In a way, the author of the letter is raising the fundamental question of the election, and what should be the fundamental difference between the parties: Do we Americans want to do what works, or what feels good and validates our biases?

Part of the point of research is that much of what we think is true in the world is not; much of what we assume will work does not. Nowhere is this more true, and ignored, than in the "debate" over "torture." Here's why we should oppose torture, in a nutshell: IT DOESN'T WORK. Period. If the technique gets anything out of the victim at all, it's going to be what the torture wants to hear, not what's true. But boy does if feel good for people to imagine that some bad guy is getting his nads zapped!

Go down the list of Republican priorities in the last 7 years, and you'll see why we're so screwed. Time after time, the emphasis has been on what makes Republicans feel good, not what works. Abstinence education? Doesn't work! Pre-emptive war to enhance national security? Doesn't work! Tax cuts to aid middle class families? Not if most of the money goes to the top 1%! Laissez-faire government? Ask New Orleans how this is working for them.

A line from Bill Clinton's campaign in '92 I'll always remember was in one of the debates. He said to Bush, "You've done it your way, and it hasn't worked. It's time for someone else to try." Hillary would certainly have reason to adopt this theme, but I think Obama has a better chance of selling it AND meaning it.

So, we now have explicit declarations of ignorance and incompetence in the face of FISA/PAA from both John King AND Joe Klein.

I can understand it AND explain it to others. Can I have both their salaries, please?

(Maybe it's just reporters with the inititals "JK" who are unable to figure this out...)

...when it was called "Apocalypto."

And it's the easiest and cheapest: Convert all of FL's primary delagates to superdelegates and let Clinton and Obama fight for their votes as they are with all the others.

Delegate selection will happen anyway; let whatever local county party process exists determine who the new superdelegates are. The flavor of each district ought to come up fairly well with a delegation that basically reflects the voting will of the populace.

FL is seated, popular will is expressed a some level, candidates are able to make their cases on an even playing field. Hopefully something so simple will be the solution of expediency.

What is she calling Hillary about again -- taxes or the deficit? If President Hill is raising taxes, doesn't that reduce the deficit, or at least keep it in check? Can't complain about both, Laurinda. If your real fear is that our children are already saddled with terrible debt by our government, as other posters have noted, she's gotta call the Current Occupant on that.

And btw, unless you live in a whole district full of the wealthiest people in the U.S., any tax increase proposed by Clinton will not "raise taxes on [your] constituents."

When a man works for an administration that famously denigrated the "reality based community" to Ron Suskind, with an official (very likely Karl Rove) claiming "we make our own reality," he has no standing by which to attack relativism as a cause of social decline.

And a word to all you culture warriors with education in your sights: Relativism as a movement within academics hasn't had any real force in 20 years. But, yes, it's an easy straw man, so by all means, keep punching it.

As I enter my second decade teaching in higher education, I can say that I have never once had a complaint from anyone who wanted a grade changed because my grade made them feel bad or because there are no real standards, so who am I to judge them? I also know of no one to whom this has happened, and we talk, professionally, about these matters all the time.

When any of my colleagues (or my wife, who taught in the Junior High) has been called on the carpet by admin, it has been because a parent has complained that something that was conveyed as a legitimate part of the instructor's job went against that parent's traditional, conservative values.

If you want to look for what powers the nanny state in education, Armstrong, you might ask your right-wing friends what they do when their children encounter challenging material that suggests that the world might not be as they were brought up to believe it to be. It's not liberals who are bringing disingenuous "intellectual diversity" bills to state legislatures.

Republicans have become the party they always said the Democrats were.

1) The current primary rules unfairly favor Obama.

2) Obama unfairly insists that the rules not be changed so they won't favor him. This makes him undemocratic.

3) Hillary Clinton's appeals to reverse the DNC's "arbitrary" decision to enforce its own rules, which MI and FL were informed would happen, is driven by a pure desire to let voters' voices be heard. This makes her democratic.

4) The most crucial aspect of democracy is winner-takes-all. Therefore apportioning delegates proportionally to the vote is undemocratic, since the rules are not consistent from state to state and unfairly weigh certain votes over others. It is far more fair to give all the delegates to one candidate, no matter what proportion of the vote he or she won.

5) The failure of efforts to resolve the matters of FL and MI so they rightly favor Clinton are soley due to the undemocratic dealings of the Obama campaign.

6) Black is white, up is down. Dogs and cats sleeping together.

Did I miss anything?