Funny how folks who think that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is unconstitutional because Congress has no power to limit discrimination under the Interstate Commerce Clause also seem to think that McCain-Feingold is unconstitutional under the First Amendment. The First Amendment says Congress has no power to abridge the freedom of speech. McCain-Feingold does not stop a single individual from speaking. Rather, it limits certain payments of money and requires that in certain kinds of commercials (which were, oddly enough, not within the contemplation of the Congress that passed the Bill of Rights) you have to add certain content. So why is that an abridgement of the First Amendment? Because the Supreme Court said something like that in Buckley v. Valeo? But that's the same Supreme Court that interpreted the Interstate Commerce Clause in Heart of Atlanta Motel. So in order to find them both unconstitutional, you essentially have to speak out of both sides of your mouth.

Which isn't altogether surprising.

One of the sillier arguments you hear from Mansfield and the rest of Bush's apologists is that the crises faced by the country today are somehow greater than any we've faced before. Yet the Supreme Court told off Lincoln (posthumously) in Ex Parte Milligan and Truman in Youngstown Steel. I have a lot of trouble thinking that the Civil War and a nuclear-armed Soviet Union were less of a threat to the country than the fanatics we face today.

Fifteen years ago my boss was killed in an auto crash. We took some time off to remember him, but we had work to do and we did it. We too had recently buried another co-worker who died young, and by recently I mean a few months before, not five years before. So I guess I think the coverage of this was way overblown.

I must admit to having no knowledge or memory of Josh Hancock as a baseball player before his death, and the hagiography ("best teammate ever!") we've seen since doesn't obscure the fact that the way he died appears to have been negligent, not tragic. I'm sorry for his family like the family of anyone else who dies needlessly, but when a person with an athlete's reflexes is unable to get out of the way of a huge tow truck flashing its lights on an uncrowded freeway late at night, it's not quite the professor at Virginia Tech blocking the doorway, if you know what I mean.

Do you remember right after 9/11, Rudy appearing on Letterman (I think it was Letterman, but I'd be happy to be corrected) and arguing that he couldn't leave office when his term ended on December 31, that he had to have his term extended?

To me, this is the real test of the man. The stuff with the radios is not the mayor's specific job; New York is mired in bureaucracy and who knows what was causing the bids on the radios to happen the way they did. The WTC as command center was stupid, but not venal. The specifics of what happened that day, well, no one else was mayor of New York that day, so can you stand in their shoes?

But in the world described by Joe Conason in "It Can Happen Here", the last thing we need is a president who has already indicated that his own personal needs override the law applying to his office. Let's not be giving W. any excuse to try to override the 22nd Amendment, okay?

that they can't find a way to use this man now that they've taken his body away. Apparently the DVA can't either. But that is pretty much the hallmark of this administration, no imagination, no ability to rethink or reformulate a mission, nothing allowed that is different from the image they see in their mind's eye of the virile, strong, white, handsome soldier.

That the military could not take away Ty Ziegel's spirit of Renee's love for him says so much about the character of these people, and so little about the character of those who would just leave them to draw a disability check and drink.

Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and friends all thought men like this would be garlanded with flowers by grateful Iraqis and they still don't--and won't--look men like this in the eye and say, "I'm sorry I was wrong. I'm sorry you had to pay this sacrifice for my mistake."

Gilles de Navacelle is not a descendant of Baron de Coubertin, unless the Baron fooled around with his sister. He is a relative of Baron de Coubertin, a member of his family, but he is a descendant of the Baron's parents, not the Baron himself.

Also, the LA Olympic venues spread a lot further than one letter writer wrote. The furthest away was soccer played at Harvard Stadium (which is in Boston, not Cambridge).

She knew that in the arena she played in, she had better get her facts straight. And she did.