Granted, the writer doesn't give us enough information to evaluate his claim. However, I can personally testify to the venality of academic institutions.

It's all the more galling because these people are always spouting self-righteous, p.c. platitudes while their treatment of underlings is reprehensible.

My experience: a couple of years ago, I was "let go" from an adjunct teaching position so they could give the course to the daughter of a full-time faculty member. I'd been employed there for four years and had received very positive evaluations from students.

Of course, the institution tried to disguise its actions by giving me a "new" course - one that started at 8 a.m. on Saturday mornings. When - surprise, surprise - an insufficient number of students registered for that course, I was out of a gig. The institution claimed it wasn't nepotism because the dean, who ultimately made the hiring decisions, was not related to the person in question. Nor did I receive any support from the union that supposedly represented me.

What I learned from all this is that I would've had more rights working at McDonald's than as a part-time employee at this community college. I said this to a high-ranking official at my former institution and, while he wasn't pleased, he didn't exactly contradict me.

It's a good thing my full-time work is in the corporate world. Say what you want about corporate America, but the battles that take place there are ultimately much more honest than the sleazy hypocrisy of academe.

It's true that just about anyone plucked off the street would be a better president than what we have now. But frankly, I'm really tired of all these pusillanimous Democrats who only voted for the Iraq war authorization out of political expediency.

That vote was one of the few moments where you really get to see what a politician is made of. When the going gets rough, will they stand on their principles, or will they fold?

Unfortunately, a majority of Democrats flunked the test, and yet they're more or less the ones we're presented with as presidential candidates for 2008. The ones with real courage when that ill-conceived vote was taken in 2002 were people like Russ Feingold and the late, great Paul Wellstone. Wellstone was running for reelection that year - and his poll numbers actually went up after he voted against the war authorization. So much for the conventional wisdom that anyone who voted against it would be demolished.

These lame Democrats' excuses and their non-apology apologies are a little too much for me to stomach. The fact is, if they had one ounce of leadership in their pathetic bodies, 3,000 Americans and untold Iraqis might still be alive today. Why should we be eager to pledge our allegiance to any of them? They haven't shown any to the best interests of the American people.

Last year all those so-called Hollywood liberals showed what they were really made of when they gave the Best Picture award to a patently mediocre film - "Crash" - instead of to the quietly groundbreaking, beautifully-crafted "Brokeback Mountain".

Of course this is nothing new, as other posters have noted. What can you think of an institution that never awarded Oscars (except honorary ones in some cases) to Alfred Hitchcock, Charlie Chaplin, Orson Welles, or Robert Altman? This year they have yet another chance to give it to Martin Scorsese, who's been passed up for the likes of Kevin Costner in years past. I'll fall out of my chair if the guy actually wins it.

There are cases of exceptional films winning the awards ("Midnight Cowboy," the "Godfather" films) but these are simply few and far between. The Oscars are about networking and following the lastest fad - not artistic excellence.

My favorite part of all this is Andrew Sullivan - the personification of the gay peanut gallery - chiming in to pronounce Boxer's comments "homophobic".

I'm not sure why anyone would care what Sullivan thinks anymore, as he's been forced to backpedal on his bizarre, pseudo-erotic enthusiasm for George W. by that pesky thing called reality.

Memo to you Andrew: most of us workaday gays and lesbians (who are not professional homosexuals like yourself) saw through George W. from the very beginning, when he unfortunately defeated the late, great Ann Richards for the governorship of Texas.

Nor would most of us characterize Boxer's comment as in any way "homophobic". Only an ignoramus like you, always eager to carry water for people who hold you in contempt, would make such a blatantly stupid remark.

I'm not a parent, but I would do anything in my power to prevent my nephew or several young cousins in my family (one of whom is in high school - close to draft age) from being sacrificed as cannon fodder in the Bush/Cheney war of choice and profit. The Bushes and Cheneys are the ones who will make money off this - if and when Iraqi oil ever becomes commercially viable. Let them send their kids to fight for it.