i am disappointed that you misunderstand the purpose of hate crimes legislation ("funny" isn't it that no one much cared about this law until sexual orientation was being added to the list?.) hate crimes are not about reading a criminal's mind, but for the establishment of a level of prosecutable criminality. the simplest example i can think of to illustrate the law's usefulness is the act of spraypainting on a wall. your run-of-the-mill tagging is misdemeanor vandalism for defacement of property, but isn't painting a swastika on the wall of a jewish temple something more egregious than mere vandalism? i think of the usefulness of hate crime laws as akin to the way we categorize and prosecute various levels of murder and manslaughter. in all cases, we have the 'same' crime in that we have a dead person, but we differentiate between accidental deaths and those perpetrated with malice and many levels inbetween. a robbery is a robbery, but we add charges when the robbed are threatened with a gun whether or not the gun was discharged or even loaded. when someone purposefully sets out to specifically terrorize gay people, or catholics, or asians, i fail to see the problem with law enforcement having the ability to enhance the charges and penalties when the committed crimes are targeted against a particular group. this isn't about establishing 'thought police' but rather just an additional tool for prosecutors to use when the basic classification of a crime does not adequately address it's egregiousness.

You seem to have mistaken my post as some sort of "new definition of free speech."

You write: "Thanks to Andrew J, I just discovered a new definition of a 'free speech.' Any author is free to write anything he or she wants to as long as the people who 'pay for the content on Salon' approve the writing. It’s never too late to learn."

My point is that asking Salon to replace Paglia with another voice is not tantamount to shutting down free speech, as some (perhaps you) have asserted. We come to Salon seeking intelligent reporting and opinion. And many of us do value reading original, independent, and dissenting voices. (In fact, I'd like to see more of that here.)

But I do not find Ms. Paglia to be such a voice. I am not out of line, whether as a subscriber or not, to decry her commentary or call for an alternative voice. This is not some form of censorship; it's voicing my opinion.

And yes, in terms of subscription dollars, I find it difficult to stomach that I, in very small part, financially support a publication that compensates its contributers who write such as Paglia does in the case of Matthew Shepard. I am allowed to be offended. She is allowed to offend. And, in this great country of ours, I am allowed to call for the replacement of offensive (or incompetent, or ineffective, or inane) content.

Obama is surpassing anything that Hitler or Stalin ever conceived. Satan walks on the earth, and his name is Obama. Evil will only be destroyed by the truth - that liberal fascism is the ultimate hate crime against humanity. Join the revolution.

"Whether Palin has a national future or not will depend on her willingness to hit the books at some point and absorb more information about international history and politics than she has needed to know in her role as governor."

Why? Comrade President Hussein was 'handled' using a two word vocabulary for two years....hope....change!!!!

Seems like Paglia may be the one who needs to hit the books.....and absorb more information about American history and politics than she needed to know in her role as opinion hog.

As someone who is very interested in the prehistory of man, I would very much like to know the source of your information regarding life during the the nomadic stone age of Homo sapiens, particularly that the connection of sexual intercourse to pregnancy was yet unestablished, that intercourse preceded puberty more often than it does now, or that human survival was under constant threat.

The evidence would suggest that the most serious threats to human survival only came about once humans crowded into cities allowing for the breeding of wave upon wave of plagues. And one would think that the particular conceit of considering nomads our inferiors would have permanently erased by the unparalleled success of Genghis Khan.

Far from their survival being under threat, the homo sapiens of the time in question were actually expanding their domain, supplanting the existing inhabitants of Europe, the Neanderthals, despite the Neanderthals larger muscles and larger brains.

I know it is somewhat natural is to imagine that all who came before us were more primitive and animal-like, and that evolution has provided a linear progression from the inferior to the superior -- the superior, of course being us. But it is not the case. Granted that our nomadic predecessors undoubtedly knew nothing about howa microprocessor should work. However, they may well have understood human sexuality far better than we do.

Thank you once again for arousing the trembling, impotent, infantile rage of the Left -- who become more and more brittle and feeble-minded with each passing day. Unable to take, even temporarily, a disinterested approach to some of your arguments for the purpose of discussion, they immediately debase themselves by engaging in vile name-calling and petty, academic status-games. This is as pretty much the most vivid portrait of the American Left Wing as you'll find anywhere, encapsulated by all these letters. Let's say they form a mosaic portrait. Notice how quickly they jump from reading an impartial observation of Palin to an ENDORSEMENT of her! A reassessment of Matthew Shepard's supposed "martyrdom" to being an APOLOGIST for his killers! It's simply shocking. There is simply no room in their brains for a disinterested discussion -- it's like they've never learned the concept. "You're with us or you're with them!" Sound familiar folks? Yup, GW Bush. You're doing a great impression of your all-time nemesis!