From hard experience we are learning to be skeptical of political prognostications from the corporate media. Why do we accept these same biased entities as fair witnesses on scientific issues?

There is NO battle among entrenched environmental opponents. Rather, every environmental issue is irreducibly complex (to borrow a phrase). Every environmental solution requires balancing conflicting goals. It is insipid to suggest that there is some simple choice between the good of the human population and the good of the turtles. Our problems are of our own making. Leave the turtles out of it.

Clearly a single energy solution is impossible. We need to move forward on all fronts, including both large scale and residential scale solar capabilities. Over the long term, all our problems scale with population (click on my signature), so all our solutions must also.

In the American Southwest, the long term argument for centralized power plants has very little to do with local energy needs. As someone else pointed out, every big box store can become a local power plant. Do you think Walmart will miss the implications of this fact when the technology costs reach a tipping point?

In other locales, water or wind or geothermal will require other mixes of distributed and centralized infrastructure with their own trade-offs. And some localities are simply impoverished for local renewable energy options. It is to benefit these distant disadvantaged cities that the great Western public works projects have always been built.

It is an obligation of the U.S. to aggressively pursue outrageous crimes such as torture. This is simply true within the bounds of U.S. justice, let alone our treaty obligations or constitutional requirements.

If the Obama administration wants to put the torture "issue" behind them and focus on other business, the quickest way to do that is to allow justice to follow its course.

It should not be assumed that doing what is right is inconvenient. In this case, doing what we all know to be right - what our parents told us was right - what Robert Jackson taught us so clearly is always right - doing right is also the most efficient way to handle the situation.

Machiavelli said: "A wise ruler ought never to keep faith when by doing so it would be against his interests." In this case however, keeping faith is completely aligned with Obama's (and the country's) interests.

Machiavelli also said: "The wise man does at once what the fool does finally."

My brother died the night before his birthday. Out celebrating, he struck his head falling down steps behind a pub; the precise circumstances forever a mystery. He was a very large man, a heavy 6'7". You couldn't help think, "the bigger they are..."

There were five of us growing up. The eldest my sister, a decade spanning to the youngest, myself. Larry, the oldest son, midway between. We would play canasta in the afternoons after school, always the two of us. I no longer remember the rules. The others never knew them. Larry would have remembered. Something about red threes.

Five very different people, dancer to Beatlemaniac, Buddhist to programmer. We were the two scientists in the family, his biochemistry degree to my newly minted astronomy. Larry was still searching for his place in the world when he left it.

He was my big brother, but he's been gone now for as long as he was alive. He has taken my place as the youngest. We go on, a gap in every photograph.

Peace to your family.

This was perhaps a poor choice for the initial question if the idea is to develop AAW into a regular feature. Personally, I would prefer a neutral title for the feature - referring to conservatives as "wingnuts" appears to make the point of the anonymous writer. Regarding the media, it is patently obvious that they are right of center - after all, they are owned by vast corporate interests and will think twice about publishing anything perceived as harming those interests.

I'm troubled by the anonymity. Is it really impossible for someone to belong to the Republican party AND to write for Salon? Surely this says more about the GOP than anything the author will ever explicitly say.

BTW, the answer to "Is it the media's fault the GOP keeps losing?" is simply "no". And then the discussion should have turned to issues pertaining to the GOP, not to Media issues. The point of the column should be to convey conservative principles. Writing a response that makes the claim that the Media are anything but conservative misses the entire point that it is understanding of conservative thought and conservative thinkers that we seek. I do not care what this person's opinion is of the Media - I have my own. I *may* care for his or her opinion of the GOP.

The reason the GOP is out of power is twofold. First, they betrayed their base in too many ways to count. Second, their base has shrunk while the Democrats' base has grown. A party of inclusion (the Dems) will have a large but soft base. A party of exclusivity (the GOP) will have a solid, but smaller base. Woe to the GOP if anything happens (like a bad war and bad economy) to solidify the Dems base.

No party can long prosper that is defined by a negative, by what it does NOT stand for. One would think the author's agenda would be best pursued by framing his/her answers in the most positive fashion possible. Do the Media suffer from multiple shortcomings? I already know this. Such an assertion has nothing to do with answering the question.

Rather, what are the core strengths of conservative thought? How can the GOP seek to regain its best nature? And across our three branches of government should they really continue to pursue a strategy of 1) filibuster, 2) a Supreme Court stacked with ideologues, and 3) presidential candidates devoid of either a conscience, or often of any discernible consciousness?