Just as I was getting ready to write you a note about how much I enjoy your posts, in reaction to the nasty comments you've been getting from anti-Obama people today. I don't read Politico, and I'll miss your writing. Thanks for being here.

He really IS a dumb liar. Not a thing wrong with lampooning him based on factual truth.

This renews my sympathy for HRC - although I am not stupid enough to vote for her based on that.

what Joe Lieberman is. Not polite words, anyway.

if it is mostly devoid of nutritional value. I eat a small amount of white flour, but if it's ALL you eat, you're setting yourself up for colon cancer to begin with. I do think science is important, but even scientific knowledge is incomplete because we don't really understand how a lot of things work - and by the time that knowledge gets filtered through pharmaceutical interests, medical paranoia, and media narratives, much of it is nearly worthless.

Kind of like processed food. For goodness' sake. Just eat REAL FOOD. You'll feel so much better. Trying to tweak your food intake based on popular science is a great idea, but take it all with a grain of salt (even if you have high blood pressure, because that whole think is a freakin' CROCK (of healthful Parkay...)), get yourself off anything you're dependent on (coffee, sugar, alcohol, whatever) so you can trust your body, and then eat what makes you feel good and get some exercise every day. No one has to specially package a damned thing in fear-based messages for that stuff to work. You're a hominid! Act like one!

And you didn't need the Internets to see what you wanted to see, did you? I think this is a cognitive weakness of humans in general, rampant in faith-based communities, institutionalized in academia, and sped up to a perhaps unprecedentedly rapid pace in the silicon-lubricated Intertubes. But basically Same As It Ever Was.

I hope your book proposes some way to teach critical thinking and research skills to kids (and anyone new to the Googles) - because those things ARE skills, not a mystery, and really are accessible to everyone. But they can't be uploaded; they have to be practices. Ah, there's the rub.

"It's the net utopians that argue that the Internet is different, that once everyone has access to all information, enlightenment will follow."

Are there really still people who make that argument? You would think that the public library and public school systems would have convinced them otherwise from the get-go, but in this day and age, I think we've all resigned ourselves to the fact that the Internet is nothing special. Just faster, and with a lot more funhouse mirror features (almost everybody has the same version of old song lyrics, even if they're wrong, for example) and more opportunities for insidious marketing than we ever dreamed possible before.

Yeah, it helped Al Gore! ... er ...

I think Clinton's attempts to get the delegates from MI and FL are despicable, and were the final straw for me. If she got the nomination, I would have voted for her with a song in my heart even though I am supporting Edwards at this stage. But now I will vote for her with a growl in my heart instead. Talk about false populism.

But that doesn't mean I'm pro-Obama either. Little fun-poking e-mails look stupid and petty. Even when the person you're making fun of deserves it. And she doesn't deserve to be made fun of about the delegate thing; it's actually a serious breach of trust, from my POV, not just something to make cutesy insider jokes about.

Then maybe they should have done something about it when they had a chance. Just like Clinton should have. It's not Obama's fault their votes don't count. AND, both he and Clinton agreed to the rules ahead of time. You don't get to take that back just because you now see it was a tactical error. If you really cared about enfranchising those voters, you would have done something about it ahead of time - as a matter of principle. Of which Clinton appears to have little on this particular issue.

half the country has no role in deciding the Democratic nominee. I'm in that half, since I'm after Stupid Tuesday. Our system is broken, and whining and inside jokes and calling people "punk-ass" are not fixing it.

I think anyone's pissing-contest win or loss in Florida or Michigan is tainted by the fact that being utterly disenfranchised supresses turnout, to say the least. In this particular election year, Obama has been notable (at least allegedly) for bringing out people who don't normally vote because they feel disenfranchised by the System. I don't think those people were voting in Florida today. It's pretty hard to come to conclusions one way or another about what any winner's win there "means." And since "meaning" something is all it's about, I guess that's fairly important to the discussion.

What do you think about Clinton's ex post facto interest in making sure "all" the Florida and Michigan's voters voices are heard?

I do agree with your sentiments, but I don't think it's a news organization's job to totally disregard the fact that Clinton won the popular vote, such as it was, in Florida. You can make all sorts of claims about why that might be and why it also doesn't matter, but being in denial that Clinton is the factual, actual winner even down to the visuals is way, way beyond editorializing and into ... well, is there even a name for what that is? Totally irresponsible.