How about a one-game playoff for the top two wildcard finishers in each league? From competing divisions, so that no third-place finisher would have a berth.

Result: truly intense division races, since second place would deliver, at best, only half a shot at mainline postseason play. One more team in the wildcard race. And a rested division winner facing a wildcard team staggering in after travel and pitching depletion.

But also the necessary fourth postseason team, an incredible day of baseball, and an outside chance at a Cinderella story.

...is linked to the Knicks story as well as to the Fights story.

The video does indeed show Salon asking Goeas what percentage of Republican primary voters would *not* vote for a *pro-life* candidate, obtaining an answer of 10-20%.

But this story is about likely defections from the GOP in the event of a *pro-choice* nominee, Giuliani.

The municipal judge who ruled the case "theft" is Teresa Carr Deni, a person of gender.

...shows that Ms. Belkin's "Life's Work" column appeared in Sunday Business until 5/17/07, when it was moved, with notice, to Thursday Styles. This was not a event-driven news story; it was a column, which must appear on an the date and page promised to readers.

To say that this column was "relegated" to its own home of 20+ weeks is ill-informed or disingenuous. A column does not wander through the paper with its author's choice of topic.

A young woman's inquiry about what she could do about global climate change elicited a flip response about, yes, what she could do. It is only Broadsheet's tribal logic that characterizes this exchange as blaming the woman, and by extension all women, for planetary destruction. If a young man had asked, he'd be advised not to purchase the Ferrari. This was a suggestion to an individual according to her stereotype, not a comprehensive ranking of causes and responses.

Far from blaming her for climate change, King politely and improperly gave this woman a free pass, as an influencer of men rather than a prime actor.

...ran five columns of conversations between Al Gore and his bald spot and described him as "practically lactating" during the 2000 run. And Drudge ran a photo of an enfeebled McCain while he, Drudge, was on a Romney push. Fact is, there are no Tafts anymore; Americans have chosen the more telegenic major party candidate in every presidential election since the dawn of television.

The campaign has months to go. Candidates are considered snobs if they don't down the hometown greasy fare at every event. So we're likely to be seeing far more of Senator Clinton. The plumpish male candidates and woulda-beens were weeded out long ago.

That's our flawed system. Expecting a gender exemption for women is the true sexism.

That modern kitchen indeed represents a new and oppressive demand on you and all women. Broadsheet reasoning at its finest.

And it's "balance a spreadsheet" (not "a spreadsheets").

"The Splurge."

Walters' discussion about pantsuits seems frivolous only to the frivolous mind. It concerns the evolution of women's wardrobes into forms that better fit the business and professional world. Men had evolved their business uniforms decades earlier.

A parallel for men would be to invoke the wardrobes of sartorial deviants such as Arafat rather than Kissinger. Even then, the deviation would not signify broader societal change.

...blindingly obvious, and it's roughly the opposite of what the Rules Committee is said secretly to prefer.

Seat the Florida and Michigan superdelegates and give them all the convention votes the elected delegates would have controlled. Penalize them by not allowing them additional votes as superdelegates.

The supers are elected officials accountable to the voters. The electorate in future out-of-order primary states will understand that their states will not be denied their weighted voice by the party, but that their own elected officials will be accruing power to themselves if they choose to jump the DNC calendar.

By the way, it is the perfect right of state legislatures to set their primary dates whenever they want. The legislators represent the people; DNC committee members are mere party apparatchiks. Legislatures may be controlled by the other party, which has an equal right to have its primary order respected. They may set rules about crossover voting which do no justice to the preferences of true Dems. With so much potential for abuse and misdirection, Dems should abandon primaries and caucuses altogether and go to an audited mail-in system to select their future standard-bearers, counting the votes of registered party members as corporations count the votes of shareholders.

Thanks David.

Again, the proposal is: seat only the MI and FL superdelegates, and give them all the votes that would have been controlled by primary delegates. Let the supers have all the say for those states, and all the accountability for their choice. Do not count them *additionally* as superdelegates.

Supers are elected officials representing the states. In supporting unrecognized primaries, they simply grabbed the decision-making power for themselves. Future line-jumping states may choose to do the same and will be understood as doing so by their voters. States do have the right to set their own primary dates, and parties do have the right to delegitimize primaries. But national parties must recognize state delegations in some form. It is not for the DNC to apportion FL and MI delegates between Obama and Clinton. It has to be a decision that comes from those states.

This plan enables those states to have their votes tallied at the convention, as cast by legitimate, accountable representatives.

>At least 3 commentators on CNN including David Gergen have suggested that if Barak chooses Hillary as a running mate, he should get a food taster.

One preferably by the name of Chelsea Clinton, per Nicholas von Hoffman in The Nation.

Reminder: the primaries in 1968 were contested into June, but they began in New Hampshire on March 12. This year's primary season began in Iowa on January 3.