Amity: You are right in your post. An earlier reader wrote a beautiful letter to Feinstein regarding the silence of the Germans before World War II. We are similarly silent.

So I will take your strident tone as a pretext to action. If I am willing to criticize Schumer, then I must be willing to criticize myself.

However, while your criticism may be on the mark for many of us, it is a bit simplistic. There are many people actively working for change. They have been working for years. However, as has been documented on these pages as well as in more moderate and more progressive publications, the multinational control of the media has served to render these people invisible.

We may need to change our techniques with the times. Sites like Salon do just that. Greenwald and Walsh (among other writers here -- Kamiya's article is quite good today) are positive forces for change -- particularly since they are willing to criticize even the Democratic Party in a reasoned fashion and call them to account.

And though I like to hurl insults at Salon's editors in my letters, I'd certainly count them on the side of 'doing good for our nation.'

comet: I was one of the people who criticized the Democratic Party. I'd like to respond to a good point you made. You noted in your letter that the Democrats are certainly different than the Republicans. I wholeheartedly agree. Democrats have much different beliefs, and I believe a Democrat in the White House would not create the crass and lawless state we see now.

What I am frustrated by is the fact that, in practice, the Democracts (as a party) are not working to do anything with their power. I don't see any real change since the Democrats took the majority in 2007. The only change seems negative: the Democrats have put a rubber stamp of approval on administrative actions.

I wrote that I wanted to change parties, but I also wrote that I would not. Why? Because while the Democratic Party as a group seems inept, individual Democrats (and the platforms they defend) do tremendous good. I noted Dodd and Leahy as examples. I'll also note again my own Congressperson, Maurice Hinchey. But you are right: even Schumer (who riled me today with his atrocious lack-of-stand) would be better than Guiliani.

Thanks for the dialog.

It appears many of you believe there is no difference between the GOP and the Democratic Party. What planet are we talking about here? Not this one. Because most of the illegality and abuses of this administration occurred on their watch. And not only did they do nothing, they facilitated it and actually impeded any attempts to investigate any of it. Americans are noted for their short attention spans but, come on, this was just a couple of years ago.

Many of you seem to believe that for a Democratic politician to get your support they must agree with everything you believe. Maybe some of you do belong in the GOP then. I realize they don’t represent just me, they represent their constituency and their country. Sometimes they act in much different ways than I would like. But to say I’m going to abandon my principles, my integrity, and my reason, because I disagree sometimes would be foolish and counterproductive.

Where is the nominee that will say his putative boss broke the law? Which crony is going to prosecute Bush and his henchmen? There ain’t one folks. I realize how angry people are about this, and I am too, but there is fantasy and there is the real world. In the real world you compromise and sometimes hold your nose while doing it.

Anyway the reason for apparent Democratic timidity and acquiescence is Bush has dirt on all of them. He is the modern day J. Edgar Hoover. It seems obvious that someone who disregards the law and the Constitution as much as Bush does would stoop to anything to get his way and further his aims. He unleashed the NSA not just on us but on Congress as well. It’s blackmail pure and simple.

So before any of you change your registration, or reflexively dismiss Democratic candidates next year, think long and hard about it. Imagine how bad it would be now if the GOP still had control of Congress. For one example, they probably would not only not hold the telcos to account, they would have asked the Justice Department to prosecute the NYT for letting us know!

I just don’t get it………there is a difference. Just listen to their presidential candidates and tell me we would be better off if they had complete control again. Vote GOP and abandon all hope for our Constitution and our democracy.

It may be that Chuck Schumer feels some antiquated obligation to the old Senate tradition that you, if no one else, vote for the guy you sponsor. It may be that he was hoping, like a barroom bully, that someone would "hold him back" and thereby prevent him from having to walk the walk implied by his talk. None of these seem implausible, but I don't know Schumer very well. Maybe people who have followed him more closely can say.

What I do know is that California progressives have been complaining about Feinstein for longer than I've been one of her constituents, and yet nobody has been willing to leverage that discontent to chase her out of office. Part of that may be pragmatism — she may be the most liberal Democrat to whom California Republicans are willing to tacitly accede, and this sort of thing is just the inevitable fallout of such compromises.

But if so, what other outcome can one reasonably expect if one agrees to making deals like that? I'm disturbed by the convenient amnesia of American liberals who are acting as though their elected representatives' lack of inspiration and imagination have only suddenly become apparent, or at least salient.

I suspect what's happened in New York is similar to California. It's not like we're talking about North Dakota — there's a superabundance of progressive political talent and resources in both states, despite the heavy counterweight of up-country suburban conservatism. You all pretty much had the party you wanted, and now you want a different one.

Now you want a different one.

Okay, that's great, change is good and it won't come too soon, but let's not go crazy trying to figure out whether Schumer or Feinstein or anyone else is cloistered or lame or both or something else altogether. We ought to already know — we've had all the time in the world to find out.

Perhaps what Joan Walsh ought to be asking is how all those irresponsible hippie beatnik types ("unserious" as Glenn Greenwald likes to put it) among her fellow Californians, who have openly voiced their distaste for Feinstein for so long, could have been right and yet remained invisible.

That, Editor, is a question I would love to see your magazine explore in depth. Salon has the talent and the means to do so — what it may lack is the courage to accept the initial premise of any such investigation, which is that despite its attachment to the moderate, "informed" stance of the past decade, Salon (and the liberal mainstream) ought to have known better.