The rumors about Clemens? I've got news for you: Most people didn't know he was doping until today. Now he's not likely to play again, and it's hard for the public to express anger at someone when he's no longer around. Same case with McGwire. On the other hand, we all knew Bonds was doping at a time when he was arguably the best hitter baseball has ever seen and was breaking its most cherished record. He was baseball's most prominent active player and known to be a doper at the same time, and nobody else has been in that situation. If you believe (without any other justification) that race made a bigger difference in the public's reaction than any of this, it can only be because that's what you want to believe.

Good point about control of the Senate, and thanks for that bit of helpful info. However, you suggest that if Leiberman were to join the Republicans, their new numerical majority wouldn't be able to pass a new organizing resolution (giving themselves control) because they'd face a Democratic filibuster. But I wouldn't take it for granted that enough Senate Democrats would actually fight to prevent this effort.

I'm only half joking. Less than half, actually.

I don’t support Paul’s candidacy and I don’t think abortion should be illegal, but I also don’t think that Paul’s anti-abortion position is inconsistent with his support for civil liberties (as Goldstein does) because it’s not an issue of civil liberties or individual rights at all for him. And that’s where I think a lot of pro-choice people miss the point.

The real disagreement over abortion isn’t women’s right to control their bodies—outside of the lunatic fringe, controlling women’s bodies isn’t really a concern for pro-life people—it’s about whether or not the fetus is a person. It’s not about what a woman does with her own body but what she does to the “body” of the fetus, and to them abortion is tantamount to infanticide, which (obviously) isn’t an issue of individual rights at all but of preventing the mother from doing violence to someone else. To them, outlawing abortion doesn’t force women to have children any more than outlawing infanticide forces women to raise children, and aborting a fetus is no more an issue of a woman being allowed to control her own body that my punching a stranger in the face is an issue of me being allowed to control my own body.

You may not agree with that position (and I don’t), but it’s not a crazy one, and it’s not inconsistent with support for civil rights and individual freedoms. I point this out because I think it’s a mistake to focus on the issue of rights when the real disagreement lies elsewhere—it’s all about the status of the fetus (or even the embryo, I suppose). And that’s the more politically important thing to focus on, too, because I’m pretty sure the legality of abortion in this country is going to hinge on the courts answering the question of when a child’s life begins, which will undoubtedly trump the question of the mother’s rights.

This is a minor point, but King, you said: "The parties involved -- owners, players, media, fans -- should each accept a share of the blame and move on to more productive things ..." Can someone explain to me why fans deserve a share of the blame here?

I'm a baseball fan, so what exactly did I do wrong? Are you saying that because I and others like me continued to follow the game, watch it on TV and go to a few games now and then, we're partly to blame for the steroid problem? Are you seriously claiming that fans (from whom owners and players were trying to hide the steroid problem, by the way) had a responsibility to boycott the game, even when we have no way to act collectively rather than individually (which has no impact). All we're supposed to do is enjoy the game, and that's all we can do. We can't take responsibility for it.

Owners, players and sportswriters all had the opportunity, either as individuals or as organizations, to either try to curb steroid use or shine a light on it. But fans didn't have that opportunity. Until there's a fans' union with a seat at the MLB bargaining table and some real leverage, stop blaming us when there's nothing meaningful we could have done. I don't mean to single you out, King, but it has became automatic for commentators to blame fans along with everyone else, and that's just a way of shucking responsibility by spreading it so thin that it disappears.