We should totally sing this every time Rudy appears in public.

for raising the subject of Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman. They present an excellent contrast. Here are two young people who really did show courage and sacrifice, not only in their military service, but in the way they (Lynch, by herself; Tillman, in memory, through the tenacity of his family) stood up to those who misrepresented and twisted the facts of their honorable service to advance their own political interests.

That doesn't sound like anybody running for political office, least of all Giuliani.

Chris, sometimes when I write a particularly effective letter and I just know it's going to get deleted, I copy it to an email and send it to myself.

This time, I didn't. Why?

Because I honestly didn't think that this particular letter would get yanked.

I admire most of the editors at Salon and try to accommodate them as they try to accommodate me, a Premium Member. But there is one, perhaps two, people at Salon who wield the editorial knife with a very subjective and arbitrary hand.

I appreciate the complements I sometimes get. It lets me know that I'm not just talking to empty space. It also lets me know that while there might be one staffer who is on a personal quest to monitor my letters and delete the ones she feels are inappropriate, there are Salon readers who like straight talk and no mincing around.

Thank you.

Tony Snow letter before some anonymous Salon censor decided it had no place in history.

I originally subscribed to Salon for the articles, but soon realized that reading the letters taught me as much, often more than the articles because they made me think from different angles.

Removing this letter was wrong. There was no threat in it to anyone. Removing it was way worse than the content.

The ass cheeks are back! YAY...NOT!

I can remember that long ago Sunday night when Guiliani, then a mere Federal Prosecutor, was profiled on "60 Minutes." It was right after he got Boesky and Millken. He was nattering on, some twaddle about believing that "confession is good for the soul" and so forth, and even waaaay back then he might as well have had "EGOMANIAC" tattooed on his forehead. When the stories about how he was running New York started coming out (I think Breslin was first), I wasn't the least bit surprised.

Rudy Guiliani is a liar, a cheat and a thorough-going scumbag but, most dangerously, he is a narcissistic totalitarian. I predict that if he is elected President this nation will be under martial law within a year, and only spontaneous and cooperative lethal rebellion on the part of this nation's citizens will put a stop to it, and him.

In other words...

GIULIANI MUST NOT BE ELECTED.

Trust me on this, Salon always did PLENTY of letter censoring, even before the recent policy change.

The way I understood it, Giuliani was saying that he had spent as much time at Ground Zero as the cleanup workers in order to refute their claims that breathing the crap in the air had made them sick. Yes, he was grabbing a chunk of political capital as well. But mostly he was saying that he was there as much as they were, and he didn't get sick, so they have nothing to complain about.

This is about something much more vile than some cynical grab for the spotlight. This is about avoiding responsibility for telling lies that led innocent people to their deaths. This is about telling more lies to cover previous lies.

Talking about the time he spent with the Yankees, or talking about his other qualities, or talking about the amount of time other politicians spent at Ground Zero is actually hiding the crime. I don't think that's how we want to respond to this lie.

just to mention that in paragraph three the days from sept.17 to dec.16 number 90 not 60 as posted

I don't know why this one topic seems so verboten. Perhaps someone on staff is dealing with the "Big C" in their family right now.

Let me tell you how I feel about that. I've lost both parents to it. I lost my first love, my first girlfriend to it. I've sat the bedsides of friends throughout my life who have been taken by it.

I of all people know more than my share of it.

One thing I know: We're all going to die. Almost all the people that I knew as a child, right on up through age 30, they are all dead now. They are gone. Some by war, drugs, street crime, car accidents, drowning, industrial accidents. That's how they went.

I just am amazed at the number of people who think just because they are in their 20s and 30s, that death is a long way off. It isn't. They get squeamish about it. They get all bent out of shape about cancer in particular. That's strange.

Why was my comment about Snow so offensive to one editor? I don't know. Was I being mean?

How mean is it for a man to stand up at a podium and shrug and mock the deaths and the suffering of hundreds of thousands of people and act so cynical and dismiss their pain with the snap of his fingers. To say that casualty figures are just a number.

That's the cold, dead reaction of a sociopath.

Now it's coming straight at him. I just find it interesting that he gets all choked up and weepy for himself now.

I have watched helplessly as the light passed from my beloved's eyes, my parents, my friends over the years. In each instance, toward the last of days, they came to peace and they asked forgiveness.

I'm just wondering if the same holds true for a man who has built an entire career making a mockery of death and the suffering of others. He's going to face what we all will have to face and there are no exceptions.