As a writer who sometimes quotes people, I think Fowler is treading on extremely thin ice, not just in violation of journalistic ethics but in violation of basic human sense. I wonder if Salon would publish her work if it were obtained this way. What do you, Justin and Alex, think? And would you interview Salon's editors and ask them what they think?

I see that you do indeed disapprove of Rosen publishing Fowler's material obtained by underhanded means. Does Salon, too?

She's an amateur with a recorder who has blindsided both Obama and Bill Clinton, doing both of them damage with the help of unscrupulous publishers. Maybe that's the new reality, and maybe journalists are an endangered species, but Fowler is no better than the papparazi who ambush people and run them off the road--and who are not journalists either.

The star just means that whoever-it-is is a paid-up Salon member. Editor's Choice posts get a red star.

Please stop throwing the word "blackmail" around; that word does not mean what I think you think it means. What these "big Clinton donors" are doing is an inartful bribery attempt. If they threatened to damage Obama by exposing something unsavory, that would be blackmail. In fact, they are just offering to pay Obama to take Clinton on as veep. It's a clueless, cynical move that will backfire on them, but nowhere near blackmail.

They're publications; websites; media organs; online magazines. "Blog" is the belittling "Democrat party" equivalent for online magazines.

...project much?

Obama has to reject arguments from other people that he wouldn't make himself. That's the only way Obama can maintain that he represents a change from old politics. I just hope that McCain is compelled to do the same.

And if Clarke has been trying to get himself chosen as Obama's running mate, Obama has just delivered a clear message to keep things clean.

Meanwhile, the essential critique of McCain's supposed military strength has been delivered. Whether Obama likes that or not, I approve.

Matthew 25 presents the parable of the wise virgins and the parable of the talents, which both emphasize prudence and its reward in this world and the next. These are clear underpinnings of the new Christian environmental movement. And the kicker is the depiction of Judgment Day as the separation of the sheep from the goats, symbolizing the reward in the hereafter for those who fed the hungry, welcomed the stranger, clothed the naked and visited the sick: "as you did it to the least of these brethren, you did it to me." This chapter of Matthew is one of the most powerful things in Christianity.

I keep thinking Janet Napolitano is Johnette Napolitano.

Horsey is a master caricaturist, whereas the New Yorker cover is blobby and dull. At the New Yorker, you see, its cartoons are all about the idea of a joke rather than its delivery, quite a contrast to its prose.

all the existing California couples can get remarried AGAIN in Massachusetts.

could you still lift the armrests up out of the way?

"[W]hen our artistic community is ready to show that sometimes men must kill in order to preserve life; that sometimes they must violate their values in order to maintain those values; and that while movie stars may strut in the bright light of our adulation for pretending to be heroes,..."

Do the Journal writers never watch television?

. . . of beaks!

You got all the War Room posts below shouting because you didn't close your bold tag.

A keyboard with that fat outlying block of numeric keys may be "classic," but it's an invitation to ergonomic injury as the mousing hand must be held way off to the right--or the alpha keys held offcenter to the left. Seriously, why is this clunky thing considered ideal? I got a mini (laptop-style) keyboard years ago and will never go back.

I am so tired of the fruitless, meaningless would-Mothra-defeat-Gigantor exercise that pits science against religion.

Science treats what we can discover using only the universal tools of experimentation and inference, the basic ingredients of common sense. It's an extremely rigorous process whose results grow ever more powerful and subtle but can be revised at any time because its fundamentals are provisional.

Religion treats the subjects for which science gives little or no guidance. It is based on cultural traditions and comforting stories, designated sacred to ensure their stability. It is extremely rigorous too, once you extend its fundamentals by logic and safeguard them from skepticism.

Where science advances, religion withers. This is good for both, expanding the one and purifying the other. This is why we have no Biblical mechanics and no useful Biblical biology. Galileo and Darwin took those over.

To me the statement "God loves us" is exactly equivalent to "the universe's laws favor our existence." They speak to the heart and the mind, respectively.

Now can Salon please stop running these sententious fatuities?

Bolton was the UN ambassador, Bolten the White House staffer.

Where does the message ask for money?

I think Corsi has made his intent entirely clear from the scurrilous title.

It's first of all about mental fitness. The man can't even grasp his own household.

Secondarily, it's about the hypocrisy of McPrivileged Upbringing And Marriage calling someone else a slacker lightweight.

Tertiarily, it's about McPUAM posing as a friend of the people.

Isn't it great to have all those messages in one sentence? "I don't know, I'll have my people get back to you."

Not me, I didn't say any of that!

Your shorthand about "burying carbon dioxide" is a little misleading. The charcoal being buried is not CO2, but the fertilized soil can in turn sequester more CO2 from the atmosphere.

We have a huge potential for improving the air while improving the soil. No-till agriculture and cellulose biofuel crops are just two of the promising techniques.

It was rejected for lameness.