I love it when some organization throws stuff out and people swallow it whole.

1. Neanderthals were around for quite a while and were fairly spread out. 10,000 females would probably not really be a sustainable breeding population for a species that lasted for thousands of years. At the very least, I'd question that number.

2. I also seriously doubt that the females went hunting with the males. The reason is children. You can gather with a child on your hip or in tow; you can't hunt that way. And women were constantly producing children - both because of a lack of contraception and because over half of the kids died before the age of 5. The other reason for producing kids in that kind of environment is that's how you create your work force - you put the kids to work somewhere between the ages of 6 and 8.

3. Even though I am homo sapiens (regardless of what some may think), I take exception to your description of the Neanderthals as animals unless you want to describe h. sapiens as an animal (which would be accurate). They had a cranial capacity larger than our own. While that doesn't mean ipso facto that they were as intelligent as we, there is a correlation between brain size and intelligence. I strongly doubt that they were just dumb animals.

I think Mr. Richardson is correct. In point of fact, the US has actively and/or passively imposed some mean, nasty, and ugly dictators on various countries in the name of our national security. Anastasio Samoza, Augusto Pinochet, and Mohammad Reza Palavi leap instantly to mind and we both know the list is substantially longer. These autocrats imposed substantial pain and suffering on their populations.

While it's a nice theoretical statement to say that "National Security" and human rights don't have to conflict, experience says that human rights are in the back of the bus and "National Security" is in the drivers seat. Indeed, the mindset that allows people to think that we can twizzle with other country's governments via either "regime change" or strategic support for somebody we like is what has transformed us from a respectable republic into the imperium we are today. And, frankly, I don't like it.

Our current dictator du jour, Mr. Musharraf, came to power via a coup, has recently packed his supreme court with compliant jurists so that he can remain in power, indefinitely suspended civil liberties, and is using the very equipment we sold him to repress his people. Even Castro wasn't that bad but since he wasn't willing to do our bidding, we've had a 50 year embargo against Cuba (an embargo which has largely hurt the people, not the government). But Mr. Musharraf? Weeelll, he's doing our bidding (or, at least, claims he is) so no embargo for him!

I'd prefer human rights in the driver's seat and "National Security" at the back of the bus, thank you very much. I don't think our "National Security" is such a delicate and fragile thing that it needs the repression of millions of people world wide to keep it in good health.

What bullshit. I know that various pundits, pollsters, and prognosticators have claimed that persons of the female persuasion vote based on their emotional response to a male candidate. Here's a hint: men don't think that way. I suppose this is reaching the logical conclusion of the apparent use by the electorate of personal characteristics as a surrogate for professional characteristics.

Using personal characteristics as a surrogate generally leads to deleterious results. There was a joke running around a few years back where you were given the personal characteristics of three men and asked which one you would like for president. You were not told that the three men who were being described were Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, and Adolph Hitler. The clueless generally picked Hitler because he had no vices and was not a serial cheat something that couldn't be said for his co-panelists. And just look at The Current Occupant.

I think it would be good if opinion shaping outlets, like Salon, would stand up and say that using personal characteristics as a surrogate for professional behavior is a bad move instead of debating the accuracy of the claims and thus lending them some air of legitimacy.

Under the heading of For the Record and Full Disclosure, I will not under any circumstances vote for Three Names. This has nothing to do with the fact that I'm male and she's female and, no, I would have no desire to date her. It has everything to do with the fact that you don't have to ask her what her position is; all you have to do is look at the latest opinion polls. Plus the fact that she has no clue what the ideals and principles that founded this nation were or how to apply them.