties?

Instead of rejoicing at the invasion of Palin's of privacy, and thus nebulizing the liberal doctrine

Leaving aside the first clause, which is incorrect (see: reading comprehension, lack of) -- what are the effects of nebulizing a doctrine? Does it become cloudy or cloudlike? More opaque or more fleecy and, hence, more transparent? Does it drift off into space in a fine mist? Or does it get sucked into asthmatic lungs as blessed relief? Perhaps it mistifies and halo-izes around our pointy liberal heads in a purple glow of doctrinity?

Inquiring minds want to know.

demagoguery so vile and reckless that it defies description

It doesn't defy description. It's just that the only accurate description would probably set everyone's computers on fire.

I doubt it was the noble, 'caring about the people' sentiment that is being posited. I think it is pure fear of not getting votes, that's all.

If we have to wait until we have elected representatives who vote based on their "noble" feelings, we'll all be dead. the sun will have burned out, and the universe will be a cold, shrunken shell of its former glory. Even then, the last remaining Congressperson will be trying to figure out how to spin his or her vote to piss off the fewest remaining molecules.

The people who say: "See, there's no crisis, the market went up today!"

aren't much different than the people who say: "See, there's no global warming, it's really cold today!"

I'm getting real tired of that, too. Sweden is the way to go, I tells ya, Sweden! And if I'm elected president of the PTA, every politican from thenceforth will have to swear undying love for Sweden, you betcha.

So far as I know, the only food more disgusting than lutefisk is the Icelander's aged shark bits -- which was probably the new guys' attempt at duplicating lutefisk in the first place.

Still trying to work out the IQ equation...:)

You do know that Swedes eat lutefisk too? They tend to use cream sauce or butter on it, though, rather than artery-clogging bacon fat....

Oh boy, you betcha I know. From personal experience. We always had the cream sauce -- and that creamy texture against the gelatinous lutefisk....eeerrrggg. But it was mostly the smell...

Bacon fat? The Nordskis eat it with bacon fat? I had a couple Norwegian friends (don't tell my grandmother) and their families always had it with cream sauce, too. But that was in Seattle -- maybe ve vass all kookoo mixed up in that town.

...naive 18 year old girls who, as I think most of us can agree, are not terribly sophisticated and able to protect their own rights.

In rides the White Night.

We can always tell what excites them sexually by who they want to rescue. I see you have a thing for naive young girls. Of course, 14 year olds are even less sophisticated than 18 year olds.

Figuring out other people's psyches is always fraught with danger.

As someone who has been an 18-year-old girl, I would agree that I at least was not sophisticated and was easily taken advantage of by older men. Maybe other girls were more aware of the world and wise to its ways than I was. Doesn't mean I think we should change the laws and make 21 the age of majority for girls, but it does mean that I don't think that a culture that approves of 18-year-old girls selling their sex is very cherishing of its young women.

What is so damn hard to understand about finding a thing legal to do in a free land even if one personally would never do such a thing?

I didn't say there should be a law. There shouldn't be.

But just as I think most 18-year-old boys aren't mature enough to decide if they want to enlist in the military and kill people in a war, I don't think most 18-year-old girls are mature enough to understand sexual exploitation and the effects that can have on later life.

Who said anything about making laws?