What you have here, beyond argument, is a causus system that discriminates against people who cannot take off a big chunk of time from work to participate and vote.

In addition, you have a bunch of casino workers who were given the unfair advantage of caucusing and voting in the work place.

In addition, you have casino workers casting a public vote right in front of their employers and union representatives, a situation that is ripe for abuse.

This will not fly. It will have to be fixed. There is no reason whatever to believe that the same thing wouldn't have happened had the union endorsed Clinton rather that Obama. There is no reason to believe that a lawsuit, with the same timing, would not have occured had the union endorsed Clinton.

People do not like to be put at a disadvantage. When it becomes obvious, they respond.

The Obama campaign wouldn't renounce the distortion, lies, and so-called "miscommunication" being perpetuated in his name? No big surprise here. I've been saying he and his campaign are not any different no matter how many times he says the words "hope" and "change" in his stump speech.

I concur with Garry. If you read through Thrasher's posts, you'll see that he is the most virulent bigot in Salon's letter pages. He is in fact so awful that some people here think he is really a white racist posing as a black racist. Maybe he is, but I take him at his word that he is a black man. Whatever he is, his postings are deliberately hateful.

Your letter went after that soft target of the straw man white-liberal-who-is-really-a-racist. While there are liberals like that, Salon and its letters pages are hardly a bastion of such people. In that regard, your letter is reactionary.

I grew up getting a lot of crap from people, both white and black, for being Jewish. As a result, I'm not fond of bigots, to put it mildly. Living in D.C. for nearly 20 years now, I can tell you that the majority of the racism I've witnessed, and even been subject to, has been black on white, either in a crude way, or in an "intellectual" attack that reveals the racism of a well-educated black liberal.

Instead of going after broad targets, go after specific acts of racism, regardless of who instigates it, and who is targeted by it.

Good point on the Repugs going after Edwards' manliness. However, after South Carolina's results, I don't think we'll have to worry about how they attack Edwards, since he came in last with 4 percent in what ought to have been his stronghold. It's a Clinton-Obama fight now.

Your point does jibe with my point, in that the Repugs are going to unleash all the vileness and hatred they can muster -- and they have oceans of the stuff -- and we are going to see racism or sexism or homophobia in its rawest and ugliest manifestation. I just hope that this time the nation rejects it, but I'm not certain that it will.

Thank you for a well-reasoned post. However, before you elevate Trasher, I want you to click on (Read Trasher's other posts) and try your best to get through nearly 800 letters that are some of the worst examples of pure hate and racism that you are likely to read here on Salon. If anyone were to copy his letters and replace black with white and re-post them here, the editors of Salon would pull them down and block the sender's ISP address fast as hell.

I share you anger at Salon's brand of liberalism. It's not even-handed. It seems they bend over backwards to atone for their white guilt. BTW, like you, I am not "white" but not black or brown enough for Trasher. I guess he ironically goes by the old KKK rule of "one drop of blood" only in reverse. I'm sick of that crap. All races are melding together into beige anyway and this whole black/white dichotomy is just as racist as any old Southern Cracker. We can't come together if the Trashers of this world keep hate alive.

I just saw your post from Saturday:

If Edwards is the nominee, the Rovian Collective will continue to call him gay.

Sigh.

Here is the quote from the transcript of BillClinton's remarks:

“Second, it is wrong that Senator Obama got to go through 15 debates trumpeting his superior judgment and how he had been against the war in every year, numerating the years, and never got asked one time, not once, ‘Well, how could you say, that when you said in 2004 you didn’t know how you would have voted on the resolution? You said in 2004 there was no difference between you and George Bush on the war and you took that speech you’re now running on off your website in 2004 and there’s no difference in your voting record and Hillary’s ever since?’ Give me a break. This whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I’ve ever seen.” …

And here is Bill's clarification on the fairy tale remark:

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/01/11/bill_clinton_obama_no_fairy_tale/

from thearticle:

"Clinton said his "fairy tale" remark on the eve of the New Hampshire primary -- won by his wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton -- was only intended to describe Obama's claim to have exercised better judgment about the war, not as a sign of "personal disrespect."

The former president, speaking Monday at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., had accused Obama of misrepresenting himself on the Iraq war. Clinton suggested that while Obama had spoken out against the war in 2002 while he was an Illinois state senator, Obama had moderated his anti-war stance during his 2004 U.S. Senate campaign.

Clinton complained that journalists beguiled by Obama's charisma had failed to question his claim to have been the only Democratic presidential candidate consistently opposed to the war."

The "fairy tale" is the msm overly-simplified, un-nuanced, and factually inaccurate portrayal of Obama's complicated stance on the Iraq war. Not Obama himself The "fairy tale" is the msm's insistence on casting Obama as the Knight In Shining Armor and HRC as The Wicked Queen. Neither portrayal is accurate, and neither portrayal does either candidate justice. Both candidates are far more complex - and far more interesting! - than this media cartoon allows.

It's something we see in the msm again, and again, and again: take the shortcut, use the cliche, mash the subject to fit into the preconceived mold and damn the truth. It's lazy journalism, and it's ugly, and it's a grave disservice to the public.

I've contributed to both the Obama and HRC campaigns. I really don't know how I will vote in my state's primary. I've even done some of those online "pick your candidate" Cosmopolitan-type tests, and there's never more than a point or 2 difference between Obama and HRC.

This (and looking at their voting records and proposed platforms on their web sites) suggests to me that the 2 candidates are far more alike than how they are presented in the msm, and people will likely make their choice based on the candidate's perceived personality, likeability, or the voter's desire to see the first woman or first African American in the White House. Which is fine, except that the msm is stacking the deck. Calling Obama a War Protester and HRC a Hawk *is* a fairy tale.