John Cole's Balloon-Juice is really quite good if you can stand a very high level of snark..

Mr Cole is a former conservative who has seen the light and now has done not really a 180 but maybe a 130 or 140.. The blog is still actually part of Pajamas Media, which is a neocon blog network.. John despises the neocons now as only a disillusioned follower can..

The commentariat there is about as intelligent as here but far more abrasive and there is a lot more humor, a considerable amount of it kind of coarse.

http://www.balloon-juice.com/

And if you are into military blogs there is Intel-Dump.com

The level of the commentariat there is I think the highest I've seen.. I keep a low profile because although I have military training these guys are pros and exceedingly knowledgeable.

http://www.intel-dump.com/

This has been a great thread, although I must admit that catching up on it after the fact has probably been safer than wading into the middle of it.

Unabashed, passionate, lots of bared teeth and flying elbows, but honest and reasonably respectful. A good show, really, and all contributors to it deserve to take a bow.

Of special interest to me was the fact that it was largely an argument among libertarians, ex-libertarians, and libertarian fellow travelers, except perhaps for Tina, who looks at the human condition and sees damage and woe, not opportunity. In any event, there didn't seem much place in the middle of this for a liberal pragmatist, a traditional conservative or a seer, which is probably why I took a powder early, and why shooter didn't drop in, or GC.

One other aside for Paul Dirks. There was that comment of yours setting out the habitual failures of the liberal imagination, followed by a quote from me on free will. I thought I might remind you that I am indeed a liberal, and that maybe at some point when the lava cools, we might discuss the role of stereotyping in discussions of ideological virtue. No doubt such a discussion would also engage Aych's ardor, once he recovers from the marathon today.

These are minor quibbles, though. I repeat my congratulations to all the doughty debaters today. It really has been a pleasure to lurk.

It isn't what we don't know that causes us the most danger.

It is what we think we know that isn't so.

Which is why I constantly harp on alcohol being a drug.

The great majority of people really don't think of alcohol as being a drug, the very language is set up to reinforce that view.

"Alcohol and drugs"

Even people who should know better do it.

My wife's sister's husband is an MD and he doesn't really realize alcohol is a drug.. Intellectually I think he does to some extent, but emotionally to him alcohol is not a drug..

They drink considerably and yet he is very negative if anyone mentions cannabis.. While anyone who does any research on the matter knows full well which drug is the more dangerous and damaging one..

It's all about *who* he perceives as using alcohol versus who he perceives as using cannabis..

I think the real answer to this is that education for many years now has not had a purpose of helping people to learn to think more clearly and apprehend reality, in fact, I'd say a lot of it is geared at exactly the opposite. With that, it should come as no surprise that intellectuals now have so little connection to reality, and people without the "benefit" of that education are more well-grounded in reality.

You, Paul Dirks, Margalis, Mona and several other people here have been quite enjoyable to read. Mr. Greenwald's blog is quite good, maybe the best one out there, as I'm certainly unaware of any better one.

--Ron Robertson

<<I used to be surprised that a lot of the manual labor types I tend to be around a good bit of the time seem more in touch with reality than those with more high powered jobs, but I have come to realize that when one does manual labor it is impossible to ignore reality. Many more high powered jobs are at a sufficient level of abstraction that job performance is hard to accurately evaluate.. They get away with bafflegab and bullshit a lot of the time.

>>

Governors who hire adult prostitutes must resign immediately lest the public trust be forever sullied. Presidents who break the law by spying on Americans with no warrants, who torture people in violation of multiple treaties and statutes, who start hideously destructive wars based on false pretenses, who repeatedly proclaim the power to ignore laws, and who imprison people -- including Americans -- with no charges of any kind, should remain in office for as long as they want. Anyone who suggests otherwise is an irresponsible, shrill, partisan radical.

Mr. Greenwald,

Your blog is one of the few blogs I regularly read. Until this week, I think I have agreed with you on 99% of everything I've ever read that you've written. So it's really disappointing to see you taking the most extreme points of view of people who disagree with you on the Spitzer affair and selecting them in order to prove your original thesis.

I think a lot of people feel, as I do:

1. no curiosity at all about the details of what he did or with whom,

2. no desire to compare Spitzer with Bush (whom I intensely dislike for having ruined my country's standing in the world and having sullied its civic life), and

3. that it's not unreasonable to say that an elected official who engages a prostitute has done an awful thing and should not continue to represent the state in an official capacity. Whether illegal or not, prostitution is a terrible thing for women, half of any governor's constituency, and it doesn't take much research to see this. That some women may choose to go into the profession on a rational basis does not change the fact that the net effect of prostitution is extremely negative for women. (Sure, there are some who argue otherwise -- but if you don't agree with my conclusion, which goes along with that of most everyone who has looked at prostitution from a human rights angle, then do I deserve your ridicule, along with everyone else who hasn't agreed with you on this topic?)

In response to your Bush screed: Yes, Bush should be impeached. Bush has ruined our reputation in the world and turned nearly everything the US says in an official capacity into a bad joke. That doesn't mean that I can't expect that my governor, should we discover he's been hiring prostitutes, shouldn't resign. Why? Because he is the governor representing my state, and whether Bush is the worst or the second-to-worst president of all time is irrelevant. Public representatives are and should be held to a different standard than the guy in the next cubicle over -- because they represent the public in an official capacity. Maybe we don't look up to our officials in the same naive way we used to (and that's, on the whole, a very good thing), but we should have the right to expect a certain standard of behavior from them. A governor of a state should be able to speak to my daughter in a way that doesn't seem ironic or creepy. It's not unreasonable or crazy of the public to expect this much.

The argument is always, "Where do you draw the line?" With Clinton, we got past infidelity, and a lot of people grew up and on the whole it was positive that Americans learned to accept that presidents can have personal problems. Minor drug offenses, also, seem to no longer matter. It is possible to separate a person's life out from a person's policies in many instances. But engaging in prostitution? While you're governor? While you go to school openings and marching band displays and countless other public ceremonies?

Come on, of course he should have resigned. Of course, of course, of course, of course we should be able to expect better.

I'm surprised at your hyperbole and the way your usual lawyerly rationality seems to have gone out the window on this topic.

We all have our better and weaker arguments; I realize that. Maybe there's room for a post re-thinking whether you've been a bit too extreme in your dismissals of those who have disagreed with you?