When you're in the middle of such an intense relationship-- with its own addictive characteristics-- it can be really hard to know how much you will regret leaving your daughter if you move for this man. But you will. No doubt about. Even if your daughter does adapt well enough, you will still regret it. And it will affect your relationship with her in ways you will come to regret. Why set yourself up for that, when this phase of her life is both so ephemeral and so important? Before you know it, she really will be grown.

And, frankly, a man worth moving for... would never ask you to choose between him and your 11-yr-old child, much less blackmail you with sex.

No promise of marriage? It doesn't really matter, since the truth is that the only real until-death-do-you-part relationships anymore are with one's children.

That doesn't mean I don't understand how much you want to move to be with him.

...if m/any of Salon's current readers remember the many times that Salon's imminent demise was foretold by the mainstream (and online) media (both left & right)? As if it were a fait accompli. Perhaps someone just needed a scoop really, really badly.

However, there was quite a bit of glee in the air each time at being able to predict such a take-down, (something like the Right now accuses the Left of regarding the war. As it actually is... on the ground.) And a bit of unbelieving wistfulness at being wrong. Again.

But, Hah!!! Salon is still here, still changing, and still ahead of the curve on some important stories. And yet, still deliberative and less likely to rush to judgment than a lot of other sources. (E.g., not endorsing a candidate. Good choice.)

I've been a pretty loyal reader since sometime in 1998 (and a subscriber bit later), when the Great Right Wing Conspiracy was trying to take down the Clinton administration via stains on a blue dress and any other shred of irrelevant evidence they could get their hands on. Those were pretty dark days... There were probably some other lamps in the wilderness, but I didn't know about many of them then. It was still early days. A lot more reading more news online, blogs, and most importantly, hyper-links, were needed for me to find other sources of news and commentary that weren't simply spewing the party line, or, even worse, just trying to gin up a soap opera (Howell Raines?). Frankly, I couldn't even tell you how I first came upon Salon, but it became a mainstay for me. Even on those days when there wasn't much on it I wanted to read, it was still a touchstone.

But, I've always seen this site as a kind of wetlands... and I'm getting weary of people who don't really appreciate how much it's helped to change the political/journalistic landscape trampling all over, poking around, and saying: "Nothing new here. What's wrong with you people? (meaning writers/editors. don't you have something better to say?"

If you want something new, exciting, different, start a blog of your own, and see how easy it is to attract readers. And keep them.

To me, it seems like a miracle that Salon even survived. But it wasn't. Just some people who kept writing and working.

...and everyone else who provided some additional insight on this topic.

As a gentile (lapsed Catholic... Irish/English), I don't have a lot of personal experience with Jewish politics, though I have always gone to school and worked with Jewish people, most of them secular, but not all.

Still, I have to admit that it felt strange to begin to come to my own conclusion, merely from reading, not discussion, that we have done a lot of harm in the world via our relationship with Israel. Rachel Corrie's death was especially shocking to me-- not because of her blonde, blue-eyed looks-- but because she was so young, and she understood the injustice so completely. She was uncompromised by filters. [Having some Irish DNA means identifying with the underdog, which for some time seemed to be Israel. Somewhere along the line, that perception changed for me.] Anyway...

I think the justification for this article and others that are sure to follow on AIPAC has more to do with the volume and intensity of the money it controls, especially in its influence on our elections. I don't want any group, left or right, to have that kind of influence. If we hadn't already believed it, we should now: Power corrupts. Period.

I found a little bit of hope at the Huffington Post today in an article about legislation being introduced by Senators Durbin and Specter that "would bring spending limits and full public financing to Congressional elections." About time. It wasn't clear to me from that article whether their bill would also limit large donations to candidates from PACs, but let's hope so.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nick-nyhart/durbin-and-specter-take-o_b_43849.html

Last thing... I raised my daughter more or less without any formal religion, except that which she got by attending church occassionally with her grandmother or with friends. No way is she vulnerable to cults. It was humbling to realize over time that she could see through such things much more clearly than I could, lapsed Catholic that I am.