I have read and loved Glenn's work from the startbut I am very troubled by his constant flogging of the Salon column to raise money for a PAC and to sink so low as to tout an endorsement by Bob Barr.

There's no pleasing everyone. If I merely write about these issues, I get constant complaints that I'm only describing bad things but doing nothing about them.

If I try to do actual work to affect the things I write about, I get complaints like this that I'm lowering myself by touching something as impure as money and PACs and coalitions with people who aren't like-minded.

In order to affect political issues, one has to raise money and work with other people. That's just how it is.

Glenn, you have been raising this money at least back to February and March and I have come to the conclusion that your primary goal is simply to raise a lot of money.

Yeah - you exposed me. It's so much fun to work 18 hours a day on a political project for no compensation that I'm just doing it for my own amusement, just to raise lots of money with no intent to spend it on things that can matter, because . . . well, there must be some reason I'm doing that.

I know because I gave you $50 and, really, I would like it back.

Every step of the way, I gave extremely detailed explanations for what this project would be, and we have adhered to it completely, as I've also detailed at extreme length.

If you go to Open Secrets, you will see that the Blue America PAC ( which is the operative PAC) keeps most of the money they raise, they are late with their reporting, they have already been fined by the FEC and they give so little money to candidates that it makes me weep.

I have no involvement in the Blue America PAC other than this single FISA fund, which has nothing to do with anything you just wrote. They can speak for themselves, but their fines were tiny amounts for petty and quite commonplace infractions over filing deadlines and the like, and they've hired a lawyer to handle that so that it doesn't happen any more.

Really Glenn, I expected better from you. If you look around at the people jumping into this cesspool, you will see some very shady characters, Bob Barr being only the latest. This whole thing is starting to stink and remind me of the Abrahamoff, Norquist, Reid cabal. I already see the cross-flogging and the payments to each other. You are fast losing all credibility.

The ACLU must be also be evil for having made a shady character like Bob Barr an official consultant. Russ Feingold has a PAC and works closely with former Reagan officials like Bruce Fein, so he's basically the equivalent of Jack Abrahamoff and probably belongs in prison.

I know it would be really nice if we could only work with really good, pure Democrats like Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer and Harry Reid but the whole point is that doing that would achieve nothing. I know they're really good Democrats which means they're nice and well-intentioned and honest and lovely, so if you want, go support them. I'll do what I think is necessary to have an impact on the issues that they've been ignoring.

American Freedom Campaign

I want the pint of blueberries back. You gonna get a pint of tarantulas for that!

Next, maybe you'll write from outside America, somewhere in South America?

I read, `people are fed up? Some boy said: `I'm sick of crap. I gonna go abroad!

Much is so confusing to me.

How can a 'guy' be abroad?

Glenn, just keep at this job.

At least you are laboring.

Hope I no, P.O., Mr. B.O.?

Glenn: say to me: su!

say it anytime, `a-ok.

I find it nearly impossible to believe that a person could lie as much as Bob Barr did about Clinton on TV and every where else and then suddenly become an honest person just a few years later. Especially since I've never heard him really account for himself.

Nobody needs to explain to me the Evil that was Bob Barr in the 1990s. I devoted a small section of my last book to documenting how hideous he was, the huge disparity between his public posturing and his actual life. His prime legislative achievement -- the odious Defense of Marriage Act -- is the reason I can't live full-time in the U.S. He was one of the most vile people on the political scene. No doubt about it.

But the Left has welcomed all sorts of people like that. David Brock was as bad if not worse, and now he's widely loved as the head of Media Matters. Arianna Huffington spent all of the 1990s in hard-core right-wing circles and now she runs the largest liberal news site/blog on the Internet. Andrew Sullivan was one of the most vicious demonizers of war opponents in 2002 and now he's one of the favorite bloggers of hard-core Obama fanatics. Barack Obama travels around with the still-right-wing, pro-life Chuck Hagel, and Obama supporters cheer.

Bob Barr says he changed, that the radicalism of the last seven years changed his views. Is he telling the truth? Who knows? Did David Brock change? Huffington? Sullivan?

Whatever else is true, there are people on the Right who believe in the same things people on the Left when it comes to war and civil liberties. Anyone can go read the Cato Institute's writing about these issues over the last seven years and let me know which group has done more to oppose extremist Bush policies than they have.

That's why the ACLU -- in the wake of the 9/11 hysteria -- hired Barr as a privacy consultant. They saw that much of the Democratic establishment was joining with the Bush administration in these policies, or would at least fail to oppose it, and they wanted to create a coalition as large and diverse as possible to work on those issues.

I agree with what the ACLU did, and I don't see how anyone can say that there are other options after witnessing what the Democrats have done with their control of Congress over the last 2 years.

This isn't directed to your comment specifically -- I know you were saying you think it's good to form this coalition -- but I'm just addressing much of the sentiment I've seen here.