For more on this story, read Jon Krakauer's brilliant and scary nonfiction account of fringe Mormon fundamentalists, UNDER THE BANNER OF HEAVEN. The Mormon authorities who run Utah (called the Beehive State to honor the Mormon image of bees with no individuality serving the greater good) know all about Warren Jeffs and distance themselves from his brand of Mormonism in public statements -- but they don't DO anything about him, either.

Brian Nelson

Funny/sad to read about Lindsay Graham attacking lawyers as "mucking up the process." Back in the Clinton impeachment, so very much was made about the fact that Graham himself is a lawyer. Maybe he thinks lawyers muck up the process because that's Graham's own approach to law?

We should not forget that he betrayed Deep Throat from the beginning -- Mark Felt wanted no acknowledgment at all that there was an inside source about Watergate. But in order to tell a good story when he was writing about the whole affair, Woodward revealed that in fact he did have an inside source. Woodward's job number one is, and always has been, getting himself the best story by whatever means necessary. If he thought that giving up his Plame source would get him the inside track to more book contracts and more famous stories, it's hard to doubt he'd do it in a heartbeat.

I keep reading that Woodward has "apologized" for his television appearances in which he criticized Fitzgerald without divulging his own role in this case. I submit this apology will not be complete until he appears on "Fresh Air" and discusses how he deceived its viewers -- until he appears on "Larry King" and "The Daily Show" and every other program on which he deliberately tried to steer us wrong. It is his viewers and readers to whom he owes an apology, and he's been so omnipresent in media this past summer that he'll have a lot of work to do to reach them all.

In their dream of maintaining a new sphere of influence in the Middle East, Bush and the neocons don't EVER plan to leave Iraq. They realize the American public isn't ready for this news (just as it's not ready for their plans to criminalize abortion or end Social Security), but just as we've left troops in Germany ever since WWII, they rely on it becoming a historical inevitability.

We keep hearing that Alito joined CAP but "never actually participated" and "never attended any meetings." Just asking: WERE there actual meetings of this organization? Wouldn't ninety-five percent of its affairs have been conducted through the writing of fundraising letters, the subsequent sending of checks, and the sporadic publication of intolerant rants by its leaders?

I don't "actively participate" and "never attend any meetings" of the National Resources Defense Council, but the fact that I belong -- said membership established by sending them checks -- is sufficient to associate me with their goals. Why Alito does escape association with this group he joined and proudly cited on what was (up to then) the biggest job application of his life?

I assume that Alito joined by reading their newsletters and sending them a check, yes? How much money did he send them? And if you weren't one of the four or five people actually writing down the bigotry for public consumption, wouldn't writing a check have been the extent of nearly anyone's participation?

Re Molly Ivins' homage to McCarthy:

While I have a lot of respect for both Ivins and McCarthy, of course the hard fact is that McCarthy lost. RFK might've won if not for Sirhan; we'll never know. But if people Ivins would rather champion idealists who have no chance at winning, we'll be doomed to another generation of GOP rule.

This is not to say that I enjoy Hillary's playing to the center, either. But this cannibalistic tendency to eat our own party does nobody any good. There was an interesting Bruce Reed column lately on Slate, in which he argued that Nixon's worst legacy was making Democrats allergic to the idea of winning and holding power in Washington. Which is better, being pure or being in power? Wait till McCain wins and finishes appointing a pro-life majority to the Supreme Court, then answer again.

What if somebody on the left of similar prominence had made such a comment about Bush? Imagine the uproar. In these days when we're constantly told that people should be careful what they say, it's clear that will never apply to Coulter.

For some time it has been obvious that McCain is the 2008 frontrunner -- the press adores him (see especially Jake Tapper's 2000 Salon articles), he's the best-known Republican in Congress, he writes right-leaning books on courage and left-leaning books on climate change, and his maverick persona distances him from a White House for whom he has sometimes slavishly carried water. So when do we begin the campaign against him that the right has already begun against Hillary?

McCain's failure to indict the Bush campaign for its loathsome race-baiting in 2000 South Carolina seems especially ripe for consideration. If Zell Miller can proclaim, as he did at the last GOP convention, that protecting your family trumps everything, then what should we say about how McCain allowed the Bush campaign to slime his family in order to secure the party's nomination? Or perhaps, like O.J., McCain is still out looking for the "real" culprit?

This article suggests what seems to me a great and underutilized tactic for the pro-choice side. Shouldn't every pro-lifer be asked, "Do you support sending every woman who has an abortion to jail for life?"

And when they try to say that the women are somehow victims, that the real killing is being done by the doctor, they should be reminded that the doctors are being paid by the women, or the women's insurance. As accessories, under pro-life thinking, that still should mean jail time. Let's hear just how many Americans the pro-lifers want to criminalize.