Mr. Manjoo's article reminds me of a man I knew who wouldn't leave his cheating girlfriend or quit working with his lying business partner because he could never find absolute proof of thier duplicity.

Farad Manjoo writes mostly about tech affairs, but human affairs aren't like science experiments that can be repeated in a lab. What people do and say when no recorders are running is ultimately unprovable. You'll take years, and far beyond the next several elections to sort out the mess of nitpicking dismissals Mr. Manjoo presents here.

Demand a "smoking gun" and risk being a sucker next time, or be like most people who live in the real world; use your judgement based on less then perfect evidence.

Evidence that's pretty overwhelming in the big picture.

I'm a fan of Farhad Manjoo, and I appreciate his critique of Robert Kennedy Jr.'s Rolling Stone article. Manjoo's legitimate points notwithstanding, Kennedy's article was far more important than Manjoo estimates. Sadly, it is a relatively tiny minority of people who have read Mark Crispin Miller's Fooled Again, or who even read Salon. Manjoo, then, is wrong when he says that "nothing here is new." Robert Kennedy commands a certain sort of attention that these other sources simply do not. And this article has prompted a response from the mainstream media that even Congressman Conyers was unable to muster. Manjoo feels the arguments presented are not new, but what's key here is that the *audience* is new, and large, and this is significant.

OK, Kennedy couldn't prove election fraud beyond a shadow of a doubt, so does that mean that the article should not have been written? Manjoo's point-by-point breakdown is well-argued. But this is not a college debate contest - it's a crucially important topic that needs wider exposure.

Moreover, many of Manjoo's arguments against Kennedy's arguments are also open for debate. As a sociologist who teaches research methods myself, I would engage with him on some of the discussions of the reliability of exit polls, for example. But what purpose is served by this sort of quibbling? There is enough data, even in Manjoo's rebuttal, that there were irregularities enough to warrant a full-blown public debate. Disenfranchisement is not OK, whether it would have resulted in a clear Kerry victory or not. And Kennedy's article does more to open this topic than anything else has to date.

Manjoo's criticism's do point out that Kennedy's article is vulnerable to attack, which may be helpful. But Manjoo's article is also symptomatic of what is really wrong with the Left - we waste time in highly intellectual argument over the details of each other's positions, while the other side accomplish its goals, and in doing so does actual damage to the physical world, human and civil rights, and the democratic process itself.

Farhad Manjoo ? Who the hell is Farhad Manjoo? We know that Conyers represents the people. We know the Kennedy clan have been killed representing the people. Who does Manjoo and this group of editors represent? You say this person has an "open mind" but all we get is his hatchet jobs on people with more experience and expertise than Manjoo has ever shown. We get his snide attacks on the millions of Americans who question 2004. Why, indeed, does Salon continue to waste space with this hack's garbage? We want investigative articles on this issue, not reviews of other people's work. It is a fact that Diebold, Hart InterCivic and the other companies controlled by the Bush Mafia have machines that count our votes, machines easily manipulated to favor this regime. With the massive conspiracy of theft in Ohio uncovered by local media and the citizen-journalists Manjoo continually attacks, why does Salon continue this arrogant attitude toward facts like the Warren shutdown? Unreal. We do not need another lazy, desk-squatting arrogant lackey of the this regime. Instead of giving people like Manjoo yet more space, let us have someone who does real research. (Gee, did Manjoo really travel all the way to Georgia to tell us Ralph didn't have his Diebold friends steal the 2002 races?! Wow! What a man of the open mind!)

Farhad Manjoo has yet to prove that GWB did, indeed, win it "fair and square." And what is Manjoo's reason for not doing so - to make himself credible in the eyes of the corrupt GOP and those taken in by them (including the CM - Corportate Media)?

Farhad Manjoo has yet to prove that GWB did, indeed, win it "fair and square."

No, you have it backwards. You have yet to prove that John Kerry won it. The answer, based on all the evidence, is no.

The mainstream media made no real attempt to shed light on these abuses.

Let me speak as a bona fide member of the MSM--at least the print side of things. You people have no idea what you're talking about. Here's a simple term for you:

P-U-L-I-T-Z-E-R!!!!

Everyone craves a Pulitzer, and if there were anything to these crazy conspiracy theories, they would have been covered in detail by journalists hungering for a Pulitzer. That fact that they've been looked at and pretty much dismissed as sour grapes or lunatic ravings by people who have every incentive to write about them if they were true should put all this belly-aching to rest.

And Manjoo is the alpha shit-eater. Straing from Joan's ass.

For those of you who've been reading the stories and following the letters, you may also be interested in the discussion we've been having over in Salon's reader community Table Talk (http://tabletalk.salon.com/webx?13@@.773bc04f) about the Kennedy/Manjoo articles, and our own experiences in the 2004 election.

I guess this explains why FOX news so rigorously and critically covers and investiages Republicans. Oh right, what faux does is COMPLETELY unconnected to ANYTHING else that happens in the media. It's kind of funny, in an unfunny kind of way, that anyone is still spouting the line, albiet in a slightly modified form, that "the LIBERAL MAINSTREAM MEDIA would NEVER let a REPUBLICAN get away with ANYTHING". I think maybe the good old USA has suffered a sort of collective mental breakdown.