Al Franken's a Minnesota native and Hillary Clinton spent many years in public service before they moved to New York and she ran for Senate. I don't think their candidacies can be viewed the way that Whitman and Fiorina's can. They're not former business execs who jump late into politics and never gave a crap about it before.

Just curious how Drudge Report being paid by one outlet is any different than Fox, CNN scrolling news headlines by AP, Reuters etc.

The money's going in the wrong direction. Media outlets like Fox and CNN pay AP and Reuters to use their newswires. That's standard practice.

People who link to other sites, like Matt Drudge does, do not typically get paid for those links. (And they don't pay to link either.)

If I was putting news stories on the front page because I'd been paid to link to them, and I didn't tell anybody, would it really not matter at all? I would hope my editorial independence here has value.

I've decided that I can't vote for a political candidate who couldn't be bothered to vote. Obviously I wasn't going to vote for Whitman or Fiorina anyway, since I'm not in California and not a Republican, but I think it's a good general rule for the next time this comes up -- no matter who the candidate is.

A person who didn't give a shit about politics until they were the candidate running is just running for personal gratification, not public service. We don't need them.

There are terrorist attacks every day by Muslims.

Not in the United States. And even overseas, the attacks by a small number of extremists Muslims have nothing to do with billions of Muslims.

There are millions of Muslims in the U.S. The lack of attacks here would suggest quite strongly that they are decent people who are as sickened by this shooting as everyone else.

Why hasn't Matt Drudge offered you $1,000,000 for the domain name?

My guess is that Matt Drudge does not believe drudge.com has any value to him. I have been told that he owned the domain and dropped it before I picked it up in 1998.

He's known about this site for a decade, and even called an LA radio show when my copublisher Jonathan Bourne was on.

I think most people would be at least a little jealous of Matt Drudge's success. He earns more than $1 million a year running a site with a staff of two people and one ad rep. That's fuck-you money. He doesn't have to answer to anybody.

But as Cobra said, the Retort has been a big success by my standards. I got no complaints.

What would that even accomplish? It wouldn't diminish the site or it's reputation.

You should be able to see how making under-the-table deals with mainstream media organizations diminishes the independence of a site like the Drudge Report. Would Drudge call out Reuters for coverage it thought was inaccurate or biased?

My position is that the Drudge Report serves an important role in the U.S. media and should have ethical practices.

I've already said what they should do: Tell their audience that the news links are a paid commercial arrangement with Reuters, not editorial content.

If there is a backlash against the Muslims of this country, they have brought it on themselves.

How did the millions of Muslims in this country bring a backlash on themselves because of the actions of one deranged murderer? The way some people are talking, it's as if they're itching for an excuse to round up America's Muslims and send them to internment camps.

But it's funny that a website that ripped off the layout and even name of the Drudge Report would raise a stink about this.

This site was set up back in 1998 as a response to the Drudge Report. It should not come as a surprise that we'd cover this issue here, just like we've covered dozens of other things about Matt Drudge's site and its rightward tilt.

Like I said: another disciple of the peaceful religion...

There are 1.57 billion Muslims in the world. Judging all of them by the acts of an extremist fringe or nutballs like this shooter is as accurate as judging all Christians by the actions of Tim McVeigh or Scott Roeder.

No big deal, Crisp.

I used to love Eight is Enough. But that theme song is a major earworm.

Here's a picture from the wedding you crashed, Crisp:

I looked up Vicki Averbach and found a funny quote from Willie Aames when he was around 18 and was about to marry her:

The numbers are still all over the place.

I'm sure if some Drudge ripoffs were more popular they would do the same.

Funny, but I wouldn't run paid links without telling people they were paid. That's a form of advertising.

It's unethical to run paid links to news stories without disclosing the commercial relationship. The fact that Reuters pays for story links on the Drudge Report -- by paying Andrew Breitbart -- calls its editorial independence into question.

Since the Report's independence from the mainstream media is such a vaunted part of its appeal, the fact that it's in bed with Reuters is worth noting.

Just curious, how many of you on the left will even admit that in the least is was a poor choice?

I think it would've been better to address the shooting before or after the remarks at the Native American event. But that's a minor quibble, not Yet Another Example of How Obama is the Devil.

It's going to be a long three or seven years for some folks.

Obama went on and on for over 2 minutes talking about thanking people who to come see HIM--and a shout out to the Indian Chief HE gave the congressional medal of honor to.

How many times do you think President Bush gave exactly the same kind of remarks in exactly the same kind of way, complete with shoutouts to some of the local muckety mucks. You're being silly.

Per the video it looks like he's up there giving the speech and just talking about something else.

He had a scheduled event and he carried it out, with some time added to address the Fort Hood shootings. If the networks and White House staff had scheduled it properly, so they cut in for the president's remarks, no one would be making an issue of this.

Outside of the people who believe the worst of Obama at all times, does anyone really think he doesn't care about the shootings and would intentionally give short-shrift to the subject? Why? Acting like the president is secretly Boris Badenoff is a stupid way to go through life.

Talk about grasping at straws.

No kidding. It's not the president's fault that the networks cut in to show unrelated remarks. Calling this "frightening insensitivity" is amazing. For some people everything the president does is wrong, no matter what he does.

You could tell he really didn't want to talk about it.

Did he tell you this through mind waves transmitted through your television?

That girl's reaction is a tearjerker. Especially when you think that there are thousands of kids like her making the huge sacrifice by having their parents serving at war.

Whenever I read about a couple of guys slaughtering Americans, I just assume there's somebody named Mohammad somewhere close by, doing his little bit for jihad.

There are thousands of soldiers serving this country with honor who have names of Arabic descent.

The suspect's name will not be pleasant news for Colorado physician and Republican donor Malik Hasan: