I posted on Monday critizing McCain for his comments on Falwell -- did you read that? That post did seriously question my stance on McCain.

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2006/04/03/mccain/index.html

I posted on Wednesday saying he'd made me feel better -- though I noted it was slight -- on "The Daily Show."

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2006/04/03/mccain/index.html

And in this post I say his reversal on this piece of finance reform is a strike against him.

Your questions suggest you think all of these positions are mutally exclusive ("So which one is it?") That's an error on your part, I submit. It's not at all irrational or contradictory to first question someone's statements (McCain on MTP); then to have someone answer those worries in a somewhat satisfactory way (McCain on Stewart); and then to have that same person's actions in a different matter (McCain on finance reform) cause a further appraisal.

Why shouldn't new information prompt new feelings?

You're right, it doesn't have anything to with gay marriage. But it does have to do with gay people. If we're not going to allow homosexuals to get married -- a debate on which I agree with your views -- we ought to at least allow them the benefits of joint filing. Taxes may be a very small part of the picture, but that doesn't mean they're unimportant to a millions of people.

MWR,

The surrender document is a negotiated document; even if it says that the surrender is unconditional, it also highlights a major condition that the U.S. accepted, namely that the emperor could keep his throne.

You can see that this was the Japanese desire in the first signal the Japanese gave after the second nuclear bomb (at Nagasaki): "The Japanese government is ready to accept the terms enumerated in the joint declaration ... with the understanding that said declaration does not compromise any demand which prejudices the prerogatives of His Majesty as a sovereign ruler."

The U.S. accepted that condition. You can see that in the surrender document you linked to.

Good point, MWR, the disagreement does hang on whether there was a "meaningful difference between the expicitly-if-nominally unconditional surrender of a crushed foe and what could have been achieved earlier by granting surrender terms to a foe not yet on her knees."

Carroll makes some points that I think would be worth taking note of in this assessment. 1) Japan was pretty much a crushed foe even without the nukes. We often forget the firebombing of Tokyo and other cities in the shadow of the death and destruction at H and N. But 100,000 people died in one night in Tokyo, and a million were made homeless. If we hadn't dropped the atomic bombs, firebombings like these would have gone down as some of the most damaging military campaigns in history. According to Carroll, Japanese civilian deaths from such non-nuclear bombings in all cities caused 900,000 civilian deaths.

2) It's not clear that the American acceptance of the Emperor was simply symbolic and magnanimous; before we dropped the nuclear weapons, it was a major sticking point. This is clear from Churchill and Truman's disagreement on what "unconditional surrender" meant with regard to the Japanese; Churchill asked Truman in July (a month before the nukes) to find a way to allow the Japanese to "some show of saving their national honor and some assurance of their national existence" (by allowing them to keep the emperor). Truman rebuffed this, and in the subsequent Potsdam declaration -- offered to the Japanese before we dropped the bombs -- Truman deleted a reference allowing the Japanese to keep "the present dynasty." The ultimatum offered to the Japanese stated: "There must be eliminated for all time the authority and influence of those who have deceived and misled the people of Japan." Japan rejected this ultimatum.

As we saw, though, after the atomic bombs, Truman dropped these objections and accepted the presence of the emperor. (Even though, as you note, the emperor's power was mostly symbolic.)

Brian,

You make many good points, some of them damaging to Carroll's thesis, but you make as many mistakes about Carroll's thesis itself -- so you'd profit reading from his book. As to your final point about Churchill, Roosevelt and "uncoditional surrender," you have one big thing wrong: Churchill and Roosevelt were at odds about unconditional surrender, not on the same side. Roosevelt won that argument.

I don't mind if you don't agree with me, but you've got your facts wrong. As I've written before, I've never missed an episode of the show. I'm not a newcomer.

http://salon.com/ent/tv/feature/2006/01/24/west_wing/index1.html

You said: "I assume Prosper hasn't yet invested in a strong collections department to protect the assets of its clients. This is a potential goldmine for a number of petty scams."

Your assumption's wrong. As I pointed out in the article, Prosper uses a collection agency when people default on their loans.

Right, Lori, the confirmation notices were sent in this case; that's why I didn't mention that requirement, because that hasn't been a point of controversy and I didn't want to muddy the argument with electoral technicalities that aren't in dispute (as far as I know nobody alleges they weren't sent; Kennedy doesn't).

Look at Ms. Hicks-Hudson's quote here (an article that Kennedy cites as his source for his assertion that thousands of Kerry voters were hurt by such purges):

http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050109/NEWS09/501090334&SearchID