Terry:

Please. Why would any self-respecting liberal vote for this guy?

Perhaps because he has a lot to offer. Certainly as much as anyone alive today, and much more than most.

"RealName" (takes some courage, that...)

He oozes anti-charisma. He already lost. Aren't we tired of recycling the same dudes over and over?

And your candidate would thus be...who, exactly? Hillary Clinton, with all the charisma of a Swiss watch? And if another Clinton isn't recycling, what's the word mean?

John Edwards? Look, I like the guy, but he has zero chance of winning. He's already a trivia question to most Americans.

Barack Obama? I like him a lot more than either of the preceding two, and would vote for him if Gore doesn't get in, based on the fact that he has a talent for finding the center, and we don't need more polarization right now - hasn't six-plus years been enough to show you that?

Chris Dodd is just too...Senatorial. He's a good man, as was his father, but he's not going beyond the Senate.

Bill Richardson's a great candidate but a no-go campaigner, and that's a very valuable distinction if you're at all serious about electoral politics.

Dennis Kucinich? Please.

Holier-than-thou Ralph? May well-deserved obscurity overtake him - and fast!

Or one of the Republican't midgets? People whose applause lines involve advocating torture should experience a few sessions of it first. Besides, they've had their chances and look what happened. We'll be a generation recovering from their damage.

No, if Al Gore got in he'd be my candidate before he was done making the announcement. I can not think of a single Democratic candidate who is better equipped to take the wheel right now. He's right on every position of import, and sharper than anyone else in the field. If he hadn't been usurped in 2000, can anyone, literally anyone, claim we'd be in the same mess we're in now? And when he stepped back, it was in his (now sadly recognized as naive) belief that it was in the best interests of the United States to not drag the fight out and exacerbate the already-forming divisions. I think he knows better now.

My ideal ticket, in fact, would be Gore-Obama. Richardson for State, Clark for Defense, Clinton maybe for Democratic Majority Leader, Dodd for UN Ambassador, Kucinich for Representative from Ohio, and so on.

According to Michael Sherer's recap, it went something like this:

Hume wants to do a role-playing game. Three shopping centers near American cities have been hit by suicide bombers. Hundreds are dead, thousands injured. A fourth attacker is apprehended and may have information about more attacks to come. The question goes to McCain. "How aggressively would you interrogate those being held at Guantánamo Bay for information about where the next attack might be?"

What I didn't see was any reference to the unlikelihood of anyone currently at Guantanamo knowing anything about a plan that would in all probability have been developed after their incarceration there.

Any one of the Ten Little Republicans could, and should, have taken that tack and pointed out the utter absurdity of the question in the first place.

Reverse the situation, and have a white woman saying she's "glad she's got some really great black folks working for her" and the howls of outrage would be heard clear to Sri Lanka, Tierra Del Fuego, and Spitsbergen.

If we are going to take umbrage when someone of one description makes a racist comment, then we are well obliged to take similar umbrage when someone answering another description makes a similarly racist remark. All we are seeing is a matter of degree. And the specific words do not matter. It is the underlying sentiment: That "the other" is irrevocably different, and worth addressing as a category, not a person. Why is that so difficult to see?

And no, I don't watch Oprah, and no, I didn't listen to Imus - in fact, I'd heard him much more during the "nhh" fuss than I'd heard him in the entire rest of my adult life. And based on that hearing, I hadn't missed much. Nor am I missing much in Oprah's case, I'll wager.

Since you made a point of calling out two players by race, whether they (or you) are white or not, rather than simply referring to them as individuals, I stand by my comment. You are a racist.

You want to complain about individuals, tell me why it matters what ethnicity they are. One or two declarative sentences ought to suffice.

A hard foul when he's on his way to the basket would work wonders. As in undercut him so he lands hard. Really hard. And make sure to whisper a few "sweet little nothings" to him as he gets up slowly. Just to plant the seed in his mind that the next time he does something, he gets hurt.

There is a definite difference between playing tough defense and playing dirty. Bowen, and Laimbeer, and Karl Malone, for that matter, are and were among the dirtiest players I've ever seen. Oh, and maybe Maurice Lucas.

And thank you, Wesley Powell, for reminding us all that being racist isn't only for white folks.

They were not there because they disagreed with Bush. They were there because they know that if he keeps to his current path, their chances in November, 2008 are going to get slimmer by the day.

They agree in large part with his policy, they just would prefer being reelected to not. It's pure political expediency.